A Manifesto for the Counterrevolution
The Right is reorganizing. Most intelligent conservatives, especially younger conservatives, who joined the political fray at a moment of sweeping ideological change, already recognize that familiar orthodoxies are no longer viable, and that ideas without power are useless. The Right doesn’t need a white paper. What it needs is a spirited new activism with the courage and resolve to win back the language, recapture institutions, and reorient the state toward rightful ends.
This essay will introduce the basic principles of this activism: where it begins, how it might work, and what it must do in order to win. It is not “conservative” in the traditional sense. The world of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century liberalism is gone, and conservatives must grapple with the world as it is — a status quo that requires not conservation, but reform, and even revolt.
We don’t need to abandon the principles of natural right, limited government, and individual liberty, but we need to make those principles meaningful in the world of today. The older conservative establishment, assembling in ballrooms and clubhouses, has marginal influence over public orthodoxy because it lacks the hunger and grit to contest it. The energy is with a new generation which no longer accepts tired platitudes, and demands a new set of strategies geared toward truly overcoming the regime — the opaque and coercive set of psychological, cultural, and institutional patterns that has largely replaced the old constitutional way of life.
Continue reading the entire piece here at IM—1776
______________________
Christopher F. Rufo is a senior fellow and director of the Initiative on Critical Race Theory at the Manhattan Institute and contributing editor of City Journal. He is the author of the new book, America's Cultural Revolution.
Photo by Douglas Rissing/iStock