What Have You Got to Lose?
7th December 2022
We treat those inside differently than we do those outside. This is necessary and good. The disaster at the southern border is an illustration of what happens when a community refuses to police its boundaries. A nation simply can’t exist without them. But neither can any human organization, whether it’s the family, a neighborhood, a corporation, or a school of thought. Knowing who’s “in” and who’s “out” is essential for allocating resources, building consensus, and organizing effectively to pursue goals.
At the same time, policing the wrong boundaries—or policing them too severely—can lead to paralysis and death. From the 1960s until the end of the Obama Administration, the borders of the conservative movement were very clearly understood. This was true even as, or perhaps in part because, the movement was growing more and more sclerotic. Trump played a key role in breaking up this ossified Republican establishment, but he wasn’t the initiator. The structure was already hollowing out, and Trump’s victory in the 2016 primaries only administered the final push.
The rain came down, the floods rushed in, the winds blew and beat against that house, and great was the fall of it. After the collapse, we didn’t simply aim to re-build. We set ourselves to the work of building a new movement—leaner, stronger, and custom-designed for the powerful new storms we face. Elements of the old guard have recognized the need for something new and brought their wisdom to bear on the new coalition. But many have “self-deported” or been replaced. The old priests of the commentariat—Boot, Kristol, French, etc.—have been cast, teeth gnashing, into the outer darkness, and a great diversity of new voices and ideas has risen to prominence.
In the last six years, we have made enormous progress. So much, in fact, that some are feeling the urge to begin marking our new borders and policing who is inside and outside. This is a natural impulse, and it is a task that will need to be done eventually—but in my view, it is too early to begin gatekeeping. There is still much building to be done, after all, and our progress to this point has been a product of a vigorous dialogue among a broad array of thinkers with divergent ideas and common interests. Nevertheless, we do need strategies that allow us to best allocate our resources. We need some criteria by which to evaluate where effective alliances can be made—a way to know the people with whom we can have a productive dialogue, and a way to know when we’re wasting our breath. I propose two criteria by which to make these determinations: honesty and sacrifice.