New Strategies for the New Right
Recently, I attended a private event where a Senator came and talked to the students in our program about his work as a representative in Congress. Afterwards, I was amiably conversing with one of our bright scholars who was questioning whether the New Right should be so eager to abandon the principles of yesterday’s conservatism. The Senator had talked about the importance of the separation of powers and of defending our allies abroad against brutal dictators. Perhaps the Senator’s consistent and high-minded practice as a public official was really the wise path after all.
Today’s conservative college youth have been thrown into a fierce contest among conservatives not over merely the direction of the movement (that has now been decided largely in favor of Trump and his MAGA faithful), but more importantly, over the substantive principles, dispositions, and modes of operation of the movement writ large. This is, in many ways, a generational divide: Baby Boomers (1946-1964) represent an older, more reserved, more Buckleyan approach toward riding out the cultural turmoil, while Millennials (1981-1996) represent a more aggressive and flexible approach toward taking back lost ground (Generation X [1965-1980] sits uneasily in the middle, but generally favors the Baby Boomer mentality). Zoomers (1997-2010) are even further to the right than Millennials, and among Zoomers, the younger cohort (ages 18-21) have shifted dramatically to the right.
In talking to this youth, I sought to convince him that a new approach was not merely desirable, but necessary to save our country (if possible). In short, the conservative “principles” of the older generation include familiar political concepts like the separation of powers and checks and balances, due process for all, the rule of law, free speech, and neutral courts to decide contested matters (among other things). Yet these are not all principles, and the form and function in which we have inherited them should not command our patriotism and loyalty.
Chris Rufo’s Long March Through Modern Liberalism
These matters coincide with new tactics being deployed by Chris Rufo, who has been working with the Trump Administration to reform the Department of Education and especially the government’s funding of colleges and universities. The Wall Street Journal ran an article on Rufo, basically calling him a Marxist communist for employing some of the tactics first articulated by Antonio Gramsci. Surprisingly, Rufo did not deny it; instead, he embraced the association, proclaiming that “the Right is learning new political tactics.”
On cue, a host of classical liberals and neoconservatives took to social media to question and denounce Rufo. Others came to his defense. This spawned a discussion between Jonah Goldberg and Rufo, with both men respectfully articulating their positions. Many people joined the debate, but one known well on the Christian Right was Doug Wilson and his Blog and Mablog. Wilson laid out the matter decently well, but shuffled between Goldberg and Rufo: ‘yes, but’ to them both. Wilson pointed out that transcendent standards are the thing we’re really all bickering about, which was then capitalized on by the Kuyperian, theonomic conservatives. David Bahnsen replied to Rufo and Goldberg, as well as Wilson more directly. Many words and ideas flew in all directions. How shall we gain a footing?
In this debate, the New Right is squarely behind Rufo (and represented by Rufo in a real sense). There is no fear in reading Marx or Foucault or Gramsci, or in emulating certain aspects of Wilson’s or FDR’s presidencies. Goldberg (and the rest of the National Review crew and Never Trumper Dispatch types) have no answer to the current moment, no ability to prevent the utter destruction of America by the Left. Goldberg insists that the conservative right in America just is classically liberal—or “at least they were considered to be for a century or so” (Goldberg says). His criticism of the New Right is that they stopped being classical liberals because they have “adopt[ed] illiberal means to achieve liberal … ends.”
The problem, Goldberg asserts, is that by using illiberal means one transforms liberal ends into illiberal ends; the means employed shape the ends, and as such, pragmatism fails to deliver its intended results. Goldberg declared that “any understanding of conservatism as a political project that rejects classical liberalism” is one that he will repudiate. This includes “imposing your ideas through raw power” or turning one’s back on free speech, freedom of association, due process, free markets, individual rights, and so forth. Bahnsen, for his part, continued to beat the same drum, warning that those who “embrace illiberalism out of expediency will get neither a win, nor anything beautiful.” The reason conservatives should continue to defend classical liberalism is that it has a political vision that requires transcendent truth. In contrast, the New Right is dangerous because it believes in “extreme governmental central planning in markets,” practices grift, and is racist to boot. In the end, Bahnsen calls on the New Right “radicals” to articulate a “limiting principle” for their movement that will hold in check the pragmatism of ‘the circumstances and times have changed’ mentality.
