2 The Claremonters

Field points to a major shift in the Conservative frame of reference with the nomination of the “cowboy conservative” Barry Goldwater in 1964.  It shifted the center of power within the Republican party to the Western US from the heretofore power centered in the East.  Goldwater was against supporting the Civil Rights Act, a major factor in Johnson becoming President. And while Rockefeller and other party leaders believed Goldwater to extreme right, a speech  about that time --- with the following lines from Straussian Jaffa who founded the Claremont Institute in 1979 --- “that extremism in defense of liberty is no vice. And let me remind you also that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue (Field 2025, p. 28).” Rush Limbaugh became a devout follower of  the writing coming out of the Claremont Institute, often reading such publications word for word on the right-wing talk show Limbaugh championed.  One of the most famous was the reading of the “2016 is the Flight 93 election”  referring to the Americans who brought down Flight 93 during the 911 Event by charging the cockpit:  Limbaugh (and the Claremonters) claimed it was essential to defeat Hillary Clinton to save the country --- the essay was “… riddled with  (a) kind of apocalypticism and conspiracism (Field 2025, p. 30)” fully lacking much in the way of truth content. 

Poor Me (Conservatives) Essay

It was a poor me kind of essay --- anonymous author Decius ---  as in “…  everything was stacked against genuine conservatism and Trumpism. The media and universities who control the culture were against them; conservative leaders were in the habit of playing way too nice and so were in effect acting against themselves; and the electoral system was on the brink of being overrun through the ‘ceaseless importation of Third World foreigners’ who were not ‘traditionally American’ and so voted against Republicans (Field 2025, p. 30).”  The Great Replacement Theory --- again lacking in much  in the way of truth content --- was born.  So, the extreme lack of truth content also led to even supporting “… ‘loudmouth’ like Trump to do something about it—to stop immigration, put an end to the endless wars, and create a more equitable economy (Field 2025, p. 30).” And, while some parts of such arenas perhaps deserved some attention, the extreme lack of concern for the truth content of the claims reined.  Decius turned out to be Michael Anton, an admirer of Harry Jaffa, West Coast Straussians all. 

Field (2025, p. 31) says, that the “…main purpose (in this part of the book) is to understand West Coast Straussianism, which is the political philosophy of the Claremonters, our first of three intellectual factions of the New Right. The two most important thinkers in this Straussian trajectory are Harry Jaffa and Allan Bloom.”  Bloom wrote The Closing of the American Mind which is all about claims of how modernity had gone awry.  Again, it was a lot of lack of concern for truth content coming out of serious and systematic inquiry in science & humanities that led to such claims. Both wanted to go back to some earlier time, focusing attention on pre-modern frames and constructs.  It was about some “grand synthesis of biblical political thought, ancient Greek philosophy, and modern political thought… (Field 2025, p. 33)” none of which holds much quarter in serious science & humanities, being more cargo-cult, make-believe than of much substance.

Constitution is Really an Empathy-With Document Which is Not Recognized by MAGA

Yet, like in all frames, some fact content is always in play, as in “Unlike other conservatives of his day, Jaffa did not minimize the evil of slavery (Field 2025, p. 35).”  Jaffa argued it was inconsistent with the Founders intent, as in “we the people” endowed with inalienable rights, with the Founders intent the dominant consideration in West Coast Straussian thinking. The moral and ethical core of Abraham Lincoln on the matter of slavery, had to be respected. And, Jaffa went onto claim, the source for said core actually came from the Founders, as in “… the American founders had forged a limited constitutional order that made space not only for civic freedom, but also for true moral and religious liberty, and so for something like the true, positive exercise of the human moral faculties (Field 2025, p. 36).”  Using DIT, the Constitution was in effect an empathy-with based document that framed the expression of the moral and ethical order. Intriguingly, Jaffa saw the separation of church and state, and not having a state religion, as the main reason it would work, as “it facilitates sectarian disagreement and moral pluralism— (which) had strengthened civic, moral, and religious bonds and agreement  … the separation of church and state simply made space for people to act within the shared, highly homogenous, moral universe that he calls ‘your inheritance from the ancient cities of Athens and Jerusalem’ (Field 2025, p. 36).”

Ironically, as DIT makes clear, in that Claremonters associate and connect with Christian Nationalists, it is not at all  what the Christian Nationalists have in mind, with the only source of the moral and ethical dimension having to be a reintegrated church & state, as in the Catholic Moral (and Ethical) Order espoused by Patrick Deneen, and JD Vance.

Universities Under Assault by the MAGA New Right

Jaffa goes after Universities for not putting enough attention to the integration of the moral and ethical dimension coming out of reason with that same dimension coming out of the revelation of religion.  Jaffa sees merit in drawing on both reason and revelation, claiming Universities downplay revelation too much.  Perhaps: As DIT clarifies, it does not matter the source. All that matters is getting to a moral and ethical frame that works for reasoned people. To Jaffa, some genuine and natural knowledge existed within the revelations of religion, and, it needed to be seriously considered. Field (2025, p. 38) concludes the discussion of Jaffa:  “I find Jaffa’s later writings unreadable. I am sure there is much to learn here—“.  Well, DIT could probably help make sense of it.

