Regime Change By Patrick Deneen - emptywheel

"The readings in my last series led me to see the genuine hatred conservatives have for what they call variously liberal hegemony, liberal ideology, left-wing ideology, and other names. David Brooks, newly ensconced at Yale and The Atlantic, is just sure it was liberals who caused Trump's wins, with their snotty "knowledge", and "refined tastes". I mocked this nonsense, but apparently Brooks was serious about the super bad feelings his people have about such things."

"I need a term to describe the people who are regarded by MAGA politicians and grifters as their "thinkers" and their "intellectuals" besides weirdo. They hate liberal hegemony and liberals, but offer bizarre solutions. Curtis Yarvin thinks we need a monarch, and his supporters, Peter Thiel and J.D. Vance among them, don't seem to disagree. I think that puts him among the Neo-Royalists. Deneen's solution points the same way."

"Their target seems to be what Jonathan Rauch calls the Epistemic Regime, and they want to bring about a new post-liberal regime (their term). As we know from reading Thomas Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolution, you can't evaluate a new paradigm in the terms of the old one. That means the goal of people studying a new paradigm is to immerse themselves in the new paradigm until they grasp it and can begin to see what would happen if it replaced the old paradigm."

Conservatives exhibit genuine hatred for liberal hegemony, liberal ideology, and left-wing ideology. Some prominent conservative commentators attribute Trump's victories to elites with 'snotty knowledge' and 'refined tastes.' Patrick Deneen's Regime Change advocates post-liberal solutions but advances proposals judged inadequate by critics. MAGA-aligned intellectuals sometimes propose radical alternatives, including monarchic restoration promoted by Curtis Yarvin and supported by figures like Peter Thiel and J.D. Vance, described as Neo-Royalists. Their aim targets the Epistemic Regime and favors a new post-liberal regime. Paradigm change, following Kuhn, requires immersion in a new framework; a paradigm supplants another if it better solves practical problems.

Read at emptywheel