National Conservatives Want Cultural Dominance Not 'Social Cohesion'
National Conservatives Want Cultural Dominance Not ‘Social Cohesion’
By Eric Levitz the Intelligencer at NY Magazine
http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/07/josh-hawley-national-conservatism-social-cohesion.html
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The mission of the Edmund Burke Foundation’s inaugural National Conservatism Conference was to develop a new, post-Trump conception of the American right’s political project, one less allergic to state intervention in the economy — and more vigorous in its promotion of communitarian social values — than the “market fundamentalism” that reigned supreme in Paul Ryan’s Republican Party.
To some liberals, this rebrand looks like an attempt to put lipstick (or maybe a tweed jacket) on a pig: Conservative intellectuals are just trying to reframe their movement’s embrace of virulent xenophobia as something more rational and respectable than it actually is. But national conservatives insist that the impetus for their creed is only peripherally related to Donald Trump; their true concern is the collapse of social cohesion in the United States. Yoram Hazony, the Israeli right-wing intellectual who co-convened the conference, contends that “national cohesion is the most important thing to be thinking about right now … You can’t have cohesion over nothing. You have to have cohesion over something shared.” And that something is national identity.
For conservatives in search of an official, overriding political goal, the appeal of “social cohesion” isn’t hard to intuit. America’s contemporary economy and culture really are atomizing. No small number voters — left and right — find the hyperindividualism of modern life alienating and unfulfilling. The people living in deindustrialized towns that comprise an increasingly large share of red America have good cause to mourn the decline of communitarian institutions. And for many Christian conservatives, the quest for moral hegemony is inextricable from a longing for a society unified by common purpose.
Plus, “social cohesion” serves as a high-minded rationale for restricting immigration. Social trust and solidarity is often lower in ethnically diverse nations with large foreign-born populations than it is in more homogeneous countries. By emphasizing this fact, conservatives can insist that Donald Trump’s immigration agenda (or a kinder, gentler version thereof) is not a leading cause of political polarization but a necessary remedy for it.
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