Several years ago, at a Philadelphia Society meeting, a friend approached me. He identified as a national conservative and believed that the Right needed to use the coercive power of the state to make the country more virtuous. He was mainly concerned about the supposed degradation of our culture and insisted that we needed a strong, authoritative leader to restore America to its former greatness. I adamantly disagreed, while conceding that we needed to work to restore the country’s institutions, including the balance of power through proper checks and balances.
He laughed and asked me if I knew what time it was. I looked at my watch and told him the time. He laughed again. I didn’t know what time it was.
For my friend, the time had long passed for reforming institutions, preserving our constitutional framework, and maintaining a minimal state. The time had come for conservatives to be radical. It was time to break the existing framework and for conservatives to wield power against their enemies.
I left that conversation deeply troubled and concerned about the rise of the illiberal, perhaps fascist, New Right. How did this happen? What happened to reasonable conservatives dedicated to conserving the American Founding?
Thanks to Laura Field’s Furious Minds: The Making of the MAGA New Right, we now have a history of the intellectuals behind the conservative movement’s shift toward illiberalism. Field’s stated purpose “is not to examine historical precursors to the New Right; I focus on the intellectual world that has grown up under the cover of Trumpism more than on the intellectual roots of these changes.” Trained as a Straussian political theorist, Field is uniquely qualified to read, understand, and communicate the ideas of the New Right intellectuals who have been challenging the Enlightenment liberal foundation of the United States.
Field — a political theorist, writer, analyst, and scholar in residence at the Niskanen Center — breaks the New Right into four distinct categories. First, there are the National Conservatives (or NatCons), who encompass most, but not all, of the figures Field discusses. National Conservatism rejects globalization, free trade, and limited government in favor of economic nationalism, protectionism, anti-immigration policies, and aspects of Christian nationalism. This is the most moderate and mainstream subset of the New Right, and it includes figures such as Kevin Roberts, Yoram Hazony, Josh Hawley, and Christopher Rufo. At this point, the Heritage Foundation, the Edmund Burke Foundation, and First Things are all essentially national conservative in nature.
The next group is the postliberals. This group consists primarily of radical and integralist Catholics who deplore and critique liberalism’s emphasis on individual rights and its claims of procedural neutrality. The most well-known figures in this school are Patrick Deneen, Adrian Vermeule, Sohrab Ahmari, and JD Vance. They attack secular pluralism, and their goal is to limit individual liberty and rights. Instead, they advocate for an illiberal vision of “the common good” and the promotion of “traditional morality” by the state.
Next, Field discusses New Right intellectuals associated with the Claremont Institute. She eventually adopts their preferred nickname: the Claremonsters. The Claremonsters believe “that the American founding was based largely on premodern ideas.” According to them, “founding-era thought was the result of a grand synthesis of biblical political thought, ancient Greek philosophy, and modern political thought.” To promote their conception of the original and true American principles, they provide constitutional and philosophical arguments that enable them to critique modern liberalism. Unlike some of the other strands of the New Right, however, they are interested in preserving and promoting their conception of the American Founding — although some Claremont-associated scholars, such as John Eastman, Michael Anton, and Glenn Ellmers, have moved well beyond that and embraced radical solutions that would upend American institutions.
Finally, Field introduces the “Hard Right Underbelly,” which overlaps with the New Right but is not fully contained within it. The Hard Right consists of an amorphous group of intellectuals, podcasters, influencers, and activists who often translate political theory into talking points that support the populist culture war and provide ideological cover the New Right. Field notes that many of these figures are young, overtly misogynistic, and racist. Unfortunately, they can’t simply be written off as a fringe because of their influence on members of Trump’s second administration and even some of the intellectuals who helped write policy blueprints for his second term. The Hard Right includes figures like Curtis Yarvin (Mencius Moldbug) and Costin Alamariu (Bronze Age Pervert).
Field expertly crafts a narrative that not only describes the ideas of these various segments of the New Right but also demonstrates the ways in which they interacted and evolved into the MAGA New Right that we know today. Along the way, she details Michael Anton’s intellectual evolution, Patrick Deneen’s critique of liberalism, and Adrian Vermeule’s arguments for “Common Good Constitutionalism.” Although Field is a self-identified progressive, she takes the ideas of her subjects seriously, and she does so with a wit rarely present in academic writing.
