ADVERTISEMENT
Vance is an intellectual heavyweight, a politician-philosopher. Among his influences are the social doctrine of the Church, the thought of René Girard, and the ideas of postliberal theorists like Sohrab Ahmari and Patrick Deneen.
It is obvious that the new right is advancing everywhere, encroaching on a center-right that has internalized the left’s ideological impositions (from the «climate emergency» to «gender violence,» transgenderism, or identity politics).
However, Trump, Le Pen, Meloni, Milei, and Orban are often lumped together in one litany, overlooking clear differences between them.
Let’s compare the speech of Javier Milei at Davos last week with the one delivered by J.D. Vance — intellectual mentor and protégé of Trumpism — when he accepted his vice-presidential candidacy in July.
The Argentine president explicitly claimed to be part of classical liberalism and enthusiastically sang the praises of capitalism. In the 19th century, the West had found the formula for constant progress: the Lockean triad of «protection of life, liberty, and private property.»
The liberal revolutions unleashed an innovative energy that lifted most of the population out of poverty. Europe and America owe their advancement, believes the chainsaw politician, to «that new moral and philosophical framework that placed individual freedom above the whims of the tyrant. The West was able to unleash the creative capacity of man, initiating a process of wealth generation never before seen.»
According to Milei, the recipe for prosperity is an impartial state that does not go into debt and reduces its intervention to the minimum necessary. Western decline is due to the replacement of liberalism with social democracy, rights-protection (which implies state abstention) for rights-provision: «At some point in the 20th century, we lost our way, and the liberal principles that had made us free and prosperous were betrayed.»
The pretext for the constant expansion of the state was wealth redistribution, under the guise of «the sinister, unjust, and aberrant idea of social justice.» Equality before the law was replaced by «equality through the law,» the redistributive state. That redistribution now takes the form of woke quotas based on sex, race, or sexual orientation, not merit, when assigning positions.
Milei’s solution is clear: return to a small, neutral state, to laws blind to color and genitals; to meritocracy, budget balance, low taxes, and free trade. Argentina ruined its early-century splendor through Peronist protectionism and «social justice»; its mistake was «closing itself off from free trade».
So, what did J.D. Vance say last July? The opposite: he accused free trade of destroying jobs in the U.S. («Joe Biden at one point supported NAFTA, a bad trade agreement that outsourced many good manufacturing jobs to Mexico; Biden gave China a sweetheart trade deal that also destroyed many middle-class jobs»).
Vance is an intellectual heavyweight, a politician-philosopher. Among his influences are the social doctrine of the Church, the thought of René Girard, and the ideas of postliberal theorists like Sohrab Ahmari or Patrick Deneen. The characteristic of postliberalism is its critique of the liberal-conservative «fusionism» that shaped the American right during the Cold War.
Vance shares that critique: «I think the Republican Party has been for too long a coalition of social conservatives and economic libertarians, and I don’t think social conservatives have benefited much from that alliance.»
Indeed, postliberals blame liberalism for the breakdown of the family, abortion, job destruction, de-Christianization, and the increasing fragility of the working class… They use populist rhetoric that borders on class struggle: the «globalist elites» (the «anywhere,» capable of adapting to the changing demands of a competitive and technified society) exploit and disdain the «rooted people» (the «somewhere,» connected to specific places and jobs).
In contrast to the liberal faith in the invisible, beneficent hand of the market, they advocate for state promotion of the «common good.»
I believe that economic liberalism is compatible with social conservatism. Classical liberals were aware of the irreplaceable value of family, churches, and other intermediate bodies.
Milei’s libertarian discourse lacks conservative weight (although, he does strongly defend the right to life from conception); the anti-liberal discourse of Vance or Deneen is overly anti-capitalist and anti-meritocratic.
The new right needs a middle path between these two extremes. We will explore that another time.
The author of the article is Francisco José Contreras Peláez, who is a professor of Philosophy of Law at the University of Seville.
Original article El Debate.
About The Author
Read the full article here
