When a book is titled Up from Conservatism, it’s clear enough that someone is hoping to pick a fight. In case there was any doubt, Arthur Milikh’s recent collection of 18 essays, all written by right-leaning American thinkers, is subtitled Revitalizing the Right after a Generation of Decay. The message is not subtle. En garde, conservatives.

Given that presentation, the essays are more variable than one might expect. Some are reflective and insightful. There is nothing feisty or tendentious, for instance, in Carson Holloway’s careful discussion of the claim that the United States was “founded on an idea.” David Goldman’s critique of “Hamiltonian economics” is not angling to shock or gratuitously alienate right-wing readers. Joshua Mitchell and Aaron Renn co-authored a very interesting essay on “What Went Wrong” with the old right, and despite the provocative title, their assessment of the Reaganites is overall rather generous. In fact, their main criticism is directed at fellow Protestants, who in their view have not contributed enough to the conservative conversation. Not every writer in the volume seemed to be spoiling for a fight.

Many were, however. The New Right is known for its belligerence and disdain for former allies, and many of the essays followed that pattern. It was interesting to reflect on the reasons. Why frame a volume like this as a feisty rejection of the “legacy right”? It might have made sense a decade ago, but it’s been seven years now since right-wing populists slid into the driver’s seat of the Republican Party. Isn’t that trope kind of a crutch at this point? Surely it’s time to stop declaring victory and get serious about constructing a workable platform. The past month has been particularly remarkable for its display of Republican decrepitude, but even before that, I cannot think of anyone who seemed to believe that the past few years have been a golden age for the American right. 

One could of course argue that the obstacles were fearsome, and that the work is still ongoing; presumably a volume like this exists in part to reassure readers that the New Right has ideas, plans, and policy goals that can transcend the political career of Donald Trump (regardless of how his particular story may end). If that is the goal however, then it would seem most fitting to focus on the goods one hopes to attain, not the mistakes one is trying to avoid. Sometimes, an examination of past mistakes can be helpful for articulating a reasonable path forward. A few of the aforementioned authors are making a good-faith effort to do that. But for many, the old right seems to function primarily as a straw-man, saddled with simplistic positions that I at least cannot recall hearing from any conservative in my lifetime. 

So, for instance, I struggled to think of any noteworthy conservative thinker who, in my evaluation, seemed to justify John Fonte’s claim that “the establishment Right’s role … has been to basically concede the Left’s narrative—namely, that the primary meaning of the American story is the continuous expansion of rights of previously marginalized groups.” Milikh himself, and Scott Yenor, sound similar notes, lamenting that the Right “more or less tacitly accepts the Left’s moral goals of sexual and racial radicalism.” They never tell us who accepted this, or how they indicated their assent. In another vein, I was quite startled to read Helen Andrews’ report that “the idea that female success in the workforce might have any downsides is absolutely taboo, on both the Right and the Left.” That’s certainly news to me! When I was getting started as a female writer on the Right (circa 2013), it felt like this was the one subject that nearly every editor I encountered wanted me to address. Meanwhile, what is Roger Kimball referring to when he excoriates the “libertarian Right” for its “embrace of kitsch”? Did Milton Friedman have pink flamingoes on his lawn? 

It is possible that a more nuanced discussion of each topic could yield a more satisfactory explanation of the relevant complaint. I cannot say, because none of the essays referenced make a serious effort to engage real texts or thinkers; in most cases, we are not offered so much as a name. In the final analysis, I must admit that I find a book like this quite demoralizing. I still believe that there is a real possibility that a revitalized conservatism or traditionalism could emerge in America. I don’t believe that conservatives are either intellectually or morally bankrupt. But it’s frustrating to be reminded how far we are from healing the rupture that occurred seven years ago. It’s hard to see a revitalized conservatism emerging from a coalition that is so fractured, as well as intensely bitter and suffused with the paranoid style. 

Many of the essays focused on enumerating ground-level strategies for winning turf wars with the progressive left. In that vein, Matthew Peterson tossed out a number of suggestions for using antitrust and consumer protection laws, among other measures, to impede the Left’s cultural agenda. He wants to meet woke capital with anti-woke capital. Richard Hanania offers “Strategies and Heuristics for Confronting Liberal Institutions.” His plan is largely built around a kind of institutional triage: try to reform or pressure institutions that might be amenable to right-wing influence, and do everything possible to minimize the influence of the non-reformable. Robert Delahunty discusses possible strategies for reforming the FBI, while Milikh and Yenor unroll their plan to “destroy and reconquer” school systems. There is a clear recurring theme here: these authors want to fight the left’s fire with some combustibles of their own. 

I cannot here render opinions on all of their various suggestions. Some struck me as reasonable and potentially promising, while others seemed rash, unprincipled, and generally ill-advised. I agree that the “woke left” has some alarming and pathological elements, so fighting its influence is a worthy goal. But I noted that, with a few exceptions (Mitchell and Renn, and perhaps Eric Kaufmann), few of these authors showed much interest in persuading larger numbers of their fellow Americans to reject woke pieties. They want to proceed by separating friends from enemies, and uniting the former in a quest for victory. These writers are happy to excoriate the “old Right” for compromising itself merely by entering into conversations about the role of women, the significance of race, or the modern-day implications of historical injustice. That kind of good-faith engagement is just further evidence of the “defensive crouch” that gives the insatiable Left the inch it needs to carry us all to our doom.

