Trends in dynamic systems don't proceed in straight lines, though over short time horizons, they may appear to be that way. But it doesn't take a long journey back through history to see that things that look ascendant over a period of years in the past end up in decline, and things in decline end up ascending. It's not to say that this is always the case, but I would look more closely at past dynamics to see what early signs there were of counter-balancing trends. For example, while it may be true that millenials are trending progressive, zoomers are showing signs of a swing toward conservativism. That may be because millenials have grandparents who said racists things, but zoomers do not. For zoomers, racism is abstract and hypothetical. But they see rise (and shocking justification of) crime and disorder, and a breakdown of social trust. To them and their predecessors, anti-racism may feel bizarre, stodgy, and inadequate to address the needs of the time, and they find themselves open to other approaches. If things get worse relative to the past, it would not be surprising at all if they look to resurrect ideas from the past to try to recreate some of those past conditions.
The only way recent trends will be permanent is if they actually result in a better society, and if there's one thing that people seem to agree on these days, it's that things are getting worse. Whatever emerges, it won't be the same as the ruling class today. Their days are dwindling as fast as their failures are mounting.
I don't really buy the zoomer swing towards conservatism. I think conservatives are seeing what they want to see in that regard; the best looks I've seen at zoomer attitudes have reflected approximately as progressive of views as among millennials, if not more. Racism isn't abstract and hypothetical for zoomers so much as it is a case of (in some cases) seeing purple dots as blue (https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aap8731) and (in other cases) seeing concrete, virulent, and proud racism among the edgy online right.
I don't deny that counterbalancing trends can and do happen, but this sort of thing sounds similar to me as communists asserting that late capitalism will soon collapse under the weight of its own contradictions. Every ascendant movement has had internal contradictions and flaws; ones that attract enough people figure out how to manage those flaws over time. I'm not saying progressivism will self-correct, precisely, and certainly not that it will become palatable to you, but I think people tend to overestimate "pendulum swing" effects. Polarization is increasing, but conservatives trashed their reputation among young, educated professionals and have done nothing at all to stem the bleeding in that regard, barely even noticing it happening.
To be clear, I'm not saying that Zoomers are going to be some sort of KKK reactionary group. Maybe there are some making that claim. I am not. But racism will not be as salient as it was. It's already on the decline. Democrats have yet to find an issue to replace it, which means there will be opportunity for a reversal of fortune.
To illustrate my point in another way, if the 1984 version of Tracing Woodgrains were to write this article, he'd be predicting that the Democrat party was dead, and the graphs would look even more dramatic. With the benefit of hindsight, we know he was wrong, because now we see the counteracting forces that were already at work. My point is simply that there are, of course, similar forces at work today, and any account that doesn't address those but instead tries to draw a straight line based on recent trends is not reliable. After all, it was only 20 years ago there was supposed to be the dawn of lasting Democrat rule because demographics. That turned out to be missing counteracting forces, too.
It's a fun post to read, but as you say, people see what they want to see.
I'm not sure the extent to which you're engaging with my central point here. I'm not making the same argument everyone saying "Republicans are doomed because of demographics" were making. My point is entirely divorced from electoral politics. The forces pushing Republicans to remain electorally competitive are not the same forces they need to regain a foothold among young, educated professionals, and without that foothold, they cannot accomplish most of what they really want to do.
It's the same thing critique. Young professionals have not always been so progressive, and you give no reason why we should expect they will continue to be so, just as in the past they were more conservative than they are today. In fact, professionals are probably much more easy to sway politically than the general body of voters. I suspect that young professionals, being intelligent and ambitious, are progressive because they know that being progressive is the way to get ahead. That's already changing. Companies like Coinbase visibly pulled out of progressive politics, and now behemoths like Disney have followed suit. The war in Israel and progressive support for Hamas is opening fissures in progressive political solidarity at universities and influential think tanks. There are plenty of people who put the "he/him" in their bios not because they are deeply devoted to trans ideology, but because it's where the prevailing winds are blowing. All that needs to happen is for those winds to blow some other direction, and the bulk of young professionals will follow suit. Whether that will happen or where those winds will blow is another story, but the virtue signaling of young professionals may be among the least durable foundations for political control we can measure.
The question of whether they will be doctrinaire progressives, liberals, or go some new direction is an open one. The question of whether they will be Republicans is not. The Republican Party has thoroughly demolished its brand among a whole generation of professionals, and they're not going to suddenly flip to it absent an extraordinary change of direction. Plenty of things are left open to change, but there is no near-term route for the Republicans in specific to regain a serious foothold among that group.
It's not as open of a question as it may seem. The "squishy middle" is well-documented, and is estimated to be somewhere between 60-80%. For professionals, I suspect it's higher, since they have strong motivation to go with the prevailing winds. You're right that as of a couple years ago, that non-squishy remainder that sets the tone was mostly progressives, sometimes extremely so. But that's already changed. DEI professionals have been laid off in droves, and those jobs aren't coming back. Other progressive professionals are currently getting cancelled for their views on Hamas. For every progressive that's fired or cancelled, about 3x-10x of other young professionals will change their overt views. "He/him"s will quietly come off bios. BLM flags will quietly be tossed in the trash. And conservative positions will re-enter the Overton Window. The idea that young professionals will continue to be doctrinaire on these issues after they have fallen out of favor I think misreads the mindset of young professionals. They are more fluid than that.
But you're right, it won't be sudden. But it's already happening, and the idea that there's some sort of "brand" that will be durably demolished relies on the same kind of thinking that predicted that demographics were going to be destiny. It's a lot more dynamic than that. That's all I'm saying.
> they cannot accomplish most of what they really want to do
What is it that they really want to do, broadly speaking?
There is a reactionary/stand-athwart element (anti-woke, anti-DEI, etc.). There is an immigration restriction element. Some 1980s/1990s style limited-government element.
A few recent laws across states with Republican legislative and/or executive control, in states like Alabama, South Carolina, New Hampshire, South Dakota, Florida read as follows: shortening the death penalty appeals process, unrestricted concealed carry of firearms, rejection of modest paid family leave provisions, rejection of medicaid expansion, discouraging vaccines.
I'm sure the median Republican voter supports these policies and finds them wise. Electorally they are doing pretty well -- majority of Governorships, significant majority of legislative control.
But, are these policies aimed at human flourishing? Responsive to aspirations of an educated, striving people? At making "a more perfect Union"?
Here are a small sample of legislation passed in the last few years across states like Colorado, Maryland, Illinois, New York, California and other states with Democratic legislatures and Governors.
Expanded patient rights like informed consent laws and drug price transparency, expanded consumer rights against financial institutions, limiting pre-trial incarceration, zoning reform for more housing, expanded pathways for community college students into UCal and SUNY, and more.
I pay attention to the actual work of elected representatives. Not vocal activist groups, not what they say on Television, and so on.
I also think the major pieces of legislation passed by the Biden, Obama, and Clinton administrations do far more for human flourishing than the recent Republican ones.
Of course a large part comes from civil society in general, and we can hold that as a constant if you like.
I'm increasingly convinced this is all just Trump, and will end with him. Which should be pretty soon, as he's 77, losing a step, and in legal trouble.
He led a revolt of the Republican base against the Republican elite and was hugely successful, to the extent that the public brand of the party now entirely reflects the formerly neglected priorities of the base. Most educated professionals - me included - find those priorities extremely unpalatable, hence the realignment covered in the article.
But, it's going to be temporary. It's becoming increasingly clear that Trump is a one-off, as other politicians attempt to replicate his appeal and keep flopping. See the 22 midterms and the Desantis and Ramaswamy campaigns. Likewise, intellectual efforts to market the Trump base's priorities to the educated class are completely falling flat.
