This is a real game changer. I had no idea of this Right Wing MAGA world. Shocks me. Incredible stuff.
Donald Trump is not a big thinker, but his 2016 presidential victory presented a grand opportunity for people who are, and it set off a radicalization and reconfiguring of the American conservative world. This book outlines what happened in the regard with names like Patrick Deneen, Christopher Rufo, Peter Thiel, and J.D. Vance. Their agenda is built to last, and it has dire long-term implications for liberal democracy.
The New Right has precedents in America history, yet it is very new also.
The author has a PHD in political theory from UT-Austin. Very impressive. With a Leo Straussian background. Lots of talk on Allan Bloom and Harry Jaffa. At this point I still do not understand the appeal of these three heavyweights, how and why they have been so influential.
The Old Right is a base of today's conservatism, but it seems to me it's mostly archaic. Goldwater seems mostly harmless today.
I have never heard of conservative Harvard Professor Harvey Mansfield. P. 60
Post liberalism features Patrick Deneen I bought his last book, but never read it. Post liberalism, actually a version today's conservatism, so far is not worth my trying to understand it. P. 70
The MAGA new right is too busy and complex for me to waste too much intellectual blood on.
Trump has new right MAGA support. I had no idea.
Steve Bannon is an admirer of the Greek Historian Thucydides and Sparta. I seem to be behind what I should know. He holds degrees from Georgetown and Harvard. P. 124
Bannon and the Alt-Right, associated with Sparta and Thucydides. P. 125
The complexity of intellectual conservatism and right -wing politics is totally new to me. I had no idea.
The infamous John Eastman story. P. 147
The entire "Stop the Steal" gambit was bogus from the start. P. 160
Issues today in higher education (SB). I don't know that I can understand. P. 171
About Trump's awful 1776 Report. P. 180
The New Right scholars succeed with these kinds of arguments because of the growing insularity of their growing intellectual world. This is a world, not the only one for sure, that is self-sealing and self-congratulatory composed of people who long ago who gave up on the idea of engaging seriously with mainstream scholarship, and whose work is always suspect. Main result is America's racial history, which is decidedly unwoke, hopelessly biased, and untrustworthy as a result. P. 189
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