For those of us who believe in individual liberty and think that America’s institutions are worth defending, Furious Minds is essential reading. In fact, despite what Michael Anton claims in his critical review, Field often agrees with the New Right’s analysis of the current state of the American economy. Further, she embraces their premise that the federal government needs to do more to address the imbalances brought on by neoliberalism. Field insists that when “it comes to inequality, poverty, and the shrinking middle class, what are lacking are ambition and will.”
In the conclusion, Field recounts some of Deneen and Ahmari’s policy preferences and agrees with them:
I might also recommend some aspects of Patrick Deneen’s ‘mixed constitutionalism’…I also agree with Deneen that it is ‘high time to revisit the question of national service’…Deneen also supports increased funding for public schools, with much more support for education in the trades. Amen to that. Let’s add a big child tax credit — for all children, in all kinds of families—to that list. We could tax billionaires and millionaires to make it happen. Sohrab Ahmari’s ideas about unions and workers sound good, too.
The specific policies that Field praises from Ahmari’s Tyranny, Inc. include proposals that were also well received by supporters of Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren. They include Ahmari’s “support for unionization” and the “achievements of the progressive past like the New Deal.” Field insists that she “tend[s] to agree with postliberals like Ahmari, Deneen, and Pappin — as well as with many liberals and progressives — that America is long overdue for serious economic innovation and reform, and I have appreciated some of their ideas about how to make it happen.”
The only problem with embracing the New Right’s narrative about the economic decline of the United States is that it is completely wrong and the solutions they suggest would simply make things worse for the very people they want to help. As I recounted in a review for Reason:
Real hourly compensation for all workers has increased by around 50 percent over the past 40 years. Middle-class incomes are up more than 60 percent in real terms since 1970. The percentage of Americans defined as poor or near poor has fallen since 1967 from 16 percent to 13 percent. The number of Americans in the lower-middle class has also shrunk, from 31 percent to 16 percent today. Where have they gone if they didn’t become poor? They moved into the middle-middle and upper-middle classes: The percentage of Americans in these two categories increased by 16 percent, and — even more impressively — the percentage of Americans in the upper-middle class rose by 27 percent. Meanwhile, income inequality has grown only slightly, once taxes and transfers are considered, and it is well within the twentieth-century average. And the share of national income going to employees is at about the same level now as it was in the 1970s.
In short, Field’s and the New Right’s narrative of America in decline is just wrong. Furthermore, the solutions that could address the affordability crisis aren’t found in more government involvement but less.
An effective reform effort should take the form of removing regulatory barriers to increase access to employment and health care. A plethora of evidence shows that this would lead to decreased costs, increased quality, and increased employment, all without compromising safety. It would also increase overall innovation and economic growth. Further, rolling back regulatory barriers at the state and local levels would encourage production and competition, which would improve affordability and enable Americans to flourish. It is no coincidence that the sectors where costs have risen fastest are often those dominated by services and characterized by heavy public provision and expansive government regulation. Additionally, a revitalization of American families and communities does not require federal government programs but a resurgence of civil society and voluntary associations. Field doesn’t seem to have considered this.
One of Field’s greatest strengths is her challenge to liberals (of all stripes, including classical liberals) to address the New Right’s criticism and establish more robust arguments in favor of liberalism. Field exclaims that “liberals have for far too long accepted a minimalist self-understanding that avoids all talk of virtue and ethical vision; they have similarly refused to acknowledge and cultivate the moral worlds and traditions that sustain our lives.” Field calls on liberals to “become more upfront about the core ideas and ideals of liberalism: about what liberalism values and why, in language that can be broadly understood.”
Despite its flawed prescriptions, Furious Minds is a well-written and enjoyable read. I recommend that anyone who believes in individual liberty and loves America’s institutions read it. Enemies of our constitutional order are among us, and they are willing to use any means necessary to upend the very institutions that have led to human flourishing. They must be defeated both at the ballot box and in the realm of ideas.
Market liberalism is the most successful political and economic system yet developed. Read Field’s book. Familiarize yourself with the illiberal Right’s arguments and become a better defender of the ideas and institutions we love. This is how we will keep America great.
