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The radical Right-wing vision is becoming mainstream (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
Last Wednesday night, I was regaled by a young black American Uber driver all the way from Dulles airport to the Capitol, with a note-perfect reel of Trumpian talking-points. He didn’t like Trump personally, he told me — but understood why he won. It was prices; it was Ukraine; most of all it was the southern border. It felt rude to ask him which way he voted, but I think I can guess.
I’m not a political insider, but I’m hardly a neutral observer: I count many of those now celebrating in Washington among my friends. As a Brit, citizen of Schrödinger’s 51st state, I don’t get to vote; but I broadly share that cabbie’s assessment. And for all Trump’s idiosyncrasies, he is vastly preferable to the alternative. And everyone needs to calm down: this isn’t the dawn of American fascism. Rather, Trump’s election confirms that however stagnant things remain in Britain, in Washington democracy is working as it should — and history is well and truly back. Even Francis Fukuyama agrees.
Cabbie conversations are a journalistic cliché, but my driver’s outlook tallied with that of the American electorate — and with that of the now politically ascendant American New Right. Far from representing mere bigotry, ignorance, or nostalgia, this has emerged as a bracingly radical Right-wing worldview, that’s now fully articulated, widely shared, and coherent on its own terms.
A new book marks just how far these ideas have permeated Washington’s conservative institutions — and where some of the battle lines may, perhaps, be drawn over the next few years. Dawn’s Early Light: Taking Back Washington To Save America (HarperCollins) is written by Kevin Roberts, who has served since 2021 as head of the Heritage Foundation. Heritage originated the now-notorious “Project 2025”, a 900-page policy wishlist subsequently disavowed by Trump and which, nonetheless, featured heavily in Kamala Harris’ campaigning. In the wake of the furore it caused, Project 2025 has lived on as a series of internet jokes about cartoon-villain policies such as prison camps for fat people, or trapping the souls of prominent liberals in crystals. At its heart, though, more than specific policies, lay a project of institutional rewiring, and list-building for a putative second Trump administration: the two elements analysts agreed were critically missing from Trump’s implementation strategy in 2016.
Politics is proverbially the art of the possible; while it’s easy to spill ink on so colourful a figure as Trump, how far he’s able to deliver on his voters’ hopes rests heavily on those around him. And here, early indications are that the core aim of Project 2025 — staffing — will deliver. Notably, one of its key contributors, former ICE director Tom Homan, has already been announced as “border czar”. Nor is the personnel project confined to leaders: institutions such as American Moment, formed in 2021 to train young New Right-aligned Hill staffers, are now enjoying their titular moment. It’s a far cry from the turmoil back in 2016. In America at least, the realignment is here to stay.
What will that realignment look like? Perhaps more than the 900 pages of Project 2025, Roberts’ readable, polemical Dawn’s Early Light captures one of the key sensibilities percolating through this new (re)aligned administration. And this isn’t just a bit of policy tinkering here and there. It’s a whole worldview, that’s comprehensively displaced the 20th-century free-market outlook Roberts dismisses in his book as characteristic of “wax-museum conservatives”. Indeed, Roberts’ own 2021 appointment as director of Heritage, until relatively recently one of Con Inc’s institutional bastions, is a case in point. So, too, is the man who wrote the foreword to Dawn’s Early Light: New Right leading light J.D. Vance, now Vice President-elect of the United States.
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SubscribeGreat article, Mary. For all the fearmongering about this particular document, its pretty obvious it contains alot of common sense.
There’s nothing wrong with public policy thinktanks getting impressive academics together to put forth a vision for the people to evaluate. The problem is that they usually don’t get evaluated on merit. Opponents in the Media simply cherrypick and distort the primary objectives by discrediting the authors. Most of the attacks against Conservatives are ad hominem and not about policy. They have simply tried to discredit not outthink the opposition.
Thinktanks Left/Right/Center should not only be willing to put their views on paper but defend their ideas in public debate. I’m very glad that many Democrats are recognizing they need to actually debate ideas with people whom they disagree with. If America is going to have a functioning Democracy, it needs two opposing sides to engage and not suppress the other.
Anyhow, nice piece from a world class writer.
I don’t see a lot of self reflection taking place amongst the Dems and their surrogates in the regime media. I see a bit I suppose, but a lot more histrionics.
They’re mostly getting the analysis wrong but I sense they realize a need to actually persuade people instead of strictly counting on the Media to discredit the opposition with hyperbole.
They will pivot to more traditional left wing cliches like “taxing the rich” and “speaking to the working class” through expanded entitlement programs…but at least that’s somewhat substantive.
They have no choice now but to debate their ideas.
I don’t believe they’ll debate ideas. They’ll do the only thing they know which is lie and attack others.
Perhaps they’ll even listen to Bernie and propose taxing ‘wealth’ rather than ‘income’. If they’re willing to do that, they might yet make themselves into a credible left-wing party in the traditional sense. That would give the people a real choice between an American right wing party and an American left-wing party. That’s what I truly hope for. I can live with either right wing solutions or left wing solutions based on reality and focused on THIS country and THIS country’s citizens. I’m not holding my breath though. The globalists are ideologues convinced they’re saving the world, from racism, from war, from climate change, etc. and they’ve already lost the Republican party for the foreseeable future.
