Buckley’s Life on the Firing Line

When William F. Buckley Jr. died in 2008, the United States lost its most articulate champion of conservative ideas. Over the course of a 60-year career in the public eye, Buckley did just about everything: published books and articles, lectured, wrote a newspaper column, edited a national magazine, advised politicians, and even ran for office. He was fortunate to live long enough to see the hopes he nourished as a young man come to pass when, after long and patient work, conservatives captured the Republican Party, elected a conservative president, and, most of all, promoted the policies that brought about the collapse of communism.

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Rubio, Vance outline the 'work of a generation,' next steps for the American renewal: 'This is a 20-year project'



Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio discussed ways forward for the country under the Trump administration and beyond at the American Compass New World Gala on June 3.

Although the two Republicans, who appear to be contenders in the 2028 presidential election, hit different beats, they were largely singing the same tune about prioritizing Americans, strengthening the country, and abandoning the failed globalist thinking that has undermined security, prosperity, and dignity in the United Sates.

Their outlooks on the future provided some indication of the staying power of President Donald Trump's vision as well as how it might evolve in the years to come.

Returning to reality

Rubio kicked off his speech by countering the progressive notion that human nature changes over time, stressing that "technologies change, the clothes we wear change, even languages change, governments change — a lot of things change, but the one thing that is unchanged is human nature."

Rubio suggested that this static nature accounts for why history often repeats itself and helps explain humans' unshakable "desire to belong," which naturally scales up to nationalism, despite nationhood being a relatively "new concept" in the grand scheme of things.

"If you put humans anywhere — a handful of people anywhere — one of the first things they start doing is trying to create things that they can join or be a part of," said Rubio. "The advent of the nation-state is a normal evolution of human behavior because people think it's important to belong to something, and being part of a nation is important. And I think that's really true, obviously, increasingly in how geopolitical decisions are made."

'We've undermined our position in the world.'

Despite man's immutable desire to belong and the naturalness of this desire's expression in nationalism, Rubio suggested that many in the West nevertheless entertained the fantasy that the dissolution of the Soviet Union meant the inevitable and imminent universalization of liberal democracy — that "the entire world is going to become just like us"; that "nationhood no longer mattered when it came to economics"; "that right now the world would no longer have borders"; and that it didn't matter where things were made.

Rubio noted that this idealistic outlook "became part of Republican orthodoxy for a long time," which accounts for why the GOP long proved indifferent to the outsourcing of labor and the offshoring of productive capacity.

RELATED: Liberals freaked out over Vance's Munich speech. Just wait till they read the State Department's Substack.

 Photo by Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images

The decades-long flirtation with liberal globalism "robbed a nation of its industrial capacity, of its ability to make things," thereby hurting the economy, hurting the country, robbing people of jobs, and eating away at the social fabric of the nation, suggested Rubio.

"What you find is because of all of those years of neglect, because of the loss of industrial capacity, we didn't just undermine our society, we didn't just undermine our domestic economy — we've undermined our position in the world," said the secretary of state, whose department recently signaled an interest in taking up the mantle of Western civilization.

'You can never be secure as a nation unless you're able to feed your people.'

Now that America and the rest of the world are facing a "crunch," the days of illusion are over, and geopolitics are adjusting accordingly.

Rubio indicated that the Trump administration is undertaking a reorientation of domestic and foreign approaches "to take into account for the fact that you can never be secure as a nation unless you're able to feed your people and unless you're able to make the things that your economy needs in order to function and ultimately to defend yourself."

Accordingly, Rubio suggested that the country moving forward needs to:

  • make decisions with the nation-state in mind and engage the world "in a way that prioritizes our national interest above all else";
  • guarantee America's access to the requisite "raw material and industrial capacity that is at the core both of the decisions that we're making and the areas that we're prioritizing"; and
  • rectify trade imbalances with fully developed countries.

While this direction is possibly good news for the American people, it bodes poorly for stubborn champions of the globalist dream.

RELATED: 'Woke right' smear weaponized by liberal interlopers against MAGA conservatives, populists — and Arby's?

 Photo by Kayla Bartkowski/Getty Images

New York Times opinion columnist Jamelle Bouie, for instance, recently complained about the MAGA vision for the future.

The MAGA movement is waging war on the nation's economic future, rejecting two generations of integration and interdependency with the rest of the world in favor of American autarky, of effectively closing our borders to goods and people from around the world so that the United States might make itself into an impenetrable fortress — a garrison state with the power to dictate the terms of the global order, especially in its own hemisphere. In this new world, Americans will abandon service-sector work in favor of manufacturing and heavy industry.

After presenting the possibility of a powerful, indomitable, and reindustrialized America as a terrifying prospect, Bouie stumbled upon the truth of the project under way, stating, "The aim, whether stated explicitly or not, is to erase the future as Americans have understood it and as they might have anticipated it."

