Hi r/neoliberal, it’s me, Adrian Vermeule. Through blood and conquest I have destroyed liberalism! Deus vult!

Who this

Hi Professor. Do you still subscribe to the view that the purpose of your legal philosophy:

>is certainly not to maximize individual autonomy or to minimize the abuse of power (an incoherent goal in any event), but instead to ensure that the ruler has the power needed to rule well … Just authority in rulers can be exercised for the good of subjects, if necessary even against the subjects’ own perceptions of what is best for them — perceptions that may change over time anyway, as the law teaches, habituates, and re-forms them. Subjects will come to thank the ruler whose legal strictures, possibly experienced at first as coercive, encourage subjects to form more authentic desires for the individual and common goods, better habits, and beliefs that better track and promote communal well-being.

If so, why? Why abandon our centuries long skepticism of concentrated power?

If that quote misses context, as Wikipedia often does, can you put it in context?