The New Right

There is a lot of intellectual energy around the "New Right" that has been described as "Trumpism without Trump." It's three prongs are: cultural conservatism, economic populism, and protectionism. It is associated with a variety of personalities: Tucker Carlson, Sohrab Ahmari,  J.D. Vance, Rod Dreher, Patrick Deneen, Michael Brendan Dougherty and (with more nuance and sophistication, maybe) Ross Douthat and R. Reno. 

Generally, they tend to tolerate Trump, glancing away from his personal depravity, as a lesser evil than the alternative. Trump himself articulated the  three-point-ideology even as he markedly failed to deliver on his promise of economic populism. He was most loyal in his fidelity to moral conservatism. 

They ambition to replace the "fusionist" conservatism that  was formulated by William Buckley, peaked with President Regan, has prevailed over the last 50 years, and continues in the now weakened Republican non-Trumpian establishment (Lindsay Graham, Ted Cruz, Paul Ryan, and such.) It is a far cry from the Republican Party of the 1950s: the moderate, congenial,  pro-business, patriotic, confident, monoculture Christian America of Eisenhower and Rockefeller.

For an observant Catholic like myself this is a very happy development as it marries the two distinct currents of the Church's social teaching that have long been opposed to each other: advocacy for the poor, vulnerable, and disadvantaged and the moral foundation of society in the family, respect for powerless human life and religious freedom. As a Catholic political vision, it is far superior to the other options: big government progressivism in bed with cultural liberalism or small government, low tax, trickle-down conservatism. But it is not without its problems.

PROBLEMS OF THE NEW RIGHT

1. It's narrow nationalism/isolationism denies the Catholic intuition into the solidarity of all people as well as a realism about our own national interest in a stable, peaceful world order. A Catholic's identity is defined first by his faith, not his nationality. A wholesome patriotism has its place. But a Civil Religion, especially in the post-Protestant United States, does not fit Catholicism.

2. Many in this group are Catholic and young; some are converts. They combine intellectual acuity with an admirable intensity. Less happily, this is accompanied by an immaturity,  a certain lack of balance, depth, breath, diplomacy.  At the age of 37, Ahmari has already been a Shiite Islam, atheist, fusionist conservative, Catholic, Trumpian and now leader of the New Right. He brings to the Culture War  a brilliant mind and fire in in belly. He went to war, no holds barred, with David French over the Drag Queen Story Hour in the local library. He is on the right side of that battle (in my view). And yet, long term, in the Culture War, I prefer the gentle, nuanced, amiable confidence of the more sophisticated Ross Douthat. 

3. Identification with The Donald is a corrupting influence. J.D. Vance is most impressive: hillbilly, marine, ivy league lawyer, author, Catholic, venture capitalist, and now candidate for Senate in Ohio. He has aligned himself with Trump and his base in all its debased fear and rage. This may prove to be politically shrewd if he accesses the immense (but negative) energy there. But the danger, from a Catholic perspective, is that he himself be contaminated. He apparently said that he cares about our Southern border, not about the Ukraine. This dialectic of antimony, setting the one against the other, is contradictory of the quintessentially Catholic "both-and": Yes, we can care for our border and theirs...it is not a zero sum game. 

4. On the other extreme, the more refined Never-Trump position of Ross Douthat, disconnected from the irrational fury and power of the base, risks becoming an intellectual, New York, hyper-Catholic niche without influence. 

CLASS WAR IS CULTURE WAR

The New Right sees that the culture war is a class war. They intend to transform the Republican Party and the conservative movement into a defense, culturally and economically, of the underclass and the worker. 

Some historical context: prior to 1970 the political divide was class based economics, pure and simple: capital vs. labor. Culturally united in a Protestant but Catholic-friendly civil religion, the conflict was relatively mild.  That changed radically in the 70s: DNC betrayed its Catholic, working class base in favor of the cultural liberalism of the emergent professional, affluent, educated elites. It was able to retain the support of (mostly evangelical) Afro-Americans and the labor movement because it defended their financial interests against a RNC still close to the wealthy and defensive of low taxes, minimal regulation and small government. 

This changed in a major way with Trump who pulled the religious and the disgruntled into the conservative fold. The New Right intends to complete this move: recreating the RNC as defender of the underclass both culturally and financially. The current alignment is quite strange: the Left upholds the status quo which privileges them and militantly defends their morals but retains the allegiance of much of the underclass through its support of identity politics and of a stronger safety net as well as governmental support of labor. Meanwhile, the RNC is a contradictory, unstable alliance between moral traditionalists, the old Republican wealthy, and the furious Trump base. It is a convoluted, illogical configuration that fiercely resists change.

Can it transform the RNC? Unlikely, but not impossible. Trump himself is still around and may even win in 2024 but he is not serious or competent. To really influence the country the New Right would need the emergence of a magnetic, charismatic figure (like JFK, Regan, Obama, Trump) who could pull these strings together in an appealing way to rouse the base and appeal to a broader constituency. Short of that, we can only hope that this new force pushes our politics in positive ways culturally and economically.

POST LIBERAL?

Ross Douthat recently suggested in a NY Times piece that the liberal order needed a religious foundation to be strong and secure. This makes sense. But it sounds more like the Neo-Conservatism, now in retreat, of Neuhaus/Novak/Weigel. These affirm the fundamental validity of the liberal order but call for a religious-moral revival to inspire it correctly. This is NOT the viewpoint of the New Right.

The various constituencies of the New Right are fundamentally critical of liberalism as an order. The core metaphysical/religious affirmation of the sovereign Self is seen as the foundation of the  regime that is cancerous and dying. They renounce the view of history shared by Right and Left: an inexorable, progressive evolution through technology, science, productivity, meritocracy, rule by experts, and expanding economy, They challenge the alliance of Big Tech, Big Business, Big Government, and Big-Celebrity-Culture which is defended by both political parties in different gestalts. 

They come with this critique from diverse positions which are not mutually compatible: Tradinista Marxism, integralist Catholic reaction, anti-technocracy, Wendell Berry/Catholic Worker back-to-the-farm-ism, Benedictine localism, the Communio philosophy of the John Paul II Institute, and other. What they share is a drastic, extreme view of the current system(s) as a dystopian Matrix.

I am in agreement with this diagnosis and yet: first, the liberal world order has lots of good as well as evil; second, it is so firmly and broadly in place that it could hardly be replaced in toto. We have no option but to defend it (against, China, Putin and Jihadism) and incrementally improve it and purify it of its toxicities and dysfunctions, even as we detach in key dimensions. 

WHAT DOES THE NEW RIGHT PROPOSE

While they are faulted for not offering a positive alternative, the outline of a coherent polity is emerging.

1. Pro-traditional-family in culture (abortion, wage, sex-gender ethics) but also in economics (child support, family wage, adequate safety net.)

2. Religious freedom.

3. Protectionism in an effort to retrieve industrial jobs for the working class.

4. Control of the southern border.

5. Isolationism as a deep reluctance to wage war over seas.

6. Support for police and law enforcement.

7. Support for the labor movement.

8. Anti-monopoly action against outsized, powerful, gargantuan Tech-Business-State.

9. Localism, federalism, subsidiarity to reduce the power of the federal government and return agency to smaller social units.

10. Engagement in the class/culture war and the rejection of identity politics.

CONCLUSION

For a Catholic, the New Right is a hopeful, refreshing development. Whatever its measure of success, it expresses what we value as true, good and beautiful. We continue to hope and to pray!