As a card carrying member (r) of the managerial elite, I partially agree. It is hard to argue with some of your specifics, especially as regards the Federales. One of the big problems is the failure to keep experts (especially lawyers) in their lane. But I do think you over-estimate the solidarity of that group. The usual metaphor for trying to accomplish anything at all is "herding cats".
There is another reason why the New Right is badly needed which you hint at in the end of your essay but needs further development. That is the utter failure of the Old Right to conserve any thing at all. Not the economic vigor, not the Constitution, not religion, not the family nor even the notion that there are two sexes. It was the Left driving all these things which they have been doing ever since the French Revolution but the moral collapse of the Right enabled it all. I blame the sainted WFB. His mantra of standing athwart progress and yell Stop was 100% wrong. First of all it ceded the notion of progress to the Left. Second, the message should not have been Stop but Go Back to the Nothingness that awaits you or whatever the exact quote from Gandalf was. What WFB did was to enable the ratchet which is the essential tool for the Left.
There is a joke about faculty politics that is is so vicious because the stakes are so small. I can assure you that infighting exists across the entire spectrum of the public sector. The easiest way to increase your power is to take it from your rival in the next office. While there are similarities in background as NSL says there are different disciplines with different ways of doing things. As a finance guy I have done many rounds with lawyers, educators, and lobbyists. None of this expanded the organization. Not to mention the endless zero sum battles with parallel organizations. My experience is state and local. The Federales are different because they can print money so there is a tendency to "fix" problems by adding a layer above the squabbling agencies. Thus DoD, DHS, EdD, HHS. This never works.
"the utter failure of the Old Right to conserve anything"
This was what pushed me from conservative to postliberal. The George Wills and William F Buckleys of the world had their shot -- they failed. "Standing athwart history yelling STOP!" didn't work. It can't promote virtue. It can't promote anything. It can can slow down the Left but not stop it. Will & Buckley just want to take our foot off the gas; I want to throw the car into reverse. As C,S, Lewis said, "when you're on the wrong road, the most progressive man is the one who turns around first."
Thus I have (reluctantly) embraced postliberal / Nietzschean politics. I don't like it. I don't want to use raw power to coerce others to my vision of a "good" society. But that's all I have left. The shared Christian philosophy of the West is in tatters. Any society from here forward is Nietzschean, grounded in power (jungle law) not shared philosophy (natural law). So I unapologetically choose a Nietzschean society that at least tries to promote virtue (as I define it) instead of that which celebrates sin.
I don't want to go there. I see the problem of America being shackled to the demonic cities. If we could break that link, we would have a shot at restoring the Republic.
What does that mean? (I'm not trying to argue, I've heard this before and I don't get it.) Are you saying you want a return to a mostly agrarian society? To break up the economic power concentrations of cities? I don't see these as viable (or even desireable) so I'm curious what that means to you.
Note: I live in an exurb myself, so I've already removed my family from the city.
Ag an extraction would be part of it but also manufacturing which seems to exist mostly in small to medium cities. Not necessary to break the economic power of the big cities but to separate from it. We would need to establish our own financial system to be able to function but it would serve the society not dominate.
If you've never read any of the Distributists (Chesterton, the Catholic Worker Movement, the American Solidarity Party) you would probably like them. And they would give you good intellectual ammunition to back up this position.
Excellent review. I wouldn’t say our liberal democracies “have become tyrannies,” but they are getting ever closer. The direction of drift is unmistakable. Most telling perhaps is the new arrogance on display from governing elites across the West. Where once they would hedge or seek to persuade, they are now unapologetic in their rejection of what the citizenry wants, and clearly *proud* of their support for censorship—“more of which is needed.”
In my view, one of the only reasons this has become viable as a politics is that conservatives let the universities fall entirely into the left’s hands. Not hard to understand why the GOP did so, being that “tax cuts tax cuts tax cuts” were the meaning of conservatism, but that there was no concerted fight anywhere in the West is harder to figure out. A once-Marxist left took over the schools during the very years it was morphing into this present identitarian cult (really no longer even *the Left*) and when the process was complete—voilà, there was available an infinitely busybody “leftish” movement that corporations could stomach. Because, of course, identities can be *marketed*. And look, these fallen universities were yearly minting tens of thousands of new consumers who could be depended on to buy the virtue-signaling junk, even as they were sure to vote for the virtue-signaling, pro-managerial party. Whether state or corporate, then, it was a win win for every managerial busybody.
And so: If the spread of managerialism at the state level was later so neatly paralleled by a similar spread in the corporate world (via the growth of HR) we have our captured universities to thank. “Foucault is ready to praise your precious uniqueness, and you needn’t even read Foucault.” All the anxious kids are signing up. And they will hit the job market this Fall.
As for whether this drift can be reversed, I’m skeptical. But building alternative educational institutions seems the most worthwhile work long term. Short term, it’s at least good that there are political figures like Vance who get the problem.
Yes, if all the money for institutions comes from the left because the right is busy with only trying to drown the government in the bathtub, then the institutions naturally all end up taken over by the left...
The old Republic has been dying for some time and is now officially dead but nature abhors a vacuum and something will arise in its place. To define that something is what we need the New Right for. Otherwise it will be defined by the Left in league with their enablers in the Old Right. Trump is a transitional figure. The future belongs to figures like JD Vance or it belongs to the Left. Or maybe to Mad Max.
Consider that the seeds of the decline are inherent in the federal structure. A substantially weakened central government is a first step to weakening the left's influence over America life.
If you want to find the source of the political power of wokeness look at the concept of civil rights. This started the ball rolling in 1964. The power of the state to punish your biases underlays all of the woke ideology.
"Conservatives" will say, oh no, not us we support civil rights and related laws. But these laws are the underpinning that allows the state of Colorado to destroy you if you won't bake a particular cake.
This is the legacy of "conservatism" as practiced in the USA.
Few are willing to accept this 100% correct conclusion.
The 1964 Civil Rights Act is structurally incompatible with the free society envisioned by the US Constitution, since it places every interaction and association (or disassociation) under the potential regulation of the state. "You're not allowed to not bake the cake" is irreconcilable with any form of freedom of association.
But I don't see any appetite to overturn it anytime soon.
"overturn" is a loaded term. A violent uprising by a determined minority is one kind of revolution, but not the only imaginable kind of revolution. The managerial class took power from the bourgeoisie by a process that began with the self-awareness that managers have superior moral clarity and expertise. The managers understood themselves as an "expert" class that should rule. Use your time machine to go back in time and visit the universities and churches of1830's New England. Read the lectures of the leading educators and sermons of the influential Protestant clergymen.
