I receive subscribed emails from Chris Rufo, and there is one below entitled JD Vance and the New Right, which I included and will comment on.
Rufo: “JD Vance and the New Right
How the Ohio senator can rationalize Trumpism—and win.
Oct 05, 2024
For conservatives, Donald Trump represents a paradigm shift. The brash real estate mogul challenged the old consensus and, for many, especially those of us under 40, there is no going back.
But this does not mean that the path forward has been entirely clear. Trump is a creature of instinct and his ideological formula—we can call it Trumpism—was never quite clear. In fact, he left open a number of important questions: What are the principles of Trumpism? How does it operate? And can it govern? “
My response: Trump, the non-intellectual, has pro-American instincts whichyounger, conservative intellectuals like Vance and Rufo have the education and intellectual self-application verbally to identity the principles of Trumpism, how they will operate, and promote that Trumpism can govern America.
Rufo: “Enter J.D. Vance. The Ohio senator is a gifted writer and a talented institutional operator. And, as the vice presidential candidate, his task is to rationalize and explain Trumpism to Americans, and, in particular, to members of the elite in Silicon Valley, Wall Street, and Washington D.C.
His recent debate performance reveals what this philosophy might entail and how it could shape the New Right. Let’s dig in.
The following is a rush transcript of the episode. Please let me know what you think in the comments:
We can start by looking at JD Vance's biographical arc. In some ways, Vance seems like an old story. Someone who grew up in Appalachia, who survived poverty, who had an environment of extreme dysfunction, and yet through his intelligence and hard work, and determination was able to make something of himself. It's the old Horatio Alger story in the contemporary setting. But there's an interesting twist at the end of that story.
Vance very famously went to the Marines, went to Ohio State University, and then Yale Law School, which cemented his rise into the elite. And in some ways, he is the product of these elite institutions, which trained him and more importantly, gave him that imprimatur. But the story changes because he eventually revolted against those institutions, the very institutions that provided his pathway to rise.
I think this is why what you see in this campaign especially, is a certain elite hatred of JD Vance. There's a sense that they let him into the elite institutions and that he betrayed those institutions. And so you see professors, journalists, cross-partisan governmental figures, really venting their spleen at this young man from Ohio. This is why we also see, for example, a number of people from his past who have leaked his old text messages to show that he once held the conventional views of the establishment. And it’s hypocrisy that he's abandoned those in favor of an uncouth and really hated ideology like Trumpism. “
My response: Vance is not hypocrite, and kudos to him for his Horaito Alger’s kind of meteoric success and rise based on belief in himself, a vision for the future, and a willingness to work very hard to make his dream come true.
Rufo: “But this actually misses the point. It's not hypocrisy to change your beliefs. It's hypocrisy to say one thing and simultaneously believe another. I think actually JD's transformation is genuine. And in fact, the people, for example, who have leaked his old messages, betrayed their own lack of conviction, lack of principle, and lack of integrity, they're betraying him as a friend much more than he's betraying them as a class.”
My response: Yes, Vance did reject the elite institutions that gave him a chance, but they are limited in what they now offer young Americans, so he was correct to pull back from them.
Rufo: “We can look at JD Vance's biographical arc in this way as a new twist on an old story, one in which the right is not just advancing the simple Horatio Alger myth, but complicating that myth and showing that the system as it exists today, the establishment, the elites not only in places like Yale Law School, but as a symbol more broadly, are not adhering to the principles that they should be. In fact, they've been corrupted even if they still offer that pathway.
What is this? In my view, this is an ideological crisis that's been embodied in this single person. JD Vance believed the myths of the establishment liberal institutions. And then around 2015, Trump blew them up. This is again, why we see JD Vance's own ideological development as a never-Trumper who bought into the myth that Trump was orange Hitler, that he was an existential threat to democracy, that he was an interloper on our democratic norms. But eventually, JD Vance, like myself, and like many other people, stopped believing in that myth, stopped believing this media narrative that had formed around Trump in 2015 and then held constant for a short period after that.
In fact, what this is in my view is that the establishment will welcome you into the circle on the condition that you maintain its orthodoxy. But through the experience of that first Trump administration, I think many of us realized that that old orthodoxy that really transcended the narrow division of left and right was no longer working, was no longer functional, and had some fatal flaws. In this light, we can think of Trump and his primary purpose as a wrecking ball to the old consensus. And he did this. He really broke through many of the norms, and I think, exposed many hidden truths about what was happening in the country. And he shook up, especially the consensus on the right, a consensus that we have not returned to now almost 10 years later.
But there was also a related problem with this. Trump could not rationalize his ideology or his political formula. He is an instinctual person, a deal maker, an improviser, someone who is not an intellectual or a thinker in those purely and self-consciously rationalistic terms. He reduces everything to the very simplest essence. And he operates on his own intuition, which I think is an extraordinarily powerful attribute as an individual. But the downside is that it's unable then to be replicated through complex institutions, which is what we have today. We have a country of 350 million people with these massive institutions that employ hundreds of thousands or millions of individuals. And then a culture that is dispersed and decentralized from coast to coast, from the Atlantic to the Pacific.