Trump’s victory basically ended any hope for them to take back the Republican party. Had Trump lost, particularly if he lost badly and embarrassed himself afterwards a second time, they might have an opening to put forward someone like Haley in 2028. Now they’re well and truly done. Trump has been consolidating his power in the party in a way I frankly didn’t think he was competent enough to do and he’s been getting the right help from the right people. I expect the globalists will hang on to the Democratic machine as long as they have the money and influence to do so and as long as there are enough indoctrinated wokesters, bureaucrats, and gullible minorities to put their candidates over whoever takes up the mantle of Bernie Sanders. It will be up to the Democratic voter base to stand up to the establishment in the same way the Republican base started standing up after 2012. Given what I know about the Democratic base, how it’s dominated by public sector unions, bureaucrats, urban enclaves, and young people who don’t have enough life experience to know any better, I’m not optimistic, but I’ve been wrong before. If they fail to do so and Trump’s reforms prove popular, the Democrats could be rendered almost irrelevant for a generation in the same way FDR’s New Deal sidelined Republicans for several decades.
Wow, someone actually takes Bernie as more than a grifter. The key to Bernie Sanders is in his initials, BS
Notwithstanding his politics I understand Sanders has managed to amass some wealth. I also understand his wife did rather well out of a failed educational institution she headed
Bernie replies, “Look, there’s a squirrel!”
Dispute his ideas rather than resort to invective.
Perhaps they’ll even listen to Bernie and propose taxing ‘wealth’ rather than ‘income’. If they’re willing to do that, they might yet make themselves into a credible left-wing party in the traditional sense.
We already have real estate taxes that tax wealth. Anything beyond that would be suicidal for any party. Do you plan to tax cars? clothing? boats? Investments, i.e. unrealized income? How would you track that?
Massachusetts taxes cars and boats annually.
My home state of Kentucky also taxes cars. The models used here and elsewhere could be upscaled to a national level
Most property taxes are local, not national. My home state of Kentucky taxes cars but has a much lower fuel tax. This does keep the price of gasoline lower relative to neighboring states. The logistics of such a thing on a national level are indeed pretty daunting, but as I said, Kentucky and some other states already do this so it isn’t as if there aren’t working models to emulate. That might be a decent starting point, as the higher value luxury automobiles driven by the upper class will be taxed at a much higher rate. It functions as a progressive tax without directly putting a tax on productive activity. That’s what income is after all, productive economic activity. In theory, we want as much economic activity as possible. It has never made any sense for the government to raise revenue by taxing the thing that we want to maximize. National sales tax proponents have made similar arguments and I’m sympathetic to that cause as well.
When I say taxing wealth I’m speaking of taxing assessed net worth over a certain threshold rather than individual assets, something Bernie proposed in 2016. Elizabeth Warren had a similar plan in 2020. I admit the logistics of such a thing are indeed daunting, but the tax code is already so complex I can’t imagine it being much worse than what we already have. There’s no way it would work without basically blowing up international finance and erecting serious penalties and barriers for the international transfer of wealth. Taxing the money coming into and going out of American banks into foreign banks, like a financial tariff would be a great way to keep the global aristocrats from simply moving their money to wherever they want to escape taxation. They could do it, but they’d pay the tax on the way out. That’s something we should be doing anyway. Trump won’t touch any of that, but a democratic socialist leaning Democrat might. It would allow the Democrats to one up the Trumpists in terms of standing up for the working class.
I do not anticipate this happening. Bernie is ancient and there’s no obvious successor to his model of a non-racial, non-woke economic leftist. The only Democrats radical enough to support things like this, such as “The Squad”, tend to be equally extreme on environmental and social issues, which limits them to the urban enclaves they inhabit.
All of those goods are already taxed. Buying clothing means paying city and county taxes.
Great post – for demrats its either adapt or die – the US electorate, unlike their german predecessors, rejected o’biden and skamala-fake accent’s national socialism in favour of a more open society. Its really up to Trump and his allies to 1. succeed and 2. stop the o’bama/o’biden axis. Its going to be a hard call. As pre UK where the national socialists have killed using fentanyl, mejicano gangsters, grooming gangs, islamist terror or just plain deaths of despair its hard to see how we could let the likes of schturmer or o’bama rejoin civil society. There is nothing wrong with a social justice driven left wing political party, as long as they accept the fact of a free vote – it is clear that scam-ala and Mr 18% schturmer do not.
Obvs they can’t debate their “ideas” if violent racist hatred is indeed an “idea” – to me its a pathology or a symptom. The “left” national socialists like labour and their german predecessors in the 1930s are simpletons. Negative emotions which we all feel and learn to manage are for these detritus “ideas”. Which they then leverage into hatred – for the same old enemies: the Jew, the Christian (not in the oil-welby or paula venals sense) the business man and ultimatley the average voter who gordon dirtbag brown branded “too stupid to vote”. Well brown is slang for heroin – doesn’t that tell you all you need to know about that particular POS? Also HTF did a violent bullying phone chucking wannabee football thug like braan ever end up near the levers of power?
