Part Two: In Their Hearts, They Know They’re Right
“It is an objective fact that we are in the middle of the largest moral and societal crisis we have had maybe in the country’s history.” (Newt Gingrich, “Contract with America” speech, 1994)
“The heart has its reasons which reason cannot know.” (Blaise Pascal)
To be opposed to modernity is to be opposed to the Enlightenment and to its privileging of Reason over Faith, Authority, and Tradition. The philosophes’ claims of Reason were challenged from the outset—by Burke, by de Maistre, by Bonald, by Kierkegaard, by Nietzsche, by Dostoevsky, and, for that matter, by Marx, who insisted that History was set on a predetermined course and that Reason had no business getting in its way. The Irrationalists offered a variety of responses to Reason’s claims; those responses were in turn picked up by American conservatives and traditionalists, culminating in the slogan attached to Barry Goldwater’s 1964 presidential campaign: “In your heart, you know he’s right.” Like the Southern Agrarians before them, the Goldwaterites were taking their stand on sentiment and intuition.
People on the New Right are not stupid. The problem is, they feel belittled, marginalized, and misunderestimated [sic], which makes them defensive, and a defensive posture is not conducive to civil dialogue. When one is under attack, instinctive action and unquestioned loyalty are what the situation demands; and “the situation,” as the New Right understands it, is not politics as usual but ideological warfare, which means that liberals are not just partisan opponents but enemies. Those distinctions—politics vs. warfare and opponents vs. enemies—are key to understanding the New American Right.
Despite Goldwater’s electoral thrashing in 1964, his followers persevered until, in 1980, the avuncular Ronald Reagan finally brought the New Right out of the shadows and into the Oval Office. Reaganism had its day, but it was Newt Gingrich, in 1994, who defined the New American Right’s ideology and temperament and who clarified its ambitions. Prior to running for office, Gingrich had been an academic specializing in military history; entering politics, he took Clausewitz’s famous maxim, “War is politics by other means,” and reversed it to claim that “Politics is war by other means.” That shift was fundamental; for Republicans, it transformed American politics from “the art of the possible” into a struggle between Children of Light and Children of Darkness.
The New American Right, says Shadia Drury, is fueled by a Manichaean worldview. It sees the nation “as overrun by the forces of evil (now called liberalism); it regards its political opponents as the incarnation of cosmic evil.” 1 As Drury explains, “When political opponents are demonized, politicians are tempted to overstep the boundaries of law. When domestic politics is turned into a contest between the forces of good and the forces of evil, when political opponents are regarded as the enemies of civilization, the results are dishonest political tactics, corruption, and conflict.”
In Newt Gingrich’s 1994 “Contract with America,” he flatly stated that ‘What is ultimately at stake is literally the future of American civilization as it has existed for the last several hundred years.’ The issue, he said, is ‘whether or not our civilization will survive’. That is a lot to put on the line in a mid-term election. The New American Right, though, goes a step further: not only do liberals imperil Western civilization, but they do so deliberately. Liberals, you see, individually and collectively, are consumed with hate, and the hate provokes them to anger and rage, which they express by mail-in voting and by following public health guidelines during a pandemic. Liberals hate America, according to the New Right, and they want to destroy it. Liberals hate families; they hate religion; they hate the military; they hate prosperity (except for themselves); and, because they are so filled with hate, they encourage anarchy while simultaneously trying to control everything you do, say, think, wear, eat, watch, read (not Dr. Seuss!), and listen to. Oh, and they also want to determine who lives and who dies.
With so much at stake, and facing such monstrous enemies, the New Right cannot afford to be reasonable.2 In the modern liberal conception, “Politics is supposed to be a triumph over war. It is supposed to replace the violence and chaos of war by a rule-regulated contest for power.” The New Right, however, feels justified in using any means necessary to defeat its enemies.3 In the Gingrich model of politics as war, you take no prisoners, and you accept nothing short of unconditional surrender. You demonize your political enemies to motivate your base, but also because your enemies are demonic; they are evil and they want to destroy everything you hold dear.
Those on the New Right have an expansive view of who their enemies are, as Shadia Drury notes:
Neoconservatives blame most of the ills of our society on the liberal intellectuals. The latter are part of what Irving Kristol calls the ‘new class,’ which is to say, a new ruling class that includes journalists, educators, city planners, government bureaucrats, as well as scientists, doctors, and lawyers who work in the public sector. As Christopher Lasch points out, the preoccupation with the ‘new class’ is a hangover from Marxist habits of thought that allows neoconservatives to attack the ‘elite’ without attacking big business. Kristol regards the intellectuals as the most poisonous component of this liberal elite. The intellectuals have turned against bourgeois culture because it is too prosaic, too domestic, too ordinary, and too boring for their liking. The virtues of honesty, hard work, and thrift do not interest them. The aspirations of ordinary people for a better living do not capture their fancy. The intellectuals are bent not only on the destruction of bourgeois civilization, but on the destruction of all restraint, morality, and decency. The nihilism of the elite is boundless, and it threatens Western civilization. The nihilistic culture of the intellectuals has infected the popular culture. Robbed of its soul by the nihilism of the adversarial culture, the bourgeois order is sick. This explains rampant crime, pornography, and promiscuity.
Thanks to the pointy-headed intellectuals, ivory tower academics, effete snobs, and people who have never had to work for a living, America suffers widespread social rot: thanks, Obama! To paraphrase Jack Nicholson, “What this country needs is a good enema.” What we got, courtesy of the New American Right, was Donald Trump.
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1 In fairness, liberals are also guilty, if less so, of using Manichaean language, e.g., Joe Biden’s cringeworthy “battle for the soul of America”. It was just an election, Joe; get over yourself.
2 Barry Goldwater, 1964: “Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice. Moderation in pursuit of justice is no virtue.” The odds are good that those lines were written by Karl Hess, but I am too lazy to look it up.
3 No one expresses this aspect of the New Right better than Michael Anton, with his perpetual “Flight 93 Election” in which America itself is at risk: liberals (Hillary Clinton) cannot be allowed control of the plane (the government), lest they fly it (and us) straight to Venezuela and, after refueling there with communist gasoline, straight on to Hell. To avert this, we must heroically charge the cockpit (i.e., win the presidency); If, as a result, some doofus “reality TV” star takes control and crashes the plane, so be it. At least we won’t die in Venezuela.
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