Kicking bad habits

Oren Cass, founder of American Compass, pressed Vance about the project of "reshoring and reindustrialization" that the Trump administration is pursuing.

Vance noted that at its core, the project is about addressing "stagnating living standards" affecting normal Americans "who just want to start a family, work in a decent job, earn a livable salary, and have dignified work."

'The complete disconnect between their views on foreign policy and economic policy made me realize, again, that we're governed by people who aren't up to the job.'

The vice president suggested that the offshoring of industry, an under-investment in technology, heavy industrial regulation, and high energy costs are among the factors that have made it difficult for "normal people who work hard and play by the rules to have a good life."

He also identified a "misalignment between the ... normal Americans and the talking heads in Washington" and an unworkable separation of the making of things from the innovating of things — a issue he raised in his March speech at the American Dynamism Summit — as problems warranting remedy.

RELATED: Vance: Trump’s growth plan ditches cheap labor for real jobs that will fuel American greatness

 Photo by Kayla Bartkowski/Getty Images

Blaze News previously noted that in his American Dynamism speech, Vance suggested that the Trump administration plans to help innovators wean off cheap foreign labor and begin on-shoring industry, partly by incentivizing manufacturing and investment inside the United States with tax cuts and other policy instruments; by erecting tariff walls around critical industries; by reducing regulations and the cost of energy; and also by enforcing immigration law and securing the border to drain the pool of cheap illegal alien labor.

In his conversation with Cass on Tuesday, Vance reiterated that America needs to effectively get innovators and labor back on the same page and in the same country and to ensure that educational institutions are equipped to supply them with talent.

Vance also criticized "pro-globalization" elements of the leadership class who are indifferent to "whether a given part of the supply chain existed here, or China, or Russia or somewhere else" yet frequently champion foreign entanglements fought with outsourced munitions and technologies.

"The complete disconnect between their views on foreign policy and economic policy made me realize, again, that we're governed by people who aren't up to the job," Vance told Cass, "until four months ago when the American people actually gave the country a government it deserved. And obviously we're in the very early days, but I think that we've done more in four months to solve these problems. But this is not a five- or a 10-year project. This is a 20-year project to actually get America back to common-sense economic policy."

When asked by NBC News' Kristen Welker last month whether he figured the MAGA movement could survive without him as its leader, President Donald Trump said, "Yes, I do. ... I think it's so strong. And I think we have tremendous people. I think we have a tremendous group of people. We talked about a number of them. You look at Marco, you look at JD Vance, who's fantastic."

Trump added that Vance is "a fantastic, brilliant guy" and "Marco is great."

A straw poll conducted at the Conservative Political Action Conference in February reportedly found that 61% of the over 1,000 attendees said they would support Vance as the future GOP standard-bearer.

 

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Trump-backed conservative wins Polish presidency, can torpedo Tusk's liberal agenda: 'Rebuff to the Brussels oligarchy'



Polish boxer-turned-historian Karol Nawrocki met last month with President Donald Trump and attended an event at the White House marking the National Day of Prayer. Nawrocki reportedly shared with Polish media that Trump told him he would win the Polish presidential election.

Trump was right again.

Nawrocki, backed by Poland's national-conservative opposition Law and Justice (PiS) Party, defeated the liberal mayor of Warsaw — whom Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem deemed a "train wreck" — in Poland's presidential election runoff on Sunday. The results, published on Monday, showed that Nawrocki beat Rafał Trzaskowski 50.89% to 49.11%, thereby securing a five-year term.

'You picked a WINNER!'

Upon taking office on Aug. 6, Nawrocki can continue former President Andrzej Duda's work of preventing Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk's "globalist liberal government" from simultaneously advancing its leftist, pro-European Union agenda and from undoing the reforms undertaken by the previous PiS government.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio congratulated Nawrocki on his "hard-earned victory," noting that "together, the United States and Poland will forge the most ambitious alliance in our shared history on defense, energy, and commerce."

Trump said in a Truth Social post, "Congratulations Poland, you picked a WINNER!"

RELATED: Liberals freaked out over Vance's Munich speech. Just wait till they read the State Department's Substack.

 Photo by Jakub Porzycki/NurPhoto via Getty Images

Nawrocki noted in response that his top priorities are a "strong alliance with the USA, as well as partnership based on close cooperation."

In addition to opposing illegal immigration and the EU's ruinous migration frameworks, the former boxer made abundantly clear on the campaign trail his opposition to leftist social policies, promising to axe any legislation that threatens to weaken Poland's pro-life legislation or normalize non-heterosexual unions, reported the Catholic News Agency.

Nawrocki also emphasized that Poland's national culture is rooted in traditional Catholic values, telling supporters, "Poland's strength lies in its faith and family values."

'It's bad news for the EU, Ukraine and women.'

