If the 2024 electoral outcome demonstrates anything enduring, it is this: So much for classical liberalism being on the “wrong side of history.”
The American progressive movement has for decades averred that anyone opposed to their designs for remaking American society is a reactionary who, in William F. Buckley’s humorous formulation, “stands athwart history, yelling Stop!” Of course, Buckley thought this a positive, while progressives — with the embedded term “progress” placing them on the side of the angels — believe the whole of modern American conservatism to constitute a sort of rearguard action against change that is not only desirable, but inevitable.
Put differently, for progressives, all change advanced by the Left is “progress,” progress is good by definition, and such progress cannot be stopped.
Of course, to actually hold in good faith that all “progress” is inherently worthy requires historical amnesia, as any reasoned observer might challenge whether the eugenics movement and lobotomies performed upon the mentally ill were unalloyed societal goods. Nevertheless, the need for such intellectual gymnastics to hold that all change represents progress has yet to slow the Left’s convictions, as its headlong march towards human perfection advances unchecked.
Among those free of such certitude, the inexorability of progressives’ historical determinism had begun to show cracks even before Donald Trump’s remarkable 2024 comeback victory, and started to look, well, exorable. The “demography is destiny” cult of future multiethnic Democratic dominance, as advanced by Ruy Teixeira and others, had begun to erode long before November 2024; Recently, even Teixeira himself has changed his tune. It turns out the “fundamental transformation” promised by Barack Obama and delivered by his former vice president (and now rejected at the ballot box) wasn’t merely a rhetorical flourish, but a comprehensive program at odds with the small-R republican and classically liberal values that have informed the country’s cultural, social, and political norms since the founding.
One should nevertheless be careful in assessing the Republicans’ sweep in 2024 as an affirmative vote for the loosely populist/nationalist program referred to as MAGA; rather, it was a vote against insanity, which under the Biden administration had come to comprise an expansive share of its policy.
The Democratic Party had never planned for its complete capture by a progressive wing with narrow identity-based agendas; rather, it accepted what we now see as the lunacy of recent times — black squares on Instagram in support of BLM, COVID mandates, the trans movement, climate dogma, unrelenting lawfare, and all the rest of it as simply way stations along the road to a progressive utopia. In the contemporary Jacobins’ ideological pantheon, concepts like “sanity” and “common sense” are rejected as antiquated and without value; worse, as they are believed to be culturally or historically defined, they’re also racist, sexist and wholly retrograde.
In contrast, how do true conservatives and classical liberals think about “progress”? While they champion real progress, they are skeptical of the totalizing impulses of historical determinism, which (among other things) remove agency and free will from the human experience. This skepticism ensues in part from classical liberalism’s Judeo-Christian inheritance, as “the fall” gives the lie to the idea of human perfectibility.
Moreover, American conservatives tend to pragmatism more than their overseas counterparts, and look to experience as a guide more than does the Left, who are prone to believing history began about 15 minutes ago. Indeed, the “urgency of now” has always been a progressive phenomenon, as it marshals the passions of the moment and eviscerates historical context in pursuit of its ends.
In addition, classical liberals typically practice deductive rather than inductive reasoning, drawing rational conclusions from empirical evidence and, consistent with their pragmatism, are prepared to change course when things don’t work. Contrast this with the Left’s approach to public policy at least since the New Deal era: progressives flood the engine when things aren’t proceeding as planned, in the belief that more of the same (money, effort, moral will, etc.) will eventually deliver the desired result. Distinct from progressives’ slavish dogmatism, modern conservatives are instinctively dubious of groupthink, centralized decision making, and concentrated power.
And so: How might President-Elect Trump and the MAGA movement make the most of the moment, with the electoral repudiation of false progress placing historical inevitability on the back foot?
The new administration and Republican Party could start by reversing the manifestations of historical determinism now marbled through the entirety of government. A root-and-branch removal of DEI, ESG, critical theory, and similar belief systems that prioritize (sometimes) good intentions over outcomes is imperative. The contamination resulting from ideologies at odds with traditional American values requires they be weeded out at all levels of government. Trump and his team would do well to consider Washington, D.C., as the new Carthage, and salt its political fields accordingly.
Similarly, power should be returned to the people by restoring significant political administration to the state and local level. Additionally, functions best performed by the private sector should be removed from government control while remaining subject to limited prudential oversight, as the profit motive is a far better guarantor of efficiency than the command-and-control approach endemic of the public sphere. The Department of Governmental Efficiency (DOGE) initiative of Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy must be relentless in its pursuit not only of efficiency, but also the alignment of public policy with desired objectives achieved at the lowest cost possible. In both theory and act, the primacy of the individual should be paramount and supersede the collectivist (and increasingly identitarian) ethos that has animated federal government policy since at least the 1930s.
Donald Trump can be a good president in his second term merely by not being Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, undoing the madness of open borders, geopolitical chaos, and EV mandates, to name but a few of this administration’s failures. Simply accepting that actions have consequences and that outcomes matter would be a sea change from current policy. Further, beyond public policy, the naked grift embodied by President Biden’s blanket pardon of his son Hunter — which sneakily insulates himself from accountability for his own corrupt acts — has bled out any last drop of moral authority the Left may have once maintained, creating an opening for bold action.
Trump has the opportunity to be a great president by pursuing a reform agenda guided by an understanding of the human experience, rather than defunct ideologies. Our species is comprised neither of automatons nor simple rational economic actors; our complexity — vastly superior to that any computing device — merits we be governed with the sort of dignity that academic constructs will never command.
Once the Augean stables of the federal government are finally cleared of all vestiges of historical determinism, the harder task of toppling arrogant, top-down philosophies — whether rankly Marxist or any of Marxism’s myriad ideological kin — and stamping out soul-crushing dogma from academia, the media, corporate America, and civil society can commence.
Richard J. Shinder is the founder and managing partner of Theatine Partners, a financial consultancy.
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