Elon Musk cannonballed into electoral politics in 2024. Other tech bros joined him to support Donald Trump. The alliance is remarkable. Heretofore no aspect of Silicon Valley seemed congenial to conservatism. As recently as 2017, Google fired James Damore for the crime of calmly articulating doubts about corporate America’s DEI regime. Yet what had seemed a homogeneous, left-wing blob turns out to be otherwise. Like working class voters in Ohio, Musk and his billionaire friends entertain grave doubts about the direction of the country. And like avid MAGA voters, they harbor a growing hostility to the liberal establishment that has a death grip on elite institutions. This unexpected harmony of sentiments led some of the most prominent figures in America’s most dynamic sector of the economy to join forces with populist masses. The time is right for a new ideological configuration: a new fusionism between right-wing progressives and social conservatives.
A year ago, N. S. Lyons published an incisive account of the emergence of tech oligarchs on the right (“The Rise of the Right-Wing Progressives”). He focused on Marc Andreessen’s 2023 call to action, “The Techno-Optimist Manifesto.” Lyons notes, “It’s a full-throated hymn glorifying technology, progress, and boundless growth, while castigating what it portrays as the demoralization, enervation, and stagnation of our society.” Mainstream journalists (which is to say left-wing journalists) reacted with horror, going so far as to describe the contents as “fascist.” Writing in the New York Times, Ezra Klein said that the manifesto’s “vibe is reactionary.”
This response is not surprising. Our postwar regime has many pillars. Nearly all of them were erected or came to be endorsed by the left. To call for their demolition is by definition “anti-left.”
The New Deal and total mobilization for World War II established the administrative state and its vast regulatory reach. Andreessen opposes this development, and he does so for the same reasons that free-market conservatives have adduced for decades: “Centralized planning is doomed to fail,” and the heavy hand of regulation stifles innovation. He echoes Milton Friedman: “We believe markets are an inherently individualistic way to achieve superior collective outcomes.”
But Andreessen does more than sing from the old free-market hymnbook. He attacks the dominant “vibe.” The manifesto states: “Our present society has been subjected to a mass demoralization campaign for six decades.” Liberal elites have reverently nodded to Ibram Kendi’s pronouncements about “systemic racism,” a pessimistic outlook that condemns us to live in a perpetual racist doom loop. Rich liberals fund organizations that clamor about climate catastrophe. Elite universities promote pedagogies of anti-Western self-laceration. These aspects of the present regime and others have flourished under left-wing sponsorship. As lifelong liberals such as Jonathan Haidt have discovered, opposing these dogmas, for whatever reason, gets one denounced as “right-wing.”
As a social and religious conservative, I reject key aspects of “The Techno-Optimist Manifesto.” Andreessen believes “in overcoming nature,” not by way of divine grace, but by fulfilling our role as the “apex predator” that dominates all things. His dream that intelligence will overcome matter strikes me as gnostic. But I share his negative assessment of the present American regime. We are united in our opposition to the status quo in culture and the arts, in education and civic institutions, in government and corporate culture. In that sense, whatever our disagreements, Andreessen and I are allied with voters who reject Democratic (and Republican) representatives of the status quo. We are “populists,” or as writers for The Atlantic delicately put it, “fascists.”
A common enemy encourages tactical alliances. Are there deeper convergences? Lyons suggests a useful distinction: egalitarianism as opposed to hierarchy. Those on the left privilege equality. Those on the right give priority to hierarchy.
At this level, the right-wing progressive and old-style conservative share a common outlook. “To be right-wing is to especially value hierarchy,” says Lyons. This commitment does not mean favoring aristocracy and monarchy. Rather, endorsing hierarchy means “to be able and willing to recognize that A is better than B in some way, and to therefore place A ahead of B and call this a proper and just ordering of things.” Lyons notes that “even science (real science) is arguably a right-wing pursuit, because scientists cannot be egalitarian over the facts.” This interpretation of the data is better than that interpretation.
