A foreign correspondent asked me about it, I presume because he found the Wikipedia entry that is based on a blog post that I wrote when I was, without realizing it, quite confused. So at this point I would say that I do not know what the term “neoreaction” means, and if I don’t, who does?
Now, I think that the central issue in American right-wing politics is nationalism. (Note, I may be overly influenced by recent exposure to Yoram Hazony.) I will get to that shortly. But a few preliminary comments.
1. I think that many Americans reject the aggressive forms of progressivism. Even many left-of-center Democrats believe that conservative speakers on college campuses are entitled to be heard. They think that people with religious faiths should have room to follow their beliefs, as long as they do not harm others. They think that the private sector is not perfect but that government is not perfect either.
2. I think that there is a set of Americans who make a big deal about what they perceive as threats to the white race, but this set is really, really tiny.
3. Progressives would like to believe that all of their opponents belong to (2). They do not want to concede that many of their opponents are respectable exponents of (1).
4. The issue of nationalism vs. transnationalism is what is most important to understand. In America, there is a long tradition of opposition to transnationalism. Many Americans are suspicious of rules made by international bodies. They are skeptical of sending American aid or American soldiers to deal with foreign problems.
5. Since World War II, American elites have been much more transnationalist than ordinary Americans. Elites on the left like international bodies that make rules and sanction military interventions. Elites on the right believe that American involvement in other countries is necessary in order to protect our national interests. For a recent statement of the elite-right view, see Robert Kagan in Saturday’s WSJ.
6. Populists on the left have taken the opposite point of view. On the Democratic side, the slogan “Come home, America” emerged durng the Vietnam War. On the Republican side, from Robert Taft through Patrick Buchanan through Donald Trump, opposition to internationalism has always had a spokesman. When George W. Bush ran for President in 2000, he used nationalist rhetoric. He ended up governing as an internationalist, especially after 9/11.
7. Mr. Trump is the first nationalist to win the Presidency since World War II. Conservative intellectuals who are in the internationalist camp are “never-Trumpers.” Conservative intellectuals who are nationalists are inclined to be Trump supporters. But Trump’s populist rhetoric turns off conservative intellectuals of all stripes.
8. Libertarians like the non-interventionist aspect of nationalism, but we hate the anti-trade, anti-immigrant aspect of nationalism. Overall, libertarians do not approve of Mr. Trump. We differ on how we think he compares with his opponents.
Nationalists on the right usually interpret transnationalism as “we’ll close the factory that sustains your town and send the jobs to China”. They believe that because that’s how transnationalism has actually worked for them for the last 30 years. They see immigration as pretty much the same thing; the foreign workers come here but they still affect the supply curve for labor, reducing US wages (compared to a world with less immigration). On a national-aggregate level, this may make all nations involved better off – but demographics within each group suffer, and to them Trump looked like the best available candidate. Although 13 percent would have voted for the Giant Meteor of Death – it wasn’t a strong field in 2016.
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/jun/30/giant-meteor-of-death-tied-with-hillary-clinton-do/
That’s partially correct, for some right wing nationalists. I know others who see transnationalism as the vehicle by which they, their fathers, and their children are sent off to fight for opaque causes in far away lands that they consider to be ____holes. And there is nothing remotely like the GI Bill waiting for them anymore, while the post-conflict care they get is a joke.
or, i should have said, “often a joke.”
Anyone who has enlisted since 2001 has known where they were going. And if there are issues coming back it sure as hell isn’t from lack of money.
oh, really?
https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/us-troops-niger/story?id=50559788
I agree with all except #8. While Trump is not a libertarian per se, he is the first president since Harding to be willing to undo most of another president’s legacy. That to me is a big deal, more important than his horrible trade policies.
I’d like to see him go on to undo the legacy of every president since Teddy Roosevelt, but at least it’s a start, one that even Reagan was too much of a compromiser to accomplish.
8. This seems accurate and is why I have lost sympathy with libertarians.
Libertarians assuage their sense of moral superiority by deeming any immigration reform such as enforcement of existing law or ending the “diversity” lottery and substituting the point systems approach used by developed nations as “anti-immigrant.”
They also deem any attempt to bilaterally reduce impediments to international trade as “anti-trade” apparently finding that the welfare of the US working class is an insignificant consideration relate to the opportunity to appear morally superior.