These managers invented and owned an ideology called "progress". These managers' ideology supported a political program for the transfer of power and wealth away from bourgeois owners to more or less powerless people. Progress was proposed as both a moral imperative and historical inevitability. Over decades more and more people were recruited into the managerial class, leaving the rest of us a "residual bourgeoisie" characterized as non-progressive, sometimes perhaps even racist or fascist adjacent.
The progressive ideology advanced the high social prestige and increasing political power of the managers. The most creative members of the managerial class became the intellectual vanguard of what we call the "progressive movement". We call those who perform this function today "the media".
How can power and wealth be taken back from the managers?
The first step is that the residual bourgeoisie must develop self-awareness of itself as a revolutionary class. I suggest the following principles for a start of a discussion:
✔️ A revolutionary class is not literally conservative.
✔️ A revolutionary class does not support strengthening institutions controlled by the managers.
✔️ A revolutionary class understands that life may become chaotic and does not seek stability at all costs.
✔️ A revolutionary class does not support imperialism or aggression abroad because "war is the health of the state."
✔️ A revolutionary class makes strategic alliances for temporary advantage to move the liberation of the residual bourgeoisie forward but does not delude itself that it has an identity of interests with any faction of managers.
✔️ A revolutionary class does not contaminate itself with chauvinistic slogans or ethnic bias as these belong to those who would split the residual bourgeoisie to disrupt our movement.
There’s nothing wrong with the concept of civil rights per se, it’s just that progressives appropriated it to themselves, claimed it “mine,” and then completely twisted it all out of shape while taking care to make it all kind of still sound good to the uncritical. Just another example of their mastery at weaponising our better instincts of right and wrong and using it against us.
By civil rights I mean rights by virtue of citizenship that force others to interact with you regardless of bias. This is a very pernicious idea that has no natural limiting condition. This is what allows the state to say, "You will bake the cake!" and destroy your life if you refuse. Civil rights began our descent towards tyranny.
> Excellent review. I wouldn’t say our liberal democracies “have become tyrannies,” but they are getting ever closer.
Aside from the horror stories that would happen to dissidents etc, many previous tyrannies were much more liberal and free for social life compared to 2024 liberal democracies.
Way fewer everyday affecting rules and regulations, much less thought police (not concerned with what you're thinking as long it's not about overthrowing the ruler), much less surveillance, and so on
Jacques Ellul argues that simply replacing one managerial set with another (theirs with ours), changes nothing long term and will only temporarily shift the direction of the technological society, while it marches ever forward.
The only way to truly effect anything is to eliminate the bureaucracy entirely. How true or realistic this is I don’t know, but I hope Vance doesn’t plan to simply swap people out without eliminating vast numbers of positions.
Yes, first steps should be supported while at the same time we must be clear headed and understand that only a maximal program can really change the trajectory of an entire society.
This is correct, but do you see any appetite in Congress for dismantling the bureaucracy and retaking control of the legislative process? I don't. Nor will there be. 95% of Congress-critters have BA degrees or above; 70% are lawyers -- regardless of party, they are the managerial class. ON a more practical level, detailed legislating is hard. it's a lot more fun to delegate hard decisions to unelected bureaucrats while you go hang out at the Georgetown cocktail parties.
In short, the system we have is working perfectly for those who run it. Therefore, it will not change. (Until it completely breaks down, when it will change suddenly.)
But you can't do that with the scale of government and corporations today. Otherwise, you can't keep the lights on and people wouldn't get paid. I would use government to cut the corporations down to size especially tech and the banksters while encouraging small entrepreneurs. Then make government smaller by separating America from the cities. The Peoples' Republics can have all the bureaucrats they want. In fact, we should encourage the ones in America to migrate there after the split.
Also, I don't know why these observations are necessarily conservative.. many of us independents don't like the way the State is currently working either.
This is what most people outside of "MAGA DC" - if there is such a thing - don't understand about Vance. He was quite literally the *perfect* if not *only* good VP pick because of his understanding of the personnel game, and Schedule F opportunity. Not just firing, but actively building the ranks of the potential hires who could execute a second term vision.
I think a lot of the "New Right" still underestimates how radical the redpill moment is for moderates and old Republicans. They don't get the game, and Vance, Vivek, and now RFK Jr. may be the first three prominent non-Trump figures to articulate the challenge. Success lies in multiplying this class of communicators. Odds of success go way up with someone like Elon at the helm of an efficiency commission because he'd control both messaging and have the track record of eviscerating unnecessary middle management.
I must disagree with Lyon's conclusion that the influence of the managerial elite can be sustainably crippled by a Project 2025-style wholesale personnel reshuffle.
The power of the non-government managerial class is so informal and vast that even a radical change of those holding the reins of power over the bureaucracy's "commanding heights" has to be transitory. The reserves of Institutional resilience are deep. For example, Trump could appoint an ally as Secretary of Defense, but there are 220 Generals in the US Army, each of whom may have sympathies with non-governmental institutions entirely dominated by other managerial elites.
If the New Right's strategy is to “seize the institutions” and "dismantle the managerial apparatus" it is doomed to failure because these institutions are much, much stronger than the people who are ostensibly in charge of them. Lyons points out how easy it was to swap a Biden for a Harris.
Reform through personnel change is doomed to be transitory because the state exists to protect an entire class, not just a relative handful of bureaucrats. If (as a thought experiment) you could eliminate the entire managerial elite a new cohort would immediately be spawned out of the rank and file of the managerial class.
The managerial elite exists because of two supporting pillars: the coercive power of the state plus the ideology that justifies the existence of the managerial class itself. Putting new people in charge of the state whose inherent nature is to represent the interests of the managerial class makes no sense.
Continuing with the thought experiment, the elimination of the managerial class is impossible because it is now virtually a majority of the population, if you use a broad definition that encompasses all those who are dependent on the state for their material well-being.
The rest of the American people are looking for answers: "What happened to America?". "Why is power over my life receding further and further away from me?". J.D. Vance and the "New Right" think reform is enough. I'm more inclined to the approach of Vivek Ramaswamy and Javier Milei, but even these two do not state the solution frankly enough.
Violence always occasions real societal change. I know of no exceptions to this rule. To cripple the power of the managerial class the power of the state must also be curtailed. It is difficult to imagine this can be a peaceful process.
I agree. The New Right must seize control of the not only the bureaucracy but the legislative branch as well. Replacing the people running things can grant you short-term relief and buy you some time to demonstrate an alternative. But the long-term solution is disempowerment of the bureaucracy by legislation. Laws must be changed in wholesale fashion. I don't see anyone willing to do that yet. Not even Vance or Cotton.
