J.D. Vance praised a “counterrevolutionary” book that calls for the repeal of the Civil Rights Act and enacting policies to discourage women from working outside the home, according to a new report.
Vance spoke in December at the launch of Up from Conservatism, an essay collection edited by the Claremont Institute's Arthur Milikh, at the U.S. Capitol visitor center in Washington, D.C., where he championed the team that put the book together and talked up the ideas they promoted, reported The Guardian.
“Congratulations on such a great book, and thanks for getting such a good crew together," Vance told the gathering. “Republicans, conservatives, we’re still terrified of wielding power, of actually doing the job that the people sent us here to do ... Isn’t it just common sense that when we’re given power, we should actually do something with it?”
The book encourages a "new right" to shove aside a conservative movement seen as too accommodating and then destroy its enemies on the left, who the authors see as an impediment to their domination of political and social life.
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“The New Right recognizes the Left as an enemy, not merely an opposing movement, because the Left today promotes a tyrannical conception of justice that is irreconcilable with the American idea of justice," Milikh writes in the introduction. "The New Right is a counterrevolutionary and restorative force.”
“We like to say that one must learn to govern," Milikh added, "but a truer expression is that one must learn to rule.”
Brad Onishi, author of Preparing for War, a critical examination of Christian nationalism, said Vance and the "post-liberal" conservatives he associates with are promoting an invasive government that prioritizes straight, white men and looks to outlaw homosexuality, contraception, and pornography.
“They want a government that expands the executive branch in order to bypass the processes that are often arduous in the legislative and even in the judicial branches,” Onishi said. “If you can expand the executive branch, and then get the agencies under the purview of the executive to operate on a loyalist basis, then you can do all the things that folks in this volume want to do by way of a president who is almost a king.”
Several of the book's authors argue that "liberation" movements for Black people, women, gay people and transgender people leads the nation "down the path of national self-destruction," according to contributor John Fonte, and they propose heavy-handed federal policies to prevent students from learning about past discrimination.
In fact, the book even goes so far as to push for repealing the Civil Rights Act.
“We need to free our minds once and for all from the fear of being called racists," wrote contributor David Azerrad.
Vance defended a white nationalist during his speech at the 2023 event and attacking the Department of Justice for “actively prosecuting its political opponents."
“I’m not just talking about Donald Trump, of course,” Vance said.
He claimed that white nationalist Douglass Mackey, also known as "Ricky Vaughn," was prosecuted for "posting a meme," but in fact he was convicted in March 2023 of conspiring to interfere with potential voters’ right to vote in the 2016 presidential election by posting bogus and racist images on his widely shared Twitter account encouraging Hillary Clinton supporters to "vote" by text message or on social media, which was legally invalid.
“Maybe we should be appointing people at the Department of Justice who actually take a side in the culture war," Vance said, "the side of the people who elected us, and not just pretend we don’t have to take sides at all.”
