This analysis is true of literally any mass-political movement. The Bolsheviks didn’t appeal to Russian peasants with endless and intricate discussion of dialectical materialism, they said “we promise: land and bread!” Modern Dem voters know nothing of John Rawls, but they know quite a bit about dem programz.
That you imply American conservative intellectuals are uniquely or even especially guilty of navel-gazing is, I submit, a species of inferiority complex.
Aside: The Bolsheviks actually hated the Russian peasants and primarily relied on the urban working class to gain power.
There is always a divergence between intellectuals and the masses in politics. But even Marxists could claim the two groups have the same interests while expressed differently. Same with American liberals. It's more common for American conservative intellectuals to have a completely different outlook from the masses they claim to represent.
You interpreted this article as saying conservative intellectuals merely express their ideas in a different way from the masses. That's not the argument here
“But even Marxists could claim the two groups have the same interests while expressed differently. Same with American liberals.”
Uhh… the progressives up through about 2016? Maybe yes. And surely arguably, I agree.
The leftists of DEI / woke / intersectionality/ Critical Race Theory oppressor-oppressed ideologues who dominate the agenda and narratives of the left today??
Color me skeptical.
You’d have to do a lot more work than just asserting this claim.
The mass movement character of early 20th-century socialism had an extremely strong social component (the actual European industrial proletariat). Naturally, there were discontinuities between the proletariat and the party intellectual, but the Left was largely embodied by proletarians or workers, and the continuities between the two were more or less real (and this includes the larger Left, both social democrats and radicals).
Currently, the situation between conservative intellectuals and the relation the Bolsheviks had with the proletariat (or the middle class with “bourgeois” liberal/conservative parties) is not at all comparable. Perhaps you could make that claim with the Soviet intelligentsia after Stalinism, which was always more progressive than the actually existing reality of the situation. But then the Soviet Union lost its mass character, and the intelligentsia was largely subsumed into bureaucracy (much like the US today) and thus neutralized in that way. May ’68 in France might have been the exception, where intellectuals were, to a certain degree, in deep collaboration with leftist labor unions. People are generally wrong about May ’68: the Left’s turn toward progressivism was mostly because of the influence of the American Left; Stonewall was more influential for the “wokist” strategy than May ’68.
In any case, conservatives (besides Scott Greer), if they actually engaged genuinely with really existing America, would need to grapple with the fact that America is a post-historical nation, that White™ is a post-European identity (which required a strong propositional vision of the nation), and that the US is perhaps one of the most mercurial countries in history in terms of identity. Appeals to “heritage Americans” are, for the most part, an empirical absurdity. The fact that Catholics represent a large number of the thought leaders of American conservatism, even among the dissident right, shows precisely my point. American Traditional Catholics, because they were actually honest, tended to be quite historically anti-American (and even Hispanophile). Orestes Brownson, who began American Catholic revisionism (the attempt to make Catholicism compatible with America), ended up at the end of his life recognizing that “in Americanizing we Protestantize.”
Basically, what I am trying to say is that if the dissident right and conservatives were actually serious about anything, they would quickly recognize how difficult it is to hold their beliefs. Greer is more realistic about almost everything. He genuinely defends kitsch White™ identity and its interests without making exaggerated claims about absolutely everything. The scope is small, but it is a sociologically real scope.
This reminds me of the point Paul Gottfried keeps on making, with good reason. Conservatism, no matter it's virtues (and it had many) is no longer viable and hasn't been for a long time. Most of what was called conservatism after WWII was (actually classical) classical Liberalism, eventually replaced by neoconservatives, who pretended to be classical liberals but were basically progressives going the speed limit. I would say the antebellum south was one of the last places where a conservative order actually stood. Along with many countries that were destroyed in world war 1. By 1918 classical conservatism was over.
I think this is an excellent piece, and generally quite on target.
I’d agree that the least problems as intellectuals on the right connecting with the interest of voters on the right have been the Milton Friedman classical liberal types.
Though the two modern notable conservative exceptions IMO are William F Buckley Jr and the pre-Trump George Will.
It would be an interesting follow-up to this piece to hear why Scott thinks they did better (assuming he agrees with my premise).
Buckley enjoyed his fame and fortune too much to be alienated from Middle America. His planned "big book" was going to be very anti-democratic but he scrapped it after gaining popularity. George Will became a free market centrist, so he obviously didn't feel qualms about the rest of the country
No argument re: Buckley, and I defer to your knowledge.
