'America First' Is Not ConservativeCalling out evil for what it is must be the core of any durable conservatism.
I. The American political right is seemingly ascendant, holding the White House, controlling both houses of Congress, and having a sympathetic conservative majority on the Supreme Court. It has a president popular within the party, a slate of future candidates that could easily compete in 2028, and serious growth potential for the new coalition it assembled over the past decade. It also certainly helps that the Democrats seem completely lost in the woods, flailing in their messaging efforts, jumping at every single faux controversy, and avoiding issues that they could actually succeed on, including economics and tariffs. And yet there is a massive internal schism brewing within the right, pitting traditional conservatives against radical extremists who seek to fundamentally alter the course of the movement. This is not a novel situation. One could trace it back decades, at least to the failed Patrick Buchanan primary campaign to unseat incumbent president George HW Bush in 1992. During that run, Buchanan mainstreamed a type of conspiratorial and antisemitic populism that has only increased in prevalence and influence with the coming of the internet and social media. This returned with a vengeance in the 2016 campaign and the early years of Trump’s first term, with the so-called alt-right picking up Buchanan’s mantle, making it even more extreme, and running with it. They were viewed as being far more influential than they were, as the president himself did not embrace their noxious messaging and neither did the Republican party writ large, much to their chagrin. Over the course of the Biden administration and during the 2024 primary campaign, these internet edgelords (read: basement-dwelling losers) grew in number and influence, picking up powerful adherents along the way. Some joined up because they were true believers, while other, more cynical actors did so for clout and popularity. These fractures in the right-wing movement, largely papered over by the successful 2024 Trump campaign and the widespread antipathy for the progressivism of the Biden administration, broke back into the open after the assassination of Charlie Kirk. Kirk was one of the few towering figures who had earned the respect and admiration of nearly everyone involved in right-of-center politics. He was a good and decent man, an effective speaker and campaigner, and someone genuinely interested in growing the conservative movement and bringing it to a new generation. Ironically enough, one of the few small non-leftist factions that despised Kirk was this evolved alt-right, calling themselves ‘Groypers’ and being led by a charismatic neo-Nazi named Nick Fuentes. They routinely attended Kirk’s speaking events, attacking his pro-Israel, philosemitic stances and looking to convince others while making Kirk look bad – at this, they failed miserably, as this excellent video of Kirk shutting down a Groyper shows. Now, however, after Kirk’s untimely demise at the hand of a leftist murderer, this radical fringe – let’s use their preferred nomenclature and call them ‘America First’¹ – is attempting to co-opt and take over the conservative movement. And, sadly, they’re having some success in the matter. The most recent and high-profile example of this comes courtesy of former Fox News host and current wild conspiracist and dictator-fluffer Tucker Carlson². On his eponymous (and extremely popular) podcast, he interviewed the leading figure of this radical fringe of America Firsters, the aforementioned Nick Fuentes. Just like Tucker’s fawning conversations with despicable men like Russian dictator Vladimir Putin, Qatari prime minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani, Iranian president Masoud Pezeshkian, and several other members of the ‘we hate America’ club, this interview was akin to a friendly bantering session between lifelong pals. There was no pushback, no criticism, and no debate. Everything was positively peachy, despite the well-documented evils Fuentes supports and promotes. And Fuentes was not particularly coy in this interview, saying that “organized Jewry in America” was the “big challenge” to unifying the country, something Carlson accepted. There was also no follow-up by Carlson on Fuentes’s statement that he loved Stalin, something one would expect a conservative to immediately pounce on. The choice to interview Fuentes was part of a broader attempt to mainstream this sort of poisonous ideology on the right by Carlson and his ilk. Thankfully, it was met with a great deal of criticism from conservatives across the spectrum of the movement, including people as important as senators Ted Cruz and Mitch McConnell. Unfortunately, however, it was not met with universal scorn and derision. Some powerful people have begun to play footsie with this fringe, either by refusing to denounce Carlson, tacitly backing the ideas he platforms, or feeling unable to directly counter the rising antisemitism in this radical movement. One such figure is the head of the august Heritage Foundation³, the conservative thinktank/political action group that powered the Reagan Revolution of the 1980s and has been of paramount importance in the movement ever since. Kevin Roberts, the leader of the institution, has turned Heritage into a full-on MAGA support structure, selling out many of its long-term positions, namely against tariffs, government intervention into the private sector, and Russia. Under Roberts’ tenure, Heritage seems to be seeking a movement to lead, shifting its ideas with the prevailing winds of partisan politics, especially the too-online New Right, of which the America First set are part.  