America is Mine, and it Owes Me a Living
Short summary
The author argues that paleoconservative rhetoric—viewing politics as existential struggle over borders, demographics, and elite betrayal—has become the dominant language of the right, even as its actual policy program hasn't fully won out. This shift stems from "enrabblement": a growing conviction that major institutions are hostile foreign powers rather than imperfect shared foundations, which has fractured the conservative coalition and made meritocracy itself suspect when its winners aren't "your kind of people."
- The right's estrangement from universities, media, and professional institutions correlates with three decades of educational sorting—Democrats increasingly college-educated, Republicans increasingly non-college—but this isn't about intelligence; it's about one's concrete relationship to civil society institutions.
- Hegel's distinction between poor and rich rabble explains the current coalition: the poor rabble feels excluded from civil society's rewards, the rich rabble resents its obligations and restraints (Trump exemplifies this), yet both demand recognition and security without reciprocal commitment to the institutions that make those goods possible.
- Enrabblement isn't irrational or external—it's the competitive logic of civil society stripped of its civility, an endogenous product of the system itself, which raises the hard question of whether institutions can be repaired without making the underlying social competition itself less barbarous.
Full summary
The author argues he was wrong to claim that American conservatism has simply become paleoconservatism over the past decade. Yes, Buchanan-era positions—immigration restriction, trade protectionism, skepticism of alliances, "America First" nationalism—now dominate Republican politics in ways they didn't before. And yes, the right has become more openly racist. But the policy program itself hasn't fully won out. Pro-Israel sentiment remains strong among evangelicals and older Republicans. Isolationism isn't the overwhelming tendency on the right. The real shift is rhetorical and psychological: paleocon framings of politics as existential struggle over sovereignty, borders, and demographic survival have become the lingua franca across different conservative factions, even when those factions disagree on actual policies. This language constantly circles back to racial replacement, contamination, and decline.
What enabled this rhetorical takeover is what the author calls "enrabblement"—a spreading conviction across the right that major institutions are hostile alien powers serving someone else's interests rather than the common good. The clearest evidence is educational sorting. Thirty years ago, college graduates leaned Republican and both parties had similar credentials. Now Democrats are dramatically more educated while Republicans increasingly draw from voters without degrees. Unsurprisingly, Republicans have grown estranged from universities, professions, mainstream media, and other institutions claiming cultural authority. The "highbrow" neoconservatives fled to the Democratic Party because their talents became useless to a coalition no longer anchored in credentialed elites.
The author borrows Hegel's concept of poor and rich rabble to explain the bind. The poor rabble feels excluded from civil society's rewards and sees the system as having failed it. The rich rabble—think Trump—enjoys civil society's fruits while resenting its obligations and universal rules as hindrances. Both arrive at estrangement from opposite directions. A telling example: Christopher Rufo once mocked the left for calling meritocracy a racial mask, but now warns that meritocracy undermines national substance because Indian Americans win under it. The principle itself shifted status. What matters isn't whether competition is fair but whether winners are "your kind of people." The enrabbled sentiment, paraphrasing Morrissey, is: "America owes me recognition and security, but I owe nothing back to the institutions that make those goods possible."