13 Conclusion: Ecce Furor

The notion of Ecce Furor us a Latin phrase translated to  “behold the fury, come now” and/or “see the madness, proceed.”  Ecce has to do with behold, see, or look.  Furor has to do with loss of social order or control when one was overcome by intense passion.  Field sees the MAGA New Right in said light.  The fury is framed by the claim that the modern world is lost track of the virtues, about which the New Right self-righteously lays claim.

Field (2025, p.  303) quotes Mansfield:  “There’s something grander and bigger than liberalism, and that’s to be seen in the philosophy of the ancients. Plato and Aristotle are the leaders, but there are a number of them.… I would describe what you learn from the ancients as learning how to live in the land of virtue, and the beauties and the difficulties of that land.… And liberalism knows essentially nothing of the land of virtue.”  Well, Mansfield fails to see that true liberalism, as represented in the classical liberalism that grew out of the Enlightenment clearly saw the key role of virtue, the key role of the Ethic. In the case in hand, as DIT makes clear, it is the American Ethic, now under assault by the MAGA New Right. 

As DIT also makes clear, classical liberalism is framed by the universal 7-virtues (after D. McCloskey, see the ??Review in Lynne 2025) of prudence and courage, but framed by justice, faith, hope and love, the latter bringing empathy-with the other to temper (as in the essential virtue of temperance) that ego-based pursuit of courageous prudence.  In fact, an aside, based in DIT framing:  The New Deal Order 1930-1980, now being completely dismantled by the New Right, was the closest the United States ever got to building that order, one that was built on the 7-virtues.

MAGA New Right is Seemingly Not Aware of the True Form of Liberalism

So, just what is Mansfield referring to? Well, it is the case that modern versions of classical liberalism have not implemented what the moral philosophers like Adam Smith had in mind.  Said philosophers and designers of the Enlightened political system such as put in place with the 1787 Constitution saw the key role of empathy-based ethics, the empathy-based moral and ethical dimension.  Mansfield and few others in the New Right get it correct that not enough attention has been paid to that dimension, ironically, also not given due attention by many if not all in the New Right movement.  

It is hard to say it any better than Field (2025, p.   ) does it here, regarding how the New Right has coalesced around flawed themes:  “The Claremonters said they wanted a return to the vision of the founders—a small-government Republican vision that respects traditional religion, manly statesmanship, self-government, and federalism. If that didn’t work, then Red Caesarism would have to do. The National Conservatives sought to protect the true American nation—a Christian, mostly white, socially conservative nation, and one where the hordes of woke neo-Marxists would be defeated for good.

For the American Postliberals and Catholic integralists, the ultimate endgame was spiritual; the secularist enemies would be defeated for the sake of the common good, which included orderly hierarchical politics, economic melioration, and the soul’s salvation. The Hard Right wanted to smash the liberal status quo, come what may…. There was significant variation between the New Right modes, but in each instance, what we saw was a group of theoretically-minded people who turned into, or always were, ideologues fighting an existential battle against liberal democratic pluralism and its freedoms.” As DIT makes clear, it is a battle against a strawman, as the reality is that liberal (to the extent it uses the classical version like Adam Smith et al envisioned) democratic pluralism and its freedoms framed by the 1787 Constitution is actually  working reasonable well.  It only needs to tweaked to put more focus on the America Ethic, and stop the wrecking ball approach that is destroying it with authoritarian and neofascist tactics and claims. 

Athena Needed Once Again

The Field book  about the Furies is framed by the themes in the “Aeschylus’s Oresteia trilogy (which) includes a true deus ex machina, and culminates in something like a paean to democratic Athens. The political hero of the play is the goddess Athena, who resolves Orestes’s tragic contest with the Furies by setting up the first major trial by jury in Athens. The tone here is very contemporary: Democratic processes to the rescue! After some good civics lessons—and terrible legal arguments—the vote is split. Athena gets the deciding vote, and she, the goddess of wisdom, tips the scales in favor of Orestes, which is also a vote for Apollo and his sophistry, and for Athens’s masculinist, rationalistic politics.34 And so, while there is relief for Orestes, the Furies lose, and it seems that mother-murder will go unavenged. The goddesses are poised to slink away back to the netherworlds to tend their festering wounds. But that is not how it ends up.

Instead, Athena’s final, drawn-out gesture is to try to assuage the angry Furies—an acknowledgment of the ignominies they have endured. The only thing that saves the final play from devolving into total rah-rah jingoism, besides the gravitas of all that came before, is Athena’s gentleness: ‘You do still have your rights.… Soothe down the seething storm-waves of your rage.’" As DIT makes clear, it is time to soothe and tone down, temper the ego-based self-interest operating with a kind of dark empathy with a few “us-loyalist” of angry (mainly white men) people. We need Athena.