Homeland Security Secretary Noem likened Nawrocki to Trump last month at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Poland and suggested that under his leadership, Poland could "steer Europe back toward conservative values."

Various European conservatives and populists celebrated Nawrocki's victory, including Jordan Bardella, the president of France's right-wing populist National Rally party, who tweeted, "The Polish people have spoken and their free and democratic choice must be respected, including by the Brussels leaders who ardently hoped for their defeat."

"Faced with a European Commission whose authoritarian policies and federalist ambitions are brutalizing national sovereignty, Karol Nawrocki's victory in the Polish presidential election is welcome news," said Marine Le Pen, former National Rally president. "It is a rebuff to the Brussels oligarchy, which intends to impose a standardization of legislation on member states, contrary to any democratic will."

Hungarian Prime Minister Orbán Viktor called the election a "nail-biter," calling the outcome a "fantastic victory."

Western liberals, meanwhile, clutched pearls and ramped up their fear-mongering.

Adam Simpson, a lecturer at the University of South Australia, wrote, "Nawrocki's win has given pro-Donald Trump, anti-liberal, anti-EU forces across the continent a shot in the arm. It's bad news for the EU, Ukraine and women."

RELATED: Rubio wages war on foreign free-speech tyrants with visa ban

 The White House

Simpson acknowledged that it's harder to frame Nawrocki as "Russia-friendly" — a framing routinely used by critics of other national conservatives and populists in the region.

'More anti-European, nationalist and pro-Trump.'

It'd be an especially hard case to make that Nawrocki is sympathetic to Moscow given he has called Russia a "barbaric state," recommended cutting off diplomatic relations with the Kremlin, and has personally been put on a Russian wanted list after leading efforts to topple Soviet monuments while director of the Museum of the Second World War and head of the Institute of National Remembrance, reported ABC News.

Nevertheless, critics have made hay out of the incoming Polish president's vow to oppose NATO membership for Ukraine and suggestion that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy "treats Poland badly."

Piotr Buras, head of the European Council on Foreign Relations' Warsaw office, told the Washington Post that Nawrocki will be a "much more radical politician" than his predecessor — "more anti-European, nationalist and pro-Trump."

Anne Applebaum, the Atlantic staff writer who smeared as propagandists early proponents of the pandemic lab-leak theory and wasted ink last year imagining parallels between Trump and various 20th-century dictators, made sure to repeatedly label Nawrocki as an "authoritarian populist."

In the wake of the election, Tusk, now facing some calls to step down, indicated the Polish parliament will hold a confidence vote on his government.

Jacek Sasin, a PiS parliamentarian, suggested that Tusk was a "completely frivolous man who got a red card from the Poles."

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The Right Way To Read

"When conservatives discuss novels," Christopher Scalia complains in his entertaining and useful 13 Novels Conservatives Will Love (but Probably Haven’t Read), "we tend to mention the same handful of works. We cherish a reliable and sturdy stock that hasn’t been replenished in a generation or two"—a stock that includes The Lord of the Rings, Nineteen Eighty-Four, Brave New World, and, heaven help us, Atlas Shrugged. It shouldn’t be that way. Conservatives should be widely read literary people.

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Progressive castoffs don’t get to define the right



When woke mobs began chasing off guest speakers from college campuses and elite institutions started investigating scientists over minor infractions against gender orthodoxy, a certain class of moderate progressives realized its reign was ending. Figures like Sam Harris, Bari Weiss, and Michael Shermer weren’t conservatives by any stretch. In the George W. Bush or Barack Obama years, they would have qualified as mainstream progressives. But they couldn’t keep pace with the radical left.

These disaffected progressives needed a new label. But they couldn’t bring themselves to align with the “backward” conservatives they’d spent careers ridiculing. Venture capitalist Eric Weinstein coined the term “Intellectual Dark Web,” which Weiss attempted to popularize in the New York Times. But most settled on “classical liberal” to describe their stance. The problem? They had spent years rejecting classical liberalism.

Disillusioned progressives are not conservatives. They’re not classical liberals, either. They don’t get to define the future of the right.

“Classical liberal” serves as the ideal label for repackaging Obama-era liberalism in a way that reassures Republicans while keeping a safe distance from the woke left. It sounds moderate compared to identity politics. It evokes America’s founders — Washington, Jefferson, Adams. If you want to appear reasonable to conservatives while shielding yourself from attacks on your right flank, aligning with the founders is a smart move.

Whether the branding strategy was intentional remains debatable. What’s not in question is how badly this self-description distorted classical liberalism.

Some members of the Intellectual Dark Web drifted right. Most did not. They held tightly to progressive instincts. Many were atheists. Some had built careers in the New Atheist movement, penning books mocking Christianity and debating apologists for sport. Several were openly gay, and most championed same-sex marriage. These were not defenders of tradition — they spent decades undermining it.

