A Brit’s Friendly Advice to American Conservatives

“In order to win, the American Right needs to bury dead dogmas, get its head out of abstract Platonic idealism, and look reality in the face.”

It may seem strange for a Brit, and a relatively young one at that, to write about what the American Right should be (and should do) in the future in order to win again. After all, what does it have to do with me? The answer is that the future of the American Right affects both the British public in general and the British Right in particular. The hegemonic position America occupies in culture, economics, and politics inevitably affects us here in Britain. A healthy and effective American Right is to all of our benefit and should be fervently desired in the face of America’s—and the wider West’s—many problems.

The fact is America is a mess. The Right in America needs to accept what it is facing. To escape into abstract worlds of Platonic ideals, constantly prating on that “ideas have consequences,” is really just a massive cope. It is a demonstration of the Right’s impotence in the face of the managerial state in control of the economic base and the means of cultural production.

The American conservative commentariat mostly shares the culture war obsessions of the leftist elite because that is with whom they interact. Much of Conservatism Inc’s ideological pastimes are divorced from the Republican base. As Michael Lind writes, “The business Republicans, whose preferences Republican politicians promote, on average make $69,711 a year, around $30,000 more than the Republican populists, whose preferences most Republican politicians ignore.”