A left-wing progressive rebels against hierarchy and insists that, when it comes to human beings, any better than judgment is based on convention, prejudice, or some other distortion of our consciousness, which must be corrected to reflect the ideals of equality. All the children in the race need to get ribbons. Yes, the fastest runner came in first, but this fact is of no special consequence. Criminals are not morally worse than the law-abiding; they suffer from bad social conditions. We need to honor indigenous traditions of knowing, instead of “privileging” Western science.
There’s a great deal of truth in the way Lyons distinguishes the political right from the left. I would go further, however. Those on the right believe that hierarchy rests on reality. When we make an accurate better than judgment, we honor the truth of things. Those on the left deny this metaphysical conviction. They say that better than judgments rest on historically contingent, socially constructed values—the interests and preferences of the powerful.
Let me give an example. Lyons notes that right-wing progressives often focus on intelligence. Some people are more intelligent than others, and this fact makes a difference. Indeed, not a few right-wing progressives seek to enhance intelligence. Elon Musk founded Neuralink, a neurotechnology company that develops ways for our brains to interface with computers. Other rightwing progressives endorse reproductive technologies that allow parents to screen embryos to select for desired traits, including intelligence. A recently founded company, Heliospect, provides embryo testing to achieve that goal, perhaps fulfilling some of the aspirations expressed in “The Techno-Optimist Manifesto.”
As a religious conservative, I judge Heliospect to be an immoral enterprise, not only because its services require the destruction of human beings, but also because genetic screening separates the sexual act from reproduction. Without doubt, a new fusionism will be tense, not easy. Nevertheless, the left-wing reaction to Heliospect is tellingly different from mine. A recent Guardian article quotes Katie Hasson, Associate Director at the Center for Genetics and Society. She gives a startling assessment of the kind of screening performed by the company: “One of the biggest problems is that it normalizes this idea of ‘superior’ and ‘inferior’ genetics,” an approach that “reinforces the belief that inequality comes from biology rather than social causes.”
I think the right-wing-progressive fixation on IQ is overdone. Hierarchy has metaphysical meaning: Truth, beauty, and goodness are transcendental perfections, and things and qualities of persons are to be valued in accord with the degree of their participation in these perfections. Intelligence is a capacity, to be sure, and, pace Katie Hasson, people intrinsically possess that capacity to greater and lesser degrees. But knowing the truth is another matter entirely. I’ve known brilliant people who have theorized their way to the most ridiculous conclusions. Very clever people are often book-smart and life-stupid. They know many facts but possess little aptitude for deep and consequential truths. Dan Hitchens recently surveyed the thought of Iain McGilchrist, who warns against a narrow, calculating intelligence that ignores our larger, truth-sensing capacity (“Iain McGilchrist’s New Era,” January 2025). Right-wing progressives tend to fall in that trap.
But my objections on this score mark a material disagreement about reality, whereas the left-wing progressive insists that “reality” is socially constructed and the distinction between male and female has no basis in biology. A new fusionism that joins conservatives with right-wing progressives will be based on a shared affirmation of the authority of reality.
I’ve mentioned the metaphysical aspect of reality, which right-wing progressives may not share. Nor do they seem to honor the reality of God. Perhaps some will become convinced and change their views. Andreessen’s manifesto urges us to believe in progress—the future. But the future does not exist, which means that the techno-optimist risks falling into the present-day nihilism he hopes to overcome. Better to believe in the real, which is both a reliable anchor and pregnant with possibilities, as man’s technological achievement makes manifest.
Political coalitions are not made in philosophy seminars. Nevertheless, as the Trump coalition matures, conservatives should emphasize the authority of reality. We can underscore our shared metaphysical affirmation in practical ways that gain traction with right-wing progressives.
One of Friedrich Hayek’s most important contributions (mentioned by Andreessen) concerns the profound limits of economic planning. Coordinating production and consumption is a task too complex for us to master with technocratic reason. Markets are far more effective. Recognizing the unworkable nature of socialism, soft or hard, provided a crucial foundation of the old fusionism of the postwar era. It will certainly play a role in a new fusionism for the twenty-first century.