The video above is a perfect microcosm of that approach. In it, Roberts vows permanent and total support for Carlson, only mildly criticizes Fuentes, called a fawning interaction with him “robust debate,” and pushes the idea that Heritage’s sole focus should be attacking the left.⁴ He says that “the Heritage Foundation did not become the intellectual backbone of the conservative movement by canceling our own people or policing the consciences of Christians,” which is simply false – the organization has been strongly critical of Christian groups that support abortion, for example. Roberts also trafficked in some veiled antisemitic tropes himself.⁵ He said Heritage would continue to support Carlson “no matter how loud the pressure becomes from the globalist class or from their mouthpieces in Washington,” using a term (globalist) that has long been used to refer to Jews and flirting with a conspiracy theory of Jewish control of government that originated with neo-Nazis in the 1970s. He said that “we will always defend our friends against the slander of bad actors who serve someone else’s agenda” – given the overall context of the speech, that someone else could only be Israel. And he says something that could honestly have been lifted directly from any antisemitic tract of the past century: “The venomous coalition attacking [Tucker] are sowing division.” This line should have raised flags for someone as well-educated as Roberts, who has a PhD in American History; that it didn’t should raise red flags for everyone else. Finally, he engaged in the most commonplace argument amongst the America First set: that those on one’s “own side” should be immune from criticism. Roberts said, “Most importantly, the American people expect us to be focusing on our political adversaries on the left, not attacking our friends on the right.”⁶ This idea has several problems. First, it assumes that the people who are being shielded from internal critique are actually inside the movement at all – something that is highly debatable with regard to the America Firsters. It also only goes in one direction. Radical figures like Fuentes, Carlson, and the execrable Candace Owens⁷ are free to attack conservatives with intense vitriol and attempt to ostracize them from the movement. Yet those of us who believe that these figures deserve criticism and scorn are lambasted for the very thought, labeled traitors and leftists in the process. Conservatism is a thing and not everyone who has glommed onto the political right in the last decade is conservative. The idea that we should refrain from internal criticism is antithetical to the whole point of a political movement. Policing internal boundaries is the only way to maintain ideological standards, prevent dilution of core beliefs, and avoid expanding so broadly as to become unmoored. Without it, nothing matters. A tent so big as to include radicals who disagree on foundational values and beliefs is one that lacks integrity and stability. Determining who gets to enter and who gets to stay in are the primary responsibilities of movement leaders, thinkers, and influencers. Conservatism is a thing and not everyone who has glommed onto the political right in the last decade is conservative. In fact, many fit that bill. Tucker Carlson is not conservative. Candace Owens is not conservative. Nick Fuentes is not conservative. Marjorie Taylor Greene is not conservative. Matt Gaetz is not conservative. Darryl Cooper is not conservative. ‘Auron MacIntyre’ (not even his real name) is not conservative. Jason Whitlock is not conservative. Jack Posobiec is not conservative. Lauren Chen is not conservative. Milo Yiannopoulos is not conservative. Joel Webbon is not conservative. The people who support them, refrain from criticizing them, and tacitly agree with their ideas are not conservative. This may seem like a useless exercise, but I assure you that it is not. Conservatism is not just right-wing politics. It is not just voting for Republicans. It is a coherent and time-tested ideology with certain critical core frameworks, beliefs, and underlying truths. It is not rewarding our friends and punishing our enemies. It is not the will to power. It is not big government statism. It is not identitarian or sectarian. It is not embarrassed of American strength. It does not ignore or attack the innate and equal dignity of every human being. And it does not believe that the United States of America is a force for ill in world history.
