Glenn Ellmers’ essay “Too Much of a Unity” asks: What should be done now that Trump has lost and many states cannot be trusted to hold legitimate elections? More than attempting to formulate a positive plan, Ellmers is trying to show that the Claremont position is adaptable to a time when the “dissident right” has immense potential, as well as some of the strongest critiques of the present regime. Well-meaning elder conservatives, who concede they are losing the battle, ask for a plan. Ellmers has set out to show the dissident right that Claremont, theoretically and practically, is capable of standing up to the clown regime and that it is capable of doing so on its own terms.
The theoretical and practical suggestions Ellmers develops have been tried before—and I do not say this disparagingly. If you fight and lose, what’s left for there to do but fight again? The good guys have won again and again in American history. The Revolutionaries defeated the slaves of King George. The North defeated the South. Progressivism changed some things but was put down after a long struggle. Martin Luther King, Jr. triumphed over Jim Crow. This narrative was fashioned by Harry Jaffa to deliver the leftwing Equality-Cudgel into the hands of the conservatives: Martin Luther King, Jr. is our guy; Frederick Douglass, ditto; we stand for principled equality against the naked racialist politics that unite ancient Southerners and modern Kendis. But now our Declaration, after a history of victories, appears to be fighting a losing battle.
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