Not the national conservatism we’ve been looking for

Many good Americans, myself included, now realize that we were swindled by Conservative, Inc. during the Bush years. But promoting the same failed policies, and rehabilitating the same failed “experts,” simply because they have rebranded as “national conservatives,” will not advance the American cause. No, Hazony is not the leader we are looking for, and his repackaged neoconservatism is not the unifying principle for a New America. We want neither Athens, nor Jerusalem, but America.

So let us be patient. There is no risk to holding off a bit longer. But there is great risk in conservative donors providing new sinecures, new salaries, new cruises to the same hucksters. Let us be patient—what’s the rush? Each day brings new challenges, and with the 2020 election incoming, a national dialogue will once again take place.

I have seen the intellectual foment across the nation—nationalists and postnationalists, traditionalists, localists, Silicon Valley accelerationists—patriotic Americans of every stripe. New alliances are being formed, and the times are exciting. Trump’s new populist fusionism—the “three-legged stool” of an America First trade policy, immigration policy, and foreign policy—provides a road map for a supermajoritarian politics in 2020 and beyond. The rising generation of thinkers on the right are still making sense of all of this.