The New Right’s Next Move
The New Right is in motion. It is younger, bolder, and less deferential than the Reaganite coalition that preceded it. As Ben R. Crenshaw recently observed, the movement’s energy is not in preserving consensus but in reshaping it. An axe to root kind of thing. The stakes are civilizational, submits Crenshaw, because the Left’s grip on the nation’s cultural and bureaucratic organs has tightened with each passing decade. I don’t disagree.
Given this, the Right can no longer afford to stand athwart history merely yelling “stop.” It must, as Bonhoffer once counseled, seize the wheel.
And it’s already happening. Crenshaw outlines a generational pivot—one that is less impressed with process and more concerned with outcomes, willing to use state power to serve the common good. This evolution (or, perhaps, it’s simply a return to a proper understanding of means and ends, set forth in the Constitution’s Preamble) is necessary. But it is not sufficient. There is another front that must be opened: the New Right must enter government—not just as elected officials or political appointees, but as long-term institutional actors within the administrative state.
O Conservative, Where Art Thou?
For too long, conservatives have derided the government as a problem to be solved rather than a platform to be stewarded. Conservative children (including me) were told to do something else—private equity, law, medicine. This instinct (that government is a problem to be solved), though rooted in legitimate grievances about a bloated bureaucracy and federal overreach, has inadvertently ceded too much of the machinery of governance to the Left. The result? A permanent, left-leaning bureaucracy that acts as a shadow legislature, advancing progressive aims—regardless of who wins elections.
Just as in Hollywood and higher ed, the Left has long understood that by filling the ranks of agencies, commissions, and regulatory bodies with its acolytes, they exert quiet but powerful influence over everything from environmental policy to education standards. Meanwhile, conservatives—especially those with libertarian leanings or inclined to Christian quietism—have been content to remain outside, criticizing or ignoring the machine but never touching its greasy gears.
It is time to change that.
A Forgotten Tradition of Stewardship
This idea—that conservatives might work in the government—is not radical. It is a return. In the early American republic, the most trusted men in their communities often served as local magistrates and county clerks. At that time, there was no shame in administering the common good; in fact, it was understood to be a moral responsibility.
But something broke in the 20th century. The rise of the administrative state and the expansion of federal authority under the New Deal and Great Society caused many on the Right to recoil. Understandably so. The government, aided by the passage of the 16th Amendment (empowering Congress to levy and collect income taxes on individuals and corporations), ballooned to a size unimaginable to the founders. But rather than working to reform and pare down these structures, conservatives largely abandoned them. And into that void marched the managerial Left.
As anyone who has spent time in and around Washington, D.C. or one of the state capitals knows, there is no such thing as a “neutral” bureaucracy. Every administrative decision involves tradeoffs, values, and priorities. When conservatives absent themselves from the arena, those decisions still get made—but by people who not only do not share their convictions but actively disagree with them.
Principled Governance, Not Passive Withdrawal
The New Right must not only challenge the administrative state from without; it must transform it from within. As I’ve written elsewhere, this does not mean endorsing the metastasis of federal, or centralized, power. Federalism, the separation of powers, and checks and balances, although not ends in themselves, still matter. The Left may have watered them down, but they’re not beyond saving. Prudent statesmanship may rescue them yet. Indeed, if every institution is, at bottom, a moral enterprise, then there is always a reason to hope. America may, as Tolstoy’s Bezukhov once observed, have been torn out of its habitual path, but that doesn’t mean today cannot be the beginning of something new and good.
That said, we do not need more bureaucrats; we need fewer, and better, ones. We need our bureaucrats. Faithful conservatives, armed with moral clarity, institutional competence, and a commitment to what Crenshaw describes as the “substance” of America, should be encouraged to pursue public service—not as a fallback for those who can’t do otherwise (to borrow from the old adage), but as a vocation. They can become the ballast in agencies prone to drift. They can preserve what remains when the bulls have finished in the China closet.
And in truth, it is not only about preservation. I’ve seen the administrative state up close and personal. It is ugly and unwieldy, but it is not a monolith. It contains many good men and women—often isolated, often discouraged—who would gladly serve alongside others animated by conscience and courage. There is no need for total liquidation. The presence of a few principled voices can have an outsized effect. Institutions do not need to be conquered wholesale to be influenced meaningfully.
Building a Pipeline of Conservative Stewards
If this is to happen, we must be deliberate. The Left has its feeder system: elite universities, fellowship programs, community organizers. The New Right must develop, or at least strengthen, its own. Think tanks, churches, and classical academies can do more than critique—they can cultivate. We need a pipeline that trains conservatives not only to campaign and litigate but also to administrate.
Imagine a generation of young conservatives equipped not only with the arguments of the Federalist Papers but also with the procedural competence to draft regulations, manage budgets, and oversee audits. Imagine school districts where curriculum decisions are made by men and women who believe in truth, goodness, and beauty. Imagine a Department of Health staffed with people unafraid to say that mutilating children is not medicine as opposed to woke data analysts.
An ideological talent pipeline will not materialize spontaneously. It will require investment, mentorship, and long-term planning. But if the Right is serious about reordering society, it must first demonstrate that it can responsibly order a filing cabinet. As anyone who’s played Jenga knows, if the wrong blocked is removed at the wrong time, the whole tower comes crashing down.
A Strategy of Presence (and Prudence)
Crenshaw is right: the New Right must move beyond procedural nostalgia. But in doing so, it must not mistake institutional absence for moral purity. The future will not be secured from the sidelines. Victory—if it comes—will come through presence and prudent statesmanship: in school boards, in zoning offices, in regulatory agencies. The kinds of places the Right once (understandably) abandoned as hopelessly lost.
It’s not enough to win elections if the agencies remain filled with permanent functionaries whose default ideology undermines the will and welfare of voters. As Reagan himself warned, “A government bureau is the nearest thing to eternal life we’ll ever see on this earth.” But that eternal life can be a curse—or a blessing—depending on who tends the altar.
We speak often of taking back the culture. But culture is downstream from policy, and policy is downstream from people willing to show up. If we want the next generation to inherit a government worth conserving, conservatives must be willing to work within it now.
Crenshaw makes a compelling case that it’s high time to rage against the machine. But there’s also an opportunity to run it—with gusto, prudence, and resolve.
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