I suspect things will have to get much worse (illegal immigrants taking more jobs, causing vastly more crime, urban centers becoming nearly unlivable, a significant devaluation of the USD, a strategic military defeat) before a Right-wing figure would arise who would do that. (Think Franco or Duterte or Bukele.) Congress isn't going to do it -- 95% have BAs (and all are full of BS) and 70% of them are lawyers (twice as bull of BS) -- they ARE the managerial class. Electoral democracy isn't going to do it -- the electeds have too much incentive to push hard decisions onto the bureaucrats. What will fix it is when the bureaucracy grows so large it can no longer effectively deliver basic services.
Max Remington is one of the best substackers on this subject. He's realstic but not hyperbolic. His theory: expect a continued gradual breakdown of the social order at the ground level while the ruling class continues to insist that what you see with your own eyes isn't happening. Anarcho-tyranny reigns until some major event (see above) shatters the illusion. If you want to see an example of that, look at the 180 degree shift from "Biden is 100%" to 'Biden is a demented fool" and put it on steroids: "our cities are safer than ever because of their diversity"... what happens when that lie can't be sustained any longer?
I agree with your assessment that change will require some sort of breakdown, but a Franco-like figure would only substitute real tyranny for anarcho-tyranny. Personally, I would prefer anarcho-tyranny.
My core belief is that the residual bourgeoisie (the non-managerial class) must develop a self-awareness of itself as a revolutionary class. A revolutionary class cannot be "conservative" or conventionally "right-wing" in my opinion.
That's interesting. I might well prefer Franco, simply on the basis that the existing structure is only capable of atomizing people and reducing solidarity and social connections (we must liberate each individual, of course) while a true authoritarian might at least be capable of enforcing a moral order of some kind, and there's a chance I might agree with that moral order.
Of course, I do recognize that a Franco is by no means guaranteed and I might well end up with a Lenin or a Hitler instead, so I'm still undecided.
Lenin wanted the proletariat to develop class consciousness like that too. They never did. He went to his grave unable to understand that.
Yes, I think that the Soviet proletariat for the most part eventually rejected proletarian class consciousness, but the process took some time and the total elimination of capitalism.
Hobbesian. :-) For what it's worth, I agree with the risk. However, at some point, if you conclude that your current society is actively trying to reduce the virtue of its citizens, you're willing to seek an alternative.
Politico ran a piece on Vance that was intended as a scare piece. My reaction was, God I hope so. Their contention was that Vance believed there is always a ruling class and it ought to be ours and work for the people rather than try to replace them. The current ruling class not only regards Orwell as an instruction manual, it has the same position on Brecht. I don't know whether Vance actually believes this but I think it reflects the reality of ruling classes.
I would think the simplest and most elegant thing to do would be stop race and sex quotas and bring back freedom of association. Let the bureaucracies deal with that. Otherwise, I see little hope for the US, regardless of who wins elections. The sacred-victim, entitled-parasite culture must come to an end. But I think it will have to destroy itself before it does and that could take quite a while.
Although MacIntyre didn't address issues which modern liberal culture drills down on constantly and in an evermore hysterical fashion his description of the tactical aspects is fine.
This runs smack into the 1964 Civil Rights Act though. I've forgotten who wrote the book, but the idea is that we are effectively governed by two irreconcilable constitutions: the 1789/1865 one and the 1964 one. One of these must fall.
I agree with your diagnosis. But I don't see any political will for eliminating the 1964 Civil Rights Act and associated public accommodation laws and restoring freedom of association. That just ain't going to happen.
(It's weird that it's perfectly legal for a black man can walk into a motel, see the guy behind the desk is Indian, and refuse to stay there. But it's illegal for the Indian guy behind the desk to see a black man walk in and refuse to give him a room. Makes no sense. But since when does the law make sense.)
The Founders constitution was broken in 1861-5 with the destruction of the sovereignty of the states. Lincoln did a bunch of other unconstitutional stuff but other than state sovereignty, that was rolled back ( and later revivified, in the case of the income tax). The Whig vision of internal improvements which Lincoln and many other Republicans brought with them when they switched parties probably wasn't unconstitutional (though Jackson and Grover Cleveland thought so) but brought a host of problems when it got out of hand.
End the Fed. Cut the infinite money pipeline that makes The Cathedral possible. Anything else, including Project 2025, is rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.
It would be the single greatest blow to the Total State.
The fiat currency underpins the power of the state. Bitcoin may end that someday. This is a futuristic theory of some anarcho-capitalists. We won't know till we get to the future!
BRICS is just a reaction to Euro-Atlantic trade power. It is in the realm of finance and trade, not even in the realm of geopolitics. The US dollar will be the last man standing if fiat currencies come under threat from commodity money like Bitcoin.
Bitcoin is just private fiat money. If they would make it redeemable for the electricity it took to make it, I might be interested. BRICS, on the other hand is viable. Admittedly, the countries currencies are a dumperster fire, if they would establish a currency based on and redeemable for real stuff like oil, wheat, rice, fertilizer and coffee, the the dollar is over.
Just about anything else. Seashells. Strings of beads. Bitcoin. Gold. The promissory notes of individual banks. Fixed money supply has a long and illustrious run, while central bank controlled inflation has overseen some of the worst calamity in history.
Regarding Project 2025 - Never reveal your game plan to you opponent! Unless Trump is elected President and Republicans, who are willing to support his policies at all costs (just like the Dems are willing to do), secure super majorities in House & Senate, then Project 2025 is a pipe dream, so why put it out there to be used by our opponents as a weapon? Republicans, whether New or Old, get their ass whipped because they don’t know how to play the game!
Gingrich's Contract with America was a huge electoral success and a partial governance success. But maybe the time for that has passed. I do like to know what I am supporting.
I recognize that in a short review essay one cannot hope to cover every element of a major book, and especially one that tackles such a broad subject. So I just ordered my own copy. But my curiosity is acute! You write about the mechanisms of managerial power accretion which Macintyre lays out, but say only a little about the cultural or historical circumstances which make it all possible in the first place, except to note that the last century has seen a great acceleration of the process. Does Macintyre speculate? It seems unlikely that this massive coagulation of power is simply the manifestation of early Progressives ideation.
The question it begs - and it’s not one I relish raising - is this: what is the value that bureaucratic institutions deliver which makes people so willing to defer to them? They do something well. It can’t all be HR nonsense and the regulation of EU foodstuffs. In the extremes it’s easy to see how absurd these institutions can be: what can possibly be the value of a Federal Department of Education? But it’s not the excesses which keep the whole game running. I want to understand that better, and frankly, I think conservatives need to understand it better. We need an answer deeper and richer and more persuasive than mere mockery when the blob fights back, as we know it will.