Communism sought to implement a planned society as well as a planned economy. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, left-wing progressives largely gave up on the economy while intensifying their efforts to re-engineer society. Traditional norms for education, family, and male–female relations have been overturned and a new, purportedly “progressive” regulatory regime has been imposed. Today, many institutions have gone so far as to launch sustained efforts to re-engineer pronoun use. This, too, is doomed to fail. Hayek observes, “No human mind can comprehend all the knowledge which guides the actions of society,” and those actions are more often cultural than economic. Tradition is the accumulated knowledge that offers a more intelligent basis for social organization than the gimcrack theories implemented by social justice advocates and progressive technocrats. The same goes for our souls. Three generations of therapeutic intervention have led to worse mental health. Jonathan Haidt calls for relaxing our efforts to engineer every aspect of a child’s life to achieve “best outcomes.” Let him play in the woods! In effect, back to traditional norms.
One need but listen to Elon Musk talking with Jordan Peterson and Joe Rogan to see that right-wing progressives are entertaining something akin to natural law. Andreessen pledges loyalty to what Thomas Sowell calls “the constrained vision,” which honors the authority of reality. We need to encourage this trend by pressing important questions. Can a healthy, productive society be sustained without traditional norms for marriage and childrearing? Do abortion, contraception, and the sexual revolution contribute to the fertility crisis? Can we meet foreign challenges without a strong and widely diffused patriotic sentiment? Do the most admirable aspects of our culture stem from Christianity?
There’s a further point of convergence, one on which I would like to conclude. In many places, “The Techno-Optimist Manifesto” praises power and victory. Andreessen rejects the “victim mentality” and its enervating attitude of helplessness. “We are not victims,” he writes, “we are conquerors.” He evokes the martial spirit: “We believe in ambition, aggression, persistence, relentlessness—strength.” His ideal is one of adventure, which requires bravery and courage.
I share these sentiments. But I wonder whether Marc Andreessen has taken the full measure of his rousing words. Wherein does a man find strength? The techno-optimist seems to offer technology as the answer. He who possesses the most powerful tools wins. But this is to misjudge our condition. The Spartans recognized that “no” is a powerful engine of freedom: No, I will not do your will. No, I will not bow to social pressure. No, I will not cave to my base desires. No, I will not fear death.
Technological advances do not give us the power to say “no.” Quite the contrary, they often help us evade the necessity of doing so. Ozempic offers an obvious example—a technological substitute for willpower. The transhumanist enterprise offers another—the promise of not needing to have courage in the face of death. As Lyons observes, rather than strengthening us, technology often enervates. “If Andreessen believes the infinite abundance and fully-automated luxury of his imagined technological future would ever produce anything more than those obese blob-humans of WALL-E (bound to their anti-gravity chairs and fully dependent on robots to fulfill their every decadent need, including to make all their decisions) then he is gravely mistaken.”
The greatest strength is spiritual, not material. Truth has power. It is indomitable. It is our devotion to truth (not its discovery or the tools we make from its fecundity) that allows us to participate in its power most fully. As Peter and the apostles say to the authorities of their day, “We must obey God rather than men.” Truth’s slaves can say “no.”
Social and religious conservatives are the custodians of devotion. In a new fusionism, we need to remind right-wing progressives that we know better than do they wherein lies the power that makes men conquerors. I commend to Marc Andreessen for contemplation this passage from St. Paul’s Letter to the Romans:
In all things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
If Andreessen wishes to probe the deepest source of strength, I suggest he get in touch with San Francisco Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone. In such conversations rests the future of a new fusionism.
The Old Fusionism Revisited
In the 1950s and early 1960s, the American right consolidated around a shared antipathy to the power of government. For social conservatives such as Russell Kirk and Richard Weaver, technocratic control must be resisted because it uprooted traditional forms of life. The dead hand of bureaucracy calculated and classified, turning men into numbers. Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman were not patrons of tradition. But they had concerns about state control as well. Management by experts, especially economic management, marked the end of freedom, the road to serfdom.
National Review editor Frank Meyer summarized the point of fusion in his 1962 book, In Defense of Freedom: “The desecration of the image of man, the attack upon his freedom and his transcendent dignity, provide common cause in the immediate struggle.” And the danger was evident: the totalitarian monster state and its enlarged ambition to manage and control the lives of men.