Let’s accept, for the sake of argument, that America is truly so polarized, and the progressive left so aggressive, that it is simply necessary to adopt a friend-and-enemy approach to politics. Wouldn’t it be advisable in that case to try to expand our list of friends? Clearly, the “legacy right” is on the bad list, and it is well known that that rift within the old coalition has already hurt the Republicans badly among middle-class professionals and in the suburbs. Somehow, the New Right must compensate if it wants to come “up from conservatism.” It must find a way to build a platform that could plausibly win tens of millions of votes in national elections. Do the ideas in this book have the potential to do that? I have doubts.

While some essays in this book are focused on turf-war strategies, others are dedicated to developing ideas that the authors view as central to our ongoing culture wars. These presumably would be central to any serious effort at building a new and more populist base. I will conclude this review, then, by offering a brief glimpse of some of the ideas proposed in this book as a foundation for a new right.

David Azerrad instructs us that slavery, though unjust, “was in no way unique to America” and “ended a long time ago,” which means that conservatives must now “root out from their souls the pathological pity for blacks, masquerading as compassion, that is the norm in contemporary America.” The Right should not make a goal of promoting the thriving of black citizens. Instead we must “defend, with uncompromising resolve, the rule of law and meritocracy,” preparing ourselves for the reality that there will soon be few or no black participants in “some elite and highly technical sectors.” Azerrad’s color blindness is seemingly of a very technical kind, more legal than social. Helpfully acknowledging that racism is not something to celebrate, he does agree that people of all races should be subject to the same laws and permitted to apply for the same jobs. However, he is convinced that even though “many” black and white Americans will “intermarry, become friends, or serve together as brothers in arms,” it is “foolish to believe” that this level of intermingling will ever become the norm for the whole nation. Would Azerrad even want to welcome black Americans into a right-wing coalition? It’s very unclear.

Helen Andrews, the only female contributor to this book, seems genuinely upset that women have too many opportunities nowadays. She is angry that the Republican Party has made no effort to reverse “legal insanities” like the Supreme Court decision Phillips v. Martin Marietta Corporation (1971) which ruled that a company could not set a policy of refusing specifically to accept applications from mothers with preschool-aged children. “Don’t hire the mothers,” is in Andrews’ view a perfectly reasonable company policy. On the policy side, she recommends less support for college and more for industrial policy, explicitly for the purpose of giving men a professional edge over women. Supplementing that, Yenor advises Americans to look back to the “deep wisdom” of the American Founders, whose admirable arrangement is characterized as follows:

Men owned the family property in their own name, controlled the family finances officially, and were the voting representatives for the family. The ideal, such as it was, of public man-private woman reigned in law and culture. … The sexes would be separate for some of their daily lives, but they came together for common private purposes. Men would have suitable outlets in commerce and politics, while women would raise children, mind the home, and build community.

Milikh himself (in an essay co-authored with Yenor) wants radical reform to education, and is largely dismissive of the enormous victories conservatives have recently won in this area, because, “moral confusions plague the Right’s efforts to wage a counterrevolution.” Milikh wants something more aggressive and overtly ideological. His own philosophy of education is sketched in only the barest form, but I would be quite interested to know how many parents would race to sign their children up for a school that focuses on “building obstacle courses” (as an interdisciplinary exercise in “physical fitness, mathematical skills, and excellence in the trades”), and teaching boys to skin animals while the girls learn to milk cows. 

For reasons of space, I will not here detail Jeremy Carl’s “nuclear option” to curbing immigration “at all costs.” I will not elaborate on Michael Anton’s remarkable claim that developing a reasonable foreign policy “is not difficult” and involves “rapprochement with Moscow,” a natural member of our “civilizational sect.” It is enough here to say that I have doubts about the potential of these ideas to reverse the trends of the past several years, either by drawing new voters, or by turning the GOP into a party capable of governance. It is perfectly fine in some contexts to explore unusual or idiosyncratic ideas, and I would be happy on another occasion to mix it up with any of these authors over a cup of coffee. This book, however, was presented as a plan for “revitalizing the right.” It will not achieve that.

The best-case scenario for the political right would involve a renewed coalition, in which conservatives of different stripes could help to compensate for one another’s shortcomings. We do need to craft a movement that honors our history and respects our political traditions, while still meaningfully addressing some of the questions that are most troubling to Americans today. Toiling under the unforgiving and divisive demands of the woke left, many Americans might decide for themselves that such a platform is worth supporting. But if the Right weds itself to a platform that alienates most voters, and demands reforms that hardly anyone wants, that promise will certainly never be realized. I still think revitalization is possible, but to achieve it, I recommend going back to conservatism.