This is why I think perhaps he chose JD Vance as his vice presidential nominee. Vance is in some ways an ideological searcher. I first met JD a number of years ago at the National Conservative Conference, I believe in 2021, and I watched his development and checked in with him from time to time, from his beginning as a never-Trump traditionalist, believing in the National Review consensus, to a creeping curiosity about Trump, and then into a number of different ideological burrows.
He's of course engaged with some on the postliberal right, like Patrick Deneen, some of us on the new right, who are trying to wage a successful culture war and bring culture rather than economy into the forefront. He's even had a relationship with some members of, say, the neo-reactionary movement like Curtis Yarvin. In fact, I had dinner with JD, Curtis Yarvin, and a number of other people at that first NatCon conference, which provided a kind of dizzying but very fascinating conversation that showed not that JD or I or anyone else were agreeing with someone like Curtis. I of course have famous disagreements with him.
But it just showed that there was this intellectual ferment, an intellectual openness, a new entry point for ideas that then had to fight it out in public. What we've seen in the last two years, with his rise to the Senate, but in particular the last few months as he's campaigned to be vice president, is that he's started to cohere this ideological formula and to rationalize what is really a folklore around Trump into a sophisticated political theory, sophisticated political rhetoric, and a sophisticated operating ideology.”
My response: If Vance and Ruo are able to translate Trumpism into a sophisticated political theory, a sophisticated political rhetoric and a sophisticated operating ideology, great, for that is good for the country and the masses, needing a workable ideological, articulated message outside of and in opposition to postmodernist Leftism.
Rufo: “When I say rationalize, I don't mean make excuses for, I actually mean rationalize in the original sense of the word, to take something that is scattered, distorted, folkloric, and to cobble it together into a rational and logical formula.
JD Vance is an intellectual. He's written a bestselling book. He takes policy matters seriously. He's very interested in the art of governing at that logical linguistic level. And we've seen this, for example, even in the recent vice presidential debate where JD had laser-sharp rhetoric that was grounded in philosophical and policy positions, but then was able to really outmaneuver his opponent linguistically and rhetorically.
I think that this debate, at least for me watching this was a key moment. You see the principles of Trump and the new right start to be adapted to the traditional format of political debate. In some ways, the interesting takeaway from that debate is that JD sounded like a normal politician engaging in issues of economics, inflation, immigration, housing, all of these kitchen-table issues that have traditionally dominated the political discourse, but he's infusing them with a new philosophical core, and then he's touching lightly on the ideological issues that surround them, whether it's critical race theory or DEI or higher education or elite institutions.”
My response: If we can rear up a generational of principled, patriotic, learned, intellectual individuating supercitizens, then these exceptional common people and voters can, like Vance, cam become functioning, hybrid political operatives, running the country: ½ commoner talking about bread and butter issues, and ½ political idealist, doing what supporting what is good for the country.
If the supercitizens are very competent per capita in their linguistic and rhetorical communications and understanding of political discourse, and the elite masses can well direct and limit their elected politicians, on how to govern in logical, linguistic terms.
Rufo: “He can speak in both registers and he can speak in a way that is, I think, comforting for normal people who are used to normal political discourse and that he can discipline himself so that his rhetoric advances the principles that have been established in practice by Trump. But he's advancing them in a way that I think has a lot of distance that it can cover.
So what would it look like to see JD Vance in the White House in the Vice President's office? I think we're seeing that prototype being built right now. JD Vance knows how to maintain a broad rhetorical consensus, but I think that given his experience, not only in the Senate but also in Silicon Valley and in the elite institutions, he can operationalize that philosophy as public policy. In the Senate. JD Vance, for example, introduced legislation to dismantle DEI. He's talked about holding universities accountable, and of course, he's in the process of building a viable counter-elite.”
My response: Note again, that Rufo refers to Vance’s role in introducing a new, ascendant, viable, conservative counter-elite.
I want to make the conservative counter-elite permanent, and the only counter-elite that will keep the masses free, and ruling classes curtailed, will be a counter-elite that is the citizens themselves the individuating supercitizens.
Rufo: “I think that the closest analog that we might have to JD Vance is another very young vice president who cut his teeth and the culture war issues—fighting communist subversion and then rose to the vice presidency at a very young age. This, of course, is Richard Nixon.
Nixon, I think, remains the touchstone president who is misunderstood, who is unfairly maligned, but who can reveal to us certain truths and insights about our own era. I compare JD Vance to Richard Nixon in only the best way. He's a young, smart intellectual who rose from humble beginnings into a position of prominence and power, and who has the potential to reshape our country towards the greater good. We'll see what happens in the closing stretch of the campaign. We're now almost exactly one month out. But keep in mind that while Trump is the headliner, JD Vance is an important addition to the ticket, and I think he could make important contributions to the country.”
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