The fusionist concern about state control was fitting. As I document in Return of the Strong Gods, the postwar consensus was concerned to fight against totalitarianism. Hitler’s Germany was a fresh memory. The Soviet Union was a clear and present threat. Moreover, intellectual leaders of the postwar right had come of age during a period of rapid expansion of government power in the United States. Between 1930 and 1960, government spending doubled, going from 15 percent of GDP to 30 percent. At every turn, the greatest danger seemed to rest in the relentless expansion of centralized control. The enemy was coercion; the cause was freedom.
There were dissenting voices, however. In 1953, the sociologist Robert Nisbet published The Quest for Community. He recognized and regretted the enlargement of government and its inhuman methods of bureaucratic control. But he argued that artificial mechanisms of coordination and ideological sources of meaning were becoming predominant because traditional forms of life were disintegrating.
In the mid-twentieth century, left-wing thinkers presumed that the proletariat functioned as the agents of revolutionary change. Nisbet exploits this conceit to good effect. He cites Arnold Toynbee:
The true hallmark of the proletarian is neither poverty nor humble birth, but a consciousness—and the resentment which this consciousness inspires—of being disinherited from his ancestral place in society and being unwanted in a community which is his rightful home; and this subjective proletarianism is not incompatible with the possession of material assets.
The gravamen of The Quest for Community is that modern individualism and the commercialization of society have disinherited middle-class Americans. They are prosperous but disconnected, materially satisfied but uprooted. This condition makes the bulk of Americans into “subjective proletarians” who clamor for security and protection, which in a post-traditional society must come from the technocratic mechanisms of the administrative state.
Put simply, weak social ties invite the state to fill the void. As Nisbet writes elsewhere, “It is the pulverizing of society into a sandheap of individual particles, each claiming natural rights, that makes the arrival of collectivist nationalism [his term for totalitarianism] inevitable.” Nisbet anticipates Patrick Deneen’s argument: Tradition and cultural authority are necessary foundations for any healthy society, and we presently suffer “from annihilation of this authority in the names of individualism and freedom.”
I recently observed that a great deal turns on what one considers to be the gravest problem facing the body politic (“Our Problem Is Disintegration,” November 2024). Postwar fusionism feared over-consolidation, especially the concentration of power in the state and the dead hand of bureaucratic control. Without doubt, these threats to freedom and human dignity remain.
But our times are different. The disintegration of the moral and spiritual coherence of middle-class life is much further advanced than it was when Nisbet penned The Quest for Community—as is the demand for ever more comprehensive guarantees of security and social control. A generation ago, who would have conceived of “safe spaces”? Homelessness, drug addiction, out-of-wedlock births, sexual harassment, and other social dysfunctions give rise to an array of legal, administrative, and therapeutic methods to impose a modicum of order where the moral order has collapsed. The “Julia” phenomenon has become a powerful political force, as single women serve in the leading phalanx of left-wing progressivism.
As a new fusionism forms, we should commend Robert Nisbet and other spokesmen for a conservatism of authority to Elon Musk and other right-wing progressives. (Russell Kirk, Richard Weaver, Philip Rieff, and Christopher Lasch come to mind, as do Simone Weil and Hannah Arendt in their own ways.) Their observations about the dangers of atomized existence in a liquid world are more relevant to our present circumstances than are the insights of the old patrons of freedom who see only peril in coercion. In the early 1960s, Milton Friedman wrote, “The greatest threat to freedom is the concentration of power.” That was more than sixty years ago. Today, as Marc Andreessen seems to recognize, the greatest threat to freedom is demoralization, a pessimism that simmers in a culture dissolved by a left-wing progressivism.
The Dark Shadow of Eugenics
Proponents of in vitro fertilization invariably draw our attention to the ideal candidate for this procedure: a married woman who has tried to have children but can’t. How can one object? Aren’t children blessings? Isn’t a couple’s desire to bring a child into a loving household something beautiful, something to be encouraged? Yes, says Jemimah Wilson (“Approaching IVF By the Back Door,” Ad Fontes, Summer 2024). But we must not deceive ourselves about reproductive technology. It is fraught with seductions.