Seems Racism Could be in Play

Also, on the racism issue, and Goldwater’s denial of the Civil Rights Act on the grounds that it was somehow not consistent with the Constitution (heard again in recent times at Charlie Kirk rallies), Martin Luther King summed it up with (Field 2025, p.  40):  “While not himself a racist, Mr. Goldwater articulated a philosophy which gave aid and comfort to the racist. His candidacy and philosophy would serve as an umbrella under which extremists of all stripes would stand.”  It seems the same is true of the MAGA New Right: Nothing much has changed, and it is all back in full flower.

Moral Relativism:  MAGA Will Have Nothing of It, as Absolutes from Religious Sources Rein

Field then turns to Allan Bloom, the political philosopher that  claimed Universities had turned students into “relativists” and away from the absolutes of moral and ethical framing supposedly buried in old books from Greece and, yes, the Bible. The Bloom book railed about “cultural relativism, nihilism, the perils of feminism and rock-and-roll, and crazed incoherence of social justice activism… (Field 2025, p. 45).”  It all stirred quite a controversy, sold lots of books, and enabled to Bloom to retire without any financial worries. In DIT terms, it added interesting ideas to discuss about the origins of the moral and ethical dimension, but had gaping holes in empirical credibility, putting too much emphasis on thinkers in Athens and the ancient holy land wherein the Bible emerged. As DIT clarifies, said dimension evolves through time and is not etched in some stone tablets and old books written by who knows  whom in the sense of credentialed ability to find such truths.

Gender Science and Humanities Ignored

And, then there is the quite untenable position of Jaffa on the gender spectrum.  Jaffa just could not accept what is now well documented in both the sciences & humanities that someone could actually be considered a legitimate, reasoned person no matter where that person existed on the gender spectrum.  Jaffa was extremely homophobic, without any reason other than, well, Jaffa was homophobic. We might say Jaffa was born with that frame of reference, and leave it at that --- albeit, unfortunately, the Jaffa as intellectual and homophobic likely provides some presumed credentialed support for the homophobia found in the MAGA New Right.  As DIT makes clear,  such framing is clearly not defensible based in serious and systematic enquiry using science & humanities, and cannot be justified on any grounds other than just belief that such people are not to be accepted as legitimate people, and are not to be tolerated.  

Intriguingly, “… things turned ugly between Jaffa and Bloom, because Jaffa was homophobic and Bloom was gay (Field 2025, p. 45).”  Bloom as a major contributor to MAGA New Right thinking was under assault by Jaffa the homophobic believer. Ironically, that is good news.  It needs to happen within the entire realm of the MAGA New Right to stop the assault on normal people who happen to have been born on a part of the gender spectrum that is somehow deemed unacceptable by a cargo-cult (make-believe) assessment of reality.  The Jaffa “hard-line moralism” on gender issues found widely in the MAGA New Right is in fact immoral and unethical to the core. And, in general, the Claremont Institute, at least on this part of the frame used within that Institute, is cargo-cult science (and humanities) to the core. 

As a result, in that it also lacks in empathy-with people born on a part of  the gender spectrum Claremont Institute framers  do not like, which is not an individual choice, it is also unethical to the core. The MAGA New Right builds on such framing, claiming their “morality” is based in absolutes only said Right can ascertain, and, as a result “rejects the possibility of deep pluralism (on any issue, especially not their short list of what is moral and ethical) at a national level and seeks to impose homogeneity instead (Field 2025, p. 46).”  It is a vertical power rule of MAGA Authoritarianism in full view.

MAGA Claims Often Lack Empirical (Fact) Based Reality

Field (2025, pp. 46-47) points to how the underlying intellectual sources of MAGA claims are based in abstract ideas, not in fact-based reality:  “…the Straussian love of abstraction liberates them from any due diligence about on-the-ground facts, and the preference for the world of ideas and big thinking releases them from normal intellectual constraints of empiricism and historical accuracy.” It releases said believers from the hard work of applying the scientific method, as in forming null hypotheses and testing same with empirical data.  Truth based in fact is optional, at best, and more generally reflects the total disregard for truth, as though no facts exist. It leads to such things as the total lack of truth in the claims of 2020 Election Stolen and the Great Replacement Theory. 

And, even when facts are acknowledged, it also leads to empirically indefensible things framed as “noble lies” as in “…  public life (the preferred form defined by MAGA) is best preserved by salutary fabrications about the past … (so, the MAGA New Right is involved in)  … telling those tales (Field 2025, pp. 47-48).”  So, the MAGA New Right is prone to both the total disregard for truth (as moral philosopher Harry Frankfurt characterizes such framing in the title of the 2005 book On Bullshit) and noble lies even when facts are acknowledged, so a distortion and/or outright denial of science & humanities based claims.