Two cheers for the new Right
A diagnostic essay in the New York Times forecasts promise—and peril
The “new Right” is a much-discussed subject these days. But there’s often more heat than light regarding exactly what it is, not to mention its goals and prospects. Enter Nate Hochman, a fellow at National Review, who has done us all a service with his long-ish essay for the New York Times, “What Comes After the Religious Right,” which provides a helpful diagnostic, lay-of-the-land perspective on this nascent movement.
Hochman’s essay has much to recommend it. It’s a useful, fairly comprehensive guide to the contours of the new Right, which is focused in the immediate term on passing “anti-critical-race-theory laws, anti-transgender laws and parental rights bills.” It also describes how it came to be. The new Right is “distinctly different from the culture wars of the late 20th century, and it reflects a broad shift in conservatism’s priorities and worldview.” As the title of Hochman’s essay plainly suggests, “The conservative political project is no longer specifically Christian.”
This is correct, but it’s a big problem—and why I cannot wholeheartedly and unreservedly endorse the new Right. Much like Irving Kristol on capitalism, I can only give it two cheers, though I’ve no doubt that it can be a useful vessel. In the decades since World War II, conservatives have been beating a hasty, pathetic retreat. “[O]n issues like school prayer, no-fault divorce and homosexuality,” conservatives have been routed. That we are finally scoring some “Ws”—having pivoted to “questions of national identity, social integrity and political alienation”—is a huge relief.
But I can’t pretend that these successes are unalloyed goods, and we shouldn’t view them that way.
A fundamentally atheistic, or pagan, and certainly libertine (though thankfully in important ways less libertarian), political Right—while it might rack up some important short-to-medium-term political and policy victories—will ultimately fail in the long term if it is not deeply rooted in and informed by authentic Christianity.
Don’t get me wrong. I understand why Christianity has lost its “senior partner” status in the movement, moving from its full-time driver to now a part-time one—and probably soon to be a mere disgruntled passenger. Critically, Christians have not proven themselves to be worthy leaders and stewards of the Right. Many today are—and have been for a while—weak, compromised, foolish, spineless, and unwilling to engage in the rough and tumble of politics to secure individual rights and the common good. In a sense, it’s fitting that they’ve been dethroned.
But it’s nonetheless not a development for which we should affirmatively cheer.
Christians are called to be for the world like unto leaven, so that the “bread” of society might rise up as a pleasing offering to God (see Lk. 13:20-21). Thus, their exclusion from politics can portend only long-term negative trends and consequences, regardless of how things might seem to us in the here and now.
Fundamentally, only a robust, orthodox Christian politics has the power successfully to resist, rebuke, and push back progressive, technocratic Wokeist tyranny. All of the things that the new Right claims to want—serious enforcement of immigration laws, protection and promotion of a distinctly American way of life, colorblindness, gender sanity, parental rights (especially in education), and genuine self-government—have Christianity as their strongest foundation.
You can rage at this assessment all you want, but it’s true. Sure, Christianity might tend toward, e.g., more lax immigration policies. But what else is going to help you push back against the Left’s current constellation of priorities: trans madness, racism, bureaucrats-as-parents, and globalism as far as the eye can see? Barstool-ism? Joe Rogan? Bill Maher?
Obviously not.
What we need is a strong, vibrant, living intellectual tradition that provides a compelling meta-narrative—a story about reality—into which people can slot themselves and find their footing as they navigate life’s challenges and hardships. Dave Portnoy’s talking like a Democrat on abortion—“just let a f---ing woman do what she wants with her body” he said after the draft opinion in Dobbs was leaked—simply won’t cut it.
Which leads me to my final point. These new members of our coalition ought to have a little humility. Sure, the old guard failed quite a bit, but that doesn’t entitle freshly minted Rightists to swagger onto the scene and start calling all the shots as though they’ve been here from the beginning. Bluntly, you haven’t put in enough time to gatekeep “true” rightwing politics. Heck, I’m not even sure you are properly classified as a member of the Right. Have the self-awareness to be grateful for what’s been accomplished and the grace not to bluster about as though you have all the answers and now own the joint.
We’ve been burned by the neocons, the former Communists who migrated into the Republican Party; we should be wiser this time around and not let our movement be coopted and tamed by interlopers with their own priors and worldviews that are not necessarily conservative/rightwing.
Admittedly, my statement of what I would prefer probably amounts to little more than shouting into the void. As Hochman correctly notes, America is much less religious now than it was after World War II—a trend that appears as though it’ll continue apace, which will simply push Christians into the position of being quasi-creative minorities. That’s not the worst position to be in, frankly; much good comes from such as these, if they are committed to their role.
Our task, in that scenario, would be to tend to the flame of Christianity, keeping it burning bright, so that when the world rediscovers its need for something more—as it desperately casts about for the antidote to its inevitable entanglement with nihilistic ennui—we will be there, ready to offer the hope and message of Jesus Christ, Who is “the first and the last, and the living one,” Who died, but is “alive for evermore,” and has “the keys of Death and Hades” (see Rev. 1:17-18).
Update (June 3, 2022, 6:55 p.m.): Minor grammatical changes (and the addition of of a couple of missing words) throughout.
Two cheers for the new Right
A brilliant and thoughtful analysis, Deion! Frankly, this is the first I've heard about a "New Right" in the context of recent events, and I agree with your assessment that its exponents haven't contributed to our political/intellectual life nearly long enough to speak for the nation or "the right". I also agree that the right is mainly notable for all the cultural battles it's lost over the last few decades, so the fact that we're showing a little dynamism under Biden isn't something to celebrate too loudly about.
Nice article, Deion! I do think it will be important to ensure that the new right, which often likes to point out the errors in fusionism, doesn't repeat all the same mistakes made then. I haven't read the article (I don't have a NYT subscription, and have no intentions of changing that), but I understand from your summary the concerns you have. I think in a lot of ways the current landscape mirrors the landscape of the Cold War, with international communism replaced by woke corporations and a relentless American bureaucratic state. It makes sense that people of divergent viewpoints will want to work together when told that their children don't belong to them, or that womanhood is undefinable, or that actually some ethnic groups really are bad. Depending on whether these different groups integrate, and the manner in which they do, we could end up with Christian conservatives left out in the cold in a similar manner to how fusionism turned out. But I am cheered that the primary rallying points of the new right are unambiguously things that Christians can cheer (opposition to gender identity and critical race theory seem to be the main elements, more so than any particular view of economics), and if we play our cards right we may be able to convince people that there is a clear link between the decline in religiosity that you point out and the fact that numerous highly-educated elites cannot say what a woman is, something I was capable of doing in preschool. Perhaps what you speak of in your final paragraph is not so far away.