I have a lot of American friends, and although they generally fall on the right of the political aisle, their views do cover a fairly broad church. One element of that is the peculiar branch of American conservatism which embraces extreme individualism, seeing the world through the lens of economic growth and a desire for a rollback in the state’s size and powers. These are all fairly coherent and logical views, but they’re historically views from the counterculture.
This strong individualism and promotion of individual rights whilst trying to reduce state power appears to track heavily to the English reformation. The most ardent non-conformists applied their religious views to politics and created a set of ideals which still holds true today. They wanted no intermediaries between man and god, no institutional church, put a primacy on personal revelation and study and wanted a state sufficiently weak that it would have no power to force an established church over them. These motivations were shared by many men who marched under Monmouth’s banners in the last English rebellion, and they’re still views which are dearly held by many on the right of contemporary politics - a right which is often still associated with descendants of those 17th century non-conformist churches.
This chips away at one of the deepest reasons the contemporary right wing is a messy failure - it contains two fundamentally opposed viewpoints. The right is traditionally all about hierarchy, and the left about levelling out society and remaking it. These non-conformist religious views were the Marxism or privilege politics of their day; revolutionary, at odds to the mainstream and based on a very particular world view. The people who founded America came from this world view and were on this extreme left in the 17th and 18th centuries. Simply by virtue of not following modern political trends and remaining anchored to their views have become the right wing by default. Individual rights are are hallmark of English and American rebellions, not part of the original DNA of conservatism. It leaves us with a right which is torn between reinforcing hierarchy and promoting individualism, between freedom to offend and a set of shared values and decorum and between a belief in the state as an enemy or aide.
The other side of the political right is sometimes put under the banner of high Toryism, although the incoherent behaviour and dislike of their own population which are the hallmarks of the modern Tory party make this a muddy definition. I prefer thinking of this wing as being the hierarchs, those that understand and accept