New Traditionalists

By Mark Tooley & Colin Dueck on June 15, 2020

Here’s my interview with George Mason University political scientist Colin Dueck about the “new traditionalists” who are reshaping American conservatism, and whom Dueck has described for American Enterprise Institute.

Dueck reflects on the influence of and differences among First Things editor Rusty Reno, Israeli thinker Yoram Hazony, popular blogger Rod Dreher, New York Times columnist Ross Douthat, and Patrick Deneen of Notre Dame University.

They are skeptical of an earlier more internationalist and free market friendly conservatism. They prefer religious traditionalism and forms of nationalism. Some incline towards populism. Others prefer Burkean conservatism. They mostly dislike liberalism, even if classical. Some are cultural pessimists, while others are fighting to reshape society.

Mostly these new traditionalists are Catholic. None are Protestant, which maybe isn’t surprising, since arguably classical liberalism and modern capitalism are Protestant projects. Or maybe Protestantism is too intellectually exhausted to produce serious political thinkers!?!

I ask Dueck this question and others. Enjoy our conversation!

Conservative | Nationalism | Populism | Roman Catholic Church

Mark Tooley is IRD’s president and editor of IRD’s foreign policy and national security journal, Providence. Prior to joining the IRD in 1994, Mark worked eight years for the Central Intelligence Agency. He is a graduate of Georgetown University and is a native of Arlington, Virginia. He is the author of Taking Back The United Methodist Church, published in 2008; Methodism and Politics in the 20th Century, published in 2012; and The Peace That Almost Was: The Forgotten Story of the 1861 Washington Peace Conference and the Final Attempt to Avert the Civil War, published in 2015.

Follow Mark on Twitter: @markdtooley

Colin Dueck is a professor in the Schar School of Policy and Government at George Mason University, and the author of Age of Iron: On Conservative Nationalism (Oxford 2019.)

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