The Conversation

 

I subscribe to online articles from Chris Rufo, and I like to quote him from this memo, where it interests me, and then comment on his content. He sent me an email on 1/17/24, entitled Counterrevolution #1, A Conversation about the DEI bureaucracy, and the crisis of American identity.

 

Here is Rufo (R after this): “Earlier this week, I hosted a lively conversation on X with the editors of the culture magazine IM-1776. We discussed the threat of DEI to military capability, the crisis of American identity, and the need for conservatives to form a counter-elite with sufficient power to reform our institutions. We were joined by special guest Erik Prince, the geopolitical strategist and found of the military contractor Blackwater. The following are lightly edited highlights from our discussion.”

 

My response: I applaud in general Rufo’s counterrevolutionary project, but there are two fatal flaws in his thinking revealed in this introductory paragraph. I wish to highlight them, and then offer corrective solutions for these reformatory defects.

 

Flaw 1: Rufo wants to form a conservative counter-elite with sufficient power to reform our institutions. We need the uncommon, common people, the individuator-supercitizens, to lead and run the counterrevolution; they need to grab the power, keep the power, and let no elite ever again have power and tell the masses how to live.

 

Flaw 2: Yes, we want to take back the institutions and reform them, but, deeper, more substantive, more lasting reform comes from Mavellonialist training of the masses as adults to live as anarchist-individuator supercitizens. Such citizens will deinstitutionalize society, or keep institutions kept small, lean strong, efficient but not too intrusive in the private lives of supercitizens. That is the coming conservative revolution that has real clout and permanent significance.

 

R: “ . . . American Identity in a Time  of Chaos . . . Rufo: The question of identity is still a critical one. And my sense is there are four general identity layers. You have the individual, the ethnic group, the racial group, and then humankind, or the human universal. The only way out of the crisis of identity fragmentation is to create a common sense of obligation to the universal principles of what the Founders called the natural rights of all mankind. It’s going to require the obliteration of DEI bureaucracy across all institutions and a recommitment to a common ethos of how our country should operate.”

 

My response: I agree that we need a national identity to rally around, a nation story and overarching culture and set of values to rally around, and for with all subordinate intersectional groups and multicultural subcultures to be subsumed into. To build national identity, teach the young of every race, color, creed, gender, gender orientation or class to live first and foremost as an individuating supercitizen, and naturally and implicitly within such a superior mode of existence will be a unifying national identity shared by all, and a connection to universal values, and that will help each supercitizen recognize and support Modernist/Enlightenment values that are objective and universal. This will build in each the sense of a national American identity.