Bring on the Counterrevolution | City Journal
Yet, we have some reason for optimism. For the past half-century, the left-wing revolution has relied on a high-low coalition the new proletariat of the white intelligentsia and the black underclass but its reach is inherently limited. The counterrevolution has an opportunity to build a broad, multiracial, middle-out coalition that seeks to overthrow the synthetic institutions of the Left and protect the organic institutions of the common citizen. Nixon s silent majority has diversified: Latinos and Asians are beginning to revolt against left-wing ideology, including critical race theory and gender radicalism; parents of all racial backgrounds have flooded local school boards to express opposition to their ideological corruption. With a national leader drawing on the great themes of the counterrevolution, conservatives can reconstitute Nixon s majority and wield democratic power to bring the cultural revolution to heel.
The question that troubled Nixon during his presidency was the basic one of politics: Who rules? He saw that the deepest conflict in the United States was not along lines of class, race, or identity but between the bureaucracy and the people. And the Revolution of 1968, which sought to connect ideology to institutional power and to shape human society through elite guidance, was ultimately antidemocratic. Nixon understood that bureaucratic rule meant the end of our constitutional order.
The telos of the counterrevolution is the restoration of political rule rule of, by, and for the people. From the summer of 1968 through the summer of George Floyd, the common citizen has found himself continuously shamed, cowed, and degraded. But despite this, he has retained the power of his instincts, which orient him toward justice, and of his own memory, which makes possible the retrieval of the symbols and principles that once animated the republic. Indeed, most Americans still believe in the promise of the Declaration and the Constitution. The statues of America s Founders might have been toppled, spray-painted, and hidden away; their principles might have been deconstructed, denigrated, and forgotten in the country s elite institutions. But the vision of the Founders strikes at something eternal. The common citizen understands this intuitively.
To this end, the counterrevolution s guiding purpose must be to reanimate the instinct for self-government and to mobilize an organic movement of citizens who will reassert their influence in the institutions that matter: the school, the municipality, the workplace, the statehouse, the Congress. The antidemocratic structures the DEI departments and the intrusive bureaucracies must be dismantled. The rule of experts must be replaced by the rule of the people; the threat of violence must be met with the power of justice.
Christopher Rufo.
Interesting take. Definitely puts ol’ RN in a different light. But Trump is no Nixon, that’s for sure. DeSantis would probably be better than Nixon, but he seems like a wan hope at this point.