In short, managerialism exists to manage the complexity created by the "revolution of mass and scale" produced by the industrial revolution, and today the digital revolution. There is no simple way to get rid of it.
N.S., I agree it was the economy's growing complexity that made managers historically necessary, but I think it is possible to imagine a materially complex industrial society with many managers, but without managerialism (i.e. the dominant political power of managers.)
The 19th-20th century class struggle between the proletariat and upper bourgeoisie resulted in many compromises that had to be "managed". At the time, the nation state was viewed as a trusted intermediary laying above the contending classes. Over the 20th century the managers gained control of the state and now we can see that the state and the managers who rely on state power have replaced the upper bourgeoisie. The administrators ended up with political power because the state was trusted to control the process.
At the end of the 19th century, revolutionary Marxists realized that the proletariat had the potential to remove the upper bourgeoisie under their leadership. Today in America, there is a class of residual bourgeoisie. These people make things or provide voluntary services in the capitalist economy. The residual bourgeoisie must become a revolutionary class. It must not seize state power to administer state power, it must seize state power to curtail state power because the state is a petri dish in which managerial power grows. To become a revolutionary class the residual bourgeoise must become aware of itself and its revolutionary role. As long as the residual bourgeoise understands its role as "conservative" it will be unable to carry out its historical potential.
Only a self-conscious revolutionary class can dethrone the current managerial dictatorship.
Is this “massive coagulation of power” simply the outgrowth of “early Progressives ideation”? It looks to me like the metastasis grew over time in direct proportion to the diminishment of Judeo-Christian beliefs that gave rise to Western civilization. I mean, if you live in a culture whose elites tell you there’s no objective truth, where else can you go with that, other than toward increasing levels of chaos and conflict and confusion? This diminishing influence of hoary old tradition comes about through either explicit rejection and rebellion (we won’t go back!), or just not wanting to think about it (these are hard questions and I might not like the answer and besides I’m busy.) The character of the general populace changes. Is it good? Who gets to define what good character is, how do you get it, where does it come from?
1) After you replace all the entrenched bureaucrats with "our people," how do you keep them from turning into another bureaucracy?
2) What, if anything, is the passion that drives bureaucracy, that makes it so powerful without personality or, really, leadership? You can understand history being driven by the greed, power lust, fear, feuds, or aspirations to glory of individuals, or by the moods of mobs, but bureaucracy seems too stagnant , faceless, heartless to be DRIVEN by much of anything—inertia? conformity? status-seeking? There's a disconnect between the sinister power of this phenomenon and its blandness.
Read Renaud Camus. An English translation of his works was just released.
He's the gay, French, socialist writer who coined the term "Great Replacement". Much of his writing on the bureaucracy centers on exactly the question you asked: how can something that appears to be an intentional conspiracy arise from a faceless, heartless, uncaring bureaucracy? (Note, unlike many on the Right, Camus explicitly rejects that the "replacement" is planned or intentional, rather it's a byproduct of the managerial structure that has arisen in Western society.)
As for #1, I don't think you can. The long term solution is to legislatively disempower the bureaucracy. Unfortunately, since 70% of Congress are lawyers (and thus part of the managerial elite) that seems unlikely.,
Jefferson, Mao and the PRI had an answer to #1. It didn't work. Jefferson's solution was never tried. Mao produced chaos and ultimately tyranny. The PRI morphed into the replacement bureaucracy.
The elites think they are being rejected based on their positions. However, the public allowed them plenty of time to use their so-called intellect and their policies. They failed, are failures, and we have to remove them.
Sharon F is correct about the reorientation of the political spectrum. That's why we're seeing so many people switching parties, in both directions, e.g. Tulsi Gabbard, the Cheney's, George Will. That's why so many of the current Republican party's ideas are old lunch-bucket Democrat ideas, e.g. protectionism, restoring the jobs of the 1950's, etc.
One thought I have: there is always part of the population that is dreaming of revolution. Psychologically, they need an ideology: if you sit around the coffee house dreaming of destroying the bastards who are running society, you need a more or less coherent story about who the bastards and the victims are.
But lots of ideologies can work, as long as they provide the necessary victimology. Since the French revolution, the necesssary victimology dressed as class conflict. Marx focussed that more sharply on economic structures. The third world used colonialism. Militant Islam is an interesting case; its appeal to theology is atavistic, but its sense of grievance against the west provides the victimology.
What has happened in the West is that victimhood has been rebased on identity politics. (Climate activism is a mutant form of this where the victim is the planet.)
This ideological shift is distinct from managerialism. The latter is driven by more fundamental and inevitable changes, like new technology, whereas the identitarian theory of victimhood is a more opportunistic choice, more disposable, and to some extent an intellectual fad. Managerialists use it to justify increasing their speech and thought control, but they can drop it if it loses too much traction with the public.
There are some signs of that. When Budweiser "queered the beer", it may have been a high water mark. Blackrock and Disney are quietly dialing back ESG and DEI, etc. Fatties for Palestine, chanting about their common victimhood with [starving] Gazans, just look silly.
So I think the disorientation of the political spectrum comes partly from the substitution of identitarian ideology for welfare state socialism, which alienated many supporters of the latter, and then the more recent overreach of the new ideology, which has embarrassed its more moderate supporters. But managerialism proceeds apace in all cases.
As a card carrying member (r) of the managerial elite, I partially agree. It is hard to argue with some of your specifics, especially as regards the Federales. One of the big problems is the failure to keep experts (especially lawyers) in their lane. But I do think you over-estimate the solidarity of that group. The usual metaphor for trying to accomplish anything at all is "herding cats".
There is another reason why the New Right is badly needed which you hint at in the end of your essay but needs further development. That is the utter failure of the Old Right to conserve any thing at all. Not the economic vigor, not the Constitution, not religion, not the family nor even the notion that there are two sexes. It was the Left driving all these things which they have been doing ever since the French Revolution but the moral collapse of the Right enabled it all. I blame the sainted WFB. His mantra of standing athwart progress and yell Stop was 100% wrong. First of all it ceded the notion of progress to the Left. Second, the message should not have been Stop but Go Back to the Nothingness that awaits you or whatever the exact quote from Gandalf was. What WFB did was to enable the ratchet which is the essential tool for the Left.
> But I do think you over-estimate the solidarity of that group. The usual metaphor for trying to accomplish anything at all is "herding cats".
That's for when you're trying to attempt something concrete (say, build some public infrastructure).