II. American conservatism reaches back into the earliest ages of the American republic, but it was most concretely laid out and affirmed in the aftermath of the Second World War. Movement conservatism, the ideology best represented politically by the Reagan presidency, sought to conserve the heritage of the American founding and the early Republican Party of Abraham Lincoln. At the same time, it incorporated more modern ideas, including on economics and trade, as well as foreign policy. Anti-communism was a driving force of this movement, which had perhaps its greatest success in providing the ideological structure and rhetorical force necessary for the defeat of the Soviet Union. These American conservatives – not to be confused with the European right, which we shall discuss soon – sought to maintain the constitutional order as originally intended, pushing back against the excesses of progressive governance, from Wilson to FDR to LBJ and beyond. They cared about and defended the peculiar process of American government, the tripartite nature of our federal system, the inbuilt checks and balances against abuse of power, the limited nature of the national government, and the protections in place to safeguard individual rights against government caprice. Conservatives centered the exceptional nature of American liberties and promoted our civilization as the greatest in the history of the world – and they were right. For them, America was indeed the shining city on a hill, meant as an example for all the world. Staunch defenders of the rights of the person, they fought for individualism, personal responsibility, and a government that got out of the way of the citizenry. They wanted decisions to be made as close to the individual or family unit as possible, following in the federalist legacy of our founders. Just because the federal government could do something, that does not mean that it should; this idea was a core conservative belief and was humorously put by Ronald Reagan when he said, “I’ve always felt the nine most terrifying words in the English language are: I’m from the Government, and I’m here to help.” That base skepticism of big government was essential to the power and persuasiveness of the anti-totalitarian argument made by the conservative movement. Porting that idea to world affairs in the post-war era meant fighting tooth and nail against international communism, stopping it in its tracks and containing it, while confronting it ideologically, economically, and militarily. This meant a robust defense of capitalism, free trade, and free markets as the best way to prosper, raise people out of poverty, and create a society that promotes the individual. American capitalism was the engine that made our nation the richest on Earth, and it rested on the ability to innovate, sell, and engage across the world. It also depended on the freedom of the seas and a powerful American deterrent force, whether nuclear or conventional. Peace through strength was the motto of these conservatives, who desired the maintenance of American power and the defeat of our national enemies. They did not cower in the face of evil, nor embrace conciliation with it. They confronted it head-on and triumphed over it, through force of argument, will, and perseverance. These conservatives became influential because of their ideas and the persuasive way in which they promoted them. They were fighting against a cultural and political current that was very much running against them, yet they kept going and persisted. The movement had its fair share of victories and defeats, false starts (Barry Goldwater in 1964) and touchdown passes (Ronald Reagan in 1980). It was not fickle, nor was it fairweather. It held on to its principles as a guiding light and a beacon for the future, regardless of the tumult of the present. And it did not toss them aside for the chance at temporary political power. The America First set are diametrically opposed to this movement conservatism. They have more in common with Continental European right-wingers than they do with anything resembling an American conservative view. They are big government statists who want to use the power of the state apparatus to force their views on the whole of the nation. They are overtly racialist, ethnocentric, sectarian, and bigoted. They center physical identity in everything they do, finding victimhood as a useful currency in going after other ethnic groups. (Sound familiar?) They do not view every human being as intrinsically having equal dignity and moral worth – reserving special vitriol for the Jewish people. Their antisemitism is palpable, when not explicit. They blame others for the predicaments they find themselves in, focusing heavily on malign Jewish control causing their own personal ills. Personal responsibility this is not. They are myopic, inward-looking, and obsessed with an invented ideal of a utopian yesteryear. They warp the past to suit their own radical partisan ends – falling into the same cardinal sin of history as does the left: presentism. They are isolationist, abhor American strength, and desire nothing more than to avoid our destiny as a world power. They prefer our enemies to our friends, support those who seek to tear us down, and attack the very basis of our society as corrupt and immoral. They see America itself as a force for evil in the world, aligning with the leftists they claim to despise so much (this is often the case). They share arguments with the left, trade in the same ideas and narratives, and rely on the same ‘experts’ – in