Trump is already talking about tax cuts—for the rich, like him and his buddy, Elon “don’t you have businesses to attend to?”Musk. This will starve the government, so Musk and Vivek “no I don’t take speed” Ramaswamy can begin to cut the EPA (Are pesticides in my cereal okay?) and FEMA (You can always live in a studio apartment in the rough part of town. Buy a gun.) All of the cuts will, of course, mean that millions of middle class government employees will lose their jobs—and probably their pensions (Working for the common man!!!)Oh, well. (Apologies for the ad hominem attacks. It was just too tempting.)
All of the cuts will, of course, mean that millions of middle class government employees will lose their jobs—and probably their pensions
How so?
Give it time. It’ll happen. Very messily and with much blood on the floor, but it will happen. Has to.
well you haven’t been looking – it’s everywhere – if you’re not still locked into Trump-centric media
It needs more than just two. We need at least a three party system, if not more. The two party system is a relic of the previous two centuries,
I also don’t see influential Democrats opening up to debate.
They largely own the institutional power in America (governmental, regulatory bodies, media, news, tech, Hollywood, academia, medical, most business that kowtow in fear, etc), other than a few notable exceptions. And HR departments that are steeped in post-modernist doctrine (not because they believe in it, but because it has been successful in giving their departments significant C Suite-level power within many institutions) will purge and otherwise keep dissenters in line.
And with such a stranglehold on societal authority, I’d surmise that influential Democrats don’t feel any need to debate anything, especially under the rigid post-modernist dogma that everything is controlled by ‘nurture’ with no nature involved, i.e. truth is relative and can be modified to one’s desire if one has enough money to enable ‘change.’
Thus, power means everything in their world as it defines truth in their post-modern religion. They merely repackage (with current academics’ glittering catchphrases) the ancient tribal brutalism of “might equals right” that enlightened humans relegated to the dustbin of history centuries ago.
Slithering around in institutionalized darkness with their behind-the-scenes power plays allows them to wallow in their confirmation bias without critical thought.
After this last election they may start talking about trimming the edges of their approach with wordplay (‘our institutions and vision are sound, Americans just need to listen harder to understand us better…’), but I highly doubt they’ll descend from their highly-secure institutional thrones to have a debate amongst the hoi polloi. That’s far too close to an enlightenment position (in other words, very risky for them).
In short, their broad positions are now largely built upon “appeal to authority” fallacy.
And because their authorities are not grounded in absolute truth – truth that they deny exists at all and that they denounce as heresy – their authorities are turtles all the way down. Infinite regress.
Not yet, no. But it’s pretty early yet and they’re stunned, even though they shouldn’t be. Give them a chance to impress you, or at least disgust you less.
You also seem to be using Democrat as an exact synonym for wokester or progressive ideologue. It isn’t. Many Democrat voters are religious and non-relativistic. And perhaps you can see that many Republican voters regard absolute truth with extreme cynicism. So does the leader of the party.
I’m more optimistic about Donald Trump right now than I’ve been at any other time since he entered politics. Not only has he already succeeded in restoring neutrality to the federal judiciary after other Republicans including Reagan failed (and thus made America much more democratic in the process) he pleasantly surprised me by picking J.D. Vance as his running mate. (As I put it in my own post-election Substack post: “Until now, Trump’s movement has been hobbled by (1) his lack of an heir and (2) what seems, a lot of the time, to be his lack of a brain…”)
I’m happy that so many of the establishment swamp-critters who kept Trump’s first administration steering in circles so much of the time are not coming back (he’s already promised no role for Haley or Pompeo, thank goodness.) And I’m happy that he’s instead surrounding himself with competent intellectuals with fresh ideas – J.D. Vance, to begin with, and Leonard Leo, and Kevin Roberts, and Elon Musk, etc.
And yet, at the end of the day, there are just too many problems that don’t have political solutions – too many religious “nones,” too many young people who don’t marry or have children, and industrial base that’s declined so badly since its peak in the 1970s that I’m doubtful any political changes can restore it, a country deeply-indebted (and borrowing another $2 trillion every year!) to pay for overdrawn entitlement programs which nobody has any plans for reforming.
So my long-term outlook for the country remains moderately pessimistic – all explained in more detail on my election-week post here:
https://twilightpatriot.substack.com/p/move-over-grover-cleveland
Still, I’m happy the election turned out the way it did, and I feel like the time and money I put into helping Trump win was well spent.
The ‘Party of Destruction’. What better name for that grouplet headed by Keir Starmer and Ed Milliband together with assorted pantomime clowns?
