RALEIGH, NC — Traditional small-government conservatism is yesterday’s news. Its few remaining adherents — nostalgic politicians, media hounds, ivory-tower intellectuals — just stumble around ineffectually, like extras from the umpteenth season of The Walking Dead, while nationalist-populists with fresh ideas and different priorities are building a young and ascendant American Right.
Or so we’ve been told, primarily by the nationalist-populists themselves. I’ve always had my doubts about this “Zombie Reaganism” narrative. It didn’t comport with my own experience, lived largely outside of the Beltway, the City, and the Twitterverse. Most conservative politicians, activists, and thinkers I know still want to make government smaller, rather than merely shifting the target of its coercive power from our “friends” to our “enemies.” And, yes, they revere Reagan, even if they don’t remember the Reagan era.
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