The Alternative Right
. . . and the Impossibility of Conservatism

From Taki’s Magazine, July 26, 2009

It’s 1964. A stranger approaches and tells you two political movements will arise in the near future, the New Left and the New Right. One of these movements will dominate American politics for a good quarter century. Indeed, political scientists will define the entire period in terms of the ascendancy of this group; historians will write books naming this age after the movement’s most successful leader. Politicians, scholars, and activists on right and left will go so far as to call it a “Revolution.”

Imagine then that you could look at the America (such as it is) of November 5, 2008, at the end of this era.

The election of “the most liberal man in the Senates” is a crowning moment for a federal welfare state that’s grown steadily for over 50 years, regardless of which party was in office. Each individual state is merely an administrative unit for a centralized bureaucracy. All important decisions are made by the Supreme Court. On social issues, conservatives have been in abject retreat even as leftists bemoan the rise of “Christian fascism.” The ban on School prayer, enacted in 1962 with Engel vs. Vitale, has about as much chance of being overturned as the ’64 Civil Right Act. Gay marriage is a reality in several states. Mass immigration from the Third World is not just permitted but hailed as a moral imperative and encouraged by leaders of both political parties. The children of those immigrants receive preferences in education and job placement over Americans whose roots go back to the Founders.

Iconic American corporations such as McDonald’s, General Motors, and Coca-Cola fund far Left groups with hundreds of thousands of dollars in grants each year—even as some struggle to make profits. Universities are filled with “ethnic studies” and “women’s studies” majors who are skilled in organizing protests against Western Civilization, but can’t read the books that define it. News articles habitually reference public schools removing the names of George Washington or Thomas Jefferson, to be replaced by some community organizer or another who was successful at stealing taxpayer money.

All of the above—and much more, of course—have occurred during and after the “Reagan Revolution” and the mighty deeds of its heroes that are regularly recounted in story and song at the foundations, think-tanks, and non-profits that occupy Northern Virginia. The cadres of Young Americans for Freedom may have gotten elected to office, but we all live in the world of Students for a Democratic Society. During the Age of Reagan and conservative hegemony, the New Left decisively won the culture wars, by largely abolishing, often through state fiat, the previously existing culture.

The American Right won past electoral victories by appealing to Middle America, posing as its defenders against the left-wing radicals who spat on the society that gave them so much privilege. Beyond lip service though, the conservative movement didn’t actually do anything to conserve that society, never mind roll back the gains of the Left.

But appealing to the heroic American past, traditional values, or the need for a strong defense of the American society is no longer a sound election strategy because the “Moral Majority” no longer exists. More than that, it is doubtful an American people, conscious of itself as a people with a particular culture, tradition, and identity, even exists. . . . Read the whole article.