It pretty much sums up why so many have tuned out libertarians and why libertarianism remains utterly ineffectual.
It is also why we are facing a Blue Wave of new members of Congress who are committed to Bernie Sanders’ Universal Medicare Program that will outlaw private health insurance, eliminate border enforcement, impose corporate tax rates in excess of 40%, and create new government funded higher education free tuition programs. Which is apparently a small price to pay to ensure China becomes the world’s dominanat power and Mexican drug cartel leaders can laze about in San Diego beach front mansions.
I think the reasons people see the proposed visa changes as “anti-immigrant” is that they believe the few remaining paths for immigrants will be closed, as proposed – but the new points-based system will NOT be opened. Thus, on net, anti-immigrant.
What I think a lot of “anti-illegal-immigrant” folks don’t realize, when they advocate that people should “get in line” and do it the right way, is that there isn’t a line. For most middle-class people – teachers, accountants, graphic designers, engineers, lawyers, airplane pilots (or mechanics), nurses, and so forth – there is literally no way to get a visa to live in the US. They can’t get an H1B, an artist visa, a corporate executive visa, an athlete visa… Nothing. There is literally no line.
Of course, the vast, vast majority of middle class people in the world don’t WANT a visa to live in the US; they’re happier where they are. But when they do, for whatever reason, I’d think we should welcome them with excitement.
These are people who WILL earn substantial amounts throughout their lives. Worrying about them competing against American workers is silly; they already compete with American workers.
We get to decide this: will they spend most of their lifetime earnings here, or somewhere else? We are eager to get them to come as tourists – for four weeks in their lives – because they’ll spend money here: why not get them to come for life, and really boost our economy?
And then there’s the fact that we don’t have entrepreneurship visas. Seriously. Many of the most valuable companies in America, started in the last 50 years, had immigrant founders. But we make it hard to move to America, and many of the most valuable companies in the world, started in the last 30 years, are not here. But, we don’t have entrepreneurship visas.
Instead, we keep arguing about how many subsistence farmhands should be legal vs illegal, and about whether there are jobs “Americans don’t want to do”.
Talk about missing the point.
If support for free trade is coming across as “moral superiority” plus “don’t care about the welfare of the working class”, then it’s either being marketed appallingly, or crony capitalists are doing a great job of marketing protectionism.
If you’re working class, then protectionism might help you if you happen to work in one of a small number of jobs that gets protected. Otherwise, though, protectionism will mean you earn less, and consume less per dollar of income.
But, despite all the examples of countries that have tried protectionism, with dire results, people don’t believe that – and I accept that they don’t.
If you care about libertarianism you should be a white nationalist because white people are the only group that cares about those values, in fact not just white people but descendants of the northwest europeans who founded the US. Those values will not survive our displacement. Demographics matter first, everything else is downstream.
The saving grace of the American right us it’s rejection of collectivism and coersion. It rejects collectivism in favor of individualism and atomism. And it rejects coersion in favor of proscription: they may prevent you from doing things you’re like to, but by and large they won’t force you to do what they want you to do. Everything good, and most of the bad things, start with these.
There are occasionally hybrids: neocons believe in individualism and a coercive foreign policy, for example.
In the Platonic ideal realm of the Libertarian utopia, I would have perfectly defined, costlessly enforceable property rights to everything of mine that I cared about, and these rights would be guaranteed for all time, regardless of who my neighbors were and how many of them there were.
In the real world, we in the US depend for the enforcement of our rights on a democratic government with birthright citizenship and universal franchise, which is importing tens of millions of people from cultures that tend to vote for politicians like Hugo Chavez.
In the neoreactionary utopia, I would have trustworthy neighbors.
I think your first paragraph describes anarchy.
Libertarianism accepts that government is required, just as you say. In fact, it’s best to think of libertarianism as a prescription for government policy and not as opposition to government itself.
As for importing large numbers of people who would vote for Chavez, it would sure be nice if we’d import large numbers of hard-working, middle-to-high-income entrepreneurial people from developed countries, instead. But we won’t issue them visas.
I don’t see why you say this: “it would sure be nice if we’d import large numbers of hard-working, middle-to-high-income entrepreneurial people from developed countries, instead”
You say in an earlier post: “Of course, the vast, vast majority of middle class people in the world don’t WANT a visa to live in the US; they’re happier where they are.”