Their solidarity lies elsewhere: as members of a class and to the system that perpetuates and increases their jobs.
There is a joke about faculty politics that is is so vicious because the stakes are so small. I can assure you that infighting exists across the entire spectrum of the public sector. The easiest way to increase your power is to take it from your rival in the next office. While there are similarities in background as NSL says there are different disciplines with different ways of doing things. As a finance guy I have done many rounds with lawyers, educators, and lobbyists. None of this expanded the organization. Not to mention the endless zero sum battles with parallel organizations. My experience is state and local. The Federales are different because they can print money so there is a tendency to "fix" problems by adding a layer above the squabbling agencies. Thus DoD, DHS, EdD, HHS. This never works.
"the utter failure of the Old Right to conserve anything"
This was what pushed me from conservative to postliberal. The George Wills and William F Buckleys of the world had their shot -- they failed. "Standing athwart history yelling STOP!" didn't work. It can't promote virtue. It can't promote anything. It can can slow down the Left but not stop it. Will & Buckley just want to take our foot off the gas; I want to throw the car into reverse. As C,S, Lewis said, "when you're on the wrong road, the most progressive man is the one who turns around first."
Thus I have (reluctantly) embraced postliberal / Nietzschean politics. I don't like it. I don't want to use raw power to coerce others to my vision of a "good" society. But that's all I have left. The shared Christian philosophy of the West is in tatters. Any society from here forward is Nietzschean, grounded in power (jungle law) not shared philosophy (natural law). So I unapologetically choose a Nietzschean society that at least tries to promote virtue (as I define it) instead of that which celebrates sin.
I don't want to go there. I see the problem of America being shackled to the demonic cities. If we could break that link, we would have a shot at restoring the Republic.
What does that mean? (I'm not trying to argue, I've heard this before and I don't get it.) Are you saying you want a return to a mostly agrarian society? To break up the economic power concentrations of cities? I don't see these as viable (or even desireable) so I'm curious what that means to you.
Note: I live in an exurb myself, so I've already removed my family from the city.
Ag an extraction would be part of it but also manufacturing which seems to exist mostly in small to medium cities. Not necessary to break the economic power of the big cities but to separate from it. We would need to establish our own financial system to be able to function but it would serve the society not dominate.
If you've never read any of the Distributists (Chesterton, the Catholic Worker Movement, the American Solidarity Party) you would probably like them. And they would give you good intellectual ammunition to back up this position.
Thanks. Will do.
Yes, Buckley was essentially a shamefaced progressive.
Excellent review. I wouldn’t say our liberal democracies “have become tyrannies,” but they are getting ever closer. The direction of drift is unmistakable. Most telling perhaps is the new arrogance on display from governing elites across the West. Where once they would hedge or seek to persuade, they are now unapologetic in their rejection of what the citizenry wants, and clearly *proud* of their support for censorship—“more of which is needed.”
In my view, one of the only reasons this has become viable as a politics is that conservatives let the universities fall entirely into the left’s hands. Not hard to understand why the GOP did so, being that “tax cuts tax cuts tax cuts” were the meaning of conservatism, but that there was no concerted fight anywhere in the West is harder to figure out. A once-Marxist left took over the schools during the very years it was morphing into this present identitarian cult (really no longer even *the Left*) and when the process was complete—voilà, there was available an infinitely busybody “leftish” movement that corporations could stomach. Because, of course, identities can be *marketed*. And look, these fallen universities were yearly minting tens of thousands of new consumers who could be depended on to buy the virtue-signaling junk, even as they were sure to vote for the virtue-signaling, pro-managerial party. Whether state or corporate, then, it was a win win for every managerial busybody.
And so: If the spread of managerialism at the state level was later so neatly paralleled by a similar spread in the corporate world (via the growth of HR) we have our captured universities to thank. “Foucault is ready to praise your precious uniqueness, and you needn’t even read Foucault.” All the anxious kids are signing up. And they will hit the job market this Fall.
As for whether this drift can be reversed, I’m skeptical. But building alternative educational institutions seems the most worthwhile work long term. Short term, it’s at least good that there are political figures like Vance who get the problem.
Yes, if all the money for institutions comes from the left because the right is busy with only trying to drown the government in the bathtub, then the institutions naturally all end up taken over by the left...
Another approach is to actually destroy the institutions. Whether this is possible or not depends on the specific institution in question.
The old Republic has been dying for some time and is now officially dead but nature abhors a vacuum and something will arise in its place. To define that something is what we need the New Right for. Otherwise it will be defined by the Left in league with their enablers in the Old Right. Trump is a transitional figure. The future belongs to figures like JD Vance or it belongs to the Left. Or maybe to Mad Max.
Consider that the seeds of the decline are inherent in the federal structure. A substantially weakened central government is a first step to weakening the left's influence over America life.
If you want to find the source of the political power of wokeness look at the concept of civil rights. This started the ball rolling in 1964. The power of the state to punish your biases underlays all of the woke ideology.
"Conservatives" will say, oh no, not us we support civil rights and related laws. But these laws are the underpinning that allows the state of Colorado to destroy you if you won't bake a particular cake.
This is the legacy of "conservatism" as practiced in the USA.
Few are willing to accept this 100% correct conclusion.
The 1964 Civil Rights Act is structurally incompatible with the free society envisioned by the US Constitution, since it places every interaction and association (or disassociation) under the potential regulation of the state. "You're not allowed to not bake the cake" is irreconcilable with any form of freedom of association.
But I don't see any appetite to overturn it anytime soon.
"overturn" is a loaded term. A violent uprising by a determined minority is one kind of revolution, but not the only imaginable kind of revolution. The managerial class took power from the bourgeoisie by a process that began with the self-awareness that managers have superior moral clarity and expertise. The managers understood themselves as an "expert" class that should rule. Use your time machine to go back in time and visit the universities and churches of1830's New England. Read the lectures of the leading educators and sermons of the influential Protestant clergymen.
These managers invented and owned an ideology called "progress". These managers' ideology supported a political program for the transfer of power and wealth away from bourgeois owners to more or less powerless people. Progress was proposed as both a moral imperative and historical inevitability. Over decades more and more people were recruited into the managerial class, leaving the rest of us a "residual bourgeoisie" characterized as non-progressive, sometimes perhaps even racist or fascist adjacent.
The progressive ideology advanced the high social prestige and increasing political power of the managers. The most creative members of the managerial class became the intellectual vanguard of what we call the "progressive movement". We call those who perform this function today "the media".
How can power and wealth be taken back from the managers?