The idiom of liberalism and illiberalism by Goldberg and Bahnsen is unfortunate. As Goldberg states, the conservative right has been associated with classical liberals for the last century—at least since Louis Hartz’s The Liberal Tradition in America was published in 1955, if not before (really, with the rise of the National Liberal League in the 1870s). But of course, America existed long before that, and while liberals like Hartz and Goldberg try to argue that the founding was classically liberal, that argument is hard to make—and if it is true, then the founders’ liberalism is nothing like the liberalism of 20th-century conservatism.
The founders’ “liberalism” could accommodate religious establishment, foreign policy isolationism, free association to discriminate, the criminalization of abortion and homosexuality, blasphemy and blue laws, tariffs and economic nationalism, and a host of other ideas unthinkable and anathemized by conservatives. In other words, the founders weren’t liberal in any contemporary understanding of the term. This is why, among other things, modern scholars have had to adopt a ‘whig interpretation of history’ in order to claim that history is unfolding and progressing toward a better future: the founders sowed the seeds of ideas whose full implications and consequences were yet to be realized, and we, their inheritors, must now complete their vision for them. This is arrogant nonsense, and it fails to take the founding generation seriously about what they believed and said, and why.
The New Right is not concerned about classical liberalism or what might or might not be illiberal. The New Right is interested in two things: first, the substance of America, in both her colonial period and her founding; second, the nature of good government and prudent statesmanship in order to rescue our country from those who have torn it down as well as from the older conservatives who have failed to conserve. The New Right believes these two goals are ordered: good government is the means to recovering the substance of America, but this might require suspending parts of the Constitution, violating its “principles,” and demolishing beloved precedents.
Regardless, liberalism—whatever it is—is dead, and the fact that Goldberg and Bahnsen can’t not think outside its framework demonstrates how limited and ineffective they are. To be blunt, none of the founders believed they were “liberals.” They all spoke in the dialect of republicanism, not liberalism. They read Locke and adopted many of his ideas, but even Locke is not “liberal” by modern standards (e.g., he believed atheists should be excluded from any commonwealth). And they didn’t just read Locke: they read Cicero, Plutarch, Machiavelli, Harrington, Sidney, Montesquieu, Blackstone, and most of all, the Bible (the KJV). The New Right simply doesn’t care about labels, but is determined to read seventeenth and eighteenth-century primary sources without modern filters or frameworks predetermining their meaning.
Ends and Means
Older and more cautious conservatives often complain that the New Right not only is not principled—willing to wield power as a cudgel to punish their political enemies—but in particular, they lack a “limiting principle” for their behavior. This is the source of the ‘other shoe’ argument: without a limiting principle that you discipline yourself to observe—despite all temptations to the contrary—and in good faith expect the opposition to as well, you are merely opening a Pandora’s box of future evil in exchange for short-term gain. Once the other side ascends to power, they will your weapon of choice against you. No one wants this, right?
The New Right rejects this premise. Abusus non tollit usum: “Abuse does not cancel use.” The question is not, primarily, about finding just the right “limiting principles” that all will subscribe to, nor conducting oneself in such a manner in public, such that when the other side comes to power, they cannot take advantage of one’s pragmatic, but ultimately foolish, practices. The Democratic and Progressive Left in America has long since demonstrated that they will abuse the system even if conservatives play by “the rules.” This reveals that the “rules of the game” are no longer the rules of the game. Liberalism is over; the other side will no longer honor the long-held presumptions of liberal democracy.