The brilliant advertiser David Ogilvy was also a classicist, so in his book Ogilvy on Advertising he drew a distinction between two famous Greek orators to make a point:
Peggy Noonan was a speechwriter for Presidents Bush (the elder) and Reagan, and now writes for The Wall Street Journal. In her book On Speaking Well she writes:
Advertising executive Jon Steel in his book Perfect Pitch tells this story:
These three vignettes play on a common theme. It’s easy to get lost in the abstract world of ideas and fail to focus on the real world, the one we live in, the only one that counts. The world where actions mean everything and words mean nothing.
As Mary Harrington says in her (as always) polished and persuasive piece, “politics is proverbially the art of the possible.” I take that further. Politics is not principle but pragmatics. Politics is not planning or policy but process. Politics is not competing in a debate of ideas but cooperating in getting things done.
So where politics is concerned, I’m not a fan of books like this one by Kevin Roberts, who writes but doesn’t do. Nor am I a fan of people of words like JD Vance who have never, in business or in government, built a team to get things done. They provide entertainment, and make me think, but they don’t change the world. The doers do that.
I agree with you. If you want to achieve something as a group, only the doers will achieve it. But in doing so, they will upset a lot of people who don’t have 100% faith in the aim of the group. These slower people will be different types of achievers; they will want to do things but will demand constant reassurance that they are doing the right things. So, to achieve something important you need doers and Neil Kinnocks to ensure that everyone is ‘doing’ at the same speed.
As an example, take NetZero. Miliband, arguably, is a doer. He sees NetZero as a religion and nobody can get in the way. Millions of people don’t understand why he is doing this, millions understand but don’t believe, millions believe that he will cause more problems than he will solve. So, he is ‘doing’ something but it won’t be very successful because it will be overturned by somebody. He wouldn’t care because he gets his kicks from ‘doing’. It makes him feel important. But a Kinnock is needed to see the overall picture – that batteries for energy storage will not exist, that people will resist the pylons causing the police to be even more politicised, that thousands will die from cold, that industry and investment will disappear. This is where ‘doers’ fail.
Actually, ideas change the world. The doers you refer to turn these ideas into reality. Each without the other doesn’t work. Mrs Thatcher was a doer. In her handbag were (figuratively and who knows, maybe actually) the ideas that guided her doing. Together they changed the UK and indeed influenced much of the western world.
Actually, actually. She carried a copy of Hayek’s The Constitution of Liberty in her handbag.
When asked what she believed, Thatcher pulled out a copy of Constitution of Liberty, dropped all 400 pages of it on a table, and said, “I believe this” as she rested her hand upon it. Hayeks ideas can still change the world today.
Good main point. But
people of words like JD Vance who have never, in business or in government, built a team to get things done
Vance was reasonably successful and was in essence an apprentice in the VC business. Isn’t that exactly what someone should be doing – learning from the best? He still leans into government control too much, however.
Your point respecting the process to get things done, that is, politics I think is absolutely correct. Debate and policy, however, decide what is to be attempted.
I’ve not read Robert’s book. But I have read the ‘Project 2025’ publication, which has Roman Catholic pro-life perspectives infused throughout. Having said this, ‘Project 2025’ is a fascinating read, much of with which I find myself in agreement. It is particularly interesting [1] for its detailed description of the complex US governmental machine and its current faults, [2] analysis of domestic and foreign policy issues and [3] its evident status as a blueprint for much of what we may expect in the forthcoming Trump administration. If its vision is anything to go by, the plan is to implement radical change that will endure way beyond the next four years with Donald at the helm.
The mandate for leadership: The Conservative promise 2025, with a foreword by Kevin Roberts, may be downloaded in full pdf format at:
https://static.project2025.org/2025_MandateForLeadership_FULL.pdf
Great article from Mary. There are many like Mary’s cabbie friend, perhaps even a majority, of Trump’s voters who know full well exactly who and what he is. He’s been a womanizer, publicity seeking narcissist since pretty much ever. He’s been a real estate salesmen, a celebrity, a reality TV star, and a seller of various kinds of snake oil, hopping from one scheme to another to keep himself wealthy and in the public eye. He’s been doing anything he can to keep people’s attention. We all know this. The few who didn’t already know it in 2016 were well educated. The Democrats ran their campaign on this in 2016, and 2020… and 2024, as if “Orange man bad” was a compelling enough reason to allow the establishment to continue to sell the American people down the river for the sake of short term profits and ‘wealth creation’ in places Americans couldn’t find on a map.
The sad thing is the Democrats actually knew all this. That’s why they didn’t even have much of a platform beyond vague promises to crack down on price gouging and ‘make billionaires pay’ without specifying how exactly. They know their real policies, that is continuing to try to support a global empire, unrestricted free trade, more offshoring, biological males in women’s sports, enforced energy poverty for the sake of ‘climate change’, DEI, affirmative action, and open borders are losing policies. They couldn’t tell the people what they actually intended to do, which is continue the Biden administration’s policy of just enough reform and protectionism to try to preserve a technology advantage over rival powers and to stave off more populism. Most people figured it out anyway.