OK, based on your statement what reason is there to remove functioning, effective, middle-to-high income people from their home county and culture and transplant them to a location with no social network and unfamiliar culture?
Leave them where they are. (And don’t let the Chavez voters in either.)
The US is already in the top tier of per-capita income. We don’t need their “lifetime income”.
I don’t know why someone would move. Why do people move from New York to California? Or California to New York? Or Boston to Dallas?
Job opportunities in their specialization. Better cultural fit. Lifestyle. Adventure. Friendships.
The gains from free movement are like the gains from trade: everyone is better off.
And, if you’re just opposed to immigration altogether, a few generations of Cherokee would probably like to have a word.
Just because someone wants to move to your neighborhood doesn’t mean it’s a good thing for you or that you should let them.
Just ask the Cherokee.
Libertarians in America?
There are no atheists in fox holes and there are no libertarians when neighborhood property zoning is under review.
To the anarchist, Trump is the wrecking ball.
I recall reading in one of Thomas Sowell’s books the assertion that the Right generally speaking, since the French Revolution, has had no special unifying theme, but is rather the umbrella term for the separate and disparate groups arrayed in opposition to the Left. At the very least, this is a useful hypothesis.
For easy overviews of understanding the Right, I would go back and read what Norman Cantor wrote in _The American Century_, and then browse Umberto Eco’s generalizations about the Right, and then _The Right Nation_ by Micklethwaite and somebody about right wing America.
= – = – = – =
The tendency of the liberal writers and trend setters to over-use accusations of racism is confusing for many of us. I enjoyed Megan McArdle’s essay last year in Bloomberg about the overuse of the term “white supremacy.” It’s kind of like what Orwell said about the term fascism, being applied rhetorically to so many things it has been diluted almost to the point of losing all meaning.
With regards to immigration, I’ve mentioned occasionally before in the comments Paul Collier’s book _Exodus_ on the topic, sober and understated. He provides various cautionary examples of the way immigration imposes large costs on various domestic subgroups. The people who most advocate high levels of immigration into the OECD countries from very different societies–they tend to deny the negative effects of immigration, because to admit them candidly would be to recognize that the opponents of immigration are not simply racist troglodytes but have legitimate concerns that are often ignored.
I have walked among them and the common bond between the 1’s and 2’s ( and it’s not tiny tiny ) is exactly that fear. Think of Trump as tar baby and a master politician.
Spend a little time thinking about the act of kneeling in protest, for a couple of minutes before a football game and the havoc it has caused and where it might end. I’m sure the NFL is.
To believe that the blog is about theAmerican Right misses the elephant. It is an existential threat that the blog try’s to intellectualize but it is a guts reaction crossing all boundaries and is where you find chaos and strange bedfellows.
Where is Love? Love of America? Patriotism and love of country – limited nationalism.
#9 The American Right loves America – “right or wrong”; “may she always be right, but she’s always my country”; “love it or leave it”.
The Right has an emotional connection to American Ideals of “Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness; plus Private Property”.
The Right believes America is NOT perfect, but is generally better than anywhere else.
“Justice, Freedom, and the American Way”.
Trump seems to genuinely love America, and wants America to be Great. Those who love America, even if they think Trump’s often a jerk and are not comfy with his unpresidential insults, we who love America want Trump to succeed. Even as we wanted Obama to succeed, altho many of us were sure he would not succeed, and most of his active policies were going the wrong way.
To attempt descriptions about the American Right, without reference to “Love of America”, is to miss the single most important point. A feeling, not a set of specific policies. The policies are, literally, rationalized after the feeling.
There was a time when Dems loved America, too — but it’s clear that many Dems today do not love the real America which voted in Trump (and Bush “Hitler”, and Reagan “Hitler”, and Nixon “Hitler” previously).
To me patriotism and economics are often in conflict. Patriotism means doing something for the greater good of our nation especially when it is contradictory to your personal best interests. Economics is about getting the best deal for yourself with the available resources. Rappelling into Mogadishu to support a downed Black Hawk helicopter is a patriotic decision. Buying a made in China blouse is a economic decision. These things are different from one another.
Excellent post, one of the best I’ve read on any blog. I also enjoyed all of the comments. All were very well written and well thought out.
