The Danger of Importing Leftist Tribalism Into Republican Politics - The American Spectator | USA News and Politics
The Danger of Importing Leftist Tribalism Into Republican Politics
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I was listening to a conservative talk radio broadcast recently — I believe it important to read, listen, and view news and information across formats, along the ideological spectrum — and found myself atypically drawn to the discussion.

The show’s host and guest were discussing a former Trump administration official (now a media personality) who had engaged in the apparent heresy of insufficiently disclosing the rationale for her less than full-throated support for the former president in his 2024 candidacy for the White House.

The guest explained the necessity — nay, the responsibility — of erstwhile Trump supporters (at least among those who are public figures) to fully explicate why they might now be supporting Ron DeSantis or some other Republican candidate for the presidency. The overall tone of the commentary, tinged with the bile of apostasy and betrayal, was as notable as its substance.

As I listened, it occurred to me that on any objective measure, there would likely be a roughly 90 percent policy overlap between a second Trump term and a prospective DeSantis administration. Of course, candidates don’t seek to distinguish themselves — nor does the electorate vote — solely on the basis of ideology. What the radio exchange starkly exposed is that in our current political climate, tribalism supersedes all else: not only ideology, but also the likelihood of victory. (READ MORE: Republicans Must Play the Long Game in 2024)

This occasioned an opportunity for reflection on the trajectory of Western philosophy, specifically the incremental advance over centuries of individual rights. Overcoming millennia of feudal servitude, mankind — as far back as the Magna Carta, later embodied in the Declarations of Independence and of the Rights of Man, and detailed in the writings of Hobbes, Locke, Smith, Montesquieu, Voltaire, and other Enlightenment rationalists — gradually freed itself from the serfdom and tribal designations (both actual and socially defined) ensuing from circumstances of birth and origin, and vigorously championed individual liberty.

Arguably the greatest success of the liberal democracies over the last two centuries is the (mostly) uninterrupted march, manifested through the sanctity and elevation of both human and civil rights, toward a world that enshrines the primacy of the individual. Moreover, these societies have done so while largely balancing rights with responsibilities and maintaining the guardrails of traditional culture and civil society, which act as shock absorbers during periods of social unrest and constrict rampant egoism from devolving into nihilism.

What, you might ask, does the Enlightenment have to do with Republican Party presidential politics in 2023?

We live in a time in which the progressive Left, the animating force within the Democratic Party, has cashiered classical liberalism and gone all-in on collectivism. Collectivism abjures the primacy of the individual; however, since in the American context its polyglot coalition of interest groups still risks descent into an unwieldy factionalism, it requires the visceral appeal of tribal loyalty to enforce message discipline and conformity, all in service of gaining and holding power. While collectivism in its myriad forms is the banner under which the modern Left flies, tribalism provides the behavioral “muscle” necessary to sustain its progress. As a recent example, one need only consider the increasingly shrill messaging about “the Science!” deployed to enforce COVID-19 mask and vaccine mandates — complete with the progressive Twitterati calling for jobs, food, and other resources to be denied to refuseniks — which, whatever such policies’ actual merits, was as anti-rationalist and bullying as a public health exercise has been in the modern era.

The political Right, on the other hand, remains the only philosophical vehicle in American life with a (weak) claim to be the proper heirs to Enlightenment values and classical liberalism. As such, it embraces tribalist impulses at its peril. To what ends would paralleling the Left’s conformity be put on the Right? The Left uses tribalism to maintain message discipline among otherwise mutually irreconcilable interest groups in service of advancing collectivist ends — the spoils of which these factions can fight over once political power has been achieved.

By contrast, the political Right risks suppressing heterodox thinking to keep its followers all pulling in one direction — in service of exactly what? The Left can always console itself with power for power’s sake in victory, given its belief in public-sector resource control; in contrast, bereft of its classically liberal philosophical underpinnings, power achieved by the Right through such suppression serves no obvious purpose. A nonideological Right in power would be a dog’s breakfast of public policy, muddled and ineffective, although likely less authoritarian (leaving a bit more space for free thinking) than a triumphant progressive Left standing at the tiller of Leviathan government. Think of South Korea in the 1960s, or any number of mid-century Latin American caudillo-led states — perhaps useful as a short-lived phase on the road to economic development, but not as an ideological endpoint.

The Right will never match the Left in its enthusiasm for conformity.

Apart from its risks, why is political tribalism now on the rise? The most likely cause is the emptiness of modern lives absent larger meaning, itself the consequence of receding religious observance, the waning patriotism resulting from anti-American narratives in primary education, and a formerly productive real economy vitiated by casino capitalism and a hollowed-out work ethic. The 21st-century American polity’s weakened immune system has left it susceptible to infection; put differently, a hunger for meaning can still be satisfied by empty calories. Another factor is that tribal conformity can be a powerful grift, another unfortunate but unsurprising consequence of lives devoid of meaning.

This emptiness won’t be remedied in a single election, or even within a generation. But importing the tribalism from which it ensues into Republican politics for short-term ends can only result in failure — as a result of fratricidal warfare — as the Right will never match the Left in its enthusiasm for conformity. Those energized by conservative ideals aren’t wired to neatly fall into line, and typically cultivate lives with interests, affiliations, and priorities well afield of issue advocacy and the acquisition of political power; they are as likely to drop out of civic life as they are to salute the flag of a conformist, right-leaning political program.

Political candidates and thought leaders of the Right would do well to resist such tribalism, not just for the sake of avoiding the internecine divisions that risk electoral loss and abandoning the field to the collectivists, but also with the following in mind: even if a tribalist ethos on the right were to secure electoral success, what exactly will have been won?

Richard J. Shinder is the founder and managing partner of Theatine Partners, a financial consultancy.

READ MORE:

Trump, DeSantis, and the Dangers of Blind Loyalty

The Case for Ron DeSantis

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