What the New Right Is Getting Wrong

Integralists and national conservatives see the slow pace of American politics as a vice. But it’s what the Founders intended.

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“As long as the reason of man continues fallible, and he is at liberty to exercise it, different opinions will be formed.”

In today’s political climate, these might be the most revolutionary—and most important—words to keep in mind from the American founding. They come from neither the Declaration of Independence nor the Constitution but from James Madison’s Federalist No. 10. 

Few of us now dispute the core tenets of the Declaration or oppose the Constitution’s central aims of promoting justice, the general welfare, and liberty. But many—on the progressive left and what we may term the anti-conservative “new right” in particular—fail to grasp the revolutionary recognition on the part of our country’s founders that in morality, religion, and politics, human beings are bound to disagree.

Old but still revolutionary truths.

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  1. Avatar photo
    Ben Connelly

    This might be Thomas’s best article yet for the Dispatch. I could not agree more.

    “ The burning desire to legislate “the Good” from on high and to do so now is quintessentially human; what is American, and revolutionary, is exercising the wisdom to constrain it.”

    So much for the so-called novelty and originality in the New Right. And so much for their arguments that they represent anything profound.

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  2. Brett

    A fresh point from a fresh voice. I love it. Great work.

    My own take is that time will tell as to whether the New Right has this impulse or not. A friend recently posted as an example of modern conservatism an Oklahoma law letting a parent unilaterally ban a library book for any reason. I said - umm, do you really think if you ran into, say, Tom Cotton or Ron Johnson on the street, and asked them if a parent should be able to unilaterally ban a library book that offends them, their answer would be - heck yes? Really? But my friend, a committed progressive, said yes they'd do that. This I think illustrates your point - if they start to say yes, so long as the ban is for the right reasons, they'll have lost the key principles of the Founding you've identified. But I think it is more likely that they will stick to those principles, albeit imperfectly, and we'll see if they win out in the marketplace of ideas.

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    1. cb76

      "do you really think if you ran into, say, Tom Cotton or Ron Johnson on the street, and asked them if a parent should be able to unilaterally ban a library book that offends them, their answer would be - heck yes?"

      No, but if Tucker Carlson asked them that during a live television interview the answer would almost certainly be "heck yes," which is probably the more salient point, don't you think?

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      1. Brett

        Well, they might say a parent should be able to ban a book if it teaches CRT, as a soundbite, but that doesn't hold up to a follow-up question - should parents be able to unilaterally ban any book they find offensive? Presumably they'd say no, only the books they disagree with like CRT or with sexual content etc. Whereas I think a progressive would say - no actually the parent should be able to ban the book unilaterally, let's have universal consensus on the book in the library. If conservatives start to agree with that then we have a real problem!

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  3. Lylegruby

    What does the new right get wrong? For starters, the 1st Amendment.

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  4. Richard Fulmer

    In her book, The Future and its Enemies, Virginia Postrel summed up history: In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth and then promptly lost control. But that’s not quite right. God didn’t lose control, he ceded it. He gave us our lives. People on both the far-right and the far-left think that that was a huge mistake, and they’re determined to correct God’s error.

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  5. Anna A

    This is excellent. "One of the best things a government can do is to allow and empower its citizens to engage in those arguments together; not oppressing one another, but muddling through together, inching toward truth"

    Loved the article. That's precisely it, the idea that we'll never agree and be of one mind, yet compromise and cooperate. Our system requires this compromise or else it doesn't work.

    "The best we can do is to maintain the zones and structures of liberty amid this passing moment of rage, keeping the absolutists away from the levers of power."

    Loyalty to institutions and laws is the path ahead, not fealty to individuals or dogmas. I couldn't agree more.

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      Todd T

      Also a very level-headed essay from a “recent” college grad.

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    J. Eric

    Excellent read!
    Thanks

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  7. Avatar photo
    The Bell Tower

    Efficient government is tyranny. No doubt. Thanks for the Moynihan quote. That’s an excellent one.

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      Synchronize Your Dogmas (Bill B)

      There is a substantial difference between slow and inefficient and broke.

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      1. Ingenero.lux

        One person’s broke is another person’s “slow and inefficient at a time when there is no real national consensus on most issues”. It reflects our country’s current fractured political nature - and consistent with that, the people complaining almost always switch sides depending on who’s in charge. If you wouldn’t have wanted Trump to have that power four years ago, maybe rethink this. The Rota Fortunae always turns and your side will never have power forever, silly racist political takes (we’ll have the support of this demographic forever and rule the country!) and longing for past glories notwithstanding.

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        The Bell Tower

        Yes. Broke is definitely not a desirable state for government.

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          CynthiaW

          Being only "broke" would be a huge improvement over what we have now.

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    Man-Eating Cow

    This is the same Thomas Koenig who wrote a fine article for NRO?

    You've made a rather good first impression with me, anyway.

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    Ed P

    The founders also intended for our Senate to move on a majority vote. So perhaps they intend it to move considerably faster and more easily than it does today, and thank goodness. Because our Congress is totally broken by partisan obstruction.