Our current immigration system is pretty abusive to immigrants. The H1B visa allows companies to hire foreign workers at rates far below market. This works because the visa is tied to the company. Changing companies is extremely difficult. The workers are left with the choice of accepting the low wages or going home.
For illegal/undocumented immigrants the situation is in many ways worse. Since they are in the country illegally they can’t go to the police if they are the victims of a crime. They are also paid far less than the minimum wage and have none of the normal worker protections. Years ago I read an article about a farmer that kept several illegals chained up on his farm. I have to wonder how often this happens.
Any discussion of immigration should consider how to stop this kind of abuse.
Seems like the system is working as intended. Unscrupulous employers are able to game the rules to acquire workers at below-market rates. A portion of those rates are paid to various state actors in the form of campaign contributions and/or other bribes to create and ‘improve’ the rules system. Everyone is happy.
Based on that context, the solution is obvious. End the H1-B visa program and vigorously enforce immigration law.
It always seemed obvious to me that H1-B’s were ant-competitive and had the consequence of suppressing high-skilled wages. What floored me was when Eric Weinstein claimed that the NSF and tech companies had conspired specifically to bring that about (and to hide their intentions from the general public).
I haven’t heard of any official response to Weinstein’s claims, but I will say that it seems wages have gone up in the tech sector since it has become more difficult to get a H1-B, and I’m not even in Silicon Valley.
In terms of Left Center:
1) Most Democrats are left center and notice there has not been a heavy left Presidential run since Mondale in 1984. More Democrats closer to Chait than Chapo. Obama was close 2008 but he governed very left center.
2) In terms of foreign policy there is Democrat populist that do not like interventions and remember Obama defeated HRC in 2008 because of her Iraq vote. And many Ds did not like Obama’s Libya intervention and feel like Obama’s decision not to Bomb Syria in 2013 was correct. You got the hawkish Democrats about international bodies correct, however there is a lot Democrats that feel the US is pro-war to protect capitalist trade. (The critique was stronger in the Cold War although the Iraq War feels like a way to protect oil purchases in 2002.) However:
2a) Most Democrats feel US defense spending is too high and the high spending leads to wars and interventions.
2b) We do spend too much abroad to protect our Allies (Germany, South Korea) that burdens our workers.
2c) Oddly enough Trump is more dovish than HRC but he seems to be led astray on Valenzuela.
3) In terms of racism, most left center see a spectrum on the right. Most right are not racist although there is a little bit of ‘those people’ in terms of African-American and increasingly Hispanic-Americans. So there is Hurrah! when Rush or Tucker Carlson complains about Diversity but the right will treat their minority co-worker fairly. (Although some of Trump nationalism against Hispanic-Americans was they were crossing the border to lower US native wages.) And African-Americans do not face huge discrimination but a lot of small discriminations:
1) They are pulled over by police at a higher rates.
2) They might treated differently in job interviews etc.
It should be noted so any political analysis should take this into account:
1) Trump is gaining approvals from African-American voters.
2) Trump is losing approvals from college educated white voters.
How could things be “Inter” National if there is no concept of the National?
I’m a bit late to the party here as I’ve been busy. But I’m not the worst candidate to provide some insight into what “neoreaction” ought to mean.
First one needs a neutral version of ‘reactionary’, which is hard, because it quickly became a kind of vague slur for anyone opposed for any reason to the most radical progressive proposal with currency among elites, and the term was abused in that manner by partisans of all sides for generations.
It’s not necessary here to get into some big intellectual and ideological history lesson about where Enlightenment liberalism and progressive moral and political theories came from. But suffice it to say, they were opposed to the authority of monarchs or the church, and the proponents of those ideas eventually acquired enough power to overthrow the old systems. In the case of the French Revolution the bloody results were terryfying and horrific, and it from that event that we get the terms for three different types of anti-progressive oppositional responses: Right, Conservative, and Reactionary.
This is really oversimplifying, but very roughly, ‘Right’ was in favor of changes, just different changes and for different reasons that those of the leftists. ‘Conservative’ was more pragmatic and intuitive than ideological, and favored keeping the traditions and institutions that remained, and stability for its own sake, having seen the awful consequences of implementing all those recent radical reforms. A ‘Reactionary’ says that conservatism is just yesterday’s progressivism (thus today’s left is just tomorrow’s right), and contains the seed of the same problem which will inevitably bloom into exactly the noxious weed it claims to want to prevent. A reactionary then is in favor of radical change to reestablish and restore the status quo ante. Instead of just being yesterday’s conservatism, reactionaries seek to ideologically justify and explain the practical basis for the wisdom undergirding the prior regime. And what naturally accompanies that project is the attempt to explain the root causes of what went wrong with the new system and why it resulted in such atrocious excesses and led to political and economic catastrophes. Filmer, de Maistre, and Chateaubriand are typical examples of classic reactionary thinkers. Many later counter-revolutionaries and anti-Socialists shared similar ideas.