Will was always a social conservative too, in addition to his smaller government bent.
At least we was through 2017-2018 when I stopped reading him entirely because I could not handle the extreme NeverTrumpism and the implicit and/or explicit assertions that Trump was worse for the country - not just for the GOP - than Biden or Harris.
The Jacksonian Democrat, The Bourbon Democrat (my namesake John Coffee Hays is a perfect example), The Old Right of Calvin Coolidge and Charles Lindbergh Senior. There's always been a strain of cultural and traditional minded Americans in the heartland.
Pat Buchanan pulled it off at the speech he gave at the GOP convention in Houston, Texas back in 1992.
In essence he said Traditional paleoconservatives like himself stood for a "conservatism of the heart. A conservatism that sees the family as the center of society, that calls on us to love our neighbor, and to protect our little ones from harm and hate.” He then invoked an intellectual, the British philosopher of the 18th century, Edmund Burke. And the values which Edmund Burke espoused as still being relevant for the average working class American today. The "values that guided our ancestors are still the right values for America. And we believe that the old virtues —faith, hope, charity, and love of neighbor — still count. We believe in the words of Edmund Burke: ‘Example is the school of mankind, and they will learn at no other.’”
This was Buchanan’s way of grounding his cultural and moral arguments in the tradition of moral leadership by lived values, not abstract theory. Burke believed that society should evolve organically, guided by tradition, virtue, and the wisdom of inherited institutions.
Buchanan spoke of ordinary Americans who may not be steeped in political theory but who live by values like faith, family, and community.
Buchanan said:
“They share our beliefs and convictions, our hopes and our dreams. They are the conservatives of the heart. They are our people.”
The connection lies in Buchanan’s effort to unite philosophical conservatism (Burke) with emotional, cultural conservatism (the heart). He was saying:
Burke’s ideas aren’t just for intellectuals—they’re lived out by everyday Americans.
The moral example Burke spoke of is embodied by these “conservatives of the heart.”
Conservatism isn’t just policy—it’s a way of life, passed down through families, churches, and communities.
In short, Buchanan used Burke to legitimize and elevate the emotional and cultural instincts of his base, framing them as not just heartfelt but historically and philosophically grounded.
Here's an excerpt from his speech which worked on me - a man in his 20s at the time, the son of a pipe-fitter, working a blue collar job myself.
"My friends, even in tough times, these people are with us. They don’t read Adam Smith or Edmund Burke, but they came from the same schoolyards and playgrounds and towns as we did. They share our beliefs and convictions, our hopes and our dreams. They are the conservatives of the heart.
"They are our people. And we need to reconnect with them. We need to let them know we know they’re hurting. They don’t expect miracles, but they need to know we care.
"There were the people of Hayfork, the tiny town high up in California’s Trinity Alps, a town that is now under a sentence of death because a federal judge has set aside 9 million acres for the habitat of the spotted owl–forgetting about the habitat of the men and women who live and work in Hay fork. And there were the brave people of Koreatown who took the worst of the LA riots, but still live the family values we treasure, and who still believe deeply in the American dream.
"Friends, in those wonderful 25 weeks, the saddest days were the days of the bloody riot in LA, the worst in our history. But even out of that awful tragedy can come a message of hope.
"Hours after the violence ended I visited the Army compound in south LA, where an officer of the 18th Cavalry, that had come to rescue the city, introduced me to two of his troopers. They could not have been 20 years old. He told them to recount their story.
"They had come into LA late on the 2nd day, and they walked up a dark street, where the mob had looted and burned every building but one, a convalescent home for the aged. The mob was heading in, to ransack and loot the apartments of the terrified old men and women. When the troopers arrived, M-16s at the ready, the mob threatened and cursed, but the mob retreated. It had met the one thing that could stop it: force, rooted in justice, backed by courage.
"Greater love than this hath no man than that he lay down his life for his friend. Here were 19-year-old boys ready to lay down their lives to stop a mob from molesting old people they did not even know. And as they took back the streets of LA, block by block, so we must take back our cities, and take back our culture, and take back our country."
I wasn't reading NATIONAL REVIEW. I had never heard of Edmund Burke or Russell Kirk (but I knew I liked Ronald Reagan much more than George H. W. Bush) but I certainly understood what Buchanan was saying.
And I agreed with him.
And still do.
He knew much more than the neoconservatives about Heartland America.