    Friendly reminder that the filibuster is simply a byproduct of the open debate format of our Senate, an artifact. It is simply that any Senator can speak and extend debate. And for 130 years or so, the gentlemans agreement that it would not be abused was kept. But then under Wopdrpw Wilson, a group of obstructionists stopped all Senate business with bad faith filibustering. And so the Senate rules were changes to include cloture - a supermajority vote to end debate.

    Today, it is cloture being corrupted to do the exact opposite of its original intentions. Instead of a supermajority to overcome a filibuster and break through obstruction, it has become a tool for obstruction, creating a de facto 60 vote threshold for nearly all legislation.

    Instead of a tool to extend debate and delay, the current filibuster is a tool to end debate and kill legislation. It is a severe corruption of our Senate and not a small part of our current dysfunction

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    1. Avatar photo
      Bill Dyer (aka Beldar)

      Ed P, I disagree with you about what the Founders intended, and incorporate by reference Man-Eating Cow's remarks about that. The Founders intended that the Senate — precisely BECAUSE OF its less democratic nature than the House, with its 2-per-state membership regardless of population and its staggered 6-year terms — be the saucer that would cool the House's dangerously hot and frequently spilled coffee.

      I think you're also more wrong than right about the history of the filibuster, and the history of cloture. For that, I highly recommend that you — and EVERYONE! — devote the substantial time and attention necessary to read volume 3 of Robert Caro's amazing (and as yet not quite finished) "The Years of Lyndon Johnson" series, "Master of the Senate." The reason Caro (and others) gave that title to Lyndon Johnson when he was the leader of his party in the Senate was because LBJ engineered the passage of the first civil rights legislation since the Reconstruction Congress' initial civil rights statutes had been effectively written out of the law by a hostile SCOTUS in the Civil Rights Cases and Plessy v. Ferguson. During that entire period, southern Democratic senators had methodically, systematically, and ruthlessly propped up Jim Crow and racism by using the filibuster to kill anything in Congress that might threaten their regime. LBJ built a bipartisan coalition to pass the Civil Rights Act of 1957 DESPITE a much tougher cloture rule — betraying the very same southern Democrats in Congress and especially the Senate who'd mentored and sponsored Johnson himself, on the previously well-justified belief that he likewise was a stone-cold racist who'd join in any future filibusters as might be needed.

      "Master of the Senate" is actually, then, the single best book on American politics I've ever read. It explains the Senate — historically, in LBJ's time in Congress and as VP & POTUS, and indirectly, even subsequent Senates — better than any ten other books I've read about politics put together.

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        Ed P

        Of course I disagree Bill

        I would point out the ugliness of that minority filibuster position to delay enactment of the CRA. Also that a filibuster was engaged in by a single person, Mr Strom Thurman, in that whole mess, the other parties that might have engaged in the then-talking filibuster having had negotiated away that position. Again, a small minority of the nation preventing what was obviously necessary and wanted by a large majority. That filibuster lasted all of 24 hours and then was defeated without cloture after Mr Thurman had talked himself out.

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          Bill Dyer (aka Beldar)

          Read Caro. It's really, really worthwhile.

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            Ed P

            The issue is that the Senate as you pointed out has this already very large and undemocratic concession to smaller states giving them extraordinary veto power. To have this compounded by a supermajorirty threshold in that same legislature is just not viable and is why our Congress can't get anything done, why we have large majorities of our population in support of all sorts of reforms we cannot get made into law.

            Of course this favors conservatives and rural populations - which is now exactly our partisan divide. And one whose divisions are becoming worse, and the representation imbalance becoming worse due to demographic shifts

            It is not sustainable.

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      Man-Eating Cow

      "The founders also explicitly intended for our Senate to move on a majority vote."

      Perhaps they did, but I don't find this explicitly in the Constitution, which gives the Senate the power to make its own rules. Except the Constitution does explicitly state that a two-thirds vote is required on some important matters, such as conviction on impeachment, ratification of treaties, expulsion of a Senator, or submission of a constitutional amendment to the States.

      I think there is an awful lot to be said for requiring something more than 50%+1 for the passage of new legislation. If nothing else, this requires both sides to sit and negotiate. The problem is not that the current setup requires negotiation; it's that neither side is willing to negotiate. And that problem won't be fixed by a procedural change that eliminates the necessity to negotiate, becaues negotiation is actually a _desirable thing._

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      1. cb76

        "I think there is an awful lot to be said for requiring something more than 50%+1 for the passage of new legislation."

        Well sure, it means that the federal government literally cannot legislate. Ever. Which has always been the ideal for a lot of people on the right.

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          Man-Eating Cow

          "Well sure, it means that the federal government literally cannot legislate. Ever."

          You're being unserious. Plenty of legislation has passed with 60% majorities. Generally you don't see it in headlines, because _it has broad support_ and so does not "bleed."

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        rlritt

        I agree. I don't know why there has to be this all or nothing stance. When the bipartisan infrastructure bill was passed 6 Democrats voted against it because they were the far left who thought they had clout. Surprise! They didn't.

        13 Republicans voted for the BIPARTISAN bill and it is my understanding that were criticized by their party and some received death threats. To me that says there are way more far right Republicans than far left Democrats.