Field (2025, p. 320) has some suggestions:   “If I were to play Athena in the unfolding drama of our age, and was in a magnanimous mood, I would ask Americans to think about the ways in which the New Right intellectuals have succeeded in shaking up the status quo—on economics, trade, localism, technocracy and managerialism, campus silos and campus bureaucracies, and the crisis of masculinity to which the entire New Right movement is such a loud testament. These are all areas where Americans could learn from one another across political divides, and in some cases they already have. The mistake here would not be listening too much; it would be to fall for the New Right’s Schmittian filth about friends and enemies and America being irreparably divided.”

Some Form of Mixed Constitutionalism Could Work

Field (2025, p. 321) also expresses support for “ some aspects of Patrick Deneen’s ‘mixed constitutionalism.’ Deneen’s ideas about liberalism are bogus, but some of his ideas about mixing up the American social order are good: moving some federal agencies from DC to other parts of the country, for example, or finding other ways to reinvigorate places that are struggling. I also agree with Deneen that it is ‘high time to revisit the question of national service.’ This would not just involve military service but could also mean giving people opportunities to work on infrastructure projects, environmental repair, and social services.

Think the Civilian Conservation Corps—the goal being, in Deneen’s words, ‘the mingling of people from a variety of walks of life… (also more) funding for public schools, with much more support for education in the trades. Amen to that. Let’s add a big child tax credit—for all children, in all kinds of families—to the list. We could tax the billionaires and millionaires to make it happen. Sohrab Ahmari’s ideas about unions and workers sound good, too. Athena knows there is no shortage of other interesting policy ideas in the center and on the left. When it comes to inequality, poverty, and the shrinking middle class, what are lacking are ambition and will.”

Patriotic Education Based in Serious and Systematic Inquiry in the Sciences & Humanities is Needed

And on the matter of patriotic education, Field (2025, p. 321) says it well: “… tear up the patriotic education page and instead promote history, great books, and liberal humanism, broadly conceived—not as a replacement but as a well-funded alternative option to what dominates already (i.e., STEM and preprofessional specialization). I would commit to building new liberal education programs in big state schools all over the country, with a genuinely pluralistic, aka “mixed,” character. The purposes here would be mainly old-fashioned and Socratic. The initiatives would ensure exposure to fine works of art, literature, and history and would treat questions—What is justice? What is love? What does it mean to live well?—as foundational.”

Closing out the book, Field (2025, p. 323) says it well:  “It is hard to tell today whether we are living through the tragic end of the American experiment in liberty and pluralism or on the cusp of a new way through.” Yes, it is, and hopefully --- a key virtue --- it leads to a new way through.

Metaeconomics Postscript: Final Thoughts

DIT clarifies something totally missed in the MAGA New Right:  Sustainable political-economic order requires simultaneous activation of ego-interest (the Incentive) and shared other-interest (the Ethic). Suppress either one—and the system destabilizes. Both Adam Smith and Jesus Christ would agree: Both made clear it was about striking a balance, and would have both been MetaEcon. The MAGA New Right is working to suppress the shared other-interest coming out of the inclusive American democracy put into play by the Founders in the 1787 Constitution. The MAGA New Right “Furies” are (with some help from ChatGPT 5.2 here) “pure, untempered ego-based with narrowly defined moral and ethical demand based in revenge, loyalty to tribe, grievance” working to in effect denigrate the widely shared-other-interest institutions that would create and keep stability. It is not only immoral, but also unethical to the core, no matter the claims of the “Christian” Nationalists. Again, both Adam Smith and Jesus Christ would not approve.

Said somewhat differently, the MAGA New Right is only about serving the self-interest and the narrowly defined dark empathy of the “us, the MAGA believers” with said frame imposed on the “them, all opposition.”  It is a form of neofascism for the sake of taking power. It is not only destabilizing, but it assures the American Democracy will be destroyed unless it is stopped. The building of the vertical power rule of men illiberal Autocracy --- the Authoritarian Nationalism with a “Christian” frame --- must be stopped and turned back onto the road America started traveling in 1787.

References

Field, Laura K.  Furious Minds: The Making of the MAGA New Right. Princeton, NJ:  Princeton University Press, 2025

Frankfurt, Harry G. On Bullshit. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005.

Hanson, Stephen E. and Kopstein, Jeffrey S. The Assault on the State:  How the Global Attack on Modern Government Endangers Our Future. Hoboken, NJ: Polity Press, 2024.

Hazony, Yoram. The Virtue of Nationalism. New York: Basic Books, 2018.