We of the Right have been lucky, as ideologists, these past fifteen or so years, even if some of our personal circumstances have been “ideal” in a more plutonic way. The propaganda we have either been taught by a mentor in an atmosphere not dissimilar to that of the Dead Poets’ Society, or have plowed through on our own while enduring the curiosity or contempt of more normal people, has had two themes: the Left, being dominated by Marx, is functionally illiterate in economics – and they are much more powerful than you.

When you’re in a cause that’s been routed, and largely defines itself through that lens, simple common sense tells you that any Nietzschean element in it is a plain cosset. It’s comforting for a young right winger to know that they belong to an enlightened few, until the implications of that minority status sink in. It is certainly self-ennobling to tell yourself that the unruly mob smashed the higher values back in the 1930s, even if it makes you sometimes forget to remind yourself of the implications of such a myth – that your ancestors-in-spirit could not successfully defend the heights against the leveling mob. I found through experience that those not taken in by the charms of what used to be called “the old Right” have this attitude: “they” [we] lost in a way that was final in the 1930s, and as such are basically harmless until one of “them” acquires some social power. Then, “they” have to be stomped down again.

Have another look at your classics. There’s always an air about them – whether the message is presented as coming from the pen of a lone survivor of a plague of locusts, or as a journey away from the normal because conventional ideas have stripped itself from the gears of truth – hinting that their authors have to live in a sort of bunker as they preach truth to an intimidated minority who is holding its back against a shaky dam out of fear for the future of the country. The yelling is consistent with that of a pipsqueak.

It’s time for those in the cold to admit that the time in which the classics are read is very little like the time in which they were written, a proposition most difficult to accept for Objectivists. The Soviet Union is gone; the idea that Communism represents the inevitable re-union of Man With God is laughable; the standard covers which Communists used to disguise this are now more easily seen through; the union movement is far from being a ring of fire nowadays; technology no longer impels standardization; the consensus among today’s futurists is that more individualism is compatible with the new modes of technological advances; and libertarianism is a surprisingly easy sell.

In a way, we’re like a 6-foot man whose father is 5’ 2”. Our rearing defines us as small, but our physical size is more than respectable. Any police officer will tell you that such a character represents a bit of a threat because he was raised by an unrestrained man – or, possibly, that a man who could hold his own in a rough-hewn bar was raised by a father that had to show deference to its habitués and was pitied by them.

From what I’ve seen, the typical adaptation to this among the people of the Right born after 1970 or so has been an easy complacency. The “forces of production” are on our side now as the Left continues its stubborn ways. They’ll always be economic illiterates because they prefer the “religion of Marx” to political efficaciousness, and the romance of “the underground” to an engagement with the real world of splintering collectivities - much like our side was categorized right after World War 2 ended. To put it bluntly: “the liberals” are, at present, us.

Some buried resentments do show every now and then, even though the Right as a movement is not prone to badgerishness. Whether you peg them as forgivable growls over old wounds, or see them as a possible foreshadowing of something uglier about to emerge, depends upon what you’ve seen with your own eyes and what kind of dues you have had to pay.

The above paragraph hints at how the in-house propaganda of the Left sees us:

The animating spirit behind the Right is that of a somewhat insecure bully that sometimes likes to put on airs as a noble crusader. The Right blunders around, sensing that they’re missing something: this makes for much mirth, or in certain cases pity, directed their way when times are calm, but an air of subtle threat is always around them. Some of the Right are pleasant fellows, a few somewhat saintly – but never forget, children, that the ideas expressed by these nice people are fully shared by others that are plain surly. If this “advance guard” of disorder doesn’t let their less-than-civilized friends in, those friends will let themselves in through plausible and successful clothes- borrowing. Besides: if you use your eyes, you’ll see something that doesn’t quite ring true about the harmless act cultivated by the “better” ones: they seem a little less aggressive than your radar says they should be, now don’t they? As if they were covering some ugly emotions up – now aren’t they?

In otherwords: The Left has us pegged as “micks.”

That’s why right wingers that have a permanent teenager side to them are always accepted in the higher ranks, as clowns. Those that think the clown act is too demeaning have to cut bread with the liberals in a substantive way, such as insisting that they are “old Whigs” (Hayek), “real liberals” (Mises and, more directly, Friedman), or castrate themselves politically by becoming naïve extremists and therefore exotic (Rand and the anarchists.) Another type of conservative that had cut bread in another acceptable way is apostate figure Peter Viereck, who is known as the leader of that part of the conservative movement that wishes to conserve the New Deal.

There is a definite pattern to this: the Right is on the wrong side of Hooker’s Doctrine as played out in American terms. Those on the right side are obliged to believe in the people and their aspirations; such an opinion makes them liberal. They are also obliged to believe that the people’s plans are frustrated by a defensive and selfish minority, who can easily be identified by the way they behave in everyday life. You see pettiness or hoardishness among people that should be generous and expansive? There are your self-centred ones; there are your churls; there are your obstructionists; there are your – micks.

You wonder why we used to be on the defensive so much? Here you go:

Conservatism stands for two things: “repression and reaction.” All their policies, despite any sense or use-value in these suggestions, spring from precisely those two sources. There’s even a Machiavellian strain among them, known as the authoritarian personality, full of hidden agendas and bomb-sheltered goals. So just use them, fellow citizens, just use them and their ideas. Never give them control - else we’ll be [micked] to death.

I can’t judge the degree of unfairness the above propaganda contains, but I would bet money (whoops) that the typical liberal pegs us as fitting the above stereotype. This implies, despite the palmy decade we’ve enjoyed, that the hard, uphill road is still ours to climb.