Friday Open Comments

I received this in an email from Chris Rufo.  Don’t know why, or how the guy got my email.  Probably a referral from another substack account, probably Dr. Malone’s.

THE QUIET RIGHT

A new counterculture with the potential to disrupt left-wing institutional capture.

The idea of a conservative counterculture might seem like an oxymoron. The term itself has been colored by the 1960s, when left-wing intellectuals, revolutionaries, and artists captured the spirit of revolt against a supposedly homogenous, oppressive, conformist America. That old counterculture has become the dominant culture, having been absorbed into the bureaucracies of universities, schools, government, and now major corporations. The left-wing culture no longer carries a critique; it is the status quo.

… Conservative critics have long lamented the lack of right-wing pop-culture production; some have rallied to such troubled figures as Kanye West, hoping that dissident celebrities could break through the stranglehold of left-wing ideological control.

But this pessimism is misplaced. The solution… is to go deeper—to rebuild the structures that provide the basis for healthy, integrated human development: families, schools, churches, neighborhoods.

Though few have noticed, this is already happening. A “Quiet Right” is patiently, and nearly invisibly, building a viable counterculture.

The main locus of this movement is in education, where conservative families have created robust alternatives to the…left-wing public education system. Many have turned to homeschooling, … Others have enrolled their children in a fast-growing network of “classical schools,” which have returned to the traditional liberal arts curriculum of logic, rhetoric, grammar, mathematics, Latin, and music. And the small but influential network of traditional, faith-based colleges, such as Hillsdale, Benedictine, Thomas Aquinas, and University of Dallas, have seen record-breaking enrollment.

In the cultural domain, the Quiet Right has broken significant new ground….More mainstream companies, such as the Daily Wire, have sought to create conservative media institutions at industrial scale. …faith-based and family-oriented social media content have seen rapid growth, …

The Quiet Right is also reshaping America’s social geography. The past decade has seen a movement to repopulate small towns and create culturally moderate communities… They fled California, Illinois, and New York for Florida and Texas. Even within states, the flight to the suburbs is, in large part, a flight from left-wing culture and policy.

Though it might not make headlines, the Quiet Right represents a key social shift…They sense the danger of captured institutions and are determined to build viable alternatives…the Quiet Right is where conservatives should devote their energy. It is home to the things that will last.

Originally published in City Journal.