This analysis is true of literally any mass-political movement. The Bolsheviks didn’t appeal to Russian peasants with endless and intricate discussion of dialectical materialism, they said “we promise: land and bread!” Modern Dem voters know nothing of John Rawls, but they know quite a bit about dem programz.
That you imply American conservative intellectuals are uniquely or even especially guilty of navel-gazing is, I submit, a species of inferiority complex.
Aside: The Bolsheviks actually hated the Russian peasants and primarily relied on the urban working class to gain power.
There is always a divergence between intellectuals and the masses in politics. But even Marxists could claim the two groups have the same interests while expressed differently. Same with American liberals. It's more common for American conservative intellectuals to have a completely different outlook from the masses they claim to represent.
You interpreted this article as saying conservative intellectuals merely express their ideas in a different way from the masses. That's not the argument here
“But even Marxists could claim the two groups have the same interests while expressed differently. Same with American liberals.”
Uhh… the progressives up through about 2016? Maybe yes. And surely arguably, I agree.
The leftists of DEI / woke / intersectionality/ Critical Race Theory oppressor-oppressed ideologues who dominate the agenda and narratives of the left today??
Color me skeptical.
You’d have to do a lot more work than just asserting this claim.
The mass movement character of early 20th-century socialism had an extremely strong social component (the actual European industrial proletariat). Naturally, there were discontinuities between the proletariat and the party intellectual, but the Left was largely embodied by proletarians or workers, and the continuities between the two were more or less real (and this includes the larger Left, both social democrats and radicals).
Currently, the situation between conservative intellectuals and the relation the Bolsheviks had with the proletariat (or the middle class with “bourgeois” liberal/conservative parties) is not at all comparable. Perhaps you could make that claim with the Soviet intelligentsia after Stalinism, which was always more progressive than the actually existing reality of the situation. But then the Soviet Union lost its mass character, and the intelligentsia was largely subsumed into bureaucracy (much like the US today) and thus neutralized in that way. May ’68 in France might have been the exception, where intellectuals were, to a certain degree, in deep collaboration with leftist labor unions. People are generally wrong about May ’68: the Left’s turn toward progressivism was mostly because of the influence of the American Left; Stonewall was more influential for the “wokist” strategy than May ’68.
In any case, conservatives (besides Scott Greer), if they actually engaged genuinely with really existing America, would need to grapple with the fact that America is a post-historical nation, that White™ is a post-European identity (which required a strong propositional vision of the nation), and that the US is perhaps one of the most mercurial countries in history in terms of identity. Appeals to “heritage Americans” are, for the most part, an empirical absurdity. The fact that Catholics represent a large number of the thought leaders of American conservatism, even among the dissident right, shows precisely my point. American Traditional Catholics, because they were actually honest, tended to be quite historically anti-American (and even Hispanophile). Orestes Brownson, who began American Catholic revisionism (the attempt to make Catholicism compatible with America), ended up at the end of his life recognizing that “in Americanizing we Protestantize.”
Basically, what I am trying to say is that if the dissident right and conservatives were actually serious about anything, they would quickly recognize how difficult it is to hold their beliefs. Greer is more realistic about almost everything. He genuinely defends kitsch White™ identity and its interests without making exaggerated claims about absolutely everything. The scope is small, but it is a sociologically real scope.
This reminds me of the point Paul Gottfried keeps on making, with good reason. Conservatism, no matter it's virtues (and it had many) is no longer viable and hasn't been for a long time. Most of what was called conservatism after WWII was (actually classical) classical Liberalism, eventually replaced by neoconservatives, who pretended to be classical liberals but were basically progressives going the speed limit. I would say the antebellum south was one of the last places where a conservative order actually stood. Along with many countries that were destroyed in world war 1. By 1918 classical conservatism was over.
I think this is an excellent piece, and generally quite on target.
I’d agree that the least problems as intellectuals on the right connecting with the interest of voters on the right have been the Milton Friedman classical liberal types.
Though the two modern notable conservative exceptions IMO are William F Buckley Jr and the pre-Trump George Will.
It would be an interesting follow-up to this piece to hear why Scott thinks they did better (assuming he agrees with my premise).
Buckley enjoyed his fame and fortune too much to be alienated from Middle America. His planned "big book" was going to be very anti-democratic but he scrapped it after gaining popularity. George Will became a free market centrist, so he obviously didn't feel qualms about the rest of the country
No argument re: Buckley, and I defer to your knowledge.
Will was always a social conservative too, in addition to his smaller government bent.
