A Movement That’s Gaining Wisdom and Confidence
Is losing seared into the DNA of conservatives? That question was asked countless times over the past couple of decades as the Left systematically defeated them on every front, from Hollywood to the halls of Congress.
As Michael Anton memorably put it in his famous “Flight 93 Election” essay, which stunned the political world when it was published less than two months before the 2016 election,
If you’re among the subspecies conservative intellectual or politician, you’ve accepted—perhaps not consciously, but unmistakably—your status on the roster of the Washington Generals of American politics. Your job is to show up and lose, but you are a necessary part of the show and you do get paid. To the extent that you are ever on the winning side of anything, it’s as sophists who help the Davoisie oligarchy rationalize open borders, lower wages, outsourcing, de-industrialization, trade giveaways, and endless, pointless, winless war.
Fortunately, what Anton describes doesn’t quite capture the current state of the conservative movement. In the years since his cri de coeur was published, conservatism has splintered into various factions. Some well-known institutions like The Heritage Foundation under Kevin Roberts are working to meet the demanding challenges of our day. Others still desperately cling to the old gods of small government and strident free trade ideology, hoping for the rise of a Reagan of their own making.
But what matters far more than the state of conservatism, which too many have assumed fully tracks with the health of America, is the rise of an invigorated Right. The Right is breaking free from the sclerotic, crumbling postwar consensus and has rediscovered the essentials of political life: borders, sovereignty, and the particularities of peoples, including their traditions and ways of life.
Momentum has been building in local politics all the way to the White House to forge a new consensus that takes on the challenges of our day instead of continuing to rationalize our decline. Universities are finally being confronted. Wokeness, trans insanity, and Critical Race Theory are in retreat (but are far from defeated). Efforts are underway to deal with the border and out-of-control illegal immigration that the “Biden” administration encouraged.
In the courts, the once unthinkable happened: Roe v. Wade was finally overturned—and only because of the justices President Trump appointed during his first term. To the shock of many in establishment legal circles, birthright citizenship, among other constitutional anomalies that have become sacralized in our postwar world, has a legitimate shot of being challenged.
The media’s efforts to spin anything related to Trump or his voters in the most negative light doesn’t seem to be working. Rasmussen released a new poll showing that 50% of likely voters think the country is going in the right direction. Trump’s favorability rating is higher than Speaker Mike Johnson, Senate Majority Leader John Thune, and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer.
Against the wildly negative predictions of establishment voices, especially among conservatives, Donald Trump has ushered in a political realignment that now favors the Republican Party. As the New York Times reported earlier this week in a feature story, Trump “has increased the Republican Party’s share of the presidential vote in each election he’s been on the ballot in close to half the counties in America—1,433 in all.” (With shock and likely deep disappointment, they note, “By contrast, Democrats have steadily expanded their vote share in those three elections in only 57 of the nation’s 3,100-plus counties.”)
Finally, in contrast to the leaderless Democrats, Trump has an obvious heir apparent in Vice President JD Vance, who can carry on the mantle of MAGA in 2028 and beyond.
Of course, we’re still in the opening stages of what will necessarily be a long contest to wrest back control of the government. The problem of the administrative state still needs to be confronted and put under the direction of the chief executive. The massive numbers of illegal immigrants living in America need to be dealt with, as do our trade policies. And on foreign policy, we need to extricate ourselves from the Middle East and focus on the threat China poses.
As Elon Musk has discovered, the ways of the swamp are extremely potent, no matter the party in power. He noted in an interview with CBS on Sunday that he was “disappointed to see the massive spending bill” that increases the budget deficit, thereby undermining what DOGE has attempted to do. Musk initially made promises to cut $2 trillion from the budget—but Congress may not even approve a $9.4 billion recessions package, including funding cuts to the low-hanging fruit of PBS and NPR.
Even a well-functioning DOGE cannot fix the mess that is Congress—which has done its best to evade responsibility in favor of grandstanding and nonstop campaigning.
Government spending and our national debt need to be dealt with—and Congress is the only institution that can fend off looming fiscal calamity. Even though the dollar remains the world’s reserve currency, and there is a great deal of ruin in a nation as Adam Smith once noted, our current path is not sustainable. Our bill will come due someday, whether we like it or not.
Nevertheless, the Right finally seems to be positioned to mount a much-needed counter-revolution and confront these imminent issues. Yes, there are grifters and content generators galore. But there are also patriots who are serving in key posts in the second Trump administration and founding startups that will revolutionize America.
Evidence that important actors on the Right understand the times is already showing up in online spaces. There’s been a noticeable shift away from making grand, unobtainable pronouncements—“Overthrow the Enlightenment!” “Repeal liberalism!”—to much better rhetoric that marshals the past for their own ends. The obsession with the “where it all went wrong” approach is giving way to a strategy where the Right uses great thinkers and doers from the past, all of whom are various shades of right-wing compared to today, against the epigones of modern liberalism.
The Right has the bulk of human history and tradition on their side against those who reject the family, nature, and God. They need to use it to their advantage.
For example, instead of some tweedy drive-by condemnation of an early modern philosopher like John Locke, as would have happened back in, say, 2018, Locke is instead being used to highlight the basic foundations of civil society.
Auron MacIntyre recently quoted Locke from his Letter Concerning Toleration, in which he taught that atheists are not to be tolerated in civil society. “Promises, covenants, and oaths, which are the bonds of human society, can have no hold upon an atheist,” Locke rightly maintained. “The taking away of God, though but even in thought, dissolves all; besides also, those that by their atheism undermine and destroy all religion, can have no pretense of religion whereupon to challenge the privilege of a toleration.”
MacIntyre writes that for Locke, atheism “posed a civilizational threat.” It undermines the moral order because it detaches the foundation of earthly justice from its source. It teaches citizens that religion—that is, Christianity—is false, which will necessarily breed confusion and chaos. Oaths are useful because they hold officeholders to account by making them publicly acknowledge an authority that’s above them. Punishment for breaking an oath is meted out by civil authorities in this life and, if not repented of, by God himself at the final judgment, where the goats are separated from the sheep.
This is just one example that shows a welcome maturation happening on the Right. They’re learning how to win arguments, change minds, and establish cultural ascendancy. If they keep it up, these virtues will lead to long-term success for the Right and, even more importantly, for the citizens of America.
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