international affairs, this means the chronically wrong John Mearsheimer, CCP mouthpiece Jeffrey Sachs, and former UN weapons inspector and convicted child sex offender Scott Ritter. Ironically enough, each of these ‘experts’ is also backed by America’s enemies, ranging from China and Russia to Qatar and Iran. Most of all, though, the America Firsters are rabid conspiracists. They avoid Occam’s Razor as though it were actually capable of cutting them. Most of all, though, the America Firsters are rabid conspiracists. They are JFK assassination theorists, 9/11 truthers, and Holocaust deniers. They have recently been arguing that Israel killed Charlie Kirk, inventing ever more absurd hypotheses by the day. They believe that the world is arrayed against them by hostile forces intending to do them harm. They see the hidden hand of evil – primarily, as Fuentes averred on Carlson’s show, in the form of “organized Jewry” – behind every action or event they dislike. They avoid Occam’s Razor as though it were actually capable of cutting them. Nothing is what it seems on the surface and skepticism to the point of idiocy is de rigeur. (Still, they somehow seem to fall for every anti-Israel or antisemitic hoax out there. Wonder why?) Nobody and nothing can be trusted, except for them and the people they vouch for. This obsession with clandestine cabals controlling current affairs mirrors that of the far left, especially when it comes to their overestimation of the American government. To the America Firsters, the United States is omnipotent, omnipresent, and omnicompetent – and this is a bad thing. These people do not put America First. They attack our institutions, our liberties, our founding documents, our national ideals, our people, our military, and our global role. Their ideas are anathema to the basis of the American political experiment and would transform our nation into as much of a cesspool as would those of the far-left. They should be nowhere near political power and should have no place whatsoever in the conservative movement. Setting the boundaries for that movement is a necessary, if thankless and unpopular, task.
III. Gatekeeping is seen as a bad word by many on the right today, but it is the whole point of having an ideological political movement. Without policing who fits the mold – the movement’s core beliefs and ideas – and who doesn’t, you lose touch with it entirely. Confronting evil ideas and labeling them as such is the responsibility of any good person, much less any good conservative. Scorning the people who expostulate these toxic beliefs, play footsie with them, or nod along as they are espoused directly to their face, is healthy for a political movement. It is not ‘cancel culture’ to harshly criticize those who try to claim membership in a movement while directly repudiating its history, ideas, and members. Some of the earliest forms of political and civic punishment were variations on the idea of exile, kicking someone out of a community for breaching the rules or acting in a way that endangers it as a whole. I am not suggesting that we literally kick people like Tucker Carlson out of the country or out of public life – that would indeed be akin to cancel culture. But excising him and his ilk from the conservative movement is a whole different thing with far more legitimacy and historical backing. Attacking the ideas of men like Tucker Carlson and Nick Fuentes is not threatening their free speech rights, it is exercising our own. Choosing to stop these people from killing the conservative movement and wearing it like a skin suit is not undermining their rights, it is exercising our freedom of association. In the same way that conservatives should not welcome avowed socialists into the movement, we should not allow the America Firsters, who have ideals just as adverse to conservatism, into the tent. Tucker Carlson and Nick Fuentes should be able to have their public lovefest as often and as loud as they want. That is their right. In fact, I want them to do it more often, as it shows everyone who they really are. At the same time, we don’t have to support their abhorrent ideas. Voltaire apocryphally said “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.” That is a classic free speech adage. But too many people today seem to miss the first part of the statement, the espousal of disagreement. The America First set promotes ideas that are fundamentally at odds with everything the American conservative movement stands for; some are beyond the pale of reasonable discussion (rank antisemitism) while others are antithetical to conservatism, properly understood (statism). Disagreeing with, debating, and attacking those ideas is not only good, but critical. If the conservative movement fails to self-police, it will be consumed by the radical fringe and lose everything that made it what it was meant to be. This is not, however, the first time that the movement has faced such an important moral choice. And today’s conservatives can learn a lot from our shared history. Back in the late 1950s and early 1960s, during the first real successes of the nascent postwar conservative movement and at the height of the communist menace, conservatives faced a challenge: do we wink and nod at the radicalism in our midst so as not to lose a potential ally, or do we fight for what we believe and ensure that everyone within the movement fits that bill? At the time, the rabidly anti-communist John Birch Society was growing in power and influence, bringing many into the conservative fold in the global fight against the