They didn’t oppose the revolution. They led it — until the mob turned on the parts they still cherished, like feminism or science.

Toleration of all ... except atheists

When the Intellectual Dark Web embraced the “classical liberal” label, it did so to defend free speech. Most of these disillusioned progressives had been canceled — for “misgendering” someone, for not parroting the latest racial orthodoxies, or for refusing to bow to ideological litmus tests. They longed for an earlier version of progressivism, one where they still held the reins, and radical activists didn’t dictate the terms of debate.

This shared frustration became the rallying point between conservatives and anti-woke liberals. Free speech offered common ground, so both sides leaned into it. But classical liberalism involves far more than vague nods to open dialogue.

Some trace liberalism’s roots to Machiavelli or Hobbes. But in the American tradition, it begins with John Locke. Much of the Declaration of Independence reads like Thomas Jefferson channeling Locke — right down to the line about “life, liberty, and property,” slightly rewritten as “the pursuit of happiness.”

In “A Letter Concerning Toleration,” Locke argued for religious toleration among Christian sects. He even entertained the idea of tolerating Catholics — if they renounced allegiance to the pope. But Locke drew a hard line at one group: atheists.

“Lastly, those are not at all to be tolerated who deny the being of a God,” Locke wrote. “Promises, covenants, and oaths, which are the bonds of human society, can have no hold upon an atheist ... [they] undermine and destroy all religion can have no pretense of religion whereupon to challenge the privilege of a toleration.”

For Locke, atheism was social acid. It dissolved the moral glue holding a nation together. A silent unbeliever who kept to himself might avoid trouble — but even then, Locke saw no reason to trust such a man with power. Atheism, in Locke’s view, posed a civilizational threat.

Indispensable religion

Now, consider the irony. Many of today’s self-declared “classical liberals” rose to prominence attacking religion. They led the New Atheist crusade. They mocked believers, ridiculed Christianity, and wrote bestsellers deriding faith as delusion. These weren’t defenders of liberal order. They launched a secular jihad against the very moral foundation that made liberalism possible.

Their adoption of the “classical liberal” label isn’t just unserious. It’s either historically illiterate or deliberately deceptive.

It’s a mistake to treat America’s founders as a monolith. They disagreed — often sharply — and those disagreements animate much of the "Federalist Papers." But one point remains clear: Their understanding of free speech and religious liberty diverged sharply from modern secular assumptions.

RELATED: Labeling you ‘phobic’ is how the left dodges real arguments

  sesame via iStock/Getty Images

Even after the Constitution and Bill of Rights were ratified, several states retained official churches. Courts regularly upheld blasphemy laws well into the 20th century. Some state supreme courts continued defending them into the 1970s. Blue laws, which restrict commerce on Sundays to preserve the Sabbath, remain on the books in several states.

John Adams put it plainly: The Constitution was “made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” The founders, and the citizens they represented, expected America to function as an explicitly Christian nation. Free speech and religious liberty existed within that framework — not apart from it.

Skin suit liberalism

So when non-woke liberals claim that “classical liberalism” demands a secular or religiously neutral government, they misrepresent history. That idea would have struck the founders as absurd. The Constitution was not written for New Atheists. Adams said so himself.

Faced with these historical facts, critics usually pivot. They argue that America has morally advanced beyond its founding values. Today, we tolerate non-Christian religions, recognize women’s rights, and legalize same-sex marriage. These changes, they claim, bring us closer to “true” American principles like freedom and equality.

Classical liberalism was a real political tradition — one that helped shape the American founding. It deserves serious treatment. Watching it get paraded around by people who reject its core values is exhausting. If Locke or Adams saw progressive atheists wearing classical liberalism like a skin suit, they’d spin in their graves.

The secular liberalism of the 1990s and early 2000s is not classical liberalism. It isn’t even an ally of conservatism. The non-woke left served as useful co-belligerents against the radical fringe, but they were never true allies — and they should never be allowed to lead the conservative movement.

Some have earned respect. Carl Benjamin, Jordan Peterson, and others have taken real steps to the right, even toward Christianity. That deserves credit. But let’s not kid ourselves. Many who still fly the “classical liberal” banner don’t believe in the values it represents. They reject its religious foundation. They rewrite its history. They co-opt its label while advancing a worldview its founders would have rejected outright.

Disillusioned progressives are not conservatives. They’re not classical liberals, either. They don’t get to define the future of the right. And they certainly don’t get to lead it.

'Woke right' smear weaponized by liberal interlopers against MAGA conservatives, populists — and Arby's?

James Lindsay. Photo by DOMINIC GWINN/Middle East Images/AFP via Getty Images

On his website, he stated:

Woke Right refers to right-wing people who have adopted the characteristics and underlying worldview orientation of the Woke Left for putatively "right-wing," "conservative," or reactionary causes. They are, as reactionaries, the image of the Right projected by the Left made real by players claiming to be on the Right. That is, they’re right-wing people who act and think about the world like Woke Leftists.