The first step is that the residual bourgeoisie must develop self-awareness of itself as a revolutionary class. I suggest the following principles for a start of a discussion:
✔️ A revolutionary class is not literally conservative.
✔️ A revolutionary class does not support strengthening institutions controlled by the managers.
✔️ A revolutionary class understands that life may become chaotic and does not seek stability at all costs.
✔️ A revolutionary class does not support imperialism or aggression abroad because "war is the health of the state."
✔️ A revolutionary class makes strategic alliances for temporary advantage to move the liberation of the residual bourgeoisie forward but does not delude itself that it has an identity of interests with any faction of managers.
✔️ A revolutionary class does not contaminate itself with chauvinistic slogans or ethnic bias as these belong to those who would split the residual bourgeoisie to disrupt our movement.
My Marxist roots are ringing in my ears, man.
There’s nothing wrong with the concept of civil rights per se, it’s just that progressives appropriated it to themselves, claimed it “mine,” and then completely twisted it all out of shape while taking care to make it all kind of still sound good to the uncritical. Just another example of their mastery at weaponising our better instincts of right and wrong and using it against us.
By civil rights I mean rights by virtue of citizenship that force others to interact with you regardless of bias. This is a very pernicious idea that has no natural limiting condition. This is what allows the state to say, "You will bake the cake!" and destroy your life if you refuse. Civil rights began our descent towards tyranny.
> Excellent review. I wouldn’t say our liberal democracies “have become tyrannies,” but they are getting ever closer.
Aside from the horror stories that would happen to dissidents etc, many previous tyrannies were much more liberal and free for social life compared to 2024 liberal democracies.
Way fewer everyday affecting rules and regulations, much less thought police (not concerned with what you're thinking as long it's not about overthrowing the ruler), much less surveillance, and so on
Alexis de Tocqueville's web of petty regulations come to life.
Jacques Ellul argues that simply replacing one managerial set with another (theirs with ours), changes nothing long term and will only temporarily shift the direction of the technological society, while it marches ever forward.
The only way to truly effect anything is to eliminate the bureaucracy entirely. How true or realistic this is I don’t know, but I hope Vance doesn’t plan to simply swap people out without eliminating vast numbers of positions.
The paradox is of course that you can't eliminate the bureaucracies without first controlling those bureaucracies.
Actually, you can. Legislative control of the purse can defund entire departments tomorrow. They won't. But they could.
Yes, first steps should be supported while at the same time we must be clear headed and understand that only a maximal program can really change the trajectory of an entire society.
This is correct, but do you see any appetite in Congress for dismantling the bureaucracy and retaking control of the legislative process? I don't. Nor will there be. 95% of Congress-critters have BA degrees or above; 70% are lawyers -- regardless of party, they are the managerial class. ON a more practical level, detailed legislating is hard. it's a lot more fun to delegate hard decisions to unelected bureaucrats while you go hang out at the Georgetown cocktail parties.
In short, the system we have is working perfectly for those who run it. Therefore, it will not change. (Until it completely breaks down, when it will change suddenly.)
Like Hemingway's bankruptcy. We should not mistake the appearance of non-fragility as the actual thing itself.
But you can't do that with the scale of government and corporations today. Otherwise, you can't keep the lights on and people wouldn't get paid. I would use government to cut the corporations down to size especially tech and the banksters while encouraging small entrepreneurs. Then make government smaller by separating America from the cities. The Peoples' Republics can have all the bureaucrats they want. In fact, we should encourage the ones in America to migrate there after the split.
Never heard of Ellul, but I agree that the managerial class has a symbiotic relationship with the state. Kill one and the other dies.
Also, I don't know why these observations are necessarily conservative.. many of us independents don't like the way the State is currently working either.
This is what most people outside of "MAGA DC" - if there is such a thing - don't understand about Vance. He was quite literally the *perfect* if not *only* good VP pick because of his understanding of the personnel game, and Schedule F opportunity. Not just firing, but actively building the ranks of the potential hires who could execute a second term vision.
I think a lot of the "New Right" still underestimates how radical the redpill moment is for moderates and old Republicans. They don't get the game, and Vance, Vivek, and now RFK Jr. may be the first three prominent non-Trump figures to articulate the challenge. Success lies in multiplying this class of communicators. Odds of success go way up with someone like Elon at the helm of an efficiency commission because he'd control both messaging and have the track record of eviscerating unnecessary middle management.
Great article.
I must disagree with Lyon's conclusion that the influence of the managerial elite can be sustainably crippled by a Project 2025-style wholesale personnel reshuffle.
The power of the non-government managerial class is so informal and vast that even a radical change of those holding the reins of power over the bureaucracy's "commanding heights" has to be transitory. The reserves of Institutional resilience are deep. For example, Trump could appoint an ally as Secretary of Defense, but there are 220 Generals in the US Army, each of whom may have sympathies with non-governmental institutions entirely dominated by other managerial elites.
If the New Right's strategy is to “seize the institutions” and "dismantle the managerial apparatus" it is doomed to failure because these institutions are much, much stronger than the people who are ostensibly in charge of them. Lyons points out how easy it was to swap a Biden for a Harris.
Reform through personnel change is doomed to be transitory because the state exists to protect an entire class, not just a relative handful of bureaucrats. If (as a thought experiment) you could eliminate the entire managerial elite a new cohort would immediately be spawned out of the rank and file of the managerial class.
The managerial elite exists because of two supporting pillars: the coercive power of the state plus the ideology that justifies the existence of the managerial class itself. Putting new people in charge of the state whose inherent nature is to represent the interests of the managerial class makes no sense.
Continuing with the thought experiment, the elimination of the managerial class is impossible because it is now virtually a majority of the population, if you use a broad definition that encompasses all those who are dependent on the state for their material well-being.
The rest of the American people are looking for answers: "What happened to America?". "Why is power over my life receding further and further away from me?". J.D. Vance and the "New Right" think reform is enough. I'm more inclined to the approach of Vivek Ramaswamy and Javier Milei, but even these two do not state the solution frankly enough.
Violence always occasions real societal change. I know of no exceptions to this rule. To cripple the power of the managerial class the power of the state must also be curtailed. It is difficult to imagine this can be a peaceful process.
I agree. The New Right must seize control of the not only the bureaucracy but the legislative branch as well. Replacing the people running things can grant you short-term relief and buy you some time to demonstrate an alternative. But the long-term solution is disempowerment of the bureaucracy by legislation. Laws must be changed in wholesale fashion. I don't see anyone willing to do that yet. Not even Vance or Cotton.
