I was reading a recent essay by Curtis Yarvin called, “Heroin Liberals and Cocaine Conservatives.” Yarvin is a clever writer and he made some entertaining comparisons between what liberals get out of believing in their narrative (anesthesia) versus what conservatives get from their narrative (hope). Clever stuff.
But later the essay focuses on one particular conservative story. He fisks an article that Chris Rufo wrote in the aftermath of his part in the recent ousting of Harvard president Claudine Gay called, “The New Right Activism.” This was a manifesto announcing the counterrevolution that Rufo declares as having already begun and he talks about what it must be, “The Right doesn’t need a white paper. What it needs is a spirited new activism with the courage and resolve to win back the language, recapture institutions, and reorient the state toward rightful ends.”
Later on, he says, “Rather, the New Right needs to move from the politics of pamphlets to the governance of the institutions. … We must recruit, recapture, and replace existing leadership. We must produce knowledge and culture at a sufficient scale and standard to shift the balance of ideological power. Conservative thought has to move out of the ghetto and into the mainstream.”
This is all very general stuff. And Yarvin is very unconvinced about all aspects of what Rufo says in his manifesto. And he’s quite snide about the fact that Rufo has one of his degrees from Harvard Extension. And he portrays the manifesto and by extension Rufo’s writing in general as merely salesmanship for his books and career.
Yarvin is a good writer and he is clever and some of his points about tactics may be true. Perhaps replacing institutions is smarter than trying to reconquer them. Maybe.
But I detect a certain aroma of sour grapes in this article. Sure, upending Claudine Gay isn’t going to change the world. It may not even make the next president of Harvard less beholden to the DEI orthodoxy. But the point is Rufo has been involved in direct action in several cases. Down in Florida he’s been involved in purging a state college; New College of Florida, of DEI, critical race theory, LGBTQ orthodoxy and all the other ills that infect modern colleges. He’s accomplishing something that hasn’t happened before. He’s taking back an institution from the Left.
Of course, it is necessary to see how this experiment proceeds. Will a new board make New College of Florida a successful learning environment? If it does, I can see how other states will learn from this effort. And if he fails, there will be things learned too.
I always liked Teddy Roosevelt’s essay on the “Man in the Arena.”
“Let the man of learning, the man of lettered leisure, beware of that queer and cheap temptation to pose to himself and to others as a cynic, as the man who has outgrown emotions and beliefs, the man to whom good and evil are as one. The poorest way to face life is to face it with a sneer. There are many men who feel a kind of twisted pride in cynicism; there are many who confine themselves to criticism of the way others do what they themselves dare not even attempt. There is no more unhealthy being, no man less worthy of respect, than he who either really holds, or feigns to hold, an attitude of sneering disbelief toward all that is great and lofty, whether in achievement or in that noble effort which, even if it fails, comes second to achievement. A cynical habit of thought and speech, a readiness to criticize work which the critic himself never tries to perform, an intellectual aloofness which will not accept contact with life’s realities—all these are marks, not as the possessor would fain to think, of superiority, but of weakness. They mark the men unfit to bear their part painfully in the stern strife of living, who seek, in the affectation of contempt for the achievement of others, to hide from others and from themselves their own weakness. The role is easy; there is none easier, save only the role of the man who sneers alike at both criticism and performance.
It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”
This is not to say that intellectual ability is nothing. But as things currently stand, what we are lacking is not ideas, it’s results. DeSantis and Rufo and some others are actually trying to change things for the better. I’m more than willing to hope they’ll succeed. As far as manifestos, I’ll check back on his progress from time to time. If he continues to score winds, I’ll begin to believe in the revolution. Maybe I’ll join him on the barricades. Maybe.
