Interesting things are happening on the Right, such as a movement to take what’s seen as the positive elements of Trumpism to formulate a new conservatism opposed to both the neoliberal consensus founded by Ronald Reagan and free-market fundamentalism.
Julius Krein, thirty-something founder and editor of American Affairs, promotes a kind of economic nationalism he calls communitarian conservatism. It’s built around the idea of “grounding the economy in society”—as in, the structures and relationships of a stable, functioning community (he's vague on this point, maybe by design)—rather than the ideology of think-tank intellectuals.
This includes more government intervention in some situations. Regulation is not always bad, he says, if balanced by strong democratic institutions and accountability. He’s highly critical of free trade.
Paraphrasing Krein: the Right reflexively celebrates capitalism without thinking of how modern capitalism is different from Adam Smith or the founding fathers, or how “corporate cartels” are harmful to classical free-market principals.
Krein even hints that socialized healthcare may be an inevitability: “The idea that the only health care is free market health care is basically impossible and doesn’t make any sense.”
But he’s no Bernie Sanders in a suit. The racism and xenophobia of Trumpism clearly does not bother him. He is generally dismissive of such concerns or even sympathetic where he sees the result as helping to define society and strengthen its boundaries.
This is where you start to get the unsettling feeling that this vision, an intellectual projection of values at the core of Jacksonian communalism, could slide into something like National Socialism.
This is where you start to get the unsettling feeling that this vision, an intellectual projection of values at the core of Jacksonian communalism, could slide into something like National Socialism.
Klein outlines his views in a podcast from Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School. It's worth a listen for anyone interested in trends across the political spectrum.
http://wws.princeton.edu/news-and-events/news/item/politics-polls-35-future-conservatism-trump-era
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