So what happens next is that Trump exits stage left, the base revolt gets bored and wanders off without its evidently irreplaceable frontman, and the former Republican elite's priorities creep back in. Those priorities - free markets, American strength in foreign policy, limited government and pro-business policy, etc. - are much more appealing to educated professionals. They will return to the party.
As evidence this will happen, consider the speaker of the house fracas. Even with Trump very much still on-stage, the revolt commanded fewer than half the votes in the house, couldn't even get their candidate nominated until third try (after McCarthy and Scalise) and then couldn't get him confirmed. When push comes to shove, they're already a minority within the party. When Trump goes, they go too.
The policies you mention are more appealing to older educated professionals, but have much less of a foothold among younger ones. Will some older suburban Romney Republicans return to the party should Trump's influence (still going as strong as ever in 2024) fade? Possibly. Will young people have a sudden religious revival and conclude that a party with a house speaker who believes gay marriage is an unnatural and disgusting stepping stone towards people marrying their pets is prepared to understand and represent their interests? No. The Republican brand is toxic to young, educated professionals for reasons reaching far beyond Trump himself.
I share your distaste for Trump and your wish for the Republican Party to move past him, but the clock will not turn back to Reagan, and young, educated professionals will not flow back towards Republicans when Trump disappears absent major changes.
Maybe. But I think it will be more difficult for the GOP to come back than you think. They can't really turn away with Trumpism without admitting that Trump was bad, and they can't do that and remain in good standing. The base will keep trying to look for the most Trump-like candidate so people will fall over themselves trying to act like the biggest buffoon. Maybe it will only take a cycle or two, but I seriously doubt things will go right back once Trump is gone.
conservatives are not underrepresented in power because they have no appeal to intelligent people.
They are underrepresented because it is ILLEGAL to allow a right-winger, or increasingly just a white straight heterosexual male to be in power in any university, corporation, or government department.
This is an explicit declared race war by the regime against the established Native population of America and Europe. Outlawing discrimination against the unintelligent, poor-working, and depraved is to MANDATE discrimination against the intelligent, hard-working, and moral.
Right-wingers are not represented in a hostile occupying government that have explicitly declared them racial enemies to be exterminated... WOW, who would have guessed?
It’s idiotic how American conservatives think that nonwhites are genetically predisposed to vote left, when there’s plenty of examples to the contrary. It’s entirely possible for right wing parties to appeal to young voters and minorities, but the toxic legacy of southern values and agrarianism are why they fail to get traction (protip: being anti-urban in a country that’s 80%+ urban isn’t a good idea).
“If you define conservatism as the broad set of ideologies aimed at preserving Jeffersonian agrarianism and Southern cultural norms in the U.S., then a “conservative urbanism” is indeed impossible, because it is the urb itself which is opposed”
"It’s idiotic how American conservatives think that nonwhites are genetically predisposed to vote left, when there’s plenty of examples to the contrary."
What examples? Non-whites have voted for the left my entire life. The pattern holds in every other country around the world too.
The closest thing to a counter example is Trump/DeSantis. DeSantis remains the only Republican ever to win over 50% of the Hispanic vote, though it was still 10% less than whites in the same election. His signature campaign move right before the election was to trick some Mexicans onto a plane, fly them to Martha's Vineyard, and brag about it.
Trump of course called them a bunch of rapist and wanted to build a wall. He doubled Romney's minority vote share. Texas counties on the border with Mexico swung 30% in his direction.
"It’s entirely possible for right wing parties to appeal to young voters and minorities"
I'm going to tell your something you're going to hate. Trump is Hispanic outreach. That's what it looks like. He is a Latin American politician up and down. I doubt the GOP will ever win a majority of Hispanics in a meaningful way, but if it does it's going to look a lot more like Trump than Romney.
"protip: being anti-urban in a country that’s 80%+ urban isn’t a good idea"
A majority of the country is suburban. Most urban cores have languished (think Rust Belt) and even the few super star cities are considered unaffordable and dysfunctional. Net Domestic migration has been moving out of place like SF or NY for a long time.
“ It’s idiotic how American conservatives think that nonwhites are genetically predisposed to vote left”
Do you not see how ridiculous is it to tar an entire mainstream political movement/voting bloc with the ideas of fringe whackos who hold no political power?
Do you not see that this is the same idiocy as asserting that the entirety of the left is not merely Marxist but actual terrorists, because a big chunk of leftists (49% of 18-24 year olds, which means a *lot* more than 49% of 18-24 year old leftists) choose “Back Hamas” in the wake of the terrorist organization’s murder, rape, kidnapping of civilians including children and glorifying same on social media?
Yes, it was a rhetorical question. Though I suspect with no other evidence than your screed above that you more likely than not are in the group that chooses to back the Hamas terrorists.
(And to be crystal clear, I’m perfectly fine with anyone who “Backs Palestinians” but is sickened by what Hamas does in regard to non-military targets.)
If you aren’t going to offer any engagement with THE number one argument from the right as to why it is happening... found in every major book on the subject in the past 5 years “Age of Entitlement” and “Origin of Woke” notably... and a growing body of SubStack article written on it by prominent voices...
There is nothing to engage productively with in a polemic describing white people as "the established Native population of America" and claiming a race war is being waged while overtly hoping to wage one of your own. While eg Hanania makes interesting arguments, I find your particular posture on this topic aesthetically and morally hideous and think that if it becomes the established position among the right, they will not only lose to the left, they will deserve to lose. You are fighting to cement your own movement's moral decay, and I have no interest in playing host to that.
One movement fights for freedom of association and the freedom to say whatever you want about anyone in accordance with the original meaning of 1a...
Another fight for an explicit racial caste systems and privileges based on ethnic and gender identity, enacting ethnic pogroms against the American population to get what they want, as seen in the ruins of Detroit, Milwaukee, Baltimore, and the massive sacrifice zones of every American city.
Using state violence and theft of property to punish ordinary Americans and business owners who exercise basic freedom of association...
And demanding the basic freedoms enjoyed from the founding to 1964 is “morally heinous”?
Have you seen the “Aesthetics” of the existing regime? Have you seen the hundreds of thousands of DEATHS. ANNUALLY. From opioids, suicide, and despair... enacted NOT by the least productive or dumbest, but by the ones with the wrong skin color and without the regime’s favour.
You look at progressivism, one of the most totalitarian and blood spattered regimes in human history... and object to oppinions that would have been held by supreme court justices anytime between 1880 and 1938 as “Moral Decay”... if thats “morals decaying” then what pray tell do you think has been occurring innAmerica for the past 80+ years?
I'm not sure this was the right response. I found you on the Motte; would this kind of comment pass muster there? Sure, it's fine to have passionate opinions, but is "your ideas are disgusting" really an effective response? When someone who isn't an obvious spammer approaches me to talk, I assume I have a chance to convince them. Granted, maybe there was a chance, and maybe there really wasn't - but there definitely isn't, now.
Kulak and I have a long history in shared circles and a clear understanding of where we stand in relation to each other, and have had many hours-long conversations and arguments in a range of forums. I do him the courtesy of responding with directness and without pretense—he is more than capable of advocating for his views and I will not stop him from doing so, but my own walled garden is not the Motte and I have no interest in encouraging those who yearn for a race war to feel they are in good company.
I respect those who meet every viewpoint with reasoned argumentation, but I firmly maintain there is and should be space for unambiguous moral condemnation as well.
There is nothing to engage with productively in a polemic describing America as a fundamentally white supremacist project but I suspect you engage with it nonetheless.
