MAGA Conservatism Critiqued
Catholic Common Good theology is a bad fit
A recent NYT opinion (121825) attempts to explain the roots of MAGA conservatism. The ideas of Richard Weaver and Adrian Vermeule are helpful if not definitive. Reduced to its elements the argument supports deference to an authoritarian Catholic-like hierarchy supporting an abstract structure rooted in “the common good”, however that is articulated.
Vermeule, a Harvard Law professor, espouses a jurisprudence which favors justice, peace and morality, over individual autonomy. He invokes Thomas Acquinas who endeavors to reconcile the rational happiness- seeking order of Aristotle with Catholic faith.
The proponents this version of conservatism seem to advocate a world that resembles the Middle Ages and repudiates the Reformation; favoring uniformity rather than diversity. The Conservatives challenge Modernism with its restless fixation with the next innovation. They support universality, predictability and deference to a hierarchy.
Given that the backbone of MAGA supporters happen to be Protestant Evangelicals and Pentecostals it’s difficult to conceive their comfort with the reversion to Catholic traditions. It’s more likely that MAGA adherents have neither exposure to nor comprehension of these intellectual vagaries.
If I have accurately extracted elements from the ideas of the proponents, it is difficult to see them embedded in the policies of the Trump administration. Eviscerating the legislative and administrative structures of government, canceling programs that unambiguously benefit all members of society isn’t advancing the intellectual objectives of these conservative thinkers.
An opinion in the NYT (122725) details the MAGA views and describes MAGA as a coalition of contradictions with little to bond them beyond transient adulation of the Supreme Leader and tribal fear of the strangers among us. What’s bugging MAGA is discomfort with diversity, people who look and behave differently. The fact that some of these would-be immigrants are essential to the economy weakens MAGA cohesion on the immigration issue.
Cracks in MAGA unity are appearing starting with the protracted Epstein debacle. Perhaps over the coming months greater numbers will come to think that the Emperor has no clothes.