Lindsay echoed this definition in his written responses to Blaze News, in which he suggested that woke right "means using critical theories or Marxian analysis for right-wing or anti-Left causes."

"It is very specific," Lindsay continued. "Most conservatives do not meet this definition."

A sizeable portion of the MAGA coalition does, however, supposedly meet this or one of Lindsay's other definitions. Right-wing populists, for example, are on the liberal's naughty list, as are those who subscribe to national conservatism, which he dubbed "the Woke Right final boss."

The application of "woke right" to national conservatives amounts to the more tactical smear, as it not only cuts through the MAGA coalition but deep into the Trump administration and the Republican Party.

Past speakers at the National Conservatism Conference, which is run by the Hazony-led Edmund Burke Foundation, include Secretary of State Marco Rubio; Michael Anton, another senior State Department official; Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Elbridge Colby; White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller; Trump border czar Tom Homan; and Sens. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), Mike Lee (R-Utah), Rick Scott (R-Fla.), Ted Cruz (R-Texas), and Roger Marshall (R-Kan.).

Of course, there's also JD Vance, who underscored in a NatCon speech — given just days before President Donald Trump chose him as his running mate — that while America was founded "on great ideas," it is not, as some have suggested, reducible to "just an idea."

James Lindsay and a bunch of his friends tried to pump the hatred higher because the term 'illiberal' — it just didn't succeed in sufficiently tainting and de-legitimizing conservatives.

While Lindsay has danced around labeling Vance "woke right" for daring to express such thoughts, stating in December, "I haven't called JD Vance Woke Right anywhere yet," he has implied as much — calling him a "post-liberal" with a predominantly woke right team, who not only entertains the woke right definition of "nation" but did the unspeakable: speak at a National Conservatism Conference.

RELATED: JD Vance cuts straight to the heart of what animates Trump's nationalism — and it's not 'just an idea' 

 Vice President JD Vance. Photo by JIM WATSON/AFP via Getty Images

In fairness to Vance and his fellow NatCon alumni, it is apparently easy to find oneself labeled "woke right." After all, even a fast-food chain has been tagged.

Lindsay recently indicated online that Arby's had veered into woke right territory with its post, "Unlike dad, our ham & swiss actually came back."

In the much ridiculed post, which he has since apologized for and walked back, Lindsay noted, "That's curtains for them. Cringe af."

When asked why national conservatives warrant their categorization as "woke right," Lindsay suggested that while "not all of National Conservatism is Woke Right ... the general thrust of the movement meets the basic definition."

Final boss

Hazony, the author of "The Virtue of Nationalism" whom Lindsay has repeatedly targeted with the “woke right” smear, explained to Blaze News that the strategy behind the term is not new.

"The main people who are behind this — and James Lindsay is the one who's most explicit, but I don't think that he's at all the only one — they've been doing the same thing for many years, long before the term 'woke right' came out; at least as far back as Donald Trump being elected, you know, so it's almost a decade ago," said Hazony. "There was this game of saying that in between liberals and Nazis or racialist fascists — in between, there is no legitimate position. That is a standard argument of the anti-nationalist liberal camp that has been used by many, many different people, and it's always the same."

"When people started using 'illiberal' ... in the mid-2000s, what they were doing was eliminating the legitimacy of the word 'conservative,' because 'illiberal' is anybody who's an authoritarian or a Nazi or a theocrat or a fascist, plus anybody else who's not a liberal," continued Hazony. "So that strategy, using the term 'illiberalism' as a way of saying, 'No, I'm not going to recognize that there are any legitimate conservatives or nationalists' — that's been around in that form for at least 15 years."

Hazony noted that more recently,

James Lindsay and a bunch of his friends tried to pump the hatred higher because the term "illiberal" — it just didn't succeed in sufficiently tainting and de-legitimizing conservatives. So they switched to "Christian nationalism," and it was the same kind of thing, where, you know, you pick the absolute least palatable people who can be called "Christian nationalists," you quote them, and then you say, "Well, everybody who's a nationalist and a Christian all the way right up to the borders of liberalism — that entire sphere of conservatives and nationalists who are basically normal but they have criticisms of liberalism — no, they're all illegitimate. They're all totalitarians. They all reject the American Constitution." And so they tried that; that peaked in 2023; and it failed. It petered out. They didn't succeed in convincing the average, intelligent person who's paying attention that the political spectrum is only liberals and fascists.

Whereas previous attempts failed, Hazony indicated that "this time, they have succeeded in drawing blood."

"This term [woke] was designed to be humiliating by taking the term that we were using for the Maoist-style cultural revolution that was taking over America and Britain and other countries. And now they say, 'Those of you who are fighting against this, you're exactly the same. You're the same exact thing.' And it upsets people."

