Mapping the Political Moment

There are three key issues defining the current political moment.

The first two issues are familiar to many.

First, there is the question of whether or not governments can and should use the power of the state (or the magistrate, if you want to use an older term) to regulate markets and provide for support for workers for the sake of the common life of the nation and, particularly, for the protection and advancement of the poor. Those who say that governments can use their power in this way belong to the political left. Those who deny the legitimacy of such things, for whatever reason, would belong to the right.

Note: The above is a claim about government's role in lifting up the poor, not about the status of the poor themselves. The primary reason many on the right are on the right is not because they are unconcerned with the poor, but because they believe that government lacks the competence to regulate markets effectively and their attempts to do so often harm the poor. So they are on the right because they see the right as offering the best means of aiding the poor. We must distinguish between 'doctrines' and 'policies' in our political analysis. Doctrines are articles of political belief, such as "the just society lifts up the poor." Policies are the specific mechanisms used to realize doctrines.

Second, there is the question of how one relates to tradition and the possibilities of what can be achieved politically. If one tends to be more modest in one's political aspirations and deferential to custom and tradition, one is a conservative. One who is more confident about what can be achieved politically and is less deferential to tradition is a progressive. At the extreme end of progressivism one finds what Abraham Kuyper referred to as "the revolution," by which he meant a kind of extreme political voluntarism in which politics, common life, and society are essentially whatever the government says they are. In practice, "the revolution" is a short hand for "arbitrary power," as Groen Van Prinsterer explains in his book Unbelief and Revolution. Many progressives are, at bottom, revolutionaries.

As I have said, these two divisions are familiar to us and usually in the years since Reagan we have tended to aggregate the two questions, such that conservatives are always also right wing and progressives are always also left wing. So, in practice, we have had a kind of political map that looks like this:

This kind of sorting isn't altogether surprising: The instinct toward modesty and deference to custom will often also mean a modesty about government's ability to effectively regulate markets and direct capital.

Likewise, a greater degree of optimism about government's capacity has tended also to make one less deferential to custom and more willing to attempt complex tasks of social engineering via political means. So typically we have tended to think of "right wing" and "conservative" as being synonymous and we have done the same with "left wing" and "progressive."

That being said, if you expand your political history beyond the post Cold War years and stretch back further, it is possible to find alternatives to these two dominant paradigms.

Why the Old Model Broke

Abraham Kuyper was very much not a progressive, as already noted. And yet he was strongly in favor of organized labor and could sound rather left wing when talking about economics, even as he loudly opposed progressivism. James Bratt has documented much of this in his biography of the man. It was not that Kuyper was anti-capitalist, but, like many other Christians of his time, he seemed to believe that both big government and big business can trample common life and so he thought we needed ways of reining in the power of both.

Kuyper's example, then, suggests that one can be both conservative and not necessarily right wing. One could argue that Kuyper was, in fact, a kind of "left wing conservative," if by that one means a communitarian conservative who thinks the government can intervene in markets with the goal of protecting workers and aiding the poor.

One could make a similar argument for the author of these words:

The obligation to provide unemployment benefits, that is to say, the duty to make suitable grants indispensable for the subsistence of unemployed workers and their families, is a duty springing from the fundamental principle of the moral order in this sphere, namely the principle of the common use of goods or, to put it in another and still simpler way, the right to life and subsistence.

Did you catch that? Provision for the unemployed and their families is "a duty" that comes from "the fundamental principle of the moral order." Such a claim actually goes beyond merely supporting organized labor, as Kuyper did. It suggests a quite strong belief in wealth redistribution in the form of unemployment benefits aimed at providing for families when income earners are in between jobs. The author of those words is Pope St John Paul II.

In fact, one could argue that a great deal of Christian social teaching over the past 100 years, whether coming from the Black church, Rome, or key Protestant thinkers like Niebuhr, Brunner, Kuyper, or Bavinck, is a sort of "left wing conservatism." It is not at all Marxist, but it also is not really in line with the Austrian school of economics. One can think the left wing conservatives were wrong about this, of course. I am not trying to prove who is correct here. I am merely noting that there is a significant tradition of Christian social thought over the past century that is undoubtedly orthodox, not 'progressive' at all, and yet also not really part of the political right as it is generally defined either.

