When Our Worlds Collide

When a chemical engineer is tasked with designing a mixing system for insoluble liquids, he has to calculate the amount of energy needed to turn the liquids into an emulsion.  So, these liquids that completely repel each other like water and oil can be suspended in each other and thereby come in intimate contact with each other.  And in that state they can be smoothly reacted with each other by some catalyst or chemical.

Something similar has occurred between the different camps on the Right.  Michael Anton describes himself as a lecturer and research fellow at Hillsdale College, a senior fellow at the Claremont Institute, and a former national security official in the Trump Administration.  He became well-known for writing the “Flight 93 Election” back before the 2016 presidential election when he advocated for Donald Trump as our last chance to stop the country from sliding into leftist tyranny.

He is as far philosophically as anyone on the real Right can be from the Z-Man when it comes to beliefs about the nature of government.  And yet these two men have now made contact.  Specifically, Anton has written a (very) long post at American Greatness defending the concept of natural rights against an assertion that the Z-Man made that natural rights do not exist.  And in fact, the Z-Man’s post was a reaction to an Anton post that was itself a reaction to an essay by yet another personality on the Right the paleoconservative Paul Gottfried.  Enough agitation is occurring in our environment to bring these various species in contact with each other and the interaction is yielding change and reaction.

Now suffice it to say that what passes for debate here is more like low intensity warfare (especially in the comments sections).  But I think the fact that, at least, they are beginning to acknowledge each other’s existence is the beginning of communication.  And this communication is important.  Not so much for the writers but for the readers.  Currently the ideas of the various groups on the Right are pretty thoroughly siloed.  Having the readers get a taste of the other opinions around is all for the good.  These ideas need to be banged around against each other a good deal for some clarity to emerge.  People need to compare the words to the world around them and decide which model is right or mostly right.  Because chances are no one model is completely correct.  There could be valuable insights from more than one camp.  And it’s possible that minds could be changed on certain points if a wider consensus is formed.

So, this is just talk.  But it’s a beginning.  One thing that’s been totally lacking on the right is any kind of open discussion of the taboo subjects.  We’ve allowed the Left to control the allowable agenda for discussion on the Right for generations.  What we’re seeing is the beginning of the breakdown of that control.  It hasn’t reached the point where the establishment Right will acknowledge the relevance of the dissident opinions but the middle is starting to address them.  Once the majority of the non-Left has shifted to the edge of the dissident territory the establishment will be forced kicking and screaming to the right.  What happens after that is unknown.

It may turn out that the Left will outright win and all this will be moot.  But if the Right manages to push the country in our direction, then the establishment Right will convince themselves that they were always in the vanguard of this great movement and deserve all the praise and benefits.  And eventually the Right will overstep itself and some reaction will occur.

But that’s hardly anything for us to worry about.  It will take a generation just to stop the leftward swing of the cultural pendulum, never mind getting it back to the center.  But it is encouraging to see the center acknowledge the dissident position and even begin to give grudging approval to some of their ideas.  Let’s see what’s next.