Wilson spells out the moral logic of IVF: It separates “the advent of new life from the one-flesh union of marriage” and replaces the sexual act with an enterprise of “technical creation.” By moving procreation into the technological realm, we’ve made it available for all kinds of uses, evaluations, and interventions. For example, unlike sex between spouses, IVF and other techniques cost money. They operate within markets.
Indeed, many advocates of IVF chastise those of us who object, pointing to the great expense borne by those who seek to have children in this way. Isn’t it a sign of their commitment to having children? But surely the introduction of price tags into procreation is morally troubling. And ripe with temptation. Some commercial sperm banks market the desirable traits of their sperm donors. IVF clinics vie for clients, touting their track records. This need not lead parents who use artificial means to think of their children as consumer products. But it certainly encourages them in this direction.
Wilson recognizes the role of economic thinking, but her emphasis falls on the therapeutic. Once we’ve separated sex from reproduction, why not ensure the best results? Wilson considers the practice of pre-implantation genetic testing (PGT). In Australia, where she lives, primary care physicians recommend that couples undergo genetic testing to screen for rare genetic diseases such as Fragile X Syndrome. If prospective parents are shown to have a propensity toward one or another of these diseases, they are encouraged to use IVF so that technicians can screen out embryos with bad genetic conditions. Note: These are fertile couples. In this setting, IVF is part of a eugenic therapy designed to prevent children with these diseases from being born.
Wilson observes that traditional thinking treats marriage as “the normative condition for bearing children.” Responsible mothers and fathers are those who marry before having children. The old-fashioned term “legitimate child” reflects this normative condition. The legitimacy flows from the marital bond, not from any quality or aspect of the child.
IVF encourages us to change our calculus. Because the embryo is outside the womb, it is available for “treatment.” Now, “responsible” parents are those who avail themselves of techniques to ensure good genes (the literal meaning of eugenics).
Wilson draws out the difference. “The condition under which the child is brought into the world through PGT and IVF is this: that the child does not bear in her genes a sign of the suffering she will bring to those around her. She is certified free from defect and is therefore admitted to life.” Put simply, the IVF industry signs off on the embryo. It has good genes. Thumbs up: The child is legitimate.
Nobody in Australia is required to get tested to discover whether he is at risk of passing on a genetic disease. No woman is forced to employ IVF. Autonomy is respected, which is a good thing. But evil can come under the sign of choice just as it can at the tip of a sword. Wilson notes that IVF, with or without PGT, requires culling embryos deemed less ideal for a successful pregnancy. Put bluntly: Unlike sexual intercourse, IVF requires deciding who shall receive the gift of life. Wilson quotes Oliver O’Donovan: “When we start making human beings, we necessarily stop loving them.” Wilson adds: “When we start making human beings, we start deciding that some human beings ought not to live at all.”
We can limit the reach of Mammon. The law can prevent children who are produced by IVF from being bought and sold. But the eugenic logic of IVF is inescapable. This dark reality haunts the technological promise of providing children to the infertile or forestalling the transmission of debilitating conditions and crippling diseases. Moreover, as Wilson recognizes, the therapeutic imperative drives us toward the ongoing expansion of IVF. In our free societies, we won’t be compelled to use IVF. But a changed conception of responsible parenting will place moral pressure on the next generation to avail themselves of the latest techniques to ensure the best outcomes. The pressure toward genetic testing and IVF will be especially strong among the well-educated, who already lavish attention and resources on the few children they end up having.
Wilson ends with a word of grace. The old-fashioned way of receiving children not of our own making entails risk. In a real sense, a newborn, though a powerful sign of life, is also an image of suffering, as parents of healthy, normal children know, to say nothing of those who raise children with grave genetic defects. So it was for the Virgin Mary. Wilson quotes Luke 2:24–25, which contains Simeon’s prophecy that the Christ child will be set for the fall, and that Mary, too, shall suffer: “Yea, a sword shall pierce through thy own soul also.” As Wilson ponders the mystery of new life burdened with the weight of sin’s punishment, she expresses confidence that “Mary understood that it was her child, and not the sign of death, that would have the last word.”