What the Left does in abuse of our constitution and country, however, does not cancel proper use. Yet this simply raises the question—long since banished by liberal democracies, and even within the conservative movement—of what constitutes proper use? The fact that the Left has blown past the rules, torn up the playbook, and arrested and executed the refs is obviously lamentable, yet it presents the New Right with the golden opportunity to question and reconsider the rules that have for so long governed us. What we find is that those rules were themselves a twice-removed simulacrum of the American founding, of the U.S. Constitution, of the people and way of life of America, of America as she was going all the way back to her colonial founding.
To think in terms of “limiting principles” is to unnecessarily place oneself under a set of rules that are bygones, and that serve only to police conservatives among themselves. The Left knows this and, for a long time, has used an appeal to high-minded principles as a mechanism for controlled opposition. This is why, when Trump rightly exercises lawful Article II powers in a way that the Left disapproves of, they scream about the violation of “constitutional principles” (by which they really mean, constitutional precedents as determined by liberal courts and legislatures over the past century). They don’t care about the separation of powers or due process or natural rights, but they know conservatives do, and so they make a theater show about how Trump is an authoritarian fascist tearing up the Constitution and how Republicans ought to muster their own Brutus to stab this would be American Caesar in the back.
The New Right does not constrain itself by “limiting principles.” Instead, it has a different understanding. This is the Original Founding Vision of America, and it includes the following truths:
- That good is to be done and pursued, and evil avoided.
- That the welfare of the (American) people is the greatest (political) good.
- That the welfare of America is outlined in the Preamble of the Constitution—toward which every stricture, institution, and clause of the Constitution was meant to facilitate, achieve, and defend.
Neoconservatives and classical liberals wedded to Kantian rationalism will immediately interrogate: but aren’t you implying the ends justify the means? That’s obviously wrong. If you try to answer this question without first questioning the question, you have already lost. The ends never merely ‘justify’ the means; the ends are logically prior, and temporally consequent, to all instruments. You must know the end before you can determine appropriate means for achieving it. The Kantian framing of ends vs. means is a dualistic false dilemma: if you reject ‘ends justify the means’ thinking, you must accept its inverse—the categorical imperative. Adopting some form of the categorical imperative is why classical liberals and neoconservatives seem to be high-minded and principled. This is where they draw their strength from—and their scorn for those who deviate onto ‘illiberal’ paths.
What are “appropriate means”? The means must be able to accomplish the ends for which they exist; otherwise, they are not means (utility), and the means must be good in themselves (just); otherwise, they are not appropriate. Since like produces like, it is impossible for unjust means to produce truly good ends; it may look like it can, but the eye is deceptive. For example, killing people for the sake of peace is usually a wrong means for a good end. But war for the sake of peace is an appropriate (i.e., just) tool for a good end. The circumstances that make war necessary and just mean that killing in war is an appropriate action for accomplishing peace.
Here’s another example: two men hit their sons using their open hand. The first man does so out of anger and to hurt; he is abusive. The second does so out of love and in response to disobedience; he is a good father. Externally, the act of striking the son may look exactly the same. The difference is the end toward which each exists—which silently shapes the acts themselves. The intention that directs the blows and communicates the father’s desire to the child makes the acts substantially different, even if formally identical. To those who cannot perceive, they merely see the same thing: two abusive fathers. Classical liberals are like those who see but cannot perceive, and so they remonstrate about “abuses” day in and day out.
Determining useful and just means to accomplish good ends (like the welfare of a people) is not a formula or written on a stone tablet somewhere. It is a matter of prudence, the consummate virtue of political statesmanship. Classical liberals don’t like this because their definition of “standards” are unchanging universal maxims or commandments (i.e., the categorical imperative) that must be strictly adhered to for a polity and people to be just. The prudent ruler, of course, has a wealth of knowledge of unchanging divine and natural truths, but the application of these truths is always determinative, particular, and variable. It can look sloppy, arbitrary, and unprincipled, but it’s not. Classical liberalism has a hard time accepting this. This is why the New Right is neither classically liberal nor neoconservative.