History is moving forward, though it still boggles my mind that Donald J. Trump could be recorded by history as the man to shove the globalists out the door. I still don’t believe he ever expected to win in 2016. I don’t think he expected to win the primary and I think he expected to beat Hillary even less. I’m not sure he ever even intended to win, but rather to play his unsuccessful candidacy into his usual schemes, more snake oil books, more silly reality shows, maybe even his own media outlet. Once he did win, he had to crawl to Mitch McConnell and the old guard just to pick his staff. That certainly doomed any chance at real populist reform and probably doomed his entire administration. I’ll give credit where credit is due. At least he didn’t make the same mistake twice. This time he has a slew of populist allies from both sides of the aisle behind him. Tulsi, RFK, Musk, and the behind the scenes intellectuals Mary has covered here. Perhaps through his ego or his narcissism or his thin skin, Trump will yet find some creative way to screw up this historic opportunity, but with the momentum and the people he has behind him, this has an entirely different feel to it.
Trump’s political legacy will be less about the man and more about a system so dysfunctional that he became possible. There would be no place for a Trump in a healthy, well-functioning republic and a man like him would not seek office in such a place. But in typical form, the hand-wringers and pants-wetters never consider how Trump came to be and their role in that..
Well said and quite correct.
On one issue I strongly disagree. The US has generally been the reason since 1945 that the world has been safer and wealthier. I think it’s in our US interests to continue in this role. It certainly isn’t empire or colonialism unless the normal meanings of those words are twisted.
I’m not all neocon, but I can’t understand how leaving a power vacuum in Southeast Asia, to be filled by China, or in Southwest Asia, to be filled by Iran, makes either economic or moral sense. Indeed, given modern technology, I prefer that US national defense stretched to a far distance from our shores.
In an ideal world, you’d be right, but in an ideal world, our ruling class wouldn’t have spent the past three decades transferring our manufacturing might to China and other unreliable places. In an ideal world, we wouldn’t have allowed the middle class to decay to the extent it has. In an ideal world, our government wouldn’t have frittered trillions of dollars on pointless wars to ‘spread democracy’ and even more trillions on useless social programs, corporate bailouts, and subsidies for things few people actually want to buy and/or don’t work (green technologies, EVs, etc.) In an ideal world, we wouldn’t have a womanizing, foul-mouthed, snake oil salesman and professional con man as the only alternative to the failed ruling class that gave us all of the above. We’re broke. Like the Soviets before us, we’ve bitten off far more than we can chew and it’s time to spit some of it out. There’s simply no fixing this situation without making some hard choices and choosing what we can afford to keep.
I will agree that we have to hold the line on China in Southeast Asia. They are far and away the greatest threat and they threaten our most critical allies. We can’t fight Russia and police the Middle East at the same time. The US frankly doesn’t need Europe anymore given how deindustrialization is even further down the road to ruin there. The Middle East is a quagmire that should be allowed to deteriorate into the base ethnic and religious conflict zone that it is. We’ve already spent God knows how much money trying to civilize the place and keep the peace between people who hate each other and we’re no closer to having a peaceful Middle East than we were in 2005 or 1985. It’s time to stand back and let those people sort themselves out by killing each other until some sort of order emerges that we can engage with productively. Israel has shown they can take care of themselves. All we have to do is keep selling them weapons. We should place all our efforts where it will do the most good.
This is the Mary Harrington of fond memory, out from the library stacks and windy discourses of academy high brows and sure-footed on the ground where reality is found if you look hard enough. Trump had to claim he knew norhing about Project 2025 because he realized the left, having nothing but racialism garbage and young white single female hysteria in the tool kit, would use it as a target. After claiming the end of democracy loomed, out of work Kamala staffers are being told to their utter fury that “we’ll get ’em next time.” George Stephanopoulos, the pint-sized ABC news anchor and onetime Clinton press secretary, was told in a live panel discussion, “You’re not only a hypocrite, you’re evil.” George looked stunned and the omnipresent Whoopi Goldberg was dumbfounded by the outburst. Both are used to praise and agreement for their progressive viewpoint. “f**k you, George,” said the young person of colour. The media landscape meanwhile is rapidly moving rightward. MSNBC and CNN are for sale, the LA Times is returning to balanced reporting according to its owner, and the WaPo, in subscription free-fall, has instructed its staff they will have to return to five days a week in the office come June. The times they are a-changin’ except for the one in New York City.
Tell you what – I have copied this and will send it back to the author for public self critique in 4 years time – should be interesting! Only I hope her amnesia and “personal truth splaining” isn’t as extreme then as it appears to be now…
In sum, this results in a post-national corporatism that is, he argues, “functionally the same” as “socialism”
It is not just socialism, it is worse, post-national corporatism is whether they realise it or not, a manifesto for Islamism, that is the only ideology that could force the world into submission.
An article based on common sense is a rarity, thanks to the writer Mary Harrington for the start of real comment and hopefully journalistic integrity.
I used to be a Democrat.
The choice this time was: WOKE or COMMON-SENSE.
Everyone has had a gut full of woke.