Meanwhile, the ascent of the Tech Right as well as the Barstool Right provides us with two examples of movements that are both plainly right wing and also not at all interested in preserving custom or tradition. So both of these groups could, in their own ways, be described as the illiberal right or as "right wing progressives." Indeed, Trump administration staffer N. S. Lyons has used that very term to describe these movements.

In other words, the old simplistic schema doesn't actually work both because it excludes left wing conservatism, and, therefore, a great deal of Christian social teaching and it also excludes the newly emergent right wing progressivism of the Trump era American right.

So one could actually argue for this as a more accurate mapping of our political moment:

The third question is newer and is a key factor in explaining the confusion of our standard political disputes. That question is the issue of managerialism or bureaucracy. Managerialism might be best understood as the name for the social order that is governed via bureaucracy. Bureaucracy, meanwhile, is essentially a term for a social order that is organized and defined by its relationship to paperwork. (Myles Werntz has a helpful piece on bureaucracy in the archives if you're looking for a good starting point.)

One way of getting at the problem more tangibly might be to use an illustration from my 20s: After college I moved into a small bungalow that I shared with a friend from college and our landlord, who when I moved in was still living in the house, though he was planning to move to be closer to his girlfriend who was in grad school out of state. Our roommate was an insurance claims adjustor and for him that role wasn't so much a profession as it was a way of life.

So, for example, he wanted all three of us to have a chart we kept in the home that listed the chores each of us would do throughout the week which we could mark when we had completed our chores. He was also deeply concerned that the work be split up equitably between all three of us, and so he sometimes would talk about timing how long it took us to do the chores just to make sure the arrangements were fair. This was, in its own way, quite generous of him, of course, given that he was the property owner and also had a more demanding job than either of us—he could have structured the relationship otherwise and we would have had to accept it. And yet even so this generosity is a very particular kind of generosity and understanding that is important.

After he moved out, this entire system basically disappeared overnight. My roommate and I reasoned that we were friends, we knew and trusted each other, and we knew what needed to be done to keep the home clean. So we would each agree to do our part, trust that what needed to get done would get done, and that over time the amount of work done would even out.

The first system for organizing the work we all had to do was bureaucratic. The second was not. The first system was built on paperwork and calculation and could guarantee a high degree of organization if it was stuck to, though it also would erode relational connection over time as the chart became a stand-in for relationship. The second system was built on trust and friendship and was not particularly organized or scalable, as they say, but it did allow our home to feel like a joint endeavor we shared with each other rather than a work responsibility we checked off our to-do list each week.

If you take that basic framework and ratchet it up to the level of political community, you essentially have the managerialism divide. On the one hand, supporters of the bureaucratic system value objectivity and calculability as social goods which promote efficiency across a society. On the other hand, supporters of the trust-based system value the informality and relational connections that tend to develop organically over time, producing stronger collective bonds than can be generated via paperwork and directives.

The question of managerialism is what has so scrambled our political coalitions. Left wing progressives and right wing conservatives tend to share an affinity for bureaucracy. The left wing bureaucrats tend to arise in large government endeavors, of course, whereas right wing bureaucracy is more likely to be seen in large commercial endeavors whose owners are keen to maximize efficiency in order to maximize profitability. You could call it "public bureaucracy" and "private bureaucracy," if you like. (Some have referred to the power of private bureaucracies as "private government," in fact.)

On the other hand, left wing conservatives and right wing progressives tend to be more hostile to bureaucracy because they see it as an obstacle to their own political projects.

For left wing conservatives, bureaucracy is resented because bureaucracies are notoriously bad at recognizing social goods that cannot be summarized on a spreadsheet. Left wing conservatives thus dislike bureaucracy because virtually every political good they care about is too abstract and relationally defined to be summarized or quantified in ways that can make it legible to a bureaucracy. To better understand this, read the entire corpus of Wendell Berry or, perhaps, just review the second to last chapter in Tolkien's The Return of the King, 'The Scouring of the Shire.' 

Right wing progressives, meanwhile, resent bureaucracy because they see it as "red tape," a kind of short hand for any process, rule, or organizational method that gets in the way of the naturally gifted or superior being able to do what they want. For a Barstool Right Progressive, bureaucracy is bad because it gets used by progressive HR Karens to moralize and scold people needlessly. Put crassly, the Barstool Right dislikes bureaucracy because it prevents dudes from being dudes.