Soviet Union. But the Birchers, especially their leader Robert Welch, were also patently insane. They pushed the idea that 70% of the American government – at least – was working directly for the enemy. They averred that President Dwight Eisenhower was himself a communist stooge who sought to subsume the United States under a one-world totalitarian government. They trafficked in conspiracy theories, pushed antisemitic charges that American Jews were actually a Soviet fifth column, and sought to undermine certain core American liberties to vanquish this phantom menace. (Sound familiar?) So much depended on the conservative movement repudiating this patent nonsense. Without ostracizing the radical fringe, the entire anti-communist message would be fatally undermined and the wild successes of the Reagan years would have never materialized. None of this criticism had to do with leftist pressure, but instead the core obligation to stand up for what is right and embrace the truths of your own beliefs, defending them against attack. And yes, that attack could just as easily come from your ‘own side’ as from the other. William F. Buckley, the founder and publisher of National Review and the most influential conservative thinker and writer of the 20th century⁸, led the charge against Bircher radicalism. He published many essays and editorials against the Birch Society and Welch in particular, but one is worth reading more than the others, especially given the astounding similarities between the challenge then and now. In his 1962 essay, “The Question of Robert Welch,” Buckley lays out the argument, one that easily could have been penned this week about the current controversy over the America Firsters. The essay is worth quoting extensively, as it so clearly and profoundly explains the problems with the Birchers that are shared by the America Firsters. It also shows the appropriate way for conservatives to deal with those issues. First, Buckley deals with the crux of the predicament, that the Birchers were not actually conservative and sought to shift the movement in their radical direction, as well as the fact that the conservative criticism was not simply echoing the left, but coming at it from a unique and different perspective.
This could easily have been written about the Tucker quandary given how applicable it is today. The core disagreement here is not how the America Firsters phrase things or go about doing politics. The core disagreement is on actual policies and ideals, which must be aligned to build a coherent and cohesive movement. And, unlike the ridiculous posturing of weak men like Kevin Roberts, none of this criticism is coming because the left hates Tucker. It is based on real divergences that must matter to a conservative. Buckley also wrote about how the Birchers allowed no dissent from their increasingly extreme views, saying:
As someone who is often on the receiving end of this sort of rhetoric from the America First set, this description fits like a glove. The vitriol with which these people treat anyone who questions them or disputes their premises is intense. It is also telling, particularly given their obsession with the ‘No Enemies on the Right’ canard. They have no qualms whatsoever about labeling actual conservatives as literal traitors to the nation, but cry out tears of victimhood anytime anyone calls them on their blatherskite. It is a double game only played by people who cannot support their own positions. Another Buckley passage explores Welch’s conspiratorial and apocalyptic rhetoric, focused on the complicity of the American government in surrendering the nation to a communist superstate. Buckley sums up the Welch position thusly:
The conspiracy theory has changed, but the rhetoric has remained eerily similar. The tone of self-assuredness. The confident assertion of totally insane claims. The attacks on the American government as controlled by malign actors who serve foreign masters. The idea that anyone who doesn’t believe this is either simply too stupid to understand or has nefarious intent. If Robert Welch had an extraordinarily annoying cackle, he would be Tucker Carlson. The Birchers and the Firsters share a great deal in terms of rhetoric, motivation, ideology, and conspiracy theorizing. It is patently obvious that the problems are similar. But are the solutions? Do the America First set really need to be kicked out of the tent, or can we countenance their views for the ‘greater good’? For Buckley, the answer was clear. His argument for why conservatives must eject the Birchers from the movement is twofold:
These are timeless arguments and timeless truths. The idea that conservatives must support someone because he agrees with us on relatively minor issues while being completely antagonistic on the most important issues is, was, and always will be false. Some premises and beliefs are simply not debatable when it comes to the internal politics of the conservative movement. The America Firsters are on the wrong side of that equation as were their John Birch Society predecessors. These people need not be cynical grifters or trying to front-run what they see as a growing audience[¹⁰ to be called out for their ideas. They could come to them entirely sincerely and believe them wholeheartedly. That does not give right-minded, conscientious conservatives an out on criticizing them. We should not, as Bill Buckley said, egg them on by remaining silent. We must continually and consistently speak up against them and in favor of actual conservatism. That is how we win. And win we must.