So this choice was easy.
Mary explores factually what thoughtful people who are working for Trump are actually saying and doing. This is a deep essay, not one to casually read or quickly react to.
This is one of the best opinion pieces Unherd has published.
“Perhaps they’ll even listen to Bernie and propose taxing ‘wealth’ rather than ‘income’. If they’re willing to do that, they might yet make themselves into a credible left-wing party in the traditional sense.”
Quite simply, wealth taxes are insanity writ large. There is no way to tax the wealthy using so-called wealth taxes that leads to anything other than capital flight, and immense efforts to restructure investments so as to avoid the tax.
It’s been tried in Europe, France comes to mind, and been nothing other than a perfect picture postcard of what an unmitigated disaster looks like.
Should Democrats embrace wealth taxes (at other than the existing level of local municipal real estate taxes and federal/state capital gains taxes) expect their complete dissolution forthwith. Recall that the United States’ income tax started out as a 1% tax on all income over $20,000 (about $500,000 in today’s terms). Then consider today’s 6,781 page Federal Tax Code.
Those who oppose wealth taxes will have ample sources to instruct America’s homeowners how it all starts with the camel’s nose under the tent flap. Everyone of them will think about their aggregate $49.6 Trillion in real estate wealth, and wonder when the Democrats will be coming for it.
All that being written, I found Ms. Harrington’s essay a thoughtful, well constructed summary that makes we wish to learn more.
The problem with making sure that the “grabbers” of this world pay for public services – roads, schools, hospitals, “defence” – is that any solution has to be international. All big countries have to be in on it, and the little tax havens like the Cayman Islands have to be dealt with.
After the rejection of Marxism, This is what Cultural Marxism, spawned out of the Frankfurt School, was designed to destroy, “the permanent things”: “the natural family, the importance of faith, the necessity of strong community ties, the dignity of work, and the common (national) good.”
I dislike their attitude towards abortion and contraception, not because I believe in choice but because those who cannot afford children are likely to bring up poorly behaved children who are net burdens to tne taxpayer. I do hope though that their plans to deport 20 million illegals are successful.
The abortion obsession is interesting. At least you see that reforming immigration is a good thing.
One of the features of the last fifty years has been the huge expansion of the underclass. The women breed to get money. They space their children out so they don’t have to work. They rely on income streams generated by crime, and their progeny know no different. These people are parasites on the body of the state.They may be uneducated, but they know how to work the system. Hence endless diagnoses of ADHD etc.
That is an offensive post.
Which country are you talking about?
I’d rather see Maggie’s fire stamped out completely. There is nothing of tradition or family oriented policy in ruthless neoliberalism.
When you have enjoyed the relative hegemony over institutions for as long as the left has, any deviation from that is “far right,” a term so overused as to be meaningless.
it’s fundamentally un-conservative to propose socially engineering other societies, let alone at gunpoint. ——> Well, yes. It used to be un-liberal to do that, too, but how things change when political and personal self-interest outweigh the national interest. Our long history of meddling has not necessarily been successful, but DC is one of those places where seldom is there a price for failure, so people keep doing the same things and expecting different results.
Most discussions of the result of the USA 2024 national election reflect an attempt to be dramatic. Thus, the facts that the Democrats got about half the popular vote for President and have about half he seats in both houses of the US parliament are ignored. In just two years, the woke-ist Democrats might control both houses of the US legislature. In the USA, the mass media can still persuade large proportions of voters to vote against their own policy preferences. Democrats are still making money off of foolish donors. The USA will have a counter-revolution when & only when the woke mass media lose their audiences.
It all sounds reasonable to this 74 year old life long Dem voter, who voted for Trump x 3. But that natural family bit I saw discussed on a podcast, and it sounded like “non-natural “ families are supposed to expect what from him?
I am more optimistic about Donald Trump right now than I was at any previous point in his political career.
For much of his first term, he let himself get steered in circles by an administration full of establishment swamp critters who had resented his rise in the first place. Now, those people are mostly gone (I was quite pleased when I saw a few days ago that he had promised not to appoint Haley or Pompeo to any positions). Also, he succeeded at getting an originalist majority in the Supreme Court (thereby making America a genuine democracy for the first time in about 50 years). Also I was very pleased with the pick of J.D. Vance for VP; as I put it into my own post-election substack post: “Until now, Trump’s movement has been hobbled by (1) his lack of an heir and (2) what seems, a lot of the time, to be his lack of a brain…”
Basically, intellectuals like Vance, Roberts himself, Leonard Leo, and Elon Musk have a good chance of directing Trump’s energies in more useful ways the second time around.
Still, there are a lot of reasons to be pessimistic about America’s long-term future. Too many religious “nones,” too many young people who don’t marry or have children, an industrial base that’s decline so far since its peak in the 1970s that it’s doubtful if any political program can restore it, a nation hugely indebted (and adding $2 trillion/year!) to pay for entitled programs that nobody has any plans to reform. I am not expecting to see political solutions to any of these problems, as I explained in detail at my own election-week post:
https://twilightpatriot.substack.com/p/move-over-grover-cleveland
That said, despite my moderate pessimism about the long-term future, I’m still very happy with the election outcome, and I feel like the time and money I put toward helping re-elect Trump was well-spent.