        I don't understand why since it was a bipartisan bill meaning written by both parties. Fixing roads and bridges is really one of the main jobs of government. I just don't understand why people can't work together. It really isn't life or death decisions. But to refuse to do your job so the country knows you're so pure in your convictions that you won't deign to even consider an opposing view is either naive or cynical.

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        Ed P

        And I do not agree with this notion that supermajorities are preferred because “negotiation is a good thing”. Perhaps that works out on paper, but the clear result we have today is a very small minority of the populations representatives can obstruct all senate business. And thats exactly what occurs regularly.

        The filibuster has long since been a means for forcing negotiation - it is a tool of killing legislation and engaging in wholesale obstruction.

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          Man-Eating Cow

          "a very small minority of the populations representatives can obstruct all senate business"

          40%+1 of Senators is not a very small minority.

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            Ed P

            And especially because our politics has become so strictly divided according to population density - rural vs urban, it is really a recipe for a whole lot of conflict to give a small minority such veto power.

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            Ed P

            If this were the House, that would be one thing, but it is the Senate where 40 Senators might represent a small fraction of the US population. According to this analysis for example, the 25% of US states with the highest population amounts to 25% of the senators but 60% of the population.
            https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/politics/wp/2017/11/28/by-2040-two-thirds-of-americans-will-be-represented-by-30-percent-of-the-senate/

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        Ed P

        I’m sorry but I wholeheartedly disagree. Perhaps I misspoke that it is explicit, just clearly the intent. As you mentioned the Constitution clearly states the situations requiring a supermajority. And the previous failed Constitution, the Articles of Confederacy, failed largely because it required a supermajorty for regular legislation in the upper chamber. This was changed specifically because of the dysfunction.

        I’ll leave you with a quote from President Wilson on the need for a new cloture rule. If only he could see today how his cloture rule has been flipped on its head.

        “The Senate of the United States is the only legislative body in the world which cannot act when its majority is ready for action. A little group of willful men, representing no opinion but their own, have rendered the great government of the United States helpless and contemptible.” Woodrow Wilson, March 4, 1917.

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          Ted Gale

          RE: "The Articles of Confederacy failed largely because it required a supermajorty for regular legislation in the upper chamber. This was changed specifically because of the dysfunction."

          If I recall correctly, there was only one chamber ("the Congress of the United States") in the Articles, with each state having an equal vote . . . the larger states' dissatisfaction with this arrangement led to the creation of a congress with two houses, with one having representation in proportion to population and one in which each state had an equal voice.

          I can't find a reference to the need for a supermajority in Congress for all legislation . . . I was aware that unanimity was required for amendments to the articles themselves (Article XIII) . . . and there is a supermajority required for the admission of new states (Article XI)


          [If I am missing something, please let me know . . .

          https://www.ourdocuments.gov/print_friendly.php?flash=false&page=transcript&doc=3&title=Transcript+of+Articles+of+Confederation+%281777%29

          ]

          The real problem with the Articles was that Congress could not do much of anything . . . supermajority or no . . .

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            Ed P

            Apologies I mangled my history lesson from too long ago. You are correct that there is only one legislative body and it is one rep from each state in teh articles. Even with the supermajorirty requirements, the powers of that legislature were extremely limited and unanimity was required for new powers. It failed because it was stagnant and unworkable.

            And exactly right on the other end. The concession made for smaller, less populous states is the structure of the Senate itself. And now there is this corruption of cloture that makes for a de facto supermajority requirement to pass nearly all legislation. So now we have the ability (and indeed this occurs often) that representatives from a tiny fraction of the population prevent any action when a large majority is ready to move. It is unhealthy and unsustainable imo. And the small state/large state representation imbalance is predicted to become far worse in the decades ahead with demographic shifts

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          Man-Eating Cow

          Woodrow Wilson is not well regarded around my pasture.

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            Ed P

            I'm hoping you can see past your bias and regard the truth he wrote as well as appreciate how cloture was invented to cut through obstruction and now is being an instrument of obstruction

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    MatthewRobin

    The New Republic article shows why the "New Right" is overhyped.

    "In other words, conservative elites, not unlike their progressive counterparts, are too weird to lead their revolution by democratic means. Many of the things that attract elite conservatives to the New Right—a thick sense of traditional morality, a communitarian ethos, a revolt against licentious modern excess, a sublime integration of spiritual and political life, and punishing, antiquarian modes of religious worship—bewilder and annoy their prospective electoral base, which is composed primarily of folk libertarian Trump voters. (By my lights, Matthew Walther’s concept of “Barstool Conservatives”—fratty libertines dedicated primarily to scandalizing overbearing libs and flouting their social norms and niceties—remains the most clear-eyed encapsulation of the GOP’s prospective future majority.)"

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    1. cb76

      "fratty libertines dedicated primarily to scandalizing overbearing libs and flouting their social norms and niceties—remains the most clear-eyed encapsulation of the GOP’s prospective future majority"

      Wonderful. Half of America's political establishment is literally dedicated to perfecting the art of trolling.

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