Ok, now fast forward to the political and ideological context of late 20th and early 21st century America. The dominant ideology of the elites and the state is an updated form of progressivism combined with New Left identity politics, and we see not three, but two kinds of anti-progressive opposition. The ‘Right’ (not really, but let’s roll with my somewhat inaccurate framework here) in this case might be the classical liberals and libertarians, who are ok with plenty of rapid, radical changes, but often different changes that what the progressives want, and on the basis of a very different set of principles. The conservative movement is numerically dominant, but intellectually vapid and incoherent and generally ineffective, and again is often merely ‘slower progressivism’, getting dragged along the same ride. I’m glossing over lots of subtleties and cross-fertilizations here, but let’s keep going.
Now, yes, there are plenty of conservatives that might seem ‘reactionary’ in that they want to roll things back to some prior point, but the numbers of these follow a diminishing decay curve with a half life period between every right-wing heyday. Some want to go back to 1994 , some fewer to 1985, a fraction to 1963, some to 1953, and perhaps there are still a few who would go all the way back to 1931 or 1912. Maybe even one or two dozen to 1860.
But you won’t find hardly anyone who go all the way to 1760, that is, to the pre-revolutionary regime, like the French Reactionaries argued for. There is no #ThomasHutchinsonWasRight hashtag. That’s because the revolution and democracy and, yes, the progressive aspects of the national origin story and evolution, are baked into the cake of American Conservatism.
But, with a few noteworthy (though probably temporary) exceptions, American Conservatism had been failing for a long, long time, and during the freewheeling heyday of unmoderated and high-quality political discussion on this new-ish thing called the internet, anti-progressives were ‘reacting’ not just to the excesses of the progressives, but of the apparent inability and often unwillingness of the American right to do anything about it, even when they enjoyed majority support and formal political power.
And one of the plausible conclusions was that the fault lies in democracy itself. Now, even the founders knew that, being familiar with the history of classical antiquity, and they tried to establish a system to contain democracy running amok in various predictable ways. The vast majority of American conservatives like to believe the founders generally succeeded with the Constitution enshrining a vision of limited government and a society of free individuals, and that if people continued to revere and obey that document in good faith, things would be fine. That’s what 99.99% of the American right still believes.
But the other point of view is that the Constitution failed, and was doomed to fail, because a document cannot enforce itself if the people who matter don’t want to obey. What they will want to obey instead is the dominant social ideology, the tenets of which are incompatible with the Constitutional structure, which will be circumvented with whatever hand-waving is required, whenever it stands in the way. If one really wanted to address the root of the problem, one would have to accept some very unpopular ideas about human nature and political reality, and give those pre-enlightenment political theories and structures another look and a fair hearing. And one would do so from the perspective enlightened, as it were, by all the latest advances in the study of human social psychology, economics, political science, and so forth.
This is a species of Reaction, but it’s also different because new. Hence, neoreaction.
In #1 replace many with most. In most areas of the country, you won’t find anyone on the left who think it is good to shut down speakers, etc. This is pretty much limited to some small number of people at some liberal arts schools. It does get lots of press when it happens.
On #2 replace tiny with small to medium sized. Leave the coasts and talk with people making less than 6 figures. They really do believe that white people’s good jobs have been given away to people of color.
There really is no one who is effectively advocating for less foreign military involvement on the left or right. Trump is committed to keeping troops in Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq if you have not been paying attention. No one is really opposing him on this.
Most libertarians just want lower taxes. They are perfectly willing to put up with a government that tortures, invades other countries, kills unarmed people looking for drugs, etc, just to get those lower taxes.
Steve
Hi Steve,
You said, “they are perfectly willing to put up with a government that tortures, invades other countries, kills unarmed people looking for drugs, etc,”
To respond to your unsupported assertion with one of my own…
No, they’re not.