Friends of PoMoCon know that I admire & support Chris Rufo’s activism in defense of the American way of life. I’ll interview him for PoMoCon, to get to some of the issues we discuss in our various private & public chats on the “right,” since the modern audience is so fragmented that it’s hard to state anything “for the record.” Rufo, in short, is someone you should follow if you’re interested in restoring self-gov’t. I reviewed his tract for the times, America’s Cultural Revolution, in that spirit for my friends at Law & Liberty. Here’s the intro—read the whole thing for an introduction to my agreement & disagreement:
Christopher Rufo is a practical man, unlike most of the angry conservatives & other right-wing figures vying for public attention. Rufo pays attention to public opinion & to legislation, he has achieved certain successes that give conservatives confidence & progressives pause; he also makes it easier to understand how to deal with CRT &, more broadly, woke issues. He is now even trying to help in higher education, serving on the board of trustees of the New College in Florida, appointed by Gov. Ron DeSantis. Rufo’s not yet 39—living proof that a young man can still succeed in public life in America!
America’s Cultural Revolution: How The Radical Left Conquered Everything helps us understand his political activity, his public spirit, & his success. It’s a big success & quickly reached #1 on Amazon. What is the news Rufo brings to American conservatives & other people scared of “The Great Awokening”? As the title suggests, he follows the Gramscian idea of a “long march through the institutions” as the explanation of the major transformations in American life. Not Marxist economic analysis focusing on class, but a cultural takeover of public life by a Leninist “vanguard,” though one comprising students & mobs, not “the proletariat.”
The “cultural Marxism” thesis is probably the only intellectual conceit that has popular support in conservative America, & Rufo is the first conservative activist to say, yes, the left became “tenured radicals,” & we should now do it, too, let them see how they like it. He acts on the idea of taking the fight to the radicals, which appeals to the “tit for tat” demand of justice, & seems to prove that it works. He also helpfully articulates a democratic fight against a foreign oligarchy, & what’s more all-American than that?
Again, read the review. I tried to explain in it the enormous gulf that separates things that seem more or less neighbors, political activity, including the work of the press to let the people know what’s happening in American gov’t & other elite institutions, to form opinion about what freedom demands—&, on the other hand, scholarship about politics, which requires a remarkable distance from the day’s concerns, since it is very difficult to understand even the recent past.
The major mistake people in our times make is to mix education with activism—everyone does it, every man his own politician, as well as historian &, why not, philosopher! To state the problem is to see how funny & how nutty we have become, thinking that theories are weapons we can reach out & grab, the better to wield against our opponents in the hurry of the social media or televised drama, which is not even concrete action. Education can come before or, more typically, after activism, but not when men listen above all to the passionate desire for revenge against those who slight them or harm them.
The obvious way out of this problem is to restore respect for deeds as opposed to speeches, “theories.” One could work to this conclusion in a long philosophical argument, but here it’s not necessary. Rufo is an admirer, as I am, of Leo Strauss, the greatest 20th c. scholar on political philosophy—an example of a man who dedicated his entire adult life, more than half a century, to the study of the philosophers, & taught many generations of students in the process, but who didn’t go around politicking. Being a teacher is a deed, obviously enough. Being an activist, too, but a distinctly different deed.
It’s difficult to restore respect for deeds now, because it is difficult to restore respect for the obvious, life as we experience it, which is the basis for all our doings—our preference for theories, abstractions, wars of words, almost always gets in the way. Rufo understands better than most conservatives that our political thinking is oriented to action, we need better judgment to get better results; it’s not for the sake of getting jobs in think tanks or publishing or what have you, but for a public purpose visible in changing laws, political platforms on which we run elections, institutions, appointments, & regulations. To go on from that thought leads us to the conclusion that much less influence should be ascribed to intellectuals in our affairs & much less respect allowed to any abstract theories.
Also read the Mahoney review:
https://americanmind.org/salvo/refusing-the-great-refusal/?fbclid=IwAR3wOSh4jD-a-NYxZU4lAFfowR7qmVsKVLANhBfFgnFZ_Uyzg5HTeZRB55M
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=90apd-BBE7w