First time I have ever heard Elon Musk described as an “intellectual”. Clever he may be, intellectual he is not.
How do you define an intellectual, which to some has a negative connotation? I prefer brilliant and successful.
“Intellectual” implies someone well read and articulate. People can be “brilliant” without being in any way articulate. People can be “successful” without even being clever.
I’d go for “visionary” over “intellectual”.
Musk certainly isn’t an orator, I find him quite difficult to listen to. Maybe it’s because his mind is working so fast, always six steps ahead, that he can’t get the thoughts out of his mouth in fast enough and it all becomes a bit of a jumble.
Musk is extra-ordinarily intelligent as well.
He bought the Teslas from two visionary guys.
An intellectual is someone who is not clever but thinks they are
What’s weird is all the same people who believe he is brilliant on this site are almost all against EVs, mandates, and support the fossil fuels industry, go figure that one out.
Religious ” nons” is a good thing. It implies higher intelligence.
It’s a mixed bag. Better to have some rooting in traditional morals, e.g. the Ten commandments, than in DEI and other virtue-signalling nonsense. Not everyone is capable of being a competent atheist and understanding where morals come from.
By your logic, Isaac Newton and a multitude of others was a dummy.
The “originalist” Justices are not originalist, because they know very little history. For example, Alito claimed that abortion was illegal in the 18th Century. Wrong. Puritan women and Colonial women could have abortions up until quickening (when the women begins to show, about four to five months). The Founding Fathers knew this. Alito didn’t.
All very interesting, but whenever I see the word “Catholic” mentioned in a political context, I cringe.
MM, ask yourself why.
The Author senses it and gives glimmers she appreciates what’s coming, but she’s reticent to fully admit it – Trump and Musk just represent a different type of Kleptocracy and one that has been canny enough to get the ‘little guy’ temporarily onside to help grab the levers of power.
The plundering of a Nation will continue. The ‘little guy’ will get the bone of some deportations and the schtick about swamp draining and Govt waste whilst the fleecing is further camouflaged with tech bros assistance. The problem for the Author is she knows this but like so many she’s not called it out because revenge against the woke-ist and liberals meant an alliance with darker forces considered expedient until, oh sh*t what’ve we done…
Face it JW. The plan didn’t work. It won’t work here either. In the end the grafters will defeat the grifters here as well. It took a while for people to spot the scam, but the wind has changed now.
All the Left has to do is drop DEI and protect the borders so why won’t they do that, it’s because it’s an ideological pursuit aided by undemocratic, billionaire funded NGOs.
As democracy is perfected, the office of the President represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day, the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last, and the White House will be occupied by a downright fool and a complete narcissistic moron.
H.L. Mencken
JULY 1920
Yes, and he had two terms and is now retired and living in Martha’s Vineyard or Chicago.
Nope. Obama keeps a large mansion in Georgetown. He is anything but retired. And don’t forget about his Hawaiian estate
The Obama mansion is in Kalorama, not Georgetown. (I’ve picked a nit here, I know.)
Obama has suddenly become very quiet….
Termites destroying a home are very quiet as well.
“Democracy” defined as in “Save Our Democracy”?
The “plain folks” perhaps those so desperate to remain on or achieve access to be fully supported by an eye-popping variety of government handouts, that contribute absolutely nothing?
Lastly, “…and the White House will be occupied by a downright fool (*)and(*) a complete narcissistic moron.” Given November 2020 yielded us Obama 3; Biden the fool, Obama the narcissistic moron?
“…As a Brit, citizen of Schrödinger’s 51st state, I don’t get to vote…’
Look, the UK should apply to formally become the 51st, 52nd, 53rd and 54th states and be done with. And if the other home nations are not keen, they can go their own way, or the EU way or whatever; England can join as the 51st state on its own. And, at this point to be honest, I’m only half joking – even less than half perhaps. I’m sure the US has no plans to make the consumption of chlorinated chicken compulsory, but even if they did, the effects don’t seem at all bad. I mean, David Lammy had some recently and he’s gone all MAGA. And I’m all up for MEGA within MAGA. But if that does not appeal, can we at least join NAFTA?
The US would never accept you. The political division makes that impossible. One side or the other or even both would conclude you might benefit the other side and threaten their ability to win national elections and control the House/Senate. In procedural terms, it’s very hard for a new state to gain admission to the union and very easy for the existing states to play goalie and keep people out. Adding states would be difficult even in better political times. It’s laughably impossible in our current environment. Ask Puerto Rico and the District of Columbia about this. If you want to join the United States, come back twenty years ago.
Mary, you are a master of final sentences.
I’ve read two biographies of Mahler and never ran across that memorable quote. Wherever did you find it?
Dear Mary, thank you!!!