I suspect things will have to get much worse (illegal immigrants taking more jobs, causing vastly more crime, urban centers becoming nearly unlivable, a significant devaluation of the USD, a strategic military defeat) before a Right-wing figure would arise who would do that. (Think Franco or Duterte or Bukele.) Congress isn't going to do it -- 95% have BAs (and all are full of BS) and 70% of them are lawyers (twice as bull of BS) -- they ARE the managerial class. Electoral democracy isn't going to do it -- the electeds have too much incentive to push hard decisions onto the bureaucrats. What will fix it is when the bureaucracy grows so large it can no longer effectively deliver basic services.
https://agentmax.substack.com/p/final-destination-part-i
Max Remington is one of the best substackers on this subject. He's realstic but not hyperbolic. His theory: expect a continued gradual breakdown of the social order at the ground level while the ruling class continues to insist that what you see with your own eyes isn't happening. Anarcho-tyranny reigns until some major event (see above) shatters the illusion. If you want to see an example of that, look at the 180 degree shift from "Biden is 100%" to 'Biden is a demented fool" and put it on steroids: "our cities are safer than ever because of their diversity"... what happens when that lie can't be sustained any longer?
I agree with your assessment that change will require some sort of breakdown, but a Franco-like figure would only substitute real tyranny for anarcho-tyranny. Personally, I would prefer anarcho-tyranny.
My core belief is that the residual bourgeoisie (the non-managerial class) must develop a self-awareness of itself as a revolutionary class. A revolutionary class cannot be "conservative" or conventionally "right-wing" in my opinion.
That's interesting. I might well prefer Franco, simply on the basis that the existing structure is only capable of atomizing people and reducing solidarity and social connections (we must liberate each individual, of course) while a true authoritarian might at least be capable of enforcing a moral order of some kind, and there's a chance I might agree with that moral order.
Of course, I do recognize that a Franco is by no means guaranteed and I might well end up with a Lenin or a Hitler instead, so I'm still undecided.
Lenin wanted the proletariat to develop class consciousness like that too. They never did. He went to his grave unable to understand that.
Yes, I think that the Soviet proletariat for the most part eventually rejected proletarian class consciousness, but the process took some time and the total elimination of capitalism.
This is more or less how the French revolution happened. It did not go well.
Hobbesian. :-) For what it's worth, I agree with the risk. However, at some point, if you conclude that your current society is actively trying to reduce the virtue of its citizens, you're willing to seek an alternative.
Politico ran a piece on Vance that was intended as a scare piece. My reaction was, God I hope so. Their contention was that Vance believed there is always a ruling class and it ought to be ours and work for the people rather than try to replace them. The current ruling class not only regards Orwell as an instruction manual, it has the same position on Brecht. I don't know whether Vance actually believes this but I think it reflects the reality of ruling classes.
I would think the simplest and most elegant thing to do would be stop race and sex quotas and bring back freedom of association. Let the bureaucracies deal with that. Otherwise, I see little hope for the US, regardless of who wins elections. The sacred-victim, entitled-parasite culture must come to an end. But I think it will have to destroy itself before it does and that could take quite a while.
Although MacIntyre didn't address issues which modern liberal culture drills down on constantly and in an evermore hysterical fashion his description of the tactical aspects is fine.
Not only "freedom of association", but also "freedom to NOT associate" (and "to disassociate").
This runs smack into the 1964 Civil Rights Act though. I've forgotten who wrote the book, but the idea is that we are effectively governed by two irreconcilable constitutions: the 1789/1865 one and the 1964 one. One of these must fall.
I agree with your diagnosis. But I don't see any political will for eliminating the 1964 Civil Rights Act and associated public accommodation laws and restoring freedom of association. That just ain't going to happen.
(It's weird that it's perfectly legal for a black man can walk into a motel, see the guy behind the desk is Indian, and refuse to stay there. But it's illegal for the Indian guy behind the desk to see a black man walk in and refuse to give him a room. Makes no sense. But since when does the law make sense.)
The Founders constitution was broken in 1861-5 with the destruction of the sovereignty of the states. Lincoln did a bunch of other unconstitutional stuff but other than state sovereignty, that was rolled back ( and later revivified, in the case of the income tax). The Whig vision of internal improvements which Lincoln and many other Republicans brought with them when they switched parties probably wasn't unconstitutional (though Jackson and Grover Cleveland thought so) but brought a host of problems when it got out of hand.
I agree. When I teach civics, I teach 3 foundings: 1789, 1865, 1964.
End the Fed. Cut the infinite money pipeline that makes The Cathedral possible. Anything else, including Project 2025, is rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.
It would be the single greatest blow to the Total State.
The fiat currency underpins the power of the state. Bitcoin may end that someday. This is a futuristic theory of some anarcho-capitalists. We won't know till we get to the future!
BRICS has the potential for ending it too. How about a fusion.
BRICS is just a reaction to Euro-Atlantic trade power. It is in the realm of finance and trade, not even in the realm of geopolitics. The US dollar will be the last man standing if fiat currencies come under threat from commodity money like Bitcoin.
Bitcoin is just private fiat money. If they would make it redeemable for the electricity it took to make it, I might be interested. BRICS, on the other hand is viable. Admittedly, the countries currencies are a dumperster fire, if they would establish a currency based on and redeemable for real stuff like oil, wheat, rice, fertilizer and coffee, the the dollar is over.
And replace it with what?
The gold standard? Fixed money supply chasing ever more goods and services.
Congress deciding to print money? Yeah, I trust them even less than Jerome Powell.
So what's your replacement?
Just about anything else. Seashells. Strings of beads. Bitcoin. Gold. The promissory notes of individual banks. Fixed money supply has a long and illustrious run, while central bank controlled inflation has overseen some of the worst calamity in history.
Regarding Project 2025 - Never reveal your game plan to you opponent! Unless Trump is elected President and Republicans, who are willing to support his policies at all costs (just like the Dems are willing to do), secure super majorities in House & Senate, then Project 2025 is a pipe dream, so why put it out there to be used by our opponents as a weapon? Republicans, whether New or Old, get their ass whipped because they don’t know how to play the game!
Gingrich's Contract with America was a huge electoral success and a partial governance success. But maybe the time for that has passed. I do like to know what I am supporting.
Like Bob Dylan said, “The times they are a changin’”
It was shocking, and revealing to me when a LTCOL(Vindaman the toad) critized the COMMANDER IN CHIEF over policy. Truly unbelievable.
Yes, and now the dirthead is trying to turn his disloyalty into a political career in the Dem party.
I think that is his brother. Also at LtCol and equally toad like as they are identical twins.