The phenomena you’re pointing at are the product of totalitarianism. You cannot publicly dissent from the approved narrative and keep your position in these institutions. That’s the general “you” and you.
That’s why charts asking how millennials self-describe themselves are meaningless. Everyone knows there is only one acceptable answer. A more useful survey would ask about specific policies and positions to determine the actual Overton window.
> There is nothing to engage with productively in a polemic describing America as a fundamentally white supremacist project but I suspect you engage with it nonetheless.
Not really. I try to stay away from race-warring screeds in general.
The myth of the “conservative white gene,” that white people have a special gene that inclines them to social or economic conservative views that people of color do not have, continues to circulate. The ethnic results of California’s Prop 8, 16 years ago, should have been the end of this bullshit.
No, conservatives are underrepresented because in order to be a conservative, you have to believe or at least tolerate insanely stupid things like what you just said.
You can't recruit anyone worth recruiting with a pitch like that. So you end up with the dregs of the talent pool.
"The youth is not following the pattern of becoming more conservative over time"
But seriously, why would they? What's the platform of the republican party? What they have to offer to the youth besides sound bites they don't even honor? People used to turn conservative because they wanted to keep a status quo that benefited them. The current status quo is instead crushing the youth. Crippling medical/educational debt, unaffordable housing, stagnant wages, climate change, gun violence. What policies does the GOP have to address this? None, in fact the opposite, that exacerbate the problems even more (anti union policies, for example). Besides some relative popular position with policing and immigration, they decide to double down on clearly loosing positions, specially anti abortion, anti Marijuana and voter suppression. In Ohio, the voters had to invoke a referendum to enact this policies and the GOP instead tried to raise the percentage threshold to pass them, trying to block this policies that "the people" clearly wanted. What do they say to justify this? "We are a republic" as an excuse to directly and unapologetically go against "the people". "We are a republic" is the new "state's rights" to ignore the "democratic" part of the republic. They don't even honor their "small government" mantra, they bail out multi billion dollar monopolies and do nothing to protect small bussiness, academic freedom or free speech, specially against arbitrary big tech or institutional decisions (censorship, discriminatory affirmative action and unfair competition). In fact, the "big government" of the European Union does more to protect small bussiness and real diversity in opinion than the GOP (GDPR and DSA laws). Cultural wars (except, and mostly abortion and free speech) do nothing for the everyday life of the average citizen. They could adopt popular positions like protecting consumer's rights and privacy, but they won't, because they clearly support mass surveillance. It's depressing to see that the only topics both parties agrees is to erode individual rights even more. They need to burn down, so a Fenix can come out of that current directionless headless chicken. The GOP need to adopt a more European approach to conservatism, because the "free market" and laissez faire don't work, specially if you don't protect worker's rights and enforce fair competition.
Why does my identity matter so much to you? You have a real counter argument besides identity politics? I'm working class and that's all that should matter. The GOP has nothing to offer for me in that regard. Healthcare? Workers rights/protections? The “free market” doesn't work when there's an egregious unbalance of power between the employee and the employer, that's why Teddy Roosevelt fought against monopolies. "The real world" does not mean fitting on a 50s stereotype and doesn't make my opinion or influence less valid. Kamala Harris, your vice president, who is childless/childfree is a bigger part of the "real world" than you. "If you’re not conservative when you’re old, you have no brain" Again with the useless sound beats. What about some real policy? Just expecting or praying for dear life that the youth is just going to turn conservative “somehow” when they get older is naive. The writings are all over the walls, ignoring it won't stop it from happening.
There is really nothing I can offers someone with your perspective, unfortunately, except this:
It is easy to be liberal if you’re ignorant of economics.
Go learn some economics so you can better understand why your statement that “The ‘free market’ doesn't work when there's an egregious unbalance of power between the employee and the employer” is so very wrong.
Best suggestion: “Basic Economics” by Thomas Sowell.
You could learn plenty about things other than economics from other Sowell books.
Have a good life. If you take my advice on Sowell I think someday you will actually want to thank me.
But of course, the chance that you are willing to expand your mind by reading the brilliant Sowell is near zero, because not only is he a conservative, he is (gasp!) a black conservative!
I accidentally deleted an 800 word comment on this topic, but suffice it to say that I agree with your analysis, and it depresses me. I don’t think there are more than 4 college campuses in the country that are predominantly right-leaning, and I am not naive enough to think that this bodes well for the future of our political system writ large. The young generations of upcoming professionals are a monoculture – politically, ideologically, philosophically.
I don't actually agree on the monoculture front. There are always and will always be fault-lines. Liberalism and leftism are not the same, and young people are increasingly aware of that. The intellectual side of conservatism is dying out in America and with that a whole sphere of useful thought, but its fade doesn't leave a monoculture, just a shift in how the arguments look. There's a lot to be done—my own views are very much minority ones among my peers—but there remain plenty of intellectual curiosity and diversity of thought to go around.
I wish I could agree with you on this, but it doesn't match my experience. From my perspective, the two categories you'll find my generation in are leftism, or apathetic disengagement. I know very, very few "liberals" in the sense that you are using the word.
I think you underestimate what can be accomplished by a very small ideological minority.
The media is a case in point. Sure, 98% of journalism degrees go to Democrats. But going outside the system, the conservative social media ecosystem is vibrant and starting to rival legacy outlets in influence. Despite lack of credentialed talent. The same can happen in other fields over time.
The conservative media ecosystem is sprawling but talent-constrained. It lacks subtlety and grace. There is no conservative New York Times, hardly anything that even aspires to be a conservative New York Times. Demand for conservative journalists massively outstrips supply, and examples like Sibarium are a reminder that the many of the best to rise in that sphere are hardly conservatives in the traditional sense.
You're not wrong—small ideological minorities can and will play important roles—but movements need talent. It's not a coincidence that many of the best and brightest among modern conservatives arise from the same few universities as their liberal peers.
Admittedly, it is not a hard-partisan rag that will deliberately publish lies and falsehoods - and even more importantly, fail to cover important stories altogether (Hunter Biden laptop, e.g., but far more than this) - if it doesn’t serve the leftist political agenda.
Are we going to run a nation with Engineers and Lawyers getting degrees by listening to podcasts? Does that sound like a good idea?
Besides, the real problem isn't that conservatives don't run colleges. The problem is that people who want to become highly educated professionals are the kind of people who are put off by right-wing buffoonery. The GOP isn't just losing young people with college degrees, it's losing old people who went to college decades ago. The GOP needs a platform (and quality candidates) that appeals to educated professionals. Like they had in 2015.
"My law school is not overwhelmingly progressive because the Powers That Be want it to be progressive. It's overwhelmingly progressive because progressives showed up. "
Let me know how the job market treats them. Just because the supply of social activists goes up doesn't meant that the demand will follow.
There are some who only want to do activist jobs, but the great majority are serious, focused people with progressive politics happy to go wherever they find opportunities in the legal field. Plenty are looking at things like public defense and public interest work, but the activist-to-biglaw pipeline is a running half-joke among students.
Too much of bread-and-butter governing is simply anathema to conservative voters. For a country to work, it has to be funded. Laws have to be passed. If every Republican in high office fears electoral retribution for funding or passing *anything*, it's hard to build a party with the institutional memory required to run things.
The government was funded and doing just fine in 1998.
Cut back spending (and regulation) to those levels, and then you’d find a fair number of conservative Republicans who would vote to fund more things.