Great article – i hope, as do many, that the axis of political theory moves toward reason and tolerance via Trump. The left are now merely national socialists or islamo-marxists and deserve no further involvement in the civic square ( beyond gaol, or execution where they clearly advocate terrorism) – careful schturmer!
I will reserve judgement on Trump until we know if his threats of criminal action against newspapers, tv channels and individuals who have offended him are just bluster or real
Will,
If you are referring to his statement regarding free dpeech and dismantling the censorship industry, how can any reasonable person possibly see that as problematic?
Excellent article.
What’s going on with the comments?
There appears to be a hierarchy, yet with zero points awarded to everyone …?
Some other commentators here are discussing taxing assets, which is illegal for the federal government in the USA. I’m curious what the taxation situation is in the UK, but either way, at least in the USA, we have loopholes in the federal income tax system consisting of tax spending to restructure society and re-direct the economy. (Perhaps the same situation exists in the UK). Hence, federal policy, and following federal policy lower levels of governments policy also, puts too little focus on revenue and debt goes out of control every fiscal year. How about cutting back on using the tax code to favor or disfavor parts of the economy or to favor or disfavor social programs?
I think that is a most fascinating article that goes wider than the simple Republican-Democrat divide so well exemplified in the comments. A return to family-based policies could strike a chord in many Western countries. One of the most difficult issues is how we can take the good of the Internet, home working etc, technology innovation etc, without also have to endure its less appealing aspects, of which there are many, not least vast monopolies and the awfulness of much of social media. As Harrington suggests, it’s a conundrum that Roberts has yet to resolve.
Overall, one of the most interesting articles I have read on Unherd for a long time.
Concerning is the Roman Catholic Conservatism that has engulfed and snuffed out Reformed Protestant American Liberty (and the modern US conservative movement since 1954 via Bill Buckley) that built the USA.
Catholicism is a disaster politically economically and morally everywhere it is used as a guide. See French Revolution, the rise of Socialism and Communism, and Latin and South America.
There are many reasons why Founding Fathers quarantined it. They wanted a country that worked.
This is a brilliant article, whose points I agree with, but which also speaks with its own hidden fire. My deepest thanks to the author. I feel smarter having been the beneficiary of her written word.
At 3 am, this dose of MH surely induced slumber. I hope she gets back to writing about perversion soon!
Wow, you have sure drunk the Kool-aid.
Quite interesting how, yet again, Trump’s followers are eager and excited at the thought of all those things that are getting burned and destroyed, with much less attention to how something might be built to replace them. But OK, at least now I know where you stand, next time I might feel tempted to trust your judgement.
Not getting this so-called new vision. Most of it is just ranting against this or that imagined oppressor. I have followed Trumpism closely since 2015 and I can detect little or no coherent plan. I am optimistic because Trump has good instincts, because he loves his country, because he may be the only one in government who understands that the people and commerce will invent the future. But all this fulminating from this guy and Vance, etc.just reeks of more industrial policy, doomed to fail.
I can’t help thinking, and hoping, that a solid and sensible population exists in the West. Why do we have such crap political players, right, left and centre. Regarding Trump; there are reasons to understand why he was elected but how is it the great Republic can sporn a crackpot? Surely, in a country of 345 million people there must many potential, sane leadership contenders!
“… how is it the great Republic can sporn a crackpot? Surely, in a country of 345 million people there must many potential, sane leadership contenders!”
Because the institutions of our country are so utterly infected by progressivism it takes an extreme personality to overwhelm them. Trump, for all his obvious faults, is the battering ram. When the castle walls are breached the “reasonable people” can pour into the institutions and start to reestablish normalcy.
Populist leaders kinda need to be disruptors. If you look at all the populists around the world right now – and there are lots – a bunch of them have bombastic personalities.
Very well put.
“Why do we have such crap political players, right, left and centre“. That’s who we elect.
Trump is not a cause; he is a symptom of a dysfunctional republic. If things were healthy and normal, there would be no place for such a candidate and he would see no need to seek office.
Just perhaps he is not a symptom but rather the cure. It is looking more and more likely that Obama is the symptom. Why is he still in Washington, DC?
America just fired the senile crackpot and his enablers/controllers. Please do try to keep up. Americans aren’t sitting still for an invasion of the nation
You have been listening to and reading too much MSM; try expanding and perhaps listen to Joe Rogan, Tucker Carlson etc for some enlightened perspectives.
Pres. Trump has been in power before!
The institutionalising of a two-party system cannot help here. It’s been pretty bad here in the UK in my lifetime, but at least we have, for example, an independent Bounday Commission drawing the electoral districts. I think I am right in saying that party influence over boundaries exits in the USA, leading to gerrymandering. Also, money seems to talk even more in electoral campaings in the USA.
OMG. I am a senior liberal/leftie, retired academic who has always prided myself on listening to opposing opinions. But this article and following comments makes me think that I have been way too generous. And Mary, I always knew you were a weird feminist, but this column really takes the cake. What planet do you people live on?
Welcome to Trump world 2.0
Judy, no. Just way too uncommitted to freedom