Has The American Mind lost its?

by Richard Schulman

The publication scene in the US has long enjoyed a rich array of offerings from its loony Left. A manifesto just published in The American Mind suggests that the US is developing a loony Right determined to catch up. The tendency’s own preferred name is “national conservatism.”

The American Mind is an occasional online publication of the Claremont Institute. The Claremont Institute is best known as the publisher of The Claremont Review of Books. This quarterly was once arguably the most distinguished conservative political review in the United States. Among its other virtues, it was the go-to place to read superb articles by Angelo Codevilla.

In a widely publicized essay, “For Real American Greatness, A Tech New Deal,” the president of the Claremont Institute, joined by five other conservative editors, argues that

• “Political speech must be freed from tech firms’ walled gardens,” i.e., be regulated by government;
• “[Tech firms] use of technology to monopolize profits and speech through cartelistic and deceptive practices should be investigated, curbed, and, when appropriate, prosecuted,” i.e., bring on the trust busters and expand the regulatory agencies to slow or reverse innovation, rather than encourage entrepreneurs to launch competitors;
• “Schemes for global private digital currency that would replace the dollar, such as Facebook’s Libra, should be opposed,” i.e., save the Federal Reserve, which has given us a century of inflation and boom-bust cycles, rather than allowing free banking or any form of monetary reform;
• “Automation can enhance our labors, but it should not be fatalistically permitted to shunt all human workers into care-giving services,” i.e., protect obsolete jobs and assume workers are incapable of moving to higher skilled jobs;
• “In the name of economic growth, human life is being diminished,” i.e., let’s have a little well-targeted Luddism from our politicians and regulators.

It’s difficult to parse the difference between the “Real American Greatness” proposals and those of Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders.

We will be surprised if this manifesto doesn’t come under widespread criticism from what remains of the real conservative movement as well as from libertarians. James Pethokoukis at AEI has already done a stellar job at getting the criticism underway with his blog post “America doesn’t need an Anti-Tech New Deal to create a safe space for nationalist populism.” We look forward to more such. But meanwhile we mourn the demise of a once outstanding publication, the Claremont Review of Books.