Erickson, much like Rod Dreher, recognizes the fascist rot at the center of trumpism but nonetheless enables the regime by blaming outside sources and accommodating it. In Dreher's case, the left is to blame for the right's growing Nazi problem--the left's evil deeds drove them to it. Both reactions are intellectually dishonest, but I expect nothing more from the right's trump-defending "intellectuals." The brave ones left the party when it became clear what it had become.
“Conservative intellectual” has been an oxymoron since the Great Depression. U.S. conservatives have not had an interesting or original idea since the 1929 crash gave the lie to laissez faire economics. Von Mises, Hayek, Friedman et al. notwithstanding, conservatives have birthed nothing new—just fancy outfits for the distrust of government and hatred of taxes and regulation.
John is this passage from Claude? I’m now citing my own use of C/GPT in footnotes to name it directly. Also, is there, in your view, no corollary to this style of accommodation on the left that would be worth contrasting: “how a movement changes without ever quite admitting that it has changed.”
That sequence matters because it shows that the problem was never simply total ignorance. Erickson recognized the rupture, recoiled from it, and then accommodated himself to it once the new regime proved capable of delivering substantive conservative victories. He was hardly alone. That process of accommodation is precisely how a movement changes without ever quite admitting that it has changed: yesterday’s disqualifying tendencies become today’s regrettable excesses, provided the coalition still delivers judges, tax policy, abortion restrictions, or victory over the left. The boundary of respectability moves after the political movement has already moved it.
Have you listened to the In Bed with the Right podcasts on Schmitt? They track his rewriting and backfilling in much the same way you describe, and I'd love to hear you speak with them about right wing thought havers like Erikson who ate always chasing the movement with their ideas.
Erickson, much like Rod Dreher, recognizes the fascist rot at the center of trumpism but nonetheless enables the regime by blaming outside sources and accommodating it. In Dreher's case, the left is to blame for the right's growing Nazi problem--the left's evil deeds drove them to it. Both reactions are intellectually dishonest, but I expect nothing more from the right's trump-defending "intellectuals." The brave ones left the party when it became clear what it had become.
Fantastic essay.
i feel like you should send erikson a bill he can charge to his health insurance.
“Conservative intellectual” has been an oxymoron since the Great Depression. U.S. conservatives have not had an interesting or original idea since the 1929 crash gave the lie to laissez faire economics. Von Mises, Hayek, Friedman et al. notwithstanding, conservatives have birthed nothing new—just fancy outfits for the distrust of government and hatred of taxes and regulation.
John is this passage from Claude? I’m now citing my own use of C/GPT in footnotes to name it directly. Also, is there, in your view, no corollary to this style of accommodation on the left that would be worth contrasting: “how a movement changes without ever quite admitting that it has changed.”
That sequence matters because it shows that the problem was never simply total ignorance. Erickson recognized the rupture, recoiled from it, and then accommodated himself to it once the new regime proved capable of delivering substantive conservative victories. He was hardly alone. That process of accommodation is precisely how a movement changes without ever quite admitting that it has changed: yesterday’s disqualifying tendencies become today’s regrettable excesses, provided the coalition still delivers judges, tax policy, abortion restrictions, or victory over the left. The boundary of respectability moves after the political movement has already moved it.
No?
Hey John, interested in reading more about the idea of Conjunctural Intellectuals. Do you have a link to anything from Robert. F Carley to learn more?
Have you listened to the In Bed with the Right podcasts on Schmitt? They track his rewriting and backfilling in much the same way you describe, and I'd love to hear you speak with them about right wing thought havers like Erikson who ate always chasing the movement with their ideas.