Where did the Right go wrong? In my latest essay at, I argue that the Right has been on the wrong track, more or less, since the day it was born. Many on our side claim that the Right makes a mistake by accepting too many liberal assumptions, but in a perverse way, this is actually a symptom of rejecting liberalism. The Right's primary flaw is that it lacks a reasoned abstract ideological core. And perhaps its initial instinctive rejection of liberalism (not Leftism) is the reason it is missing this important element.

This "abstract ideology" does not to be something that is remote and overly intellectual. I just mean to say that we need a first principle that has not been designed ad hoc, it must be something that is, in some sense, "universal"—even if this universal idea is a rejection of Universalism.... See Where the Right Went Wrong, June 7, 2015.