IV. Thankfully, the ideas espoused by the America Firsters are toxic to the public at large. Antisemitism, racism, sectarianism, isolationism, and civic repression are not particularly popular with the average voter. And these beliefs are not ascendant on the American right, either. Yet. That is what makes it all the more important to fight tooth and nail against this betrayal of conservatism. Not only is it a moral and ideological necessity, it is a political one, too. Handing the movement over to these cretinous figures would drastically reduce the appeal of right-of-center ideas and politicians, harming our ability to make concrete conservative policy gains. And just at the moment in which the left is itself flirting with its own form of unpopular radicalism, allowing for further gains to potentially be made by the right. At the same time, the Firsters are increasingly attacking President Trump and his agenda, especially on foreign policy. Carlson, Taylor-Greene, and others have repudiated the administration’s approach to issues as diverse as Israel, Russia, and Venezuela, aligning with far leftists on all three. Republican politicians are going to have to choose. Are they on the side of the conservatives, or are they on the side of the America Firsters? This internecine debate will define the next several years of right-of-center American politics and must be settled. There is no room for waffling on an issue of such profound moral and ideological importance. It is either one way or the other. Still, some politicians wish to play both sides. Vice President JD Vance is exemplary of that approach. In the Senate, he was one of the leading lights of the New Right, aligning with them ideologically and seeking to become their political champion. Since becoming vice president, Vance has had to toe the White House line, focusing on bolstering the president’s messaging instead of ideologically freelancing. This has pulled him away from the fever swamps of the online right, including the America Firsters, but he has been loath to alienate them entirely. As the potential Republican frontrunner in the 2028 primary contest, Vance sees this fringe as a part of the coalition he would need to succeed Donald Trump. And he has done a great deal to avoid antagonizing these radicals. Vance has allowed antisemitic nonsense to pass unquestioned or unremarked upon during interviews or public appearances. He has long supported Carlson, even going so far as to have him on as a guest on the Charlie Kirk Show podcast that he hosted just days after the assassination and bring him on as a speaker at Kirk’s memorial. Naturally, Tucker used those opportunities to tacitly attack American Jews. These are but a few of the examples of this innate softness toward the America First set. It all came to a head this week, just before the Tucker/Fuentes interview. In a public question-and-answer session he hosted for a Turning Point USA event, Vance was presented with questions from an obvious Groyper, repeating the same tactics used against Kirk. This was a test of Vance’s sentiments, and he failed massively. Much of the answer was outwardly reasonable, arguing that we should work with Israel when we have shared interests. But one line was the giveaway. Vance stated that “When people say that Israel is somehow manipulating or controlling the President of the United States, they’re not controlling this President of the United States.” That is a tacit endorsement of the idea that Israel controls American politics, which has been a staple of neo-Nazi antisemitic propaganda for half a century. Of course, Vance left the current administration out of it, but that is no excuse for engaging with these tropes. There was no need for the particular emphasis on this administration, yet he included it anyways. That is revealing. Unifying around this project and bringing it to a triumphant end is perhaps the greatest internal challenge for the conservative movement since the Cold War. We can win and, for the sake of American conservatism, we must. Just as revealing is the fact that Vance seems to believe that he needs to do this sort of grotesque rhetorical posturing to have himself crowned as the MAGA heir apparent. The America Firsters are not all that influential, despite the outsized media coverage they receive. But that could change. If Vance and others like him continue their courtship of these extremists, they will indeed become the powerful force that many in the media claim them to be. That, however, is merely a possibility. It can be forestalled or defeated wholesale, if