Strive to be Everything
SOTU: “Aspirational conservatism” seeks to “break from a growing preference on the right for wielding federal power in pursuit of moral goals.”
There’s a new kind of conservatism on the block. No, it’s not national conservatism or post-liberal conservatism, two movements that have emerged on the American right in the past few years seeking to revive conservative traditions and ways of thinking that predate liberal modernity. This new conservatism also calls itself a revival but instead of reaching back to Aristotle or Aquinas’ works, it draws its inspirations from figures like Paul Ryan and George W. Bush.
You have that right.
Its proponents are calling it “aspirational conservatism,” a self-admitted rebranding of the “compassionate conservativism [sic]” of the 1990s. “Many in the party think the GOP must choose between an anti-elitist nationalism and a return to establishmentarian small government… between waging war against wokeism and capitulating to the…
