The Fall of the West: The Post-War Consensus and the Sexual Revolution

Or, Why Are Leftists So Comfortable Calling Everyone a Nazi?

Jan 08, 2026

This is a shorter version of a talk I gave at Trinity Church Denver this past fall. It was well attended and we had a lively discussion. I’m thankful for them hosting me. Think of this as a quick hitter reference guide to shed some light on an important meta-narrative that has basically permeated every aspect of our world.

What Is the Postwar Consensus?

Ben Crenshaw:

“The Postwar Consensus refers the world order that emerged after the World Wars. Its overarching goal is to achieve and maintain world peace through disarmament and intrastate cooperation.”1

In a move away from ever repeating the World at War, the goal was to eradicate any particular people in particular places which could give rise to more empires vying for global domination.

In this open society, there would be not hate but open commerce, open borders, open everything. Things would become uniform in this open society as cultures and particularity were hollowed out.

Think of globohomo. Everything is the same. You can now buy In-And-Out in Tennessee. Congrats. World Market is now irrelevant because the world has come to you! Gay rights are coming to Guatemala and Guatemalans are coming to you!

Consider it this way. Think of the opposite of the postwar consensus: strong loves and attachments to particular people, places, and ways of life.

Historical Background

The League of Nations (1920) was an early stage postwar consensus. Woodrow Wilson imagined a global covenant of peace and national disarmaments.

The United Nations (1943): Roosevelt wanted to establish powers to police the world, mainly the US, Britain, China, and Russia. These

“The goals remain the same: to beat back the conflict-ridden ‘jungle’ of a multipolar world where world war once again becomes possible, to ensure perpetual peace, to police rogue nations and protect human rights, and to enforce international law.”2

The collection of these organizations, their purposes, ideology, and the means they employ is known as the Liberal International Order (LIO). Its principles, values, language, and ends constitute the Postwar Consensus.

How Nations Used to Work

How did nations formerly operate? Law of nations.3 There were various peoples. They each had a duty to their own people. They had particular sovereignty over their own nation. They did not have an inherent duty as much to other nations. That doesn’t mean they wouldn’t get involved but it was a different metric and self-conception. This is what some might call “nationalism” today.

“The blame for the destruction of the World Wars was placed at the feet of nationalistic fervor and loyalty.”4

Strong love for family, kin, and people, often stirred to ambition by natural leaders, must be tamped down and deconstructed. Nationalism would be tied to fascism, Nazism, and populist authoritarianism.

The only reasonable option was a politically and economically open global society led by the LIO.

Rusty Reno on the Postwar Consensus

“A powerful consensus in favor of fluid openness was embraced by the left and right… The postwar consensus sought to banish the strong gods.”5
“After 1945, our ruling class agreed that powerful loves and intense loyalties make us easily manipulated by demagogues.”
“Our only hope… is to tamp down our loves and loyalties, to weaken them with skepticism, nonjudgmentalism, and a political commitment to an open society.”
“Intent on countering the evils of Auschwitz… we embarked on a utopian project of living without shared loves and strong loyalties.”
“By the first decade of the twenty-first century, the postwar consensus supported a power-sharing arrangement between the Democratic Party and the Republican Party…”

How It Was Implemented

This was mainly implemented through global markets. By making global consumers, national distinctions could be suppressed. People become economic units with no national ties.

“You’ll own nothing, and you’ll be happy.” — WEF

National entities rise up like the CIA, sharing intelligence and strategies with other nations. Propaganda is a key instrument in the PWC.6 Because as these agencies, along with the media, deploy propaganda, they are conducting something of an air war against anything other than the PWC.

Unchosen bonds are seen as dangerous. All narrative is about being free from unchosen bonds. Think about every Disney movie ever written. Parents are bad. They do not understand. Become your true self. Destroy those who hold you back. Be free from your unchosen bonds.

You can have the pod. You can eat the bugs. You watch the blue screen. You can take happy pills. Just become a cog. Become a number on spreadsheets stored in data centers deep underground. Feel the warm embrace of your virtual reality girlfriend. Just do not resist. Do not transgress. Submit.

