My friend Paul Gottfried makes a powerful and persuasive case that those of us on the right have a lot to learn “by reading those who don’t share [our] political views.” When the New Left developed its guerilla tactics for capturing the opinion-making institutions in the 1960s and early ’70s, the establishment was still (mostly) patriotic, decent, and devoted to moderate constitutionalism.

That situation is now reversed, as many—but not all!—of us on the right understand. As Gottfried has often tried to explain, too many so-called conservatives still haven’t come to terms with how successful those guerilla tactics were and fail to appreciate “the cultural and moral control that the left has assumed in our society.” 

I don’t blame Gottfried for being offended by the dumb label “woke right,” but I’m not going to bother with Neil Shenvi’s confused, convoluted criticisms. An evangelical activist with degrees in chemistry and quantum computation, Shenvi has a weak grasp of political philosophy but suffers from Fauci Syndrome, which is the belief that being a scientist makes one an expert in everything, and thus entitled to pontificate loudly about matters one doesn’t understand.

Let me stick to Gottfried’s sensible argument about how the left came to power. He insists, quite correctly, that to reverse the moral-political rot of the last several decades, we need to adopt, tactically, the same radical techniques. Having said that, I want to add a note of friendly criticism, as well as a suggestion.

Gottfried writes:

We believe, like Gramsci, that those in power shape how others process reality, although unlike Gramsci we view the (predominantly leftist) managerial class and its allies, rather than the capitalist owners of productive forces, as being the ones who now control us. Moreover, this managerial ruling class determines the ideological persuasion of those they rule. It therefore falls on those who wish to break this hold to encourage a revolt against it, which is an activity that the populist right is now engaged in.

This strikes me as both courageous and prudent. Aristotle taught that prudence is not mere caution, but rather doing what is both right and effective under the circumstances—which means that extreme circumstances may justify and even require extreme actions. Gottfried correctly wants us to revolt against the current ruling class, i.e. the establishment. It is important to recognize how deeply unconservative this is. The point of this article is to argue that’s a good thing. Even if what Gottfried proposes is traditional in its ends (which I grant, with a caveat), his means to that desirable end are, according to his own language, radical and nontraditional.

Now, I love the best parts of the American tradition as much as anyone. My fellow Claremonsters and I are devoted to reviving what we regard as the noblest part of our tradition: the republicanism of the American founding. We are sometimes accused of being somehow opposed to tradition because of this. Not at all. Our only point is that tradition, by itself, doesn’t give us everything we want or need as citizens—especially right now. Let me clarify that.

The problem, I would argue, is that traditionalism by itself does not, in any meaningful sense of the term, separate ends from means. Its essential argument, as I understand it, is defaulting to a course of “sticking to the tried and true,” and avoiding disruptive changes based on some idea or goal we might prefer in the abstract. In fact, one might go further and note that the most thoughtful traditionalists objected to talking about aims or ends in politics altogether (which just invites dangerous theoretical speculation), preferring instead a disposition or attitude that emphasizes respect for the customs and practices we’ve inherited, even if we don’t always understand why those customs and practices evolved the way they did.

That’s entirely inadequate today because it amounts to a recipe for leaving the administrative state in place.

Gottfried’s revolutionary assault on the ruling class isn’t some utopian scheme, inspired by Pol Pot, to restart history at Year Zero. I gather he has in mind some model or ideal based on a particular moment or several moments from America’s past, suitably updated for contemporary conditions. Yet, after a Civil War and a century of progressive assaults on the Constitution, our history is now too varied and complex to be described as having a single tradition (hence my mention earlier of a caveat).

Browsing through America’s past to identify the best elements we want to recover necessarily involves making choices and applying standards that can’t simply be reduced to “the tradition.”

As if that discriminating approach to the past were not unsettling enough, Gottfried’s agenda also includes tearing up the current political landscape and fundamentally reconfiguring our institutions. All this would have sent Russell Kirk into fits of apoplexy. Gottfried, to be sure, is not a Kirkian, and doesn’t generally call himself a “conservative,” preferring to consider himself a man of the right or the Old Right. In fact, based on his writings over the past few years, and especially this most recent essay, it looks like the Old Right represented by Gottfried and Chronicles is now at war with traditional conservatism—a fight I heartily join.

The most (I’m tempted to say worst) traditional people in America today are those timorous, “Conservatism, Inc.,” normies who are more alarmed by DOGE than DEI. They would rather live under the leftist orthodoxy of the managerial class than endure the brash, crass, chaotic (and at times gleefully juvenile) chainsaw administration of Trump and Musk. Instead of having a moral framework that includes a conception of good government to which they can aspire, the normie-cons prioritize whatever would preserve the old status quo, and thus (perhaps this is the real point) their comfortable privileges. As I argued in a previous Chronicles article, the bottom line for these folks seems to be, “Don’t rock the boat, I’m counting my money.”

But if traditionalism and conservatism can’t justify the revolutionary overthrow of the ruling class, we might want to be more clear about what we are fighting for. While we have a lot to learn from Gramsci (and, for that matter, Foucault), we need to be clear to people like Neil Shenvi that we are only using critical theory and the postmodern critique of power structures in order to establish something better.

But what exactly is that something better? We need to be explicit about what’s guiding this battle; what is the central idea that serves as our lodestar? This brings me to my suggestion: I would propose as our political banner the principle of consent. Consent of the governed seems to capture the most essential aspects of what we all want to recover. Moreover, it is a relatively easy concept to explain and offers the widest appeal for uniting the different factions of the spirited right. (Incidentally, I would offer the same suggestion to Elon Musk. Waste, fraud, and abuse are bad; but what’s truly offensive about the administrative state is how it undermines the dignity and independence of self-governing citizens.)  

What the conservative traditionalists at the Dispatch, the Bulwark, and increasingly (sad to say) National Review crave is not personal liberty or strong families or the rule of law, but the comforting predictability of the old uniparty establishment—even if that means accepting the corrupt regime of race-obsessed, morally degenerate bureaucracy: “Stand with trans Americans,” as Bill Kristol now says. That attitude is repulsive to Gottfried, which is why I have tremendous respect for his moral courage and practical judgment, even if we still disagree on some theoretical or historical points.

My one recommendation would be to let go (finally) of the idea that tradition, as important as it is, can be adequate by itself as a practical guide during this crisis. All of us, even paleoconservatives, need solid, enduring, and—I dare say—theoretical principles to unite behind. The rallying cry of “consent of the governed,” which I think captures the best part of our tradition, can supply a coherent, teachable, unifying principle for waging the urgent battle that Gottfried and I both want to fight.