only we have the courage to do so. That means traditional conservatives taking the fight to the modern-day Birchers, calling out their abhorrent ideology and showing why it is the wrong path for the right to take. There is no towering figure of conservatism today like Bill Buckley was in his heyday; part of this is due to media fracturing, but part is due to the sui generis nature of Buckley as a rhetorical talent. All is not lost, however. To paraphrase the book/film Moneyball, we may not have Buckley, but we can mimic him in the aggregate. All conservatives need to do our part in combating this evil ideology and excising it from the political right. To succeed, we must hang together. Unifying around this project and bringing it to a triumphant end is perhaps the greatest internal challenge for the conservative movement since the Cold War. We can win and, for the sake of American conservatism, we must. So the question remains. Which way, right-of-center man? Buchanan or Buckley? Conservatism or America First radicalism? Right or wrong? There is only one correct answer here. Pray that enough of us have the fortitude to actively choose it. 1 I want to attack this genuinely evil movement on its merits, not its name. Still, the name they chose consciously echoes the past, which is worth touching on. The history of the name itself goes back most (in)famously to the period preceding World War II, where a group led by the celebrity aviator Charles Lindbergh sought to isolate America from the world, avoid conflict with the Axis powers, and rapidly and totally end foreign immigration to the country. They also had a serious antisemitic streak. Lindbergh would permanently sully his reputation by his involvement, although he did repudiate isolationism after Pearl Harbor and spent time in the war aiding in perfection of flying tactics. 2 Tucker Carlson has gone after me directly in his newsletter, labeling me a “disinformation Tsar.” Coming from the likes of him, that’s an amazing compliment. 3 A bit of personal disclosure: I was a fellow in the Heritage Academy program back in 2023, a program I found very interesting and largely useful. At the time, there were several speakers with which I significantly disagreed – Heritage was even then more MAGA than I am, after all – but nothing I found truly out of the realm of reasonable disagreement. Now, Heritage has gone very hard in favor of everything Trump and has repudiated several positions I consider fundamentally conservative. I am not a fan and would not participate in the program had it been offered today instead of over two years ago. 4 Roberts did receive hearty criticism for this weak-kneed stance, yet doubled down afterward. He did suggest that he disagreed with Fuentes in many ways, but called for engagement with him and avoided the Tucker question entirely – this is the whole point of the exercise, as there is little argument over what Fuentes is, but plenty of failures to understand that Carlson is pushing the same ideas. Still, as of this writing, Roberts retains his position at Heritage. This bodes ill for the future of this intra-right debate. 5 I do not think this was intentional on his part, but surely was on the part of whatever staffer wrote him the script. 6 This ‘No Enemies to the Right’ idea was a major topic of Episode 13 of the Rational Policy Podcast, so give that a listen if you want to hear my fullest thoughts on the matter. 7 Candace Owens has also attacked me on her podcast, saying that I was “winning the Olympics of psychopathy,” in relation to this piece on the atomic bombing of Japan. I wear that one as a badge of honor given the source, a woman who thinks Israel killed Charlie Kirk, believes France’s first lady is actually a man, and says the Holocaust was exaggerated. 8 No shade on profoundly influential men like Russell Kirk or Senator Barry Goldwater, who were similarly instrumental in ejecting the Birchers from the conservative movement, but Buckley was the driving force here. 9 Comsymp is a Bircher term for ‘communist sympathizer’ and applied to basically everyone who wasn’t himself a Bircher. 10 Many of the people mentioned earlier in the essay are absolutely front-running grifters, however. Rational Policy is free today. But if you enjoyed this post, you can tell Rational Policy that their writing is valuable by pledging a future subscription. You won't be charged unless they enable payments.
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Tuesday, November 4, 2025
'America First' Is Not Conservative
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