Donald Trump's victory in the 2016 elections left me with my jaws dropped to the floor. It was one thing that I couldn't wrap my head around how half of the electorate could vote for a petty and narcissistic fuckwit. It was quite another that he was supported by many very intelligent and informed people on the conservative side - Peter Thiel comes to mind. I got intrigued, so I started reading right-wing blogs first, then magazines, and finally books. I watched countless public speeches or debates featuring conservative intellectuals. I quickly forgot about Trump (whose victory and popularity is still a mystery, and probably will remain so in many years to come).
But I found that the history of political philosophy resonates with me in strangely similar ways as did my childhood literary favorites. People read fantasy to be pulled away from the mundane and boring reality, and into a world of magic, sword-fights, and bone-chilling adventures. But there is more to it. More than any other genre of fiction, fantasy offers heroes and larger than life characters. The protagonists often have to overcome their inner demons to fulfill their destiny. Characters are tested in terrible situations. Tragic heroes stand by their principles in the face of certain death. They resist the corruption of power and the seduction of dark magic. For fans of more realistic fiction, there also are plenty of all too human heroes balancing in the grey zone of morality.
As I dived into it, at some point I caught myself projecting these archetypes into my new field of interest. It was very easy to find Sauron-like monstrous rulers (Stalin), mad prophets (Nietschze), sages (Sokrates), or machiavellian villains (well...Machiavelli). It doesn't even require to look at it through the lense of fantasy to see that political and moral philosophy is a vicious battlefield of ideas. Its history is fraught with uprisings, purges, and betrayals. There were charismatic heroes, heretics, fallen prophets, fanatics, and conmen. The fights are metaphorical of course, and academic debates don't keep the general populace awake at night, but ideas the fighters wield do have very real-world power.
“Practical men who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influence, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist. Madmen in authority, who hear voices in the air, are distilling their frenzy from some academic scribbler of a few years back" - John Maynard Keynes
Nietzsche wasn't an evil wizard, but his ideas paved the way to the Second World War. Marx was just an obscure economist. His scribblings in the British Museum eventually killed a mind-boggling hundred million people long after he died. The visions of an apocalyptic Jewish prophet in Roman-ruled Palestine changed the course of history for the next two thousand years (and counting). Top that with any fictional sorcerer!
Delving into the history of the Right was a lucky coincidence. The Left is all about equality and fairness and just society. Who can be against that? But the Right has seemed to be absolutely wrong in everything. Let's assume you know only a single fact about a stranger, and that fact being one of these: he/she is an evolution denier, climate change denier, nationalist, greedy capitalists, homophobe, misogynist, racist, gun-rights advocate, or a religious fanatic. You can make a pretty safe bet what he does in the ballot-box. So the Right is more interesting for the same reason the villains of a story are usually more interesting than the good guys. Darth Vader to Luke Skywalker, Dracula to Van Helsing, Mephisto to God. Even the righteous can be fun sometimes, but a great badass character beats them every time. If I want to read good fiction, give me someone who succumbed to his inner demons, was tainted by power, or a mischievous, machiavellian scoundrel.
It actually didn't take much time to realize that my original blanket judgment had many holes. Despite being wrong on everything at first glance, the Right has some very profound insights into life, and many of them go against the mainstream thought. Strong emphasis on freedom and individual responsibility. Firm moral principles. Rejection of radicalism. Pride in your own culture.
Long story short, after following a couple of blogs and on-line magazines for some weeks, I settled down with the National Review. The Review has been the flagship magazine of the mainstream conservative movement since the 50s. It has always been the driving force of fusion in the Right, that is, it has tried to reconcile the two principal strains of conservative thought, libertarianism and traditionalism.
What got me hooked on the National Review was the quality of writing. Maybe it's just wordsmithery. If someone can bang sentences together in a graceful way, I'm halfway sold. I also appreciate the strong diversity of opinion, which is normally a great sign in a newspaper, although I don't think it's solely driven by editorial principle. The magazine gives voice to some unshakable Trump supporters, like the renowned historian Victor David Hanson, or the British journalist and convicted felon (and Trump pardonee) Conrad Black. But it also features some former Never Trumpers. Yes, the relation to Trump is the defining feature of our time. The rest of the contributors are spread across the spectrum. In general, the NA represents, or it is itself, the current mainstream conservatism. It's pro-life, pro-gun-rights, small government, moderately religious, free-market advocate. It despises communism and dictators (chief among them Putin or the Chinese Communist Party), and although it's wary of new international commitments, it maintains that America represents a force of good in the world and, in reasonable limits, should stand up for it on the world stage. It's critical of Trump, whom it regards as unpresidential, ignorant, petty, dishonest and often damaging to American interests and institutions. But not as much as it is critical of the Left (or what they perceive as the monolithic force hellbent on destroying the greatness America).
In short, NA has a strong character, but a broad spectrum of acceptable opinion. It's openly slanted towards the Right but makes grudging nods to Obama or anyone on the Left when credit is due. It often makes a good case for conservative ideas and much more often points out genuine problems with the liberal side which you wouldn't pick up from the Guardian, maybe not even from the New York Times.
On the bad side, the magazine's hypocrisy is unbearable sometimes. Had Obama done a tenth of what Trump is doing every they, they would have gone apoplectic. Now they resort to pointing out the problem before quickly finding an issue on the Left they can bite onto. Religion-driven sanctimoniousness is similarly repellent, but, thank ...God, less frequent. I wish they would give more space to the secular conservatives.
The aforementioned diversity of opinion is a great thing, but it's partly forced upon NA by financial considerations. The two most outspoken Trump critics at NA, Jonah Goldberg and David French, recently left to launch their own conservative magazine, The Dispatch. In an interview, Goldberg remarked that after occasional less restrained articles, the phone lines used to suddenly get busy with angry donors. Which suggests that NA would take a harder line against the president, but caves in to financial pressure.
I am a regular reader now and the good and bad things force me to cherry-pick constantly. Love letters to Trump trigger a gag-reflex. So do the articles about The Terrible Thing the Left Did Again. The pieces on foreign policy or economy thoughtful and well-written, the book reviews are excellent. In sum, I read around half of the content in each issue, and I never found it a waste of time yet. True to its fusionist roots, with gems and warts altogether, the National Review embodies the contemporary American Right.
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