termincd opposition to the regime, even from those whornclaimed to be calling a halt to the march of progress.rnI am exaggerating somewhat. Here and there in an economicsrndepartment there were principled defenders of the freernmarket, and there were cen a few poets and j^hilosophers whorntried to patch some corner of the crumbling edifice of Christendom,rnbut most self-deseribed conscrvaties and men of thernright were reluctant to face the disapproval of their colleaguesrnand neighbors. Thev could not stare down all the respectablernpeople who control the media and the universities, who writernthe ad’ice columns, cheap fiction, adventure films, and comicrnstrips that constitute American civilization. Success for conscr-rn’aties is almost alwavs defined as winning the respect of liberals,rnand this timidit’ provides the psvchological explanation ofrnStan E ans’ famous law that whenever one of ours gets in a positionrnwhere he can do am good, he becomes one of theirs.rnThe nonthreatcning American right lacks the will and therncourage to risk unpopularitv. Real revolutionaries—Mazzini orrnL.enin—endure exile and persecution; conservatives cannotrnc’cn bear a negative reiew or a snub from Ted Koppel. The-rndare not challenge the partv-state regime.rnThe regime which the right must find the courage to confrontrnis not the constitutional republic that took shape inrnthe late 18th centurv, but the Jacobin state knocked together byrnWilson and Rooseelt as an analogue to National Socialism inrnthe Third Reich, communism in the Soviet Union, and fascismrnin Italw This jacobin state—which is b its crv nature revolutionar’rnand despotic—rests on a series of mvths and fictionsrnsuch as the notion of a General Will that exists apart from thernindividuals and communities that constitute the societies governedrnb- the state and the doctrine of equalitv that providesrngo’ernmcnt with the occasion for leveling all distinctions andrnannihilating every eommunit’ that refuses to collaborate withrnthe armed expression of the General Will.rnOn an international level, the Jacobins see only necessities ofrnstate, if the’ are pragmatists, “human rights,” if thev are leftistrnidealists, or individual free market liberties, if thev are libertinernlibertarians who recognize no law, no social order beond therngratification of their appetites. The difficult questions of thernBalkans War, then, get reduced to rape camps or ethnic cleansing,rnbecause the desire to live with one’s own people is ineonceirnable for individuals who repudiate both loalt- and friendship.rnThere are any number of diverse strategics that have beenrnused to oppose Jacobin states. The strategy most frequentlyrnemployed in the United States is the affirmation of the dignityrnand libcrt’ of indi’iduals against the General Will embodied inrnthe state. This is obviouslv the classical liberal position but itrnderives from an older tradition, from the Christian emphasis onrnthe ‘alue and dignit’ of the individual human life, and fromrnthe Greek ele’ation of the human possibilit to a level neerrnagain achieved.rnSince Jacobins are fond of talking about individual rights—rnand man libertarians are only Jacobins w ho take money fromrnbig business—the classical liberal strateg, bv itself, can onlyrnhack awa at the surface of state despotism. To get down to thernfoundations requires a more fundamental opposition, namely arncounterre’olutionary defense of premodern loyalties of kithrnand kin, the ties of marriage and family. This was the object ofrn19th-eentury reactionaries sueh as Bonald, when he arguedrnagainst divorce, and of Sir Walter Scott, when he celebrated thernirrational political loyalties of feudalism.rnThere arc vast differences, of course, between Bonald andrnScott, Coleridge and Chateaubriand, but, in general, the counterrevolutionarv,rnromantic right defended inherited irrationalitiesrnon the grounds that thev produce the rielmess and beautyrnthat give wine its bouquet and life its savour. They also producern(as Burke makes clear in his Reflections) the countervailingrnforces that check the power of the state. A man who is loyalrnto his family and his chief, who insists upon keeping up thernold ways, simpK cannot be absorbed into a new order. I le mustrnbe tolerated or exterminated, and in the fight to exterminaternhim, a resistance is created.rnhi the United States, reactionary movements ha-e alwaysrntaken the form of opposition to innovation: to the increased nationalrnauthoritv granted by the Constitution, to the triumphantrnliberal industrialism of the Northeast that destrov cd the hrst republie,rnto the imperialism of Rooscvelts I &’ II, and to the NewrnDeal. There is no linear coherence to these movements, and itrnis unlikely that Calhoun would have sat down to supper withrnH.L. Mencken. From the perspective of the present, the mostrnobvious division is between libertarians and conservatives, hirnone important respect, however, the split is an illusion: thernsense of individual worth iiiav seem like a universal ideal, whilernit is in fact a cultural artifact of European civilization. The individualrnperson is less appreciated in other civilizations andrnhardlv exists among savages. Defending libertv is a senselessrncommitment in societies where thev do not know the meaningrnof the word—and there are whole continents in this condition.rnFor a real right to develop, it would require men and womenrnwilling to be v iewed as virtual criminals in the ev es of everyonernsupporting—or rather supported by—the system. They wouldrnhave to give up the centrism so engrained in the Americanrncharacter, and they would have to form an open and valid oppositionrn—instead of the opposizione finta practiced on bothrnleft and right. To be genuinely radical, we have to accept thernfact of being enemies of the regime, of being criminals, of beingrnoutlaws, hi the late 1960’s, radical leftists could sing:rnWe are the outlaw s of AmericarnWhatev er thev say we arc, we are.rnAnd we are very proud of ourselves.rnThey were, of course, nothing more serious than spoiled suburbanrnbrats, but the sentiments arc admirable.rnThe left, when it was in opposition, knew its business well:rnleftists began bv’ constituting a minority counterculture, and littlernby little tliev’ imposed that counterculture on the entirerncountry. Of course, the old-fashioned liberals who controlledrnthe regime between the 30’s and 60’s were incapable of resistingrnthe counterculture, because for the most part both sidesrnwere operating on the Jacobin assumptions, and both sides hadrna dim understanding that their real enemy was the great AmericanrnGothic nation of farmers and villagers with their bizarre attachmentrnto place, to kin, and to religion. Oh, there were Wobbliesrnand Progressives who were as American Gothic asrnPitchfork Ben Tillman or W.J. Bryan, but that is because, ultimately,rneven the La Follettes were enemies of both the capitalistsrnwho owned the regime and of the socialists who wanted tornshare power with them.rnhi constructing their revolution, leftists of everv stripe knewrnthat they had to alienate their followers from the mainstreamrnand to construct social and cultural alternatives: not just a fewrnAPRIL 1997/11rnrnrn