Left Conservatism
CrowdSource 9.23.2024
Welcome to CrowdSource, your weekly guided tour of the latest intellectual disputes, ideological disagreements, and national debates that piqued our interest (or inflamed our passions). This week: the death of ideology (maybe), and J. D. Vance’s ideas.
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The End of Ideology?
A few weeks ago, Shadi and Damir pondered the rise of Kamala Harris and wondered whether vibes had eclipsed policy and ideology in American politics.
This week, Ross Douthat makes a similar observation: “… there is a flight from ideological ambition on both sides, with the Democratic candidate offering a mix of poll-tested incrementalism and nonspecific pabulum and the Republican candidate closing out his campaign with inconsistent pandering …”
Despite these trends, there’s one person on the presidential ticket who, for better or worse, is saturated with ideas: J. D. Vance.
The Mystery of the Ideology of J. D. Vance
There is much disagreement about what exactly Vance’s ideology really is.
Ideology as Fandom. Those in search of J. D. Vance’s worldview have looked into his interests: Lord of the Rings, Pulp Fiction, seven different intellectuals and various musical groups in his Spotify playlist, which someone unearthed from the bowels of the Internet.
Vance Encounters. Jessica Winter plumbed Vance’s memoirs to discover a “strange, sad politics of family.” Martyn Wendell Jones looked at Vance’s social media posts and saw “a galaxy-brained tendency common among his hyper-online far-right milieu.” Peter Thiel and the other tech billionaires who funded Vance’s campaign might be pushing Vance toward a species of Silicon Valley techno-futurism.
Integralism. This week, political scientist Kevin Vallier associates Vance with “integralism,” the idea that state should favor the Catholic Church as the true religion: “J.D. Vance is friends with many of the leading integralists, so it’s not entirely clear to me how far away he is from thinking that this would be the best system of government.” Paul Elie recently claimed that Vance would like to see Catholic power “enshrined through regime change.”
The Left Conservative Idea
Perhaps Vance’s worldview is something simpler: Left Conservatism.
Marx + Burke. Norman Mailer defined it in 1968: “[Mailer] tried to think in the style of Marx in order to attain certain values suggested by Edmund Burke. Since he was a conservative, he would begin at the root. … Since he was also a Left Conservative, he believed that radical measures were sometimes necessary to save the root.”
Here’s a list of books and movies that capture the socially-conservative, left-on-economics, populist sensibility that Vance embodies:
The Revolt of the Elites by Christopher Lasch. A highly influential critique of meritocracy.
Grand New Party by Reihan Salam and Ross Douthat. They predict the rise of Right wing populism in the Introduction.
Tyranny, Inc. by Sohrab Ahmari. A critique of corporate power, from the right.
Fulfillment by Alec MacGillis but also “Fulfillment” by Kevin Williamson: a center-left critique of the Amazon economy balanced by a center-right appreciation of it.
Armies of the Night by Norman Mailer. At times too conspiratorial and crankish, it is nevertheless a brilliant portrait of midcentury American resistance against The Machine. Today, its rhetoric echoes throughout the Left Conservative right.
Nebraska, a heartwarming movie from 2013 about an old man who, in retrospect, fits the profile of a certain type of Trump voter.
Dignity by Chris Arnade. Anti-elite populism.
Knocked Up, a 2007 movie by Judd Apatow. Left Conservative social conservatism.
Rise of the Unmeltable Ethnics by Michael Novak, an early (1972) report on what came to be known as the white working class.
“How I Joined the Resistance,” by J. D. Vance. Vance’s account of his conversion to the Catholic Church.
Sadly, by spreading anti-Haitian nativist memes, Vance is discrediting both himself and whatever ideas he could represent.
From the Crowd
David DeSteno, on “Twin Peaks and the Divine,” by
:
I think you’re hitting on the concept of awe. In today’s language, it tends to take on a very positive tone. But in truth, awe/awesome is really a more complex state — one that combines a bit of fear/apprehension with any positive feelings too (fear at the awesome power of a storm, God, etc.). What we know from psychological research is that awe does three things when you feel it. First, it makes the self feel small, as in you’re facing forces that are beyond your control/comprehension/full understanding. Second, it makes people feel more connected, and leads to prosocial behaviors. And third, it also makes people more willing to believe in the idea of supernatural forces (or at least the idea that there is an unseen order in the universe). In other words, awe itself (whether from witnessing beauty or threat) is the perfect emotion to reinforce a sense of spirituality for those inclined that way, or to give a sense of wonder (and meaning) to those who aren’t.
See you next week!
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Interesting times. For a moment there economic and social attitudes sorted into the parties. The left conservatives like Jennings Bryan were sucked into the black hole of racial hatred and came out converted to economic conservatism as the last open path towards de facto segregation. And then the left got taken over by the Brahmins (to steal a term from Piketty) and there was no one on the economic left. Interesting to see what happens over the next 10-20 years as things reshuffle to fill a few different vaccuums!
I'm confused. I don't even get what point you're trying to make about Vance, or anyone else. Apparently, he's bad because he's Trump's VP candidate, and what kind of yahoo would do THAT? It seems to me you are having to go deep into the weeds to find anything bad to say about the man.
If you have to work that hard at it, then maybe it's not worth the trouble. What are you trying to accomplish?