WHILE WE'RE AT IT
♦ Here’s another insight for right-wing progressives to consider:
There is something which unites magic and applied science while separating both from the wisdom of earlier ages. For the wise men of old the cardinal problem had been how to conform the soul to reality, and the solution had been knowledge, self-discipline, and virtue. For magic and applied science alike the problem is how to subdue reality to the wishes of men: the solution is a technique.
C.S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man.
♦ I predicted the scenario: a European court would nullify the results of an election. I had imagined that the European Court of Human Rights would rule the victory of a populist candidate a violation of human rights. By this way of thinking, “European values” are a human right, which means an election that puts into power someone European elites deem a threat to “European values” is by definition a violation of human rights. Citizens have a right to progressive governance, and that right must be defended!
The Romanian constitutional court took a different approach to achieve the same outcome. Following the first round of the presidential election that propelled outsider candidate Călin Georgescu into a commanding lead, the court fixed upon claims that Russia had used social media accounts to influence the election. On that basis, the court annulled the results.
Writing in Compact, Thomas Fazi observes, “It’s the first time a European court has overturned the result of an election, signaling a troubling escalation in the EU-NATO establishment’s increasingly open war on democracy.” Underlining Fazi’s observation: The U. S. State Department issued a memorandum that implicitly endorsed the judicial coup. All hands on deck to defend “our democracy”!
♦ The Holy Scriptures are selling. The Wall Street Journal reports a year-over-year 22 percent increase in Bible sales. I’m not surprised. Last fall, an NBC News poll reported that two-thirds of voters say the country is on the wrong track. It’s an understandable judgment. Drug addiction, homelessness, sky-high home prices, inflation, a weakening culture of marriage, declines in fertility, polarized politics, untrustworthy institutions—nobody can reasonably say that these dysfunctions arise in a world run by evangelical pastors and Catholic bishops. To the contrary, it’s the leadership of our secular progressive establishment that has curdled society—which puts the Bible in a favorable light. The Bible is not implicated in the impairments of the post-Christian West, and those disgruntled by the status quo are eyeing the Word of God. What one finds in its pages is quite different from progressive pieties, and as dissatisfaction with the status quo grows, that difference is an increasingly attractive quality.
♦ I don’t regard Elton John as a reliable source of wisdom. But he’s not always wrong. And when it comes to the legalization of marijuana, he’s entirely right. Speaking to a Time magazine journalist, the venerable rock star said, “I maintain that it’s addictive. And when you’re stoned—and I’ve been stoned—you don’t think normally.” Which led John to conclude, “Legalizing marijuana in America and Canada is one of the greatest mistakes of all time.”
♦ In early December, Pope Francis attended the inauguration of a nativity scene in the Vatican, created by Palestinian artists. The baby Jesus lay on a keffiyeh, the scarf that Palestinians have adopted as a national symbol. The display announces an unfortunate anti-Semitic trope: Jesus was NOT Jewish.
♦ Fr. Robert Imbelli charts the right course: “The Church needs to be properly ‘woke,’ to awaken from the utopian dreams we see all around us in the culture. It’s not a comfortable thing to live in a fallen world. But a false comfort will only make things worse” (“The Church Somnolent,” The Catholic Thing).
♦ Pascal: “Justice without might is impotent. Might without justice is tyrannical.” We should keep these truths in mind when judging political actors. Unprincipled pursuit of power and power attained for nefarious purposes are to be condemned. But we should also censure those who champion principle in the public square while being either inept at attaining power or unwilling to enter the fray with effective means.
♦ British journalist Ruby Warrington is the author of Women Without Kids: The Revolutionary Rise of Unsung Sisterhood. In his recent book, The Care Dilemma, David Goodhart quotes her estimation that half of female academics in Great Britain are childless. I doubt the situation is much different in the United States. Indeed, among professors under fifty, male and female, I suspect that the rate of infertility is well north of 50 percent and that the share with more than one child is statistically negligible. As has been so often the case in recent decades, higher education incubates some of our worst social diseases.