'You got dogmatic, fanatic liberals who thought that the whole world simply could be brought under liberalism either by persuasion or, if not, then by conquest.'

Hazony further told Blaze News that "it's deeply insulting at a personal level for people who've devoted their time to trying to save America and the West from the woke, and at the same time, it's incredibly effective at destroying the coalition that was built — the anti-woke coalition — by making the different parties despise one another."

"The idea that liberalism is about toleration was just thrown out the window and you got dogmatic, fanatic liberals who thought that the whole world simply could be brought under liberalism either by persuasion or, if not, then by conquest."

Playing with fire

Lindsay has tried tarring Blaze Media with the same brush he has used on Hazony and others, characterizing it as "the first captured stronghold" in his imaginative woke right "takeover" narrative.

'The term has little meaning other than as a slur used by people trying desperately to gatekeep this intellectual, cultural, and commercial majority movement.'

Blaze Media editor in chief Matthew Peterson, whom Lindsay has implicated as a key player in this supposed takeover, said, "I know Lindsay and we had a decent relationship until he suddenly lumped me and my tenure here at Blaze Media with his slur."

"Obviously, we have a wide variety of people and opinions at Blaze Media. We represent the broad MAGA-MAHA majority coalition, and I take that role seriously," continued Peterson. "But I do not need to say for the record that we are not 'woke right' because the term has little meaning other than as a slur used by people trying desperately to gatekeep this intellectual, cultural, and commercial majority movement."

Peterson suggested that the term's capricious usage has helped empty it of meaning.

"What's puzzling and ultimately discrediting about the term is that Lindsay and others lump disparate people and groups together into a wild, grand conspiracy," continued Peterson. "He and his associates refer a lot to abstract -isms like hermeticism, communism, and gnosticism and call all kinds of people followers of various schools of thought: 'Nietzscheans' and 'Schmittians.'"

The "Schmittian" smear lobbed around evokes Carl Schmitt, a German political theorist who critiqued liberalism, defined politics as the distinction between the categories of friends and enemies, and lent intellectual support to the Nazi regime in Germany.

Peterson noted that he once tried to explain his thoughts on Schmitt to Lindsay over text.

"As a student of political thinkers who were taught by Leo Strauss, who fled Nazi Germany (as opposed to Schmitt, who became a Nazi), I think Schmitt's writings are important to anyone who wants to seriously consider the nature of executive power, which is why they are still studied by people of all kinds throughout the world," said Peterson. "But the idea that this makes me a Nazi or that I agree with everything Schmitt says or believed is ridiculous. James recently asked me to 'denounce Schmitt' on X at his command, which sounds a lot like he's trying to initiate the very 'struggle sessions' he often decries."

Peterson emphasized the range of people and institutions that Lindsay and his fellow travelers have lumped into his "grand conspiracy," noting, for instance, that "they throw in institutions from the Roman Catholic Church to the Claremont Institute, countries from Hungary to China, and individuals from General Michael Flynn to Yoram Hazony to Peter Thiel in the mix as part of whatever the 'woke right' is."

"It becomes silly pretty quick," said Peterson.

Threatened liberals

The host of BlazeTV's "The Auron MacIntyre Show" — one of Lindsay's frequent targets — said that when it comes to Lindsay, woke right "seems to be more of a branding exercise and a political weapon than it does anything with definitive content."

"I think that's the reason so many people have had difficulty when attempting to have even a basic discussion about the term," MacIntyre said. "The guy who is most famous for coining and popularizing it himself has admitted that it wasn't a great one, and it doesn't really have a lot of content besides its ability to be used as a political weapon."

'The only thing that seems to actually link any of these people together is their willingness to win.'

MacIntyre suggested that woke right's apparent transformation in the wild from a denigratory term for anti-Semites and identitarians into a strategic full-spectrum put-down is “the real trick of this term.”

"A lot of people assume that [anti-Semites and identitarians] were the original targets, and because of that, many people thought that perhaps there could be some value in it because, you know, not all of those groups are particularly ones that people enjoy being associated with," said MacIntyre. "That said, it's become quickly clear that the expansion of the term has now come to encompass Orthodox Jews like Hazony, guys who are big fans of Israel like Tim Pool, and others."

"He's included a large number of very well-respected people who are obviously well outside of this — guys like Matt Walsh."

RELATED: Let's build a statue honoring Pat Buchanan

 BlazeTV host Auron MacIntyre. Photo by DOMINIC GWINN/Middle East Images/AFP via Getty Images

"The only thing that seems to actually link any of these people together is their willingness to win, their willingness to fight back against the left, their willingness to say, 'Actually, we're going to take affirmative steps. We're going to take power. We're going to use power to win political battles.' And that seems to be the main violation," continued MacIntyre.