We the People
The Preamble of the Constitution tells us what the ends of the American people are: We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
The overarching goal was union, harmony, and friendship among the American people—the Greek idea of homonoia, the end for which every ancient city existed. This could not happen without common defense and provision for the general welfare; without justice and peace; and without the blessings of liberty not only for the founding generation, but secured for their children and children’s children as well.
The New Right understands that every clause of the U.S. Constitution, every enumerated provision, every limiting stricture, and every institution it creates—each of these was implemented for the purposes set forth in the Preamble. These are the means, not the ends of the American constitutional order. Older conservatives who elevate the separation of powers or due process, or the Bill of Rights as the highest principles of the American order have an ill-conceived idea of America. They are wrong. These are the means to greater ends, and so they are not the unmovable principles of American politics. When practiced and applied well, they are good and salutary means, and we should be wary of hastily abandoning them.
Yet the Left has already destroyed almost every constitutional “principle” cherished by conservatives. Separation of powers? Eviscerated by Woodrow Wilson, John Dewey, James Landis, and FDR, and the growth of the bureaucracy. Due process? Eroded by the Supreme Court in Yick Wo v. Hopkins (1886), which ruled that the right of due process in the Fourteenth Amendment was “not confined to the protections of citizens,” but is “universal in [its] application” and must be open to “all persons within the territorial jurisdiction” of the United States—even, we are now told, to illegal felonious alien gang members. And of course, Due Process was completely destroyed when January 6 defendants were blatantly held as political prisoners, denied their Fifth and Sixth Amendment rights. What about the rule of law? Did not the Obama administration spy on the 2016 Trump campaign, and did not the Clinton Foundation fund the fabricated Steele dossier that led to the Russia Collusion Hoax? From these illegalities to two failed impeachments to an illegal FBI Mar-a-Lago raid to fake felony trials to two failed assassinations, the Democratic party has mocked the rule of law at every turn in their obsession to destroy Trump’s populist movement.
Classical liberals will blandly retort that just because the Left has broken the law doesn’t justify the Right doing the same. But of course, the New Right is not championing lawlessness. Instead, the New Right recognizes that the Left’s lawlessness has forced the question: What is the law? If the administrative state has destroyed separation of powers, then separation of powers is no longer the de facto law—even if still on the books de jure. If judicial supremacy has destroyed checks and balances and precipitated a form of judicial tyranny, then the Executive is under no legal or constitutional obligation to defer to court rulings—either district courts or the Supreme Court. In such circumstances of civil anarchy and maladministration, the New Right recognizes that we must appeal to a higher law. Constitutional provisions are no longer sufficient; instead, the salus populi of the people is the suprema lex—the welfare of the people as described in the Preamble of the Constitution is the highest law and greatest civil good that commands our allegiance, not a stale and perfunctory performance of departmental separation or sycophancy to Fourteenth Amendment case law.
Yet even here, at the level of the Preamble, the Supreme Court has couped the American people by proclaiming in Jacobson v. Massachusetts (1904) that the Preamble was non-justiciable: “Although that Preamble indicates the general purposes for which the people ordained and established the Constitution, it has never been regarded as the source of any substantive power conferred on the Government of the United States or on any of its Departments. Such powers embrace only those expressly granted in the body of the Constitution and such as may be implied from those so granted” (in the words of Justice Harlan). Pace Harland, the New Right asserts that the Preamble does confer substantive power to the people’s representatives (and especially the President), at all costs necessary, to secure the goods of the Preamble for the people and opposed to an entrenched elite arrayed against them.
If this requires ‘violating’ the separation of powers as currently conceived and practiced (which itself is a distortion), or not granting due process to illegal alien gang members upon arrest and deportation (which they have no right to anyway), then so be it. To the older constitutional order that we have loved, requiescat in pace. We find ourselves navigating waters unchartered for 250 years. Yet we have been here before, so we should not lose heart. To save our country, the New Right must be willing to wield new tactics despite the mumblings and complaints of the old guard. Our founders did nothing less. We should emulate them once again.
Image Credit: Unsplash