♦ I recommend Walter Russell Mead’s two-part essay on Donald Trump’s role in American political history, “Rebel Yell” (Tablet). Mead highlights the enduring role of Jacksonian populism, which waxes when out-of-touch elites become imperious and censorious. The post–Civil War South was a hotbed of populist political resentment, which became powerful enough to put an end to Reconstruction, much to the dismay of Northern elites. Mead regards the MAGA base as a twenty-first-century expansion of Southern populism into a remarkably diverse cohort, which is united in its hostility toward elites and the institutions they dominate. As he notes, one reason Republican elites were blindsided by Trump is that “white Southern political history after the Civil War is not a subject many people bother with anymore.” All attention falls on the “subaltern.” Dissertations are written on black homosexual culture in New Orleans and other recherché topics. Mead goes on to make an important observation: “But history does not lose its influence because people don’t study it.” America is always simmering with populism, which occasionally comes to a boil. University committees and peer-reviewed journals can enforce ignorance, but they can’t cancel reality.
♦ In his 1939 sermon, “Learning in Wartime,” C. S. Lewis outlines the essential elements of education:
Most of all, perhaps, we need intimate knowledge of the past. Not that the past has any magic about it, but because we cannot study the future, and yet need something to set against the present, to remind us that periods and that much which seems certain to the uneducated is merely temporary fashion. A man who has lived in many places is not likely to be deceived by the local errors of his native village: the scholar has lived in many times and is therefore in some degree immune from the great cataract of nonsense that pours from the press and the microphone of his age.
Today’s politicized curricula leave students and academics imprisoned in the present and ill equipped to make sober and informed judgments about contemporary politics.
♦ In preparation for an excellent Liberty Fund seminar on fusionism past and present, I was reading George H. Nash’s history of postwar conservatism, The Conservative Intellectual Movement in American Since 1945. Nash’s account of the often-intense debates in the late 1950s and early 1960s illuminates the degree to which “postliberalism” and its critiques of liberalism have precedent. Here’s Brent Bozell in a 1962 National Review article (“Freedom or Virtue?”): “The story of how the free society has come to take priority over the good society is the story of the decline of the West.” And here’s Willmoore Kendall rejecting John Stuart Mill’s conceit that we should rely on a marketplace of ideas:
In order to practice tolerance on behalf of the pursuit of truth, you have first to value and believe in not merely the pursuit of truth but truth itself, with all its accumulated riches to date. The all-questions-are-open-questions society cannot do that: it cannot, therefore, practice tolerance towards those who disagree with it.
Paradoxically, the open society is open only to those who endorse the open society. The inclusive university accepts only those committed to inclusion. The patrons of diversity celebrate only those who champion diversity.
♦ Canada vindicates Kendall’s claims about the open society’s trajectory toward intolerance. The town of Emo, Ontario was brought before that province’s Human Rights Tribunal. Its crime? Failing to honor Pride Month. The commissars on the tribunal ordered the rural township to pay $15,000 in damages to a local LGBTQ+ advocacy group and required town officials to undergo diversity and inclusion “training.” Welcome to the Rainbow Reich.
♦ Darrel Darby of Charleston, South Carolina wishes to form a ROFTers group. If you want to meet with smart, like-minded people who are not averse to arguing about theology, culture, and the meaning of life, get in touch with him: hddarby@pm.me.
♦ At 6 p.m. on February 13, Patrick Deneen will deliver the first annual Neuhaus Lecture at New College of Florida in Sarasota. His title: “We’re All Postliberals Now.” For details, go to firstthings.com/florida. We’re grateful to the college for providing the venue. The institution’s support is a bright spot in the otherwise blighted landscape of higher education. I hope to see you at the lecture.
♦ I’m also pleased to announce that Carl Trueman will deliver our annual Washington, D.C., lecture at 6 p.m. on March 11: “The Hour for a New Humanism.” For more information, visit firstthings.com/dc.
♦ December is half done as I write. Our year-end campaign is in full swing, and many readers have stepped up with generous donations. Next month, I’ll report the results. In the meantime, please accept my thanks. It is a blessing to run a publication that wins your support.