For Tech Right Progressives, bureaucracy is bad because it prevents Great Men like Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos from becoming the titans of industry that they ought to become as they help guide us into the future. I would also argue here that true Christian nationalists are right wing progressives. But for them the point is not to protect the right of men to be beer swilling frat boys or the rights of Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos to do whatever they like. For them, natural hierarchy is the central concern and all three other quadrants are objectionable because they in some way curtail or limit the ability of the naturally superior to assert themselves. Right wing conservatism is objectionable because it gives markets power over families. Left wing progressivism is objectionable because it rejects nature altogether. Left wing conservatism is objectionable because it is insufficiently attuned to natural hierarchy and tends to be far too egalitarian in its sensibilities, which means, in their understanding, that grace is intruding on nature.

This ostensibly Christian variety of right wing progressive hates bureaucracy because they see it as a form of assault against natural hierarchy by constructing a power—managerialism and the regime of paperwork—that undermines the natural affinities and natural hierarchies that exist in nature.

The New Model in 2028

Donald Trump's unique ability to disrupt our politics rests in his ability to appeal to three of the four quadrants in our revised map above: Because of his highly informal and rambling speaking style and his disdain for HR, he could appeal to the two anti-bureaucratic quadrants. But because he is also a businessman and entrepreneur and can speak in quite lofty terms about the power of competition and markets, he also is liked by many conventional right wing conservatives.

That being said, it is unlikely that whoever comes after Trump will be able to maintain that coalition. So the 2028 elections figure to be highly interesting because the old flattened one-axis political map is shattered but every election we've had to this point since it was shattered has been defined in one way or another by the unique figure that is Donald Trump. Remove Trump and now we still have the same political map—with right wing progressives and left wing conservatives added to the mix and a deep anti-managerial tendency in many voters—but we no longer have the figure that could unite both those new blocks while retaining one of the old as Trump at least somewhat managed to do.  There are a couple possible outcomes that I can see.

First, it is possible that in 2028 everyone discovers the power of inertia and, in the absence of a singular figure like Trump, people retreat to their corners and the old single axis model reasserts itself and we once again see right wing conservatives going against left wing progressives.

That said, I think there are reasons the pre-Trump status quo will not simply reassert itself in this way. That single-axis model is largely a vestige of the late Cold War and post-Cold War era—an era defined by a generally pro-democratic global political atmosphere, by a single great political power, by free trade across national borders, and by broad economic prosperity. All of those conditions are now either gone or much weaker than they were prior to Trump. Many around the world are quite open to illiberal political visions. We plainly no longer live in a unipolar world. The reassertion of nationalist political ideologies as well as heightened anxieties about immigration will both work to undermine global free trade. The economic picture is also much murkier.

This, then, creates a second possibility, which is more interesting, probably also far more dangerous, and, I fear, much more likely: That America's two entrenched parties will have to fight and work to build coalitions out of the four dominant blocs in American politics.

At present, Democrats have a monopoly on the left wing progressive quadrant, basically no appeal in either right wing space, and rapidly diminishing appeal with left wing conservatives. (The classic left wing conservative constituencies, of course, will be Afro-Americans, Hispanics, and working-class whites—all groups that have drifted significantly to the right in the Trump era.) The defining problem for Democrats going forward will be how to appeal to anyone outside the left wing progressive space. Appealing to anyone on the right is likely to be quite difficult, but if they could regain their once strong position amongst left wing conservatives, that would at least make them more competitive. That said, it seems highly unlikely to me that Democratic leadership will do what is required to win those voters back.

Republicans, meanwhile, have a natural advantage in that they can successfully appeal to three of the four quadrants. However, there is likely to be trouble as well for whoever emerges from the next Republican primary: J. D. Vance, for example, will play very well with right wing progressives. Indeed he is in many ways the quintessential right wing progressive politician. He has strong ties to Peter Thiel, but also is Roman Catholic and friendly to many Christian nationalists. His frequently vulgar and highly online persona also gives him great appeal to the Barstool Right.

