Conservatives outside the comfort zone

a symposium in The New Criterion

James Piereson writes,

How do conservatives challenge the cultural revolution and the new world of politicized law enforcement without rending the constitutional order, causing a new civil war, or wrecking the capacity of government to function? That is the new dilemma for conservatives: to go along with the cultural revolution and the growing powers of government officials to control information, censor contrary opinion, and disorient their opponents, in which case conservatives will be silenced, enfeebled, and eventually destroyed; or, alternatively, to take aggressive steps to confront it, in which case they run the risk of disrupting the current order

If society were a car, conservatives feel fine tapping on the brake. But when it spins out of control, taking the wheel is outside of their comfort zone.

Margot Cleveland writes,

Today’s American populists are conservative, but with a passion of conviction that establishment politicians and most pundits lack. To rebuke the masses, then, is to rebuke conservatism itself. And for what? Our sacred institutions? Those, as the last years have showed us, deserve demolition and reconstruction, not deference. The established order? It is now disorder, and it must be rebuilt on the foundations laid more than two hundred years ago.

“Passion” and “demolition” are outside of the conservative establishment’s comfort zone.

Daniel McCarthy writes,

The conservative factions of today exhibit four types of response to the crumbling of the foundations that made conservatism possible for the last two hundred years.

The “restorationists” are those who believe a return to the industrial economy and a Christian culture is possible. Economic nationalists and Christian nationalists are two varieties of restorationist. Compact magazine has a restorationist outlook, as does much of the New Right, and the leading populist figures in the Republican Party, such as Trump and DeSantis

…This second right-wing faction is composed of the “nihilists.” They are defined by their rejection of the Left, rather than their desire to restore conservatism. Christianity, bourgeois security, the patriotic masses, and the ancien régime are all equally dead to them. Yet this does not make them despondent or inclined to accept left-wing authority. They will resist though they have nothing but resistance itself.

…the “withdrawalists.” This group, which includes advocates of “national divorce,” the Benedict Option, and outright state secession, would like to save a microcosm of conservatism if the macro-conditions for conservatism have vanished.

…Finally there are the “accommodationists.” These men and women, who often represent the “conservative” voices in liberal media, accept their place in a post-industrial, culturally progressive America. They tend to live like withdrawalists…Accommodationists do not like restorationists or nihilists

…Of these four groups, the one that provides the best hope for conservatism, however slender that hope might be, is the restorationists. If they are right that the hour is not too late for increasing industrial employment, reinvigorating citizen population growth, and proclaiming anew what had long been the nation’s moral consensus, then conservatism as we have known it has a future.

I think that the libertarian inclination is to be a “withdrawalist” or an “accommodationist.” What is the difference between the two? It sounds like an accommodationist is a withdrawalist who still has some progressive friends, with whom he tries to ingratiate himself by engaging in ritual denunciations of Donald Trump and his supporters.

One can have problems with each of these factions.

I think that the restorationists are trying to squeeze toothpaste back into a tube. We aren’t going to return to being a nation of assembly-line workers any more than we are going to return to being a nation of yeoman farmers. I would like to see a new movement toward what Brink Lindsey calls “temperance,” but I don’t think it will be centered on Christianity.

My problem with nihilism, or with demolition-ism, is that it throws establishment conservatives too far under the bus. We do need fiscal conservatism, sooner rather than later. And I don’t think that anti-corporate populism is a healthy development.

Withdrawalism and accommodationism seem too passive. You may not be interested in the left’s soft totalitarianism, but soft totalitarianism is interested in you—and your children.

To paraphrase the serenity prayer, conservatives/libertarians need the courage to change what can be changed, the serenity to accept what cannot be changed, and the wisdom to know the difference. I believe that the institutional dominance of the left can be changed: we can turn the tide against chaotic immigration*, urban degeneracy, DEI, viewpoint suppression, and gender craziness. I do not believe that we can successfully retreat from globalization or innovation. I can imagine seeing religious revivals emerge in various forms, but I would be surprised if either Christianity or Woke-ism attracts more adherents than they have today in this country.

*I think that it is right for libertarians to be biased against restrictions on immigration. But we are also biased in favor of the legal order. I can argue for a more generous set of immigration laws; but regardless of what is currently on the books, I am angered by the current lack of enforcement. People who take the legal steps to immigrate are denied due process by the years that they wait in limbo. Meanwhile, evading the law seems to work quickly and effectively, especially by comparison. This enforcement anomaly makes a mockery of the rule of law.