The PWC functions as a meta-narrative for the morality of nations.

Where Do We See the Postwar Consensus?

Cases of Promotion

Boomers generally uphold the PWC. Even conservative boomers who believe that the Republicans are not in on it (like Mike Pence). Global leaders who represent the world more than their nation (i.e. Obama). Christianity itself becomes sublimated to the PWC. Pastors and theologians have by and large bought PWC messaging hook line and sinker.

The gospel has been accommodated. They talk about human dignity while punching against natural bonds like family, marriage, and children. They laud the single woman and the foreigner. They despise the backwater southern man. “The nations are coming to you!”

What is wild is how the postwar consensus is a type of anti-Christ. It is a global empire vying with God.

It has become an empire hellbent on global domination with sacred terms, sacred actions, sacred institutions, and sacred rights. It uses the language of the Bible to trick Christians into thinking that Christianity has always been multicultural and friendly to Muslims and sodomy.

Dissenting Responses

Think of Tucker Carlson or Donald Trump. They promote “America First” or what some call nationalism. Israel (ironically) is the only nation allowed to be nationalistic.

“A nation’s responsibility is first to itself.”7

Under the LIO, human dignity and human rights became tools to justify policing the world. Nationalism became a bad word. Any threat to multiculturalism is treated as Hitler.

Allies vs. Axis functions as a meta-narrative for global, national, and local threats.

Democracy, once a system of government, became the thing the PWC must make the world safe for.

Universalized Cultural Principles

Western liberal democracy (i.e. PWC) sets the bounds of what we are allowed to talk about.

Cultures may no longer arise as the living outgrowth of a people and place… Instead, we must renounce hard metaphysical claims and focus on subjective personal meaning.8

A great example of the PWC is Vivek Ramaswamy. Or think of this classic PWC thinking that you’ve probably heard:

“America is an idea anyone may adopt, not a people and place.”

Why Are Leftists So Comfortable Calling Everyone a Nazi?

Because within the Postwar Consensus, anyone who resists universalism, globalism, or the liquidation of natural bonds is seen as the threat and the reincarnation of fascism itself.

Connected to the Sexual Revolution?

Marriage constitutes a nation and marriage is constituted by sex. Think of an annulment. In former times, a marriage could be annulled if it was never consummated. Now of course, marriage can be dissolved or annulled for any and every reason.

Therefore, if you can change sex, you can change marriage. If you can change marriage, you can change the nation. See how it works?

The sexual revolution followed naturally from the PWC. Sex is one of the most intimate and bonding actions in the human experience and it’s corruption is not accidental but intrinsic to the PWC.

Feminism Goes Hand in Hand with the PWC

Birth control, abortion, no-fault divorce, sodomy laws repealed, pornography, IVF. All of these matters flowed from the chief aim of dissolving unchosen bonds.

Sex was separated from conception. Sex became recreation. Abortion became a sacrament. Divorce followed. Pornography exploded. Children became products.

Women themselves became “free” from the bond of marriage. They could have it all (and be completely miserable along the way).

The sexual revolution was integral to the spread of the Postwar Consensus. If you go after one, you go after the other.

What to do?

Most people have no idea about any of this. They don’t realize what has happened. Worse, they don’t even care.

When you question immigration, defense, economics, equality, human rights, “love is love;” you are questioning reality as they know it.

Nothing is a greater threat to the PWC and the sexual revolution than Bible-believing Christians who love their family, their God, and their nation.

It is the job of every preacher to articulate the truth. That does not mean they must attack the PWC in every sermon. But in their study, they should come to terms with how the PWC has colored their reading of God’s Word. And they should be careful to not become a patsy for the PWC by parroting lines from the LIO and twisting the Scripture to uphold it. Furthermore, pastors can help themselves by utilizing commentaries and books from before the 20th century. Even more, they can help their congregation find sources that have not been sublimated to the regime.

It is the job of every Christian to “live not by lies,” soberly assess the times, and trust God and His providence. If you discuss these matters publicly, there will be a cost. Sometimes it is necessary. Other times it is not. Wisdom is needed and so we must go Christ, who is himself the wisdom of God.

J. Chase Davis

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