I recognize that in a short review essay one cannot hope to cover every element of a major book, and especially one that tackles such a broad subject. So I just ordered my own copy. But my curiosity is acute! You write about the mechanisms of managerial power accretion which Macintyre lays out, but say only a little about the cultural or historical circumstances which make it all possible in the first place, except to note that the last century has seen a great acceleration of the process. Does Macintyre speculate? It seems unlikely that this massive coagulation of power is simply the manifestation of early Progressives ideation.
The question it begs - and it’s not one I relish raising - is this: what is the value that bureaucratic institutions deliver which makes people so willing to defer to them? They do something well. It can’t all be HR nonsense and the regulation of EU foodstuffs. In the extremes it’s easy to see how absurd these institutions can be: what can possibly be the value of a Federal Department of Education? But it’s not the excesses which keep the whole game running. I want to understand that better, and frankly, I think conservatives need to understand it better. We need an answer deeper and richer and more persuasive than mere mockery when the blob fights back, as we know it will.
Glad you got the book, I'm sure you'll get more out of that. I wrote a lot more on managerialism in my own take on it that might answer your question: https://theupheaval.substack.com/p/the-china-convergence
In short, managerialism exists to manage the complexity created by the "revolution of mass and scale" produced by the industrial revolution, and today the digital revolution. There is no simple way to get rid of it.
N.S., I agree it was the economy's growing complexity that made managers historically necessary, but I think it is possible to imagine a materially complex industrial society with many managers, but without managerialism (i.e. the dominant political power of managers.)
The 19th-20th century class struggle between the proletariat and upper bourgeoisie resulted in many compromises that had to be "managed". At the time, the nation state was viewed as a trusted intermediary laying above the contending classes. Over the 20th century the managers gained control of the state and now we can see that the state and the managers who rely on state power have replaced the upper bourgeoisie. The administrators ended up with political power because the state was trusted to control the process.
At the end of the 19th century, revolutionary Marxists realized that the proletariat had the potential to remove the upper bourgeoisie under their leadership. Today in America, there is a class of residual bourgeoisie. These people make things or provide voluntary services in the capitalist economy. The residual bourgeoisie must become a revolutionary class. It must not seize state power to administer state power, it must seize state power to curtail state power because the state is a petri dish in which managerial power grows. To become a revolutionary class the residual bourgeoise must become aware of itself and its revolutionary role. As long as the residual bourgeoise understands its role as "conservative" it will be unable to carry out its historical potential.
Only a self-conscious revolutionary class can dethrone the current managerial dictatorship.
Collapse will get rid of it and much else as well.
Is this “massive coagulation of power” simply the outgrowth of “early Progressives ideation”? It looks to me like the metastasis grew over time in direct proportion to the diminishment of Judeo-Christian beliefs that gave rise to Western civilization. I mean, if you live in a culture whose elites tell you there’s no objective truth, where else can you go with that, other than toward increasing levels of chaos and conflict and confusion? This diminishing influence of hoary old tradition comes about through either explicit rejection and rebellion (we won’t go back!), or just not wanting to think about it (these are hard questions and I might not like the answer and besides I’m busy.) The character of the general populace changes. Is it good? Who gets to define what good character is, how do you get it, where does it come from?
China convergence redux.
Two questions:
1) After you replace all the entrenched bureaucrats with "our people," how do you keep them from turning into another bureaucracy?
2) What, if anything, is the passion that drives bureaucracy, that makes it so powerful without personality or, really, leadership? You can understand history being driven by the greed, power lust, fear, feuds, or aspirations to glory of individuals, or by the moods of mobs, but bureaucracy seems too stagnant , faceless, heartless to be DRIVEN by much of anything—inertia? conformity? status-seeking? There's a disconnect between the sinister power of this phenomenon and its blandness.
Read Renaud Camus. An English translation of his works was just released.
He's the gay, French, socialist writer who coined the term "Great Replacement". Much of his writing on the bureaucracy centers on exactly the question you asked: how can something that appears to be an intentional conspiracy arise from a faceless, heartless, uncaring bureaucracy? (Note, unlike many on the Right, Camus explicitly rejects that the "replacement" is planned or intentional, rather it's a byproduct of the managerial structure that has arisen in Western society.)
interview with him if you're interested: https://www.vox.com/world/2017/8/15/16141456/renaud-camus-the-great-replacement-you-will-not-replace-us-charlottesville-white
As for #1, I don't think you can. The long term solution is to legislatively disempower the bureaucracy. Unfortunately, since 70% of Congress are lawyers (and thus part of the managerial elite) that seems unlikely.,
Jefferson, Mao and the PRI had an answer to #1. It didn't work. Jefferson's solution was never tried. Mao produced chaos and ultimately tyranny. The PRI morphed into the replacement bureaucracy.
The elites think they are being rejected based on their positions. However, the public allowed them plenty of time to use their so-called intellect and their policies. They failed, are failures, and we have to remove them.
Sharon F is correct about the reorientation of the political spectrum. That's why we're seeing so many people switching parties, in both directions, e.g. Tulsi Gabbard, the Cheney's, George Will. That's why so many of the current Republican party's ideas are old lunch-bucket Democrat ideas, e.g. protectionism, restoring the jobs of the 1950's, etc.
One thought I have: there is always part of the population that is dreaming of revolution. Psychologically, they need an ideology: if you sit around the coffee house dreaming of destroying the bastards who are running society, you need a more or less coherent story about who the bastards and the victims are.
But lots of ideologies can work, as long as they provide the necessary victimology. Since the French revolution, the necesssary victimology dressed as class conflict. Marx focussed that more sharply on economic structures. The third world used colonialism. Militant Islam is an interesting case; its appeal to theology is atavistic, but its sense of grievance against the west provides the victimology.
What has happened in the West is that victimhood has been rebased on identity politics. (Climate activism is a mutant form of this where the victim is the planet.)
This ideological shift is distinct from managerialism. The latter is driven by more fundamental and inevitable changes, like new technology, whereas the identitarian theory of victimhood is a more opportunistic choice, more disposable, and to some extent an intellectual fad. Managerialists use it to justify increasing their speech and thought control, but they can drop it if it loses too much traction with the public.
There are some signs of that. When Budweiser "queered the beer", it may have been a high water mark. Blackrock and Disney are quietly dialing back ESG and DEI, etc. Fatties for Palestine, chanting about their common victimhood with [starving] Gazans, just look silly.
So I think the disorientation of the political spectrum comes partly from the substitution of identitarian ideology for welfare state socialism, which alienated many supporters of the latter, and then the more recent overreach of the new ideology, which has embarrassed its more moderate supporters. But managerialism proceeds apace in all cases.