'What they're finding is actually, no, conservatives would like to be in charge.'

When asked whether this campaign might be, at least in part, the early stages of an effort to politically neutralize JD Vance ahead of the next presidential election, MacIntyre answered in the affirmative.

"Not only is that the case, I think he's been pretty explicit about that," said the BlazeTV host.

MacIntyre suggested that Lindsay and other "new atheists, rational-centrist types" feel threatened by Vance and the national conservatives, given their willfulness and refusal to "be ruled by people who hate them, hate their values, hate their religion."

MacIntyre suspects that while the "salience" of the "woke right" term has risen, the credibility of those wielding it has "plummeted."

"[Lindsay has] made many enemies of pretty high-profile figures with good reputations by throwing around this term and attacking people who clearly don't hold any of the nefarious views he's attributing to them," said MacIntyre.

The attacks have also served to expose bad actors who "ultimately were hoping to undermine the conservative movement rather than be a productive part of it," said MacIntyre. "That's something that's critical to know at this juncture."

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The Left Can’t Admit The Sexual Revolution Was Harmful Without Admitting Christians Were Right

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Meet the schmucks trying to kneecap the anti-woke alliance



Until recently, “woke” was a term that anti-Marxist liberals, nationalists, and conservatives had in common. It was a term we could use to communicate with one another and understand one another in our post-2015 battle against a virulent and ascendant strain of neo-Marxist revolution. In other words, the term “woke” played an important role in building a broad coalition that looked like it could be strong enough to defeat this enemy.

It was a pretty big achievement for such a small word.

But now a handful of anti-woke liberals have decided to turn this formerly unifying, coalition-building term into a weapon to use against the right.

True, some of the most malicious liberals have been intentionally using “woke right” to cover just about the entire nationalist right, whereas other, more naive liberals, having taken the bait, are trying to apply the term “woke right” only to what used to be called the “alt-right” or “white nationalists.”

I get it. I really do. I understand that some of the liberals who’ve been pumping up the term “woke right” are deceitful scoundrels and that others are just honestly, nerdishly trying to work out a way of answering real questions in political theory that bother them.

But for present purposes, it doesn’t matter if you’re a deceitful scoundrel or an earnest nerd. Every liberal using the term “woke right” is being a schmuck.

What they are all doing is taking a flag and a symbol that for 10 years was highly effective at rallying opposition to the neo-Marxist revolution — and worked well to cement a coalition that could defeat it — and throwing that flag to the ground and trampling on it so it can’t be used any more.

Yes, you schmucks, “woke” always meant exactly one thing: It referred to that part of the neo-Marxist left that liberals, conservatives, nationalists, Christians, and Jews had to join forces to defeat. And by repurposing that term as a weapon against this coalition, you’ve turned it into gall in our mouths. You’ve taken a shared term of discourse, gutted its common and universally accepted meaning, and mangled it so we can’t use it to talk to one another any more.

Targeting the anti-woke coalition

This is why so many on the nationalist right are so amazed by the treachery of certain anti-Marxist liberals who have been promoting the theory of the “woke right” — and by the wretched folly of so many other liberals who have walked right into the trap.

Turning the term “woke” on the nationalist right isn’t just redefining any old term. It’s a betrayal. A betrayal that, if it goes through, will mean the end of the anti-woke coalition that looked, for a few short months, like it could actually win.

Sure, there were always different streams on the right. There was always an “alt-right” (as Richard Spencer called it) or a “white nationalist” right that set itself up in opposition to mainstream nationalist conservatives. There was also the “dissident right,” which had a somewhat broader reach. Then there were mainstream nationalist conservatives (or “NatCons”). These were all well known and reasonably accurate terms for talking about the various movements on the political right. And of course, if you didn’t feel like using reasonably accurate terms, you could always use the corporate left-wing media’s go-to favorites like “illiberal right” and “Christian nationalist right” — typically employed when the idea was to deplore everyone who wasn’t a liberal.

In other words, there were plenty of terms available for those anti-Marxist liberals who just wanted to criticize various factions of the right. Those terms existed, and everyone knew what they were referring to.

Why they’re using this term

So why weren’t all these existing terms good enough? Why did some of the super-geniuses who spend their time competing for the title of grand poobah in the anti-Marxist liberal camp feel like they had to manufacture this entirely new term — “woke right” — and work day and night to get it to take off?

Obviously, it was because, in the eyes of a few anti-Marxist liberals, “woke right” had advantages that more accurate terms like “alt-right” or “white nationalist right” didn’t have. Let’s count the advantages these aspiring poobahs thought they could milk out of using “woke right” instead:

1. “Woke right” is intentionally designed to be humiliating. The whole point of the term “woke right” is to target people who have devoted their best efforts for years — often with serious personal and professional consequences — to mounting a viable opposition to the “woke” left. The whole point is to tell them: Sorry, pal, but you’re not a whit better than the Maoist revolutionaries you were out there fighting. And coming out of the mouths of anti-Marxist liberals who were at least sometimes out there on the barricades with us, that is in fact a pretty demeaning thing to hear.