That being said, Vance's brand of Trumpism is far more noxious to right wing conservatives than Trump's has been, and I expect Vance to have virtually limited appeal to the left wing conservatives. So there are a significant number of Trump voters who would strongly prefer someone other than Vance. For this reason, it would not be at all a surprise if Marco Rubio, Tom Cotton, or a relatively successful Republican governor like Spencer Cox, Ron DeSantis, or Glenn Youngkin made a significant push for the GOP nomination in 2028.

The New Model Later On

Finally, there is a deeper problem that is implied by this particular mapping of our political moment. It is actually quite difficult to identify what common objects of love might unite people across distinct blocs.

There is very little that remains to unite right wing conservatives and right wing progressives, as we are seeing play out right now. 

One can see the divide between right wing progressives and right wing conservatives in the reaction to the Politico piece documenting racist and pro-Nazi messaging in private group chats amongst 20- and 30-something Republican staffers. You can observe the same divide in the reaction to Tucker Carlson hosting the anti-semitic podcaster Nicholas Fuentes on his show.

This is how Daily Wire founder Ben Shapiro responded to Carlson and Fuentes:

Now compare that with the reaction of people like Matt Walsh, who works for Shapiro, and Adrian Vermeule and the current Vice President of the United States. All of them have refused to frankly and simply condemn such speech, claiming instead that critiques of their fellow right wingers ultimately weakens their cause and makes them more likely to lose. The unspoken conclusion is that such speech should be tolerated, if not encouraged, for the sake of electoral success. The events of the past two weeks have made it plain that right wing conservatives like Shapiro and right wing progressives like Carlson cannot go on existing in the same coalition, unless one side or the other changes in quite dramatic and unlikely ways. I could be wrong, but I suspect that the energy (and the money) on the American right is largely with the right wing progressives—and the outcome of this will be the marginalization of figures like Shapiro.

Left wing conservatives, meanwhile, are scattered, unorganized, and lack vision—which means they are not necessarily an attractive voting bloc for Democrats to court anyway. In theory, the left wing conservative movement could include many Catholics (including the current occupant of the chair of St Peter), some white evangelicals, and much of the Black church and various Hispanic Christian communities. But there are significant barriers to building a coalition out of those disparate and divided groups, and even greater barriers to creating a political coalition that includes all of them and figures like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Zohran Mamdani, as Ezra Klein thinks must be done. Indeed Mamdani's triumph in the NYC mayoral race will likely be interpreted by many on the left as proof that they should lean even more into the left-wing progressive space which is a catastrophic error on the national level, but one the Democrats have already committed and are likely to go on committing.

The best chance we have here—and I don't rate it especially highly but it's the best we have, I fear—is that right wing and left wing conservatives would recognize that their economic differences are negotiable whereas their shared opposition to arbitrary power and their shared political modesty are both immensely important in our current moment.

There are two reasons this is going to be difficult:

First, it will require both left wing and right wing conservatives to recognize that the chief political danger in our moment is arbitrary power. While both groups have the resources within their traditions to see how profoundly dangerous arbitrary power is, I wonder if the anxiety generated by digital media around other issues will prevent both blocs from recognizing their common cause on this issue.

Second, it is possible that the natural gravity of our current cultural moment—a highly complex world driven by radical technological innovation that enables quite alarming and intrusive abuses of power and that is carried out by largely unaccountable principalities and powers—will push us all to embrace arbitrary power and a very hard friend/enemy distinction as a way of coping with the sheer complexity, unknowability, and danger of our world. If so and if those conditions continue long term, it will eventually erase the rule of law from our political lives. 

If that is what happens, then it is hard to see how a democratic liberal society under the rule of law can long endure. If power is entirely arbitrary, then the norms and processes that shape and define democratic life will die. Or that, at least, is what I fear.

And yet there is also this:

We do not have the right to ask the question of whether we will succeed or not. The only question we have the right to ask is 'what's the right thing to do?'

If we should fail, I hope that we will fail while persisting in the good till the end. But, perhaps, we might not fail.

Who can say?

There is but One who can—and thankfully we know that his judgments are true and righteous altogether.

So while we await the disclosure of his particular will for us, both as individuals and as a common people, and while we seek to love our country, even in its disorder and violence and chaos, we can do no better than to say what Lincoln said 160 years ago when he invoked those same words about the justice of God's judgments:

With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation's wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan—to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace, among ourselves, and with all nations.