At least we was through 2017-2018 when I stopped reading him entirely because I could not handle the extreme NeverTrumpism and the implicit and/or explicit assertions that Trump was worse for the country - not just for the GOP - than Biden or Harris.
Interesting, but I think I liked it better when I thought it was ripping on car salesman. Those people are the worst.
The Jacksonian Democrat, The Bourbon Democrat (my namesake John Coffee Hays is a perfect example), The Old Right of Calvin Coolidge and Charles Lindbergh Senior. There's always been a strain of cultural and traditional minded Americans in the heartland.
Pat Buchanan pulled it off at the speech he gave at the GOP convention in Houston, Texas back in 1992.
In essence he said Traditional paleoconservatives like himself stood for a "conservatism of the heart. A conservatism that sees the family as the center of society, that calls on us to love our neighbor, and to protect our little ones from harm and hate.” He then invoked an intellectual, the British philosopher of the 18th century, Edmund Burke. And the values which Edmund Burke espoused as still being relevant for the average working class American today. The "values that guided our ancestors are still the right values for America. And we believe that the old virtues —faith, hope, charity, and love of neighbor — still count. We believe in the words of Edmund Burke: ‘Example is the school of mankind, and they will learn at no other.’”
This was Buchanan’s way of grounding his cultural and moral arguments in the tradition of moral leadership by lived values, not abstract theory. Burke believed that society should evolve organically, guided by tradition, virtue, and the wisdom of inherited institutions.
Buchanan spoke of ordinary Americans who may not be steeped in political theory but who live by values like faith, family, and community.
Buchanan said:
“They share our beliefs and convictions, our hopes and our dreams. They are the conservatives of the heart. They are our people.”
The connection lies in Buchanan’s effort to unite philosophical conservatism (Burke) with emotional, cultural conservatism (the heart). He was saying:
Burke’s ideas aren’t just for intellectuals—they’re lived out by everyday Americans.
The moral example Burke spoke of is embodied by these “conservatives of the heart.”
Conservatism isn’t just policy—it’s a way of life, passed down through families, churches, and communities.
In short, Buchanan used Burke to legitimize and elevate the emotional and cultural instincts of his base, framing them as not just heartfelt but historically and philosophically grounded.
Here's an excerpt from his speech which worked on me - a man in his 20s at the time, the son of a pipe-fitter, working a blue collar job myself.
"My friends, even in tough times, these people are with us. They don’t read Adam Smith or Edmund Burke, but they came from the same schoolyards and playgrounds and towns as we did. They share our beliefs and convictions, our hopes and our dreams. They are the conservatives of the heart.
"They are our people. And we need to reconnect with them. We need to let them know we know they’re hurting. They don’t expect miracles, but they need to know we care.
"There were the people of Hayfork, the tiny town high up in California’s Trinity Alps, a town that is now under a sentence of death because a federal judge has set aside 9 million acres for the habitat of the spotted owl–forgetting about the habitat of the men and women who live and work in Hay fork. And there were the brave people of Koreatown who took the worst of the LA riots, but still live the family values we treasure, and who still believe deeply in the American dream.
"Friends, in those wonderful 25 weeks, the saddest days were the days of the bloody riot in LA, the worst in our history. But even out of that awful tragedy can come a message of hope.
"Hours after the violence ended I visited the Army compound in south LA, where an officer of the 18th Cavalry, that had come to rescue the city, introduced me to two of his troopers. They could not have been 20 years old. He told them to recount their story.
"They had come into LA late on the 2nd day, and they walked up a dark street, where the mob had looted and burned every building but one, a convalescent home for the aged. The mob was heading in, to ransack and loot the apartments of the terrified old men and women. When the troopers arrived, M-16s at the ready, the mob threatened and cursed, but the mob retreated. It had met the one thing that could stop it: force, rooted in justice, backed by courage.
"Greater love than this hath no man than that he lay down his life for his friend. Here were 19-year-old boys ready to lay down their lives to stop a mob from molesting old people they did not even know. And as they took back the streets of LA, block by block, so we must take back our cities, and take back our culture, and take back our country."
I wasn't reading NATIONAL REVIEW. I had never heard of Edmund Burke or Russell Kirk (but I knew I liked Ronald Reagan much more than George H. W. Bush) but I certainly understood what Buchanan was saying.
And I agreed with him.
And still do.
He knew much more than the neoconservatives about Heartland America.
Great article.
This is all so incredibly obvious to people who don’t live in the beltway.
thank you for reminding me just how vulgar everything is