2. “Woke right” is perfect for virtue-signaling. Because the term “woke right” signals a rupture and a betrayal of the coalition that some anti-Marxist liberals forged with the right, it serves as proof of ideological purity. It says: As for me, I’m still untainted. I will keep delegitimizing and canceling nationalists and conservatives forever.

3. “Woke right” succeeds as a provocation where previous terms of contempt like “illiberal right” and “Christian nationalism” failed. The fact is, the term “woke right” really has outraged many nationalist conservatives. And for a small number of especially thuggish liberal trolls, causing that upset and confusion in the ranks of nationalist conservatives is a good in itself.

4. “Woke right” is a term that neutralizes the power of the term “woke” to forge a broad coalition between anti-Marxist liberals and nationalist conservatives. The term “woke right” destroys the flag and symbol of that broad, anti-Marxist coalition and makes it impossible to rally around it any longer.

5. “Woke right” is a term that actively works to destroy the possibility of mutual respect, political alliance, and friendship between anti-Marxist liberals and the nationalist right. Because of its strong connotations of intentional humiliation and provocation, betrayal, and the destruction of shared symbols, getting this term into wide circulation is the best weapon anyone has come up with yet to ensure that anti-Marxist liberals and nationalist conservatives will truly despise one another and do everything possible to avoid working together going forward.

So that’s a lot of reasons why an anti-Marxist liberal might want to use the term “woke right” instead of more accurate, established terms. But notice that he would only use this new term if his goal was to drive a wedge between liberals and the nationalist right, increase mutual distrust and mutual resentment, and cripple the ability of the two camps to pursue common aims.

That’s why I say that every one of you anti-Marxist liberals using this term is being a schmuck. Because either you are purposely trying to destroy the anti-woke coalition, snatching defeat from the jaws of victory, or you are completely clueless about the damage you’re doing to the anti-woke coalition and don’t have the political sense to know when you’re being played like a fiddle and who’s playing you.

Either way, there’s an old political term for what you’re doing. You’re being a schmuck.

A common effort endangered

There are lots of things I find aggravating and distasteful about having to work with liberals to achieve common aims. But probably the worst is the way that certain big-shot liberals continue to find ever-new ways of expressing their disgust and loathing for their nationalist and conservative allies — no matter how much their nationalist and conservative colleagues may have contributed to a common political effort and no matter how recent the memory of it.

Some readers may be too young to remember the end of the Cold War. So for them, let me just add a relevant historical comment. If you want to know what happened in 1989 to transform the victorious anti-communist alliance between liberals and conservatives into a dystopian reality in which liberals worldwide ended up trying to grind their former nationalist and conservative allies into the ground — well, it looked exactly like what we’re seeing with this “woke right” campaign.

After the fall of the Berlin Wall, a small group of fanatical liberal commissars decided that the victory over communism was the perfect moment to try for a world without nationalists and without real conservatives in any positions of influence anywhere. When they spoke of a “unipolar” world, they didn’t mean that America was going to be the single great power on earth. What they meant was that their liberalism was going to be the single great power on earth, so that no one with any power or influence would ever be anything other than a liberal again. Francis Fukuyama’s grotesque fantasy about banishing anyone driven by “thymos” to jungles at the edges of the political world was only the best known example of this ideal.

It seems like we’re going through an attempted replay of this same liberal fantasy now, although still on a much smaller scale. A small number of fanatical liberal commissars are giddy with the feeling that the Berlin Wall has fallen again. They think (mistakenly) that the war against “woke” is basically over and that our side has already won. They think (mistakenly) that they can safely turn their attention to trying to remove nationalists and genuine conservatives from whatever positions of influence they’ve succeeded in gaining in the last 10 years.

I admit that for now, this effort still looks pathetic. The anti-Marxist liberals who really believe these things are still just a fanatical few. But when you see how quickly they’ve hoodwinked so many in their camp into embarking on an immediate war against their nationalist and conservative coalition partners, it just makes your head spin.

Donald Trump and JD Vance were right to bring anti-Marxist liberals into their coalition and into their administration. They could not have won without broadening their appeal. And that broad coalition will be needed for many years to come if any part of the nationalist and conservative agenda is going to be implemented in reality.

But there won’t be much hope of holding this coalition together if certain fanatical, anti-Marxist liberal commissars continue inflating the lie that nationalist conservatives are an imminent threat to all things good and beautiful — “just like the left.”

Editor’s note: The second edition of Yoram Hazony’s award-winning book, “The Virtue of Nationalism,” will be published in June and is available for pre-order now.

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