- 6,132
- Simcoeace
It has been gradually seeping into my awareness over the last months - this is a new force in national and international politics, economics and culture. It is the intellectual underpinning behind MAGA, Orbán, Erdoğan and most of the other right wing populist movements in Europe and around the world. As we have seen in the US, it often bears little resemblance to traditional conservative movements, which for most of the last hundred years have embraced ideas like laissez faire capitalism and free trade.
Although Trump himself seems to be entirely lacking any intellectual curiosity and deep-seated ideology, there are people around him, like JD Vance, Steve Bannon and others, who have a coherent world view they are promoting and which opposes not just "progressive" liberalism, but the whole package of liberal ideals that have been ascendent in the West since the end of the Second World War. This is why what Trump is doing seems so shocking - it's overturning 80 years of established norms in government. It's why there is tacit support for Putin (not to mention Netanyahu) among many National Conservatives. Here is a link to the National Conservatism website Statement of Principles page.
nationalconservatism.org
It's worth checking out the signatories of this statement of principles. Among them is the "libertarian" billionaire and Trump backer Peter Thiel who wrote in the Cato Unbound newsletter in 2009:
"Since 1920, the vast increase in welfare beneficiaries and the extension of the franchise to women — two constituencies that are notoriously tough for libertarians — have rendered the notion of “capitalist democracy” into an oxymoron."
Democracy per se is not is not high on the list of priorities for National Conservatives.
Although Trump himself seems to be entirely lacking any intellectual curiosity and deep-seated ideology, there are people around him, like JD Vance, Steve Bannon and others, who have a coherent world view they are promoting and which opposes not just "progressive" liberalism, but the whole package of liberal ideals that have been ascendent in the West since the end of the Second World War. This is why what Trump is doing seems so shocking - it's overturning 80 years of established norms in government. It's why there is tacit support for Putin (not to mention Netanyahu) among many National Conservatives. Here is a link to the National Conservatism website Statement of Principles page.
National Conservatism: A Statement of Principles - National Conservatism
The following statement was drafted by Will Chamberlain, Christopher DeMuth, Rod Dreher, Yoram Hazony, Daniel McCarthy, Joshua Mitchell, N.S. Lyons,...
nationalconservatism.org
It's worth checking out the signatories of this statement of principles. Among them is the "libertarian" billionaire and Trump backer Peter Thiel who wrote in the Cato Unbound newsletter in 2009:
"Since 1920, the vast increase in welfare beneficiaries and the extension of the franchise to women — two constituencies that are notoriously tough for libertarians — have rendered the notion of “capitalist democracy” into an oxymoron."
Democracy per se is not is not high on the list of priorities for National Conservatives.
Last edited:
