The Right has this problem of "big-picture" obsession because until very recently it has not viewed politics as morality. For most conservatives, politics is a day job. For progressives, it's life. That's why the left has taken over most of the institutions - they are zealous, while conservatives like to read for fun and grill. They do not see politics as a moral crusade, nor do they see themselves as an agent of History. The core of conservative thought is to allow Man to flourish on his own. Why develop "small-picture" items when the small picture takes care of itself?
So when they need to develop talent, they teach the thing that most resembles conservative Scripture which is Burke, Jaffa, etc. These are principled people as opposed to moral people. Father figures as opposed to prophets. Imperfect man as opposed to perfect man.
No wonder conservatives get bogged down in "facts and logic" while progressives run through institutions like a hot knife and the butter is people like James Lankford and Ted Cruz.
What the right needs above all is Anglo empiricism. This is why I considered Stoddard the gold standard of intellectual life as mentioned before, although less scientific contemporaries like Spengler or Evola I do still humor.
A lot of these young talents are just grifting donos from rich boomer donors.
Bari Weiss is a good example hell Charlie Kirk was as well.
Scott talked about this before but in the bush era there was so much talk that millennial were the pro life generation, guess what millennial were the most pro choice generation to that point
You say communism is dead, but New York City just elected a communist mayor, and Black Lives Matter, a political movement of some note, is led by communists. Not to mention the Democratic Socialists of America, which explicitly calls for government ownership of the means of production.
If nothing else, the pipeline keeps people with ideas but not plans for implementing them busy talking to each other so they don't bother the implementers. And, occasionally, they throw out an idea than an implementer can use. FYI: Scientists are usually idea people, engineers are implementers. Never seen any data on the number of science papers that turn into products but I'd guess it is about 1%. For "social science" papers, I'd guess 0. followed by at least there more zeros before a non-zero digit.
"On the margin, both the opportunity and the necessity for getting conservatives into academia lie in the social sciences. Unlike the humanities, the social sciences still hold a stable share of academia. And social sciences address policy-relevant questions such as “How does inequality work?” “What are the likely consequences of drug legalization?” and many others. These are questions that benefit from technical expertise and mastery of the academic literature that universities provide. ..."
The NYT just published a hand-wringing lamentation that Texas is making UT Austin less woke. Maybe that will help.
I think a piece on the rise and fall of the libertarian movement in America could be interesting.
I think the fact is a lot of libertarians were never in it genuinely it was a pragmatic way to resist the civil right regime but going into the 2010s "woke" was no longer a top down effort foisted onto the people from the state it was pushed by the capitalist class and the masses in ways that do not violate the nap
Republicans don’t care about voters. Voters don’t want troops stationed in Japan and Germany 80 years after WWII. They don’t want pornography. They don’t care about Ukraine or Israel. They don’t want their kids trafficked. What are republicans doing about any of that, aside from Trump.
Voters care about inflation, illegals, illegal drugs, the crazy cost of housing, and the massive corruption in government.
American rightists have been hamstrung for fifty years by agreeing to the Left’s basic premises and the result is convoluted calls to obscure thinkers.
The question facing American rightism is simple: “what is good for the White middle class?” Practical policies flow very easily from that concern. But as rightists did not permit themselves to ask it openly for fear of racism/sexism/whatever, we’re left with a series of obscure and theoretical square pegs trying to fit round holes.
>the right needs people who can sprinkle their Aristotle with a good dose of econometrics.
That is an excellent point. In fact, here is a video of a torch march held in honor of Ragnar Frisch, the Norwegian economist considered the father of econometrics. Since the right has always had a fondness for torchlight processions, perhaps it's time for them to start appreciating econometrics as well.
At my old university, the glaring difference between College Democrats and Republicans was structure, both in the image of their meetings and their messaging, and I think this is very relevant. Dems who have their established dogma gave meetings that were more like lectures, with PowerPoints and generous school funding for various speakers. CRs were “offered” this funding, but with “suggestions” no further right than Dave Rubin. At the same time, CR meetings were entirely (dis)organized on conversation, usually with current events to set the topics, and being the typical split between staunch libertarians, the couple moderate women and gays with little to say, and then the traditionalists. Almost all arguments got nowhere and would cause mostly personal animosity, while the more numerous Dems were celebrating and patting themselves on the back.
On the topic of what to teach the younger people on the right: What is a list of books that cover each category (1 per category) that you would place in their bookshelf?
I've attended a lot of conservative events post 2018, and there's an interesting blend of people who all manage to get caught in the weeds. It's getting better, as I feel like more pushes towards the nonpolitical arena have been made, but still, you're right that concrete policies tend to get thrown out by these groups and either ignored or watered down.
The Right has this problem of "big-picture" obsession because until very recently it has not viewed politics as morality. For most conservatives, politics is a day job. For progressives, it's life. That's why the left has taken over most of the institutions - they are zealous, while conservatives like to read for fun and grill. They do not see politics as a moral crusade, nor do they see themselves as an agent of History. The core of conservative thought is to allow Man to flourish on his own. Why develop "small-picture" items when the small picture takes care of itself?
So when they need to develop talent, they teach the thing that most resembles conservative Scripture which is Burke, Jaffa, etc. These are principled people as opposed to moral people. Father figures as opposed to prophets. Imperfect man as opposed to perfect man.
No wonder conservatives get bogged down in "facts and logic" while progressives run through institutions like a hot knife and the butter is people like James Lankford and Ted Cruz.
“Young conservatives should be grounded in reality and not spend all their time wondering what Augustine would think of sports betting apps. “
Absolutely true. The right as a whole needs to deal with reality and as such, learn how to rule.
The “conservative” (libertarian) instinct to limit government has ceded every major institution to the left who are happy to fill the void.
“You can just do things” needs to become ascendant on the right.
What the right needs above all is Anglo empiricism. This is why I considered Stoddard the gold standard of intellectual life as mentioned before, although less scientific contemporaries like Spengler or Evola I do still humor.
A lot of these young talents are just grifting donos from rich boomer donors.
Bari Weiss is a good example hell Charlie Kirk was as well.
Scott talked about this before but in the bush era there was so much talk that millennial were the pro life generation, guess what millennial were the most pro choice generation to that point
"The Conservative Pipeline" sounds like a Washington DC gay bathhouse with an adult male sized water play park.
You say communism is dead, but New York City just elected a communist mayor, and Black Lives Matter, a political movement of some note, is led by communists. Not to mention the Democratic Socialists of America, which explicitly calls for government ownership of the means of production.
If nothing else, the pipeline keeps people with ideas but not plans for implementing them busy talking to each other so they don't bother the implementers. And, occasionally, they throw out an idea than an implementer can use. FYI: Scientists are usually idea people, engineers are implementers. Never seen any data on the number of science papers that turn into products but I'd guess it is about 1%. For "social science" papers, I'd guess 0. followed by at least there more zeros before a non-zero digit.
Something like this is the basis for the "Policysphere Manifesto" by the redoubtable Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry:
https://policysphere.com/articles/the-policysphere-manifesto
Gabriel Rossman, one of the few openly conservative academic social scientists, also argues for 'wonky' conservative efforts:
https://www.city-journal.org/article/academia-conservatives-universities-ideological
"On the margin, both the opportunity and the necessity for getting conservatives into academia lie in the social sciences. Unlike the humanities, the social sciences still hold a stable share of academia. And social sciences address policy-relevant questions such as “How does inequality work?” “What are the likely consequences of drug legalization?” and many others. These are questions that benefit from technical expertise and mastery of the academic literature that universities provide. ..."
The NYT just published a hand-wringing lamentation that Texas is making UT Austin less woke. Maybe that will help.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/10/us/university-of-texas-republicans-academic-freedom-faculty.html
I think a piece on the rise and fall of the libertarian movement in America could be interesting.
I think the fact is a lot of libertarians were never in it genuinely it was a pragmatic way to resist the civil right regime but going into the 2010s "woke" was no longer a top down effort foisted onto the people from the state it was pushed by the capitalist class and the masses in ways that do not violate the nap
Republicans don’t care about voters. Voters don’t want troops stationed in Japan and Germany 80 years after WWII. They don’t want pornography. They don’t care about Ukraine or Israel. They don’t want their kids trafficked. What are republicans doing about any of that, aside from Trump.
Voters care about inflation, illegals, illegal drugs, the crazy cost of housing, and the massive corruption in government.
American rightists have been hamstrung for fifty years by agreeing to the Left’s basic premises and the result is convoluted calls to obscure thinkers.
The question facing American rightism is simple: “what is good for the White middle class?” Practical policies flow very easily from that concern. But as rightists did not permit themselves to ask it openly for fear of racism/sexism/whatever, we’re left with a series of obscure and theoretical square pegs trying to fit round holes.
>the right needs people who can sprinkle their Aristotle with a good dose of econometrics.
That is an excellent point. In fact, here is a video of a torch march held in honor of Ragnar Frisch, the Norwegian economist considered the father of econometrics. Since the right has always had a fondness for torchlight processions, perhaps it's time for them to start appreciating econometrics as well.
https://youtu.be/Cn1OYDdFneQ?si=W7g0bOSw1LPOd1PK
At my old university, the glaring difference between College Democrats and Republicans was structure, both in the image of their meetings and their messaging, and I think this is very relevant. Dems who have their established dogma gave meetings that were more like lectures, with PowerPoints and generous school funding for various speakers. CRs were “offered” this funding, but with “suggestions” no further right than Dave Rubin. At the same time, CR meetings were entirely (dis)organized on conversation, usually with current events to set the topics, and being the typical split between staunch libertarians, the couple moderate women and gays with little to say, and then the traditionalists. Almost all arguments got nowhere and would cause mostly personal animosity, while the more numerous Dems were celebrating and patting themselves on the back.
On the topic of what to teach the younger people on the right: What is a list of books that cover each category (1 per category) that you would place in their bookshelf?
I've attended a lot of conservative events post 2018, and there's an interesting blend of people who all manage to get caught in the weeds. It's getting better, as I feel like more pushes towards the nonpolitical arena have been made, but still, you're right that concrete policies tend to get thrown out by these groups and either ignored or watered down.