The conservatives, when they feel the bumps under their seats and realize the train is not on rails, feel each bump as a problem to be solved. DEI is a problem to be solved. Mass migration is a problem to be solved. The fentanyl epidemic is a problem to be solved.
Yet not only are the conservatives’ solutions wildly, fantastically disproportionate – by orders of magnitude – to these problems, they are not the real problems. They are only symptoms of the real problem – that our country is lost in history. There are no rails. There never were any.
But your quixotic, but energetically and even brilliantly conducted, fight against just one of these symptoms, in which even when your sword goes home and sinks to the hilt, you only demonstrate what a pinprick it is to this Brobdignagian monster, serves a different purpose. You are not defeating the enemy. You are only revealing it – showing everyone that the monster is real, and brave and capable men can fight it. Let us learn to fight it well – and let us learn to make it show its face. I complain, but I do not know of – for now – a better way.
Rufo: Let’s begin by clearing up some misconceptions. First, we have different objectives. Your goal seems to be accelerating the cycle of regimes from democracy to monarchy. My goal is to halt and reverse political decomposition and return to the beginnings of the republic — counter-revolution.
We also have a deep disagreement over the nature of history. You argue that there are no rails, no destiny, no divinity, and nothing beyond human contingency. This nihilistic argument creates considerable problems for you because it eliminates all possibility of making normative judgments. What is the ground of your convictions? What is the telos of your political system? And, if America is ordinary, contingent, and accidental, why care about its future at all?
My conviction is that there is a logical structure to human nature and, consequently, a structure of political order. The American founders were not ordinary politicians, but men of extraordinary vision and virtue who solved the core political problem posed by classical political philosophy and thereby created the most secure, free, and virtuous republic in history, with unprecedented innovations in commerce, technology, and the arts. You ridicule the category of “problems to be solved,” but pragmatism is the Anglo-American political spirit.
I see in your pessimism an excuse for inaction. I am grateful that you recognize that my work is valuable in “revealing the enemy” and that “brave and capable men can fight it.” This is enough. I have no illusion that my work alone will topple the regime. But I am doing what I can to contribute to that possibility in the future. Small victories yield new insights and open up new lines of action. Politics is not an abstraction; real-world fights generate greater practical knowledge than idle fantasies.