That said, your premise is a joke. Republicans in fact HAVE continued to ramp spending along with the Democrats these last 25 years. Would that your premise were true…
A degree of whiplash can happen among the voting population as a whole but it is likely to be much less pronounced depending on demographic, and there’s no reason to anticipate a reversal among the demographics that would need to reverse to change the trend I outline.
Is there any re-evaluation of this hypothesis after the 2024 election? I'm not referring to the electoral outcome but rather the elite re-alignment preceding it. It is quite notable to have the richest man in the world so vocally in one's camp, right? Or am I over-valuing that? Plus, a lot of the "Gray Tribe" (Tech elite & VC), "New Media" (Rogan), and certain avant-garde (cringe, I know but couldn't think of a better word) scenes (e.g. Dimes Square) siding openly with Republicans. This would be almost unimaginable in the Obama era.
It is looking like GenZ men are indeed redpilled, Millennial disenchantment with the Left may be setting in and GenX (as Twenge has noted in her work) is perhaps the most staunchly Republican identified generation in a long time. Won't this reshape institutions? How much elite direction will actually come from white women with degrees? I don't think we should expect Fusionism to return but it seems like there's a strong preference to return to the ethos of the 90s.
I ventured some my skepticism of the claims of this piece in an X reply to your post there (awhile ago), pointing out that the Republican party would likely be able to re-constitute a viable counter-elite from defectors from the Left. These defectors will build new institutions. I pointed to this happening in the recent past (e.g. original neocons like Norm Podhoretz, Irving Kristol, and such). I feel like this quite clearly happened in the wake of The Great Awokening. The IDW of course had some hiccups, but hasn't it sort of triumphed, especially after Musk bought Twitter?
Admittedly, the new set of defectors have not revolutionized major sociocultural institutions (excepting Twitter/X and some new media outfits), but the old guard institutions have public trust quotients that are bottoming out. There are signs of concern on the horizon or even active degradation in progress in journalism, entertainment, higher ed, etc. It seems the future is much more uncertain than it looked at the end of the 2010s.
It’s a good question. I do think the rise of the tech right is notable; as you note, it hasn’t really resulted in more of a push into the institutions, however. I would say: I’m less confident in the thesis now, particularly with the reported voting behavior of young men, but I think the broad strokes stand and should still be understood.
Late to this, but I think there's an elephant in the room that's not being discussed. WHY are these people so progressive? What are the social and cultural pressures that lead to people adopting a given political stance? Children aren't cold, rational creatures; if everyone under 18 is a progressive there's a reason for that. And so any change will likely have to begin with a change in culture or indoctrination.
Uh… have you seen academia lately? Have you seen the DEI agenda of the teachers unions?
Add that on top of compulsory K12 education and the historical adage that “if you’re not a liberal when you’re young, you have no heart”, and it’s pretty self explanatory.
End the indoctrination in public schools and public universities. By force of withholding federal education dollars, make K-12 school choice vouchers a requirement to receive a dime in Federal funding. Make elimination of speech codes and DEI departments a requirement of receiving federal loan guarantees and grants for private universities. That would go a long way…
A huge number of right leaning men who used to go to college are skipping the piety of, "higher education" and going straight into tech. From my experience, half of the people in my field either skipped college altogether or they are a drop out.
These are highly skilled and sought after professionals who realized that college is a scam for most professions. And colleges are so terrible at teaching tech that college grads need to be trained anyway.
The unwashed masses are literally building the future, making six figures, working where they want and all without going through an institutional gatekeeper. You could even say that they are members of the professional managerial class. They just didn't need to be fucked sideways to get there.
You should map "white college graduates" onto numbers of women attending college. I suspect you're just seeing female vs male preference and the blossoming of all the female preference college courses (social sciences etc.) as the universities have cashed in on female 'empowerment'.
It seems the massive over representation of the feminine in government is already causing a crisis that must either result in some kind of drastic realignment or soviet style dissolution. You can't just keep drawing the line out as if it can continue on it's current trajectory. The dysfunction won't allow it.
I actually think you are on to something. I work at one of the more conservative institutions and even here it's clear that the goal is always more female representation despite evidence they are already overrepresented. It's also just personally irritating to have everyone assume I'm a progressive due to being a white woman. I'm likely among the most conservative in our department
It's an excellent, and important question. Part of the answer is, I think, "Diffused through academia and the media." That is: you're less likely to get one-off iconoclasts right now, more likely to get polished presenters of the party line who convey a zeitgeist without contributing any particularly interesting ideas (eg John Oliver). Podcasts like Chapo, from the little I've seen of it, are similar: adept at conveying a zeitgeist, where their lack of particularly original ideas doesn't really hurt them. Breadtube, too, though one of them will come up with an interesting idea here and there. You also have people like Ezra Klein for a more serious bent, or Nathan J Robinson for a veneer of seriousness that lets people feel someone has done the thinking for them.
People with intellectual and creative energy exist among progressives, but I think they're a lot less central to the progressive movement than they are to the dissident right or 'heterodox' center, because when you're a structurally strong enough, developed enough movement you don't need intellectual creativity in quite the same way. You want a consensus that inspires action, and they have become adept at generating that in and around the works of any one intellectual.
If Republicans want to survive, they need to focus on education. I've been working on several proposals which can be readily implemented from the state level which is where Republicans are strongest.
1. Break up large school districts. Every high school should have it's own school board. Let's have some democracy. (See Rule 6)
2. End tenure for public school teachers -- even if that means upping the pay. Treat teachers as professionals. (With the smaller school districts, teachers can shop their services to more independent customers within driving range.)
3. Replace a bunch of the BS requirements for keeping certification with courses in world history. If you look just at U.S. history, the U.S. looks pretty bad -- without the context of what was going on elsewhere. (See Rule 3)
Then, should Republicans ever gain power at the national level, they should end the Department of Education entirely. No more federal student loan or grant program at all. If you think that's unfair to the poor and ambitious, given every natural born citizen a Universal Inheritance when they hit a certain age (19 or 20) which they can use for education, a home down payment, or starting a business, or whatever. Make the universities compete against other uses of startup capital.
Trends in dynamic systems don't proceed in straight lines, though over short time horizons, they may appear to be that way. But it doesn't take a long journey back through history to see that things that look ascendant over a period of years in the past end up in decline, and things in decline end up ascending. It's not to say that this is always the case, but I would look more closely at past dynamics to see what early signs there were of counter-balancing trends. For example, while it may be true that millenials are trending progressive, zoomers are showing signs of a swing toward conservativism. That may be because millenials have grandparents who said racists things, but zoomers do not. For zoomers, racism is abstract and hypothetical. But they see rise (and shocking justification of) crime and disorder, and a breakdown of social trust. To them and their predecessors, anti-racism may feel bizarre, stodgy, and inadequate to address the needs of the time, and they find themselves open to other approaches. If things get worse relative to the past, it would not be surprising at all if they look to resurrect ideas from the past to try to recreate some of those past conditions.
The only way recent trends will be permanent is if they actually result in a better society, and if there's one thing that people seem to agree on these days, it's that things are getting worse. Whatever emerges, it won't be the same as the ruling class today. Their days are dwindling as fast as their failures are mounting.
I don't really buy the zoomer swing towards conservatism. I think conservatives are seeing what they want to see in that regard; the best looks I've seen at zoomer attitudes have reflected approximately as progressive of views as among millennials, if not more. Racism isn't abstract and hypothetical for zoomers so much as it is a case of (in some cases) seeing purple dots as blue (https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aap8731) and (in other cases) seeing concrete, virulent, and proud racism among the edgy online right.
I don't deny that counterbalancing trends can and do happen, but this sort of thing sounds similar to me as communists asserting that late capitalism will soon collapse under the weight of its own contradictions. Every ascendant movement has had internal contradictions and flaws; ones that attract enough people figure out how to manage those flaws over time. I'm not saying progressivism will self-correct, precisely, and certainly not that it will become palatable to you, but I think people tend to overestimate "pendulum swing" effects. Polarization is increasing, but conservatives trashed their reputation among young, educated professionals and have done nothing at all to stem the bleeding in that regard, barely even noticing it happening.
To be clear, I'm not saying that Zoomers are going to be some sort of KKK reactionary group. Maybe there are some making that claim. I am not. But racism will not be as salient as it was. It's already on the decline. Democrats have yet to find an issue to replace it, which means there will be opportunity for a reversal of fortune.
To illustrate my point in another way, if the 1984 version of Tracing Woodgrains were to write this article, he'd be predicting that the Democrat party was dead, and the graphs would look even more dramatic. With the benefit of hindsight, we know he was wrong, because now we see the counteracting forces that were already at work. My point is simply that there are, of course, similar forces at work today, and any account that doesn't address those but instead tries to draw a straight line based on recent trends is not reliable. After all, it was only 20 years ago there was supposed to be the dawn of lasting Democrat rule because demographics. That turned out to be missing counteracting forces, too.
It's a fun post to read, but as you say, people see what they want to see.
I'm not sure the extent to which you're engaging with my central point here. I'm not making the same argument everyone saying "Republicans are doomed because of demographics" were making. My point is entirely divorced from electoral politics. The forces pushing Republicans to remain electorally competitive are not the same forces they need to regain a foothold among young, educated professionals, and without that foothold, they cannot accomplish most of what they really want to do.
It's the same thing critique. Young professionals have not always been so progressive, and you give no reason why we should expect they will continue to be so, just as in the past they were more conservative than they are today. In fact, professionals are probably much more easy to sway politically than the general body of voters. I suspect that young professionals, being intelligent and ambitious, are progressive because they know that being progressive is the way to get ahead. That's already changing. Companies like Coinbase visibly pulled out of progressive politics, and now behemoths like Disney have followed suit. The war in Israel and progressive support for Hamas is opening fissures in progressive political solidarity at universities and influential think tanks. There are plenty of people who put the "he/him" in their bios not because they are deeply devoted to trans ideology, but because it's where the prevailing winds are blowing. All that needs to happen is for those winds to blow some other direction, and the bulk of young professionals will follow suit. Whether that will happen or where those winds will blow is another story, but the virtue signaling of young professionals may be among the least durable foundations for political control we can measure.
The question of whether they will be doctrinaire progressives, liberals, or go some new direction is an open one. The question of whether they will be Republicans is not. The Republican Party has thoroughly demolished its brand among a whole generation of professionals, and they're not going to suddenly flip to it absent an extraordinary change of direction. Plenty of things are left open to change, but there is no near-term route for the Republicans in specific to regain a serious foothold among that group.
It's not as open of a question as it may seem. The "squishy middle" is well-documented, and is estimated to be somewhere between 60-80%. For professionals, I suspect it's higher, since they have strong motivation to go with the prevailing winds. You're right that as of a couple years ago, that non-squishy remainder that sets the tone was mostly progressives, sometimes extremely so. But that's already changed. DEI professionals have been laid off in droves, and those jobs aren't coming back. Other progressive professionals are currently getting cancelled for their views on Hamas. For every progressive that's fired or cancelled, about 3x-10x of other young professionals will change their overt views. "He/him"s will quietly come off bios. BLM flags will quietly be tossed in the trash. And conservative positions will re-enter the Overton Window. The idea that young professionals will continue to be doctrinaire on these issues after they have fallen out of favor I think misreads the mindset of young professionals. They are more fluid than that.
But you're right, it won't be sudden. But it's already happening, and the idea that there's some sort of "brand" that will be durably demolished relies on the same kind of thinking that predicted that demographics were going to be destiny. It's a lot more dynamic than that. That's all I'm saying.
Apologies for necromancing an old thread.
> they cannot accomplish most of what they really want to do
What is it that they really want to do, broadly speaking?
There is a reactionary/stand-athwart element (anti-woke, anti-DEI, etc.). There is an immigration restriction element. Some 1980s/1990s style limited-government element.
A few recent laws across states with Republican legislative and/or executive control, in states like Alabama, South Carolina, New Hampshire, South Dakota, Florida read as follows: shortening the death penalty appeals process, unrestricted concealed carry of firearms, rejection of modest paid family leave provisions, rejection of medicaid expansion, discouraging vaccines.
I'm sure the median Republican voter supports these policies and finds them wise. Electorally they are doing pretty well -- majority of Governorships, significant majority of legislative control.
But, are these policies aimed at human flourishing? Responsive to aspirations of an educated, striving people? At making "a more perfect Union"?
You think woke, DEI, zero-sum oppressor/oppressed, 49% of 18-24 year olds back Hamas ideology is about human flourishing?!?
Here are a small sample of legislation passed in the last few years across states like Colorado, Maryland, Illinois, New York, California and other states with Democratic legislatures and Governors.
Expanded patient rights like informed consent laws and drug price transparency, expanded consumer rights against financial institutions, limiting pre-trial incarceration, zoning reform for more housing, expanded pathways for community college students into UCal and SUNY, and more.
I pay attention to the actual work of elected representatives. Not vocal activist groups, not what they say on Television, and so on.
I also think the major pieces of legislation passed by the Biden, Obama, and Clinton administrations do far more for human flourishing than the recent Republican ones.
Of course a large part comes from civil society in general, and we can hold that as a constant if you like.
Beware the boomerang! The further it doth fly, the harder still it whippeth back!
Then people are wrong.
I'm increasingly convinced this is all just Trump, and will end with him. Which should be pretty soon, as he's 77, losing a step, and in legal trouble.
He led a revolt of the Republican base against the Republican elite and was hugely successful, to the extent that the public brand of the party now entirely reflects the formerly neglected priorities of the base. Most educated professionals - me included - find those priorities extremely unpalatable, hence the realignment covered in the article.
But, it's going to be temporary. It's becoming increasingly clear that Trump is a one-off, as other politicians attempt to replicate his appeal and keep flopping. See the 22 midterms and the Desantis and Ramaswamy campaigns. Likewise, intellectual efforts to market the Trump base's priorities to the educated class are completely falling flat.
So what happens next is that Trump exits stage left, the base revolt gets bored and wanders off without its evidently irreplaceable frontman, and the former Republican elite's priorities creep back in. Those priorities - free markets, American strength in foreign policy, limited government and pro-business policy, etc. - are much more appealing to educated professionals. They will return to the party.
As evidence this will happen, consider the speaker of the house fracas. Even with Trump very much still on-stage, the revolt commanded fewer than half the votes in the house, couldn't even get their candidate nominated until third try (after McCarthy and Scalise) and then couldn't get him confirmed. When push comes to shove, they're already a minority within the party. When Trump goes, they go too.
The policies you mention are more appealing to older educated professionals, but have much less of a foothold among younger ones. Will some older suburban Romney Republicans return to the party should Trump's influence (still going as strong as ever in 2024) fade? Possibly. Will young people have a sudden religious revival and conclude that a party with a house speaker who believes gay marriage is an unnatural and disgusting stepping stone towards people marrying their pets is prepared to understand and represent their interests? No. The Republican brand is toxic to young, educated professionals for reasons reaching far beyond Trump himself.
I share your distaste for Trump and your wish for the Republican Party to move past him, but the clock will not turn back to Reagan, and young, educated professionals will not flow back towards Republicans when Trump disappears absent major changes.
Maybe. But I think it will be more difficult for the GOP to come back than you think. They can't really turn away with Trumpism without admitting that Trump was bad, and they can't do that and remain in good standing. The base will keep trying to look for the most Trump-like candidate so people will fall over themselves trying to act like the biggest buffoon. Maybe it will only take a cycle or two, but I seriously doubt things will go right back once Trump is gone.
Ctrl F:
"Antidiscrimination" 0/0. "1964" 0/0. "Civil Rights" 0/0. "Hostile work environment" 0/0. "Dear colleagues letter" 0/0. "Human Resources" 0/0. "Equity Statement" 0/0. "Affirmative Action" 0/0.
conservatives are not underrepresented in power because they have no appeal to intelligent people.
They are underrepresented because it is ILLEGAL to allow a right-winger, or increasingly just a white straight heterosexual male to be in power in any university, corporation, or government department.
This is an explicit declared race war by the regime against the established Native population of America and Europe. Outlawing discrimination against the unintelligent, poor-working, and depraved is to MANDATE discrimination against the intelligent, hard-working, and moral.
Right-wingers are not represented in a hostile occupying government that have explicitly declared them racial enemies to be exterminated... WOW, who would have guessed?
And with this sort of winning attitude, who's to say why right-wing voices have moved to the margins?
Peddle your race war rubbish elsewhere, please. I have no taste for it.
It’s idiotic how American conservatives think that nonwhites are genetically predisposed to vote left, when there’s plenty of examples to the contrary. It’s entirely possible for right wing parties to appeal to young voters and minorities, but the toxic legacy of southern values and agrarianism are why they fail to get traction (protip: being anti-urban in a country that’s 80%+ urban isn’t a good idea).
https://medium.com/migration-issues/what-does-conservative-urbanism-mean-536dc25d32a8
“If you define conservatism as the broad set of ideologies aimed at preserving Jeffersonian agrarianism and Southern cultural norms in the U.S., then a “conservative urbanism” is indeed impossible, because it is the urb itself which is opposed”
"It’s idiotic how American conservatives think that nonwhites are genetically predisposed to vote left, when there’s plenty of examples to the contrary."
What examples? Non-whites have voted for the left my entire life. The pattern holds in every other country around the world too.
The closest thing to a counter example is Trump/DeSantis. DeSantis remains the only Republican ever to win over 50% of the Hispanic vote, though it was still 10% less than whites in the same election. His signature campaign move right before the election was to trick some Mexicans onto a plane, fly them to Martha's Vineyard, and brag about it.
Trump of course called them a bunch of rapist and wanted to build a wall. He doubled Romney's minority vote share. Texas counties on the border with Mexico swung 30% in his direction.
"It’s entirely possible for right wing parties to appeal to young voters and minorities"
I'm going to tell your something you're going to hate. Trump is Hispanic outreach. That's what it looks like. He is a Latin American politician up and down. I doubt the GOP will ever win a majority of Hispanics in a meaningful way, but if it does it's going to look a lot more like Trump than Romney.
"protip: being anti-urban in a country that’s 80%+ urban isn’t a good idea"
A majority of the country is suburban. Most urban cores have languished (think Rust Belt) and even the few super star cities are considered unaffordable and dysfunctional. Net Domestic migration has been moving out of place like SF or NY for a long time.
Does it hold in Brazil, or Philippine, or India, or Afghanistan, you loon?
“ I doubt the GOP will ever win a majority of Hispanics in a meaningful way”
The first part of your prediction just came true.
Maybe you wanna back off on this hedge now? 🙂
“ It’s idiotic how American conservatives think that nonwhites are genetically predisposed to vote left”
Do you not see how ridiculous is it to tar an entire mainstream political movement/voting bloc with the ideas of fringe whackos who hold no political power?
Do you not see that this is the same idiocy as asserting that the entirety of the left is not merely Marxist but actual terrorists, because a big chunk of leftists (49% of 18-24 year olds, which means a *lot* more than 49% of 18-24 year old leftists) choose “Back Hamas” in the wake of the terrorist organization’s murder, rape, kidnapping of civilians including children and glorifying same on social media?
Yes, it was a rhetorical question. Though I suspect with no other evidence than your screed above that you more likely than not are in the group that chooses to back the Hamas terrorists.
(And to be crystal clear, I’m perfectly fine with anyone who “Backs Palestinians” but is sickened by what Hamas does in regard to non-military targets.)
If you aren’t going to offer any engagement with THE number one argument from the right as to why it is happening... found in every major book on the subject in the past 5 years “Age of Entitlement” and “Origin of Woke” notably... and a growing body of SubStack article written on it by prominent voices...
There is nothing to engage productively with in a polemic describing white people as "the established Native population of America" and claiming a race war is being waged while overtly hoping to wage one of your own. While eg Hanania makes interesting arguments, I find your particular posture on this topic aesthetically and morally hideous and think that if it becomes the established position among the right, they will not only lose to the left, they will deserve to lose. You are fighting to cement your own movement's moral decay, and I have no interest in playing host to that.
One movement fights for freedom of association and the freedom to say whatever you want about anyone in accordance with the original meaning of 1a...
Another fight for an explicit racial caste systems and privileges based on ethnic and gender identity, enacting ethnic pogroms against the American population to get what they want, as seen in the ruins of Detroit, Milwaukee, Baltimore, and the massive sacrifice zones of every American city.
Using state violence and theft of property to punish ordinary Americans and business owners who exercise basic freedom of association...
And demanding the basic freedoms enjoyed from the founding to 1964 is “morally heinous”?
Have you seen the “Aesthetics” of the existing regime? Have you seen the hundreds of thousands of DEATHS. ANNUALLY. From opioids, suicide, and despair... enacted NOT by the least productive or dumbest, but by the ones with the wrong skin color and without the regime’s favour.
You look at progressivism, one of the most totalitarian and blood spattered regimes in human history... and object to oppinions that would have been held by supreme court justices anytime between 1880 and 1938 as “Moral Decay”... if thats “morals decaying” then what pray tell do you think has been occurring innAmerica for the past 80+ years?
I'm not sure this was the right response. I found you on the Motte; would this kind of comment pass muster there? Sure, it's fine to have passionate opinions, but is "your ideas are disgusting" really an effective response? When someone who isn't an obvious spammer approaches me to talk, I assume I have a chance to convince them. Granted, maybe there was a chance, and maybe there really wasn't - but there definitely isn't, now.
Kulak and I have a long history in shared circles and a clear understanding of where we stand in relation to each other, and have had many hours-long conversations and arguments in a range of forums. I do him the courtesy of responding with directness and without pretense—he is more than capable of advocating for his views and I will not stop him from doing so, but my own walled garden is not the Motte and I have no interest in encouraging those who yearn for a race war to feel they are in good company.
I respect those who meet every viewpoint with reasoned argumentation, but I firmly maintain there is and should be space for unambiguous moral condemnation as well.
Oh wow, I had no idea - sorry to be obtuse about this, Woodgrains!
Gay marriage is not a marriage of pets
There is nothing to engage with productively in a polemic describing America as a fundamentally white supremacist project but I suspect you engage with it nonetheless.
The phenomena you’re pointing at are the product of totalitarianism. You cannot publicly dissent from the approved narrative and keep your position in these institutions. That’s the general “you” and you.
That’s why charts asking how millennials self-describe themselves are meaningless. Everyone knows there is only one acceptable answer. A more useful survey would ask about specific policies and positions to determine the actual Overton window.
> There is nothing to engage with productively in a polemic describing America as a fundamentally white supremacist project but I suspect you engage with it nonetheless.
Not really. I try to stay away from race-warring screeds in general.
"Not really. I try to stay away from race-warring screeds in general."
The liberal, Jewish donors thought that until Oct 7. You may not be interested in race, but race is very much interested in you.
Romney lost bro.
The right already tried minority outreach and it failed.
The myth of the “conservative white gene,” that white people have a special gene that inclines them to social or economic conservative views that people of color do not have, continues to circulate. The ethnic results of California’s Prop 8, 16 years ago, should have been the end of this bullshit.
Is it the race war that’s rubbish or the pointing out of it that’s rubbish?
You personally have benefited from this. Brave of you to ignore it. Your homosexuality won’t save you when the decolonization starts.
No, conservatives are underrepresented because in order to be a conservative, you have to believe or at least tolerate insanely stupid things like what you just said.
You can't recruit anyone worth recruiting with a pitch like that. So you end up with the dregs of the talent pool.
Colossal ignorance, more pathetic because it pretends to be open-minded while being incredibly closed-minded - I.e. deliberately ignorant.
The sort of highly-educated, upwardly mobile professionals that this article is talking about are disproportionally white lmao.
"The youth is not following the pattern of becoming more conservative over time"
But seriously, why would they? What's the platform of the republican party? What they have to offer to the youth besides sound bites they don't even honor? People used to turn conservative because they wanted to keep a status quo that benefited them. The current status quo is instead crushing the youth. Crippling medical/educational debt, unaffordable housing, stagnant wages, climate change, gun violence. What policies does the GOP have to address this? None, in fact the opposite, that exacerbate the problems even more (anti union policies, for example). Besides some relative popular position with policing and immigration, they decide to double down on clearly loosing positions, specially anti abortion, anti Marijuana and voter suppression. In Ohio, the voters had to invoke a referendum to enact this policies and the GOP instead tried to raise the percentage threshold to pass them, trying to block this policies that "the people" clearly wanted. What do they say to justify this? "We are a republic" as an excuse to directly and unapologetically go against "the people". "We are a republic" is the new "state's rights" to ignore the "democratic" part of the republic. They don't even honor their "small government" mantra, they bail out multi billion dollar monopolies and do nothing to protect small bussiness, academic freedom or free speech, specially against arbitrary big tech or institutional decisions (censorship, discriminatory affirmative action and unfair competition). In fact, the "big government" of the European Union does more to protect small bussiness and real diversity in opinion than the GOP (GDPR and DSA laws). Cultural wars (except, and mostly abortion and free speech) do nothing for the everyday life of the average citizen. They could adopt popular positions like protecting consumer's rights and privacy, but they won't, because they clearly support mass surveillance. It's depressing to see that the only topics both parties agrees is to erode individual rights even more. They need to burn down, so a Fenix can come out of that current directionless headless chicken. The GOP need to adopt a more European approach to conservatism, because the "free market" and laissez faire don't work, specially if you don't protect worker's rights and enforce fair competition.
Yeah, in order to adopt a conservative mindset, you have to have something worth conserving.
Yes - for example the morals not to back murdering, raping, baby-decapitating terrorists like Hamas…
I’d bet a lot of money you are under 40 years old. And good bet under 30 unmarried without children, having yet to face the real world.
If you’re not liberal when you’re young, you have no heart. If you’re not conservative when you’re old, you have no brain…
Why does my identity matter so much to you? You have a real counter argument besides identity politics? I'm working class and that's all that should matter. The GOP has nothing to offer for me in that regard. Healthcare? Workers rights/protections? The “free market” doesn't work when there's an egregious unbalance of power between the employee and the employer, that's why Teddy Roosevelt fought against monopolies. "The real world" does not mean fitting on a 50s stereotype and doesn't make my opinion or influence less valid. Kamala Harris, your vice president, who is childless/childfree is a bigger part of the "real world" than you. "If you’re not conservative when you’re old, you have no brain" Again with the useless sound beats. What about some real policy? Just expecting or praying for dear life that the youth is just going to turn conservative “somehow” when they get older is naive. The writings are all over the walls, ignoring it won't stop it from happening.
There is really nothing I can offers someone with your perspective, unfortunately, except this:
It is easy to be liberal if you’re ignorant of economics.
Go learn some economics so you can better understand why your statement that “The ‘free market’ doesn't work when there's an egregious unbalance of power between the employee and the employer” is so very wrong.
Best suggestion: “Basic Economics” by Thomas Sowell.
https://www.amazon.com/Basic-Economics-Thomas-Sowell-ebook/dp/B00L4FSSTA/
You could learn plenty about things other than economics from other Sowell books.
Have a good life. If you take my advice on Sowell I think someday you will actually want to thank me.
But of course, the chance that you are willing to expand your mind by reading the brilliant Sowell is near zero, because not only is he a conservative, he is (gasp!) a black conservative!
I accidentally deleted an 800 word comment on this topic, but suffice it to say that I agree with your analysis, and it depresses me. I don’t think there are more than 4 college campuses in the country that are predominantly right-leaning, and I am not naive enough to think that this bodes well for the future of our political system writ large. The young generations of upcoming professionals are a monoculture – politically, ideologically, philosophically.
I don't actually agree on the monoculture front. There are always and will always be fault-lines. Liberalism and leftism are not the same, and young people are increasingly aware of that. The intellectual side of conservatism is dying out in America and with that a whole sphere of useful thought, but its fade doesn't leave a monoculture, just a shift in how the arguments look. There's a lot to be done—my own views are very much minority ones among my peers—but there remain plenty of intellectual curiosity and diversity of thought to go around.
I wish I could agree with you on this, but it doesn't match my experience. From my perspective, the two categories you'll find my generation in are leftism, or apathetic disengagement. I know very, very few "liberals" in the sense that you are using the word.
I think you underestimate what can be accomplished by a very small ideological minority.
The media is a case in point. Sure, 98% of journalism degrees go to Democrats. But going outside the system, the conservative social media ecosystem is vibrant and starting to rival legacy outlets in influence. Despite lack of credentialed talent. The same can happen in other fields over time.
The conservative media ecosystem is sprawling but talent-constrained. It lacks subtlety and grace. There is no conservative New York Times, hardly anything that even aspires to be a conservative New York Times. Demand for conservative journalists massively outstrips supply, and examples like Sibarium are a reminder that the many of the best to rise in that sphere are hardly conservatives in the traditional sense.
You're not wrong—small ideological minorities can and will play important roles—but movements need talent. It's not a coincidence that many of the best and brightest among modern conservatives arise from the same few universities as their liberal peers.
“There is no conservative New York Times”
There is, of course, the WSJ.
Admittedly, it is not a hard-partisan rag that will deliberately publish lies and falsehoods - and even more importantly, fail to cover important stories altogether (Hunter Biden laptop, e.g., but far more than this) - if it doesn’t serve the leftist political agenda.
So apologies - I concede that you are correct.
The Federalist Society further illustrates how you just need a handful of conservatives to have enough talent to fill the courts.
Are we going to run a nation with Engineers and Lawyers getting degrees by listening to podcasts? Does that sound like a good idea?
Besides, the real problem isn't that conservatives don't run colleges. The problem is that people who want to become highly educated professionals are the kind of people who are put off by right-wing buffoonery. The GOP isn't just losing young people with college degrees, it's losing old people who went to college decades ago. The GOP needs a platform (and quality candidates) that appeals to educated professionals. Like they had in 2015.
"My law school is not overwhelmingly progressive because the Powers That Be want it to be progressive. It's overwhelmingly progressive because progressives showed up. "
Let me know how the job market treats them. Just because the supply of social activists goes up doesn't meant that the demand will follow.
There are some who only want to do activist jobs, but the great majority are serious, focused people with progressive politics happy to go wherever they find opportunities in the legal field. Plenty are looking at things like public defense and public interest work, but the activist-to-biglaw pipeline is a running half-joke among students.
Too much of bread-and-butter governing is simply anathema to conservative voters. For a country to work, it has to be funded. Laws have to be passed. If every Republican in high office fears electoral retribution for funding or passing *anything*, it's hard to build a party with the institutional memory required to run things.
🙄
The government was funded and doing just fine in 1998.
Cut back spending (and regulation) to those levels, and then you’d find a fair number of conservative Republicans who would vote to fund more things.
That said, your premise is a joke. Republicans in fact HAVE continued to ramp spending along with the Democrats these last 25 years. Would that your premise were true…
This theory leaves no room for the impact of policy failures. The future could cause serious whiplash and I'm not so sure the country has finished processing COVID. https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/4319127-rfk-jr-leads-2024-candidates-in-favorability-poll/
A degree of whiplash can happen among the voting population as a whole but it is likely to be much less pronounced depending on demographic, and there’s no reason to anticipate a reversal among the demographics that would need to reverse to change the trend I outline.
The guy who wrote about "The End of History" is having his comeuppance about now. The End of Politics might be one of his chapters.
Hi Trace,
Is there any re-evaluation of this hypothesis after the 2024 election? I'm not referring to the electoral outcome but rather the elite re-alignment preceding it. It is quite notable to have the richest man in the world so vocally in one's camp, right? Or am I over-valuing that? Plus, a lot of the "Gray Tribe" (Tech elite & VC), "New Media" (Rogan), and certain avant-garde (cringe, I know but couldn't think of a better word) scenes (e.g. Dimes Square) siding openly with Republicans. This would be almost unimaginable in the Obama era.
It is looking like GenZ men are indeed redpilled, Millennial disenchantment with the Left may be setting in and GenX (as Twenge has noted in her work) is perhaps the most staunchly Republican identified generation in a long time. Won't this reshape institutions? How much elite direction will actually come from white women with degrees? I don't think we should expect Fusionism to return but it seems like there's a strong preference to return to the ethos of the 90s.
I ventured some my skepticism of the claims of this piece in an X reply to your post there (awhile ago), pointing out that the Republican party would likely be able to re-constitute a viable counter-elite from defectors from the Left. These defectors will build new institutions. I pointed to this happening in the recent past (e.g. original neocons like Norm Podhoretz, Irving Kristol, and such). I feel like this quite clearly happened in the wake of The Great Awokening. The IDW of course had some hiccups, but hasn't it sort of triumphed, especially after Musk bought Twitter?
Admittedly, the new set of defectors have not revolutionized major sociocultural institutions (excepting Twitter/X and some new media outfits), but the old guard institutions have public trust quotients that are bottoming out. There are signs of concern on the horizon or even active degradation in progress in journalism, entertainment, higher ed, etc. It seems the future is much more uncertain than it looked at the end of the 2010s.
It’s a good question. I do think the rise of the tech right is notable; as you note, it hasn’t really resulted in more of a push into the institutions, however. I would say: I’m less confident in the thesis now, particularly with the reported voting behavior of young men, but I think the broad strokes stand and should still be understood.
Late to this, but I think there's an elephant in the room that's not being discussed. WHY are these people so progressive? What are the social and cultural pressures that lead to people adopting a given political stance? Children aren't cold, rational creatures; if everyone under 18 is a progressive there's a reason for that. And so any change will likely have to begin with a change in culture or indoctrination.
Uh… have you seen academia lately? Have you seen the DEI agenda of the teachers unions?
Add that on top of compulsory K12 education and the historical adage that “if you’re not a liberal when you’re young, you have no heart”, and it’s pretty self explanatory.
End the indoctrination in public schools and public universities. By force of withholding federal education dollars, make K-12 school choice vouchers a requirement to receive a dime in Federal funding. Make elimination of speech codes and DEI departments a requirement of receiving federal loan guarantees and grants for private universities. That would go a long way…
A huge number of right leaning men who used to go to college are skipping the piety of, "higher education" and going straight into tech. From my experience, half of the people in my field either skipped college altogether or they are a drop out.
These are highly skilled and sought after professionals who realized that college is a scam for most professions. And colleges are so terrible at teaching tech that college grads need to be trained anyway.
The unwashed masses are literally building the future, making six figures, working where they want and all without going through an institutional gatekeeper. You could even say that they are members of the professional managerial class. They just didn't need to be fucked sideways to get there.
You should map "white college graduates" onto numbers of women attending college. I suspect you're just seeing female vs male preference and the blossoming of all the female preference college courses (social sciences etc.) as the universities have cashed in on female 'empowerment'.
It seems the massive over representation of the feminine in government is already causing a crisis that must either result in some kind of drastic realignment or soviet style dissolution. You can't just keep drawing the line out as if it can continue on it's current trajectory. The dysfunction won't allow it.
I actually think you are on to something. I work at one of the more conservative institutions and even here it's clear that the goal is always more female representation despite evidence they are already overrepresented. It's also just personally irritating to have everyone assume I'm a progressive due to being a white woman. I'm likely among the most conservative in our department
Not a rhetorical question - where is the intellectual energy on the progressive left now? Who are the up and coming figures or movements?
The right and liberal centrists seemed to have possessed most of the intellectual and creative energy over the past decade.
It's an excellent, and important question. Part of the answer is, I think, "Diffused through academia and the media." That is: you're less likely to get one-off iconoclasts right now, more likely to get polished presenters of the party line who convey a zeitgeist without contributing any particularly interesting ideas (eg John Oliver). Podcasts like Chapo, from the little I've seen of it, are similar: adept at conveying a zeitgeist, where their lack of particularly original ideas doesn't really hurt them. Breadtube, too, though one of them will come up with an interesting idea here and there. You also have people like Ezra Klein for a more serious bent, or Nathan J Robinson for a veneer of seriousness that lets people feel someone has done the thinking for them.
People with intellectual and creative energy exist among progressives, but I think they're a lot less central to the progressive movement than they are to the dissident right or 'heterodox' center, because when you're a structurally strong enough, developed enough movement you don't need intellectual creativity in quite the same way. You want a consensus that inspires action, and they have become adept at generating that in and around the works of any one intellectual.
Good article. I agree with everything you said.
If Republicans want to survive, they need to focus on education. I've been working on several proposals which can be readily implemented from the state level which is where Republicans are strongest.
1. Break up large school districts. Every high school should have it's own school board. Let's have some democracy. (See Rule 6)
2. End tenure for public school teachers -- even if that means upping the pay. Treat teachers as professionals. (With the smaller school districts, teachers can shop their services to more independent customers within driving range.)
3. Replace a bunch of the BS requirements for keeping certification with courses in world history. If you look just at U.S. history, the U.S. looks pretty bad -- without the context of what was going on elsewhere. (See Rule 3)
Then, should Republicans ever gain power at the national level, they should end the Department of Education entirely. No more federal student loan or grant program at all. If you think that's unfair to the poor and ambitious, given every natural born citizen a Universal Inheritance when they hit a certain age (19 or 20) which they can use for education, a home down payment, or starting a business, or whatever. Make the universities compete against other uses of startup capital.
What Roman opposed teaching? Roll nothing back - roll it all in!
Make them learn calculus and old philosophy,
Press them to test in logic, history, and verse,
Heap on rhetoric, and chemistry, and worse!
Ere they dare to call them scholars,
Make them debate in Latin first!