Intellectual Conservatism Needs Fighters to Survive
Editor's Note
The cold civil war in America is sustained as much by asymmetries within the Right as by opposition from the Left. This essay examines one such asymmetry: a persistent reluctance among “intellectual conservatives” to recognize politics as a domain requiring conflict, organization, and the exercise of power. What follows, then, is a deeper dispute over whether the Right intends to govern or merely to endure.
Tom Klingenstein likes to say that you can’t win a war if you don’t know you are in one. That’s bad enough. But what about people who do know they are in a war, and choose to shoot at their own side? Those individuals would rather not fight, prefer to ignore the dreadful march of the destructive Left, and balk at “activist conservatives” who attempt to stop the progressive trampling of institutional, legal, and cultural inheritances.
Prominent among those troubled by bold right-wing action in the United States we find “intellectual conservatives.” That title has generally become shorthand for a certain kind of respectable right-leaning never-trump academic. These brave scholars lob stones from atop the ivory tower, bruising the backs of the men in their own army as they defend the city walls. They believe the work of the tower superior in every way, to the point of making the work on the ground not just strategically in error, but perhaps morally wrong. Never mind the role those in the trenches play in defending the tower.
The Self-Styled Losers
In Public Discourse, Elizabeth Corey (the symbolic representative of intellectual conservatives for the purposes of this essay) chose a more apt name for intellectuals of this stripe, willingly donning Samuel Francis’s biting label for American conservatives: “Beautiful Losers.” Corey defines beautiful losers as: men and women who maintain their moral and intellectual purity while losing cultural and political battles. They are reasonable and civil, but losers nevertheless. They would rather be defeated, with grace and dignity intact, than win at the cost of being crass, vulgar, or harsh.
Throughout the piece Corey repeatedly refers to herself and her ilk as simply “losers.” The article reads like a parody.
As her foil, Corey takes the “scrappy warrior” who sees the world in binary, living and dying by Carl Schmitt’s in-vogue friend-enemy distinction. A Chris Rufo or Kevin Roberts (her examples) attacks the enemy, ignoring any nuance in favor of confronting directly the perceived existential crisis facing his tribe. She dismisses these men for their crude, militaristic misapprehension of our political situation.
As Corey sees it, the warriors are inferior to the losers because approaching politics in “the framework of games and battles” to be lost or won should be “rejected altogether.” In her view, warfare “requires prioritizing the political, not the personal; the national, not the local; sweeping generalizations, not subtle, qualified arguments.” The personal, the local, and subtle, qualified arguments are indeed worthwhile. But does this mean the political, the national, and the general are unimportant? Does no one need to tend the ship while scholars read below deck?
Oddly, Corey sees herself as one who lives and works in “the institutions of civil society,” and the warriors as those who have left them behind. Somehow, the work of the scholar, teacher, parent, mentor, or friend, is more politically engaged than that of … the politician.
Intellectual Action vs. Political Action
To be fair to Corey, it seems in her view that much of her denunciation of “warriors” points more to keyboard warriors than actual political actors, for she warns “We should never assume that bloggers, writers, and podcasters are offering accurate assessments of the political world… they spend far too much time online.” Yet, her examples, noted above, of two scrappy warriors are Chris Rufo (who does not need me to defend him as it turns out) and Kevin Roberts—two men decidedly in the arena, working to change public policy directly, and not merely fighting in the comment section (though perhaps they do some of that too).
Corey describes a positive vision which will include a sort of political action of its own, but it proscribes the work of people like Chris Rufo and Kevin Roberts. She wishes to renew engagement in activity that takes place in a much deeper stratum of consciousness than political and journalistic warfare. They invest energy in existentially permanent activities, like loving and caring for other people: children, students, family, neighbors, colleagues. They work as musicians, educators, physicians, priests, and artists. Beautiful losers renew and pass on the art, literature, and manners that constitute the best of our culture.
The kind of local, interpersonal, “tablet-keeping” conservatism she enjoins does not negate the need for the larger, more muscular political efforts of the warrior. Indeed, both are needed. Ironically, her preferred field of action would and will cease to exist absent the efforts of those willing to bloody themselves in unpleasant cultural and political battles.
What Corey dimly glimpses but fails to appreciate is that indeed there is a “distinction between contemplation and action.” The sorts of “action” she describes above are admirable and worthwhile, but they are decisively different than the actions of a genuine statesman. Perhaps Corey should be reminded that Edmund Burke placed special emphasis on the priority of action over theory on all questions of politics, to the point of denigrating theory as dangerous and unworthy of the public square.
Pluralism in and Out of the Movement
Corey, in a podcast with Law and Liberty, acknowledges some level of appreciation for Chris Rufo’s “anti-DEI crusade,” but wishes he would be nicer, that DEI could be accepted in half-measure and not thrown out altogether. She wishes she could go to fewer DEI seminars (the only thing she specifically acknowledges as a good from that crusade), but that DEI officers could peacefully carry out their work on campus without mean men like Chris Rufo attacking them for illegal and immoral activities they were found to be engaged in.
The feminized tone-policing nature of this particular example is representative of Corey’s whole approach to the problem. In a piece for Law and Liberty she suggests that perhaps a more feminine approach is what is needed, for, as she quips, “men (and they are nearly all men),” are the ones doing the “fighting.” Women would do a better job of getting along, being gentler, compromising with the liberals in control of the university, etc. Here, she lives up to the trope of the feminine voice shouting down positive, direct action amidst our civilizational crisis, the very thesis of Helen Andrews she dismisses offhand in the same piece.
In this emphasis on getting along with the liberals, these losers (their term, not mine) possess an odd focus on “pluralism” in the nation (and on campus), but small tent conservatism in the party. Corey chides the new right for its “lack of understanding of what pluralism means,” which causes them to reject anyone who is “not like them,” despite the fact that the whole world is not like the conservatives. Corey’s fellow traveler in attacking the new right, and the host of the podcast that sparked this conversation, James Patterson, wrote a book review titled “Neo-Integralism Delenda Est,” which, as Helen Andrews pointed out, quietly removed from the initial published version an immoderate, aggressive attack on the likes of Patrick Deneen, calling for such individuals to be “hounded out of conservative institutions, made pariahs in religious circles, and alienated from polite discourse on politics.” Pluralism for thee, but not for me it seems, as the tolerant right casts out and excommunicates any not adequately adhering to their orthodoxies.
The teaching here seems to be that conservatives must play nicely with their liberal colleagues, while conservatives themselves can critique and castigate each other whenever and however they please. Kevin Roberts is one of the most prominent victims of this for refusing to break ties with Tucker Carlson after his interview with Nick Fuentes. Whatever your position on that whole debacle, these guilt by association games do nothing but weaken conservatives. They serve as circular firing squads in which each is required to sacrifice the person to their right.
The Sin of Ingratitude
A student of mine at Ole Miss recently asked me if I would ever consider going into politics. I answered no, and explained that I prefer studying politics, philosophy, and literature in search of both theoretic and practical truths that I can then share with my students, some of whom will hopefully go into politics. In saying so, I expressly emphasized to my student that politics is a noble vocation and that should he or any of his classmates wish to enter that world, I would exert whatever influence I could on their behalf. I take very seriously the responsibility to, in whatever way I can, educate America’s political class.
Teachers of political philosophy should unquestionably spark in their students a love of the subject itself. But if all we accomplish as scholars of politics is creating another generation of scholars we fail not only as teachers, but as citizens.
Most importantly for one in my position, I would never denigrate the efforts of the very people defending my way of life. Professors might even think their work of educating the next generation is of superior importance to the work of cultural pugilists fighting for our country. But this is no excuse for such a foolish misapprehension of their position in the regime. I may not agree with everything these right-wing actors do or say, but I do not have a better approach to offer. So I know to allow them to do their work. And while it may be true that one cannot “buy” or “legislate” scholars “into existence,” that these are not sufficient conditions to bring about a community of scholars, both financial and legislative incentives and support are absolutely necessary conditions to bring about any kind of real change in our world.
In this whole dispute I am reminded of Shakespeare’s Coriolanus. The protagonist of the play is the greatest individual soldier Rome ever knew. By his solitary efforts he conquered cities, turning the tide of wars single-handedly. His political “betters” in the Senate understand his virtue. The plebeians, those beneath Coriolanus in the polis, even realize his superiority and therefore cannot fail to grant him his due. The only characters in the play who undeniably hate Coriolanus for his brusque, effective manner are the tribunes. These execrable figures redirect the energies of the people into hate for Coriolanus drive him out of Rome, the land to which he had devoted his superior energy and life to its defense. Coriolanus, who once upheld the way of life of senator, citizen, and tribune alike, now turns again to tear apart the regime he loved. The blame for Rome’s near collapse in that instance falls squarely on the tribunes for their ungracious, foolish intransigence.
The intellectual conservative professors who would dismiss, or, worse, attack the soldier defending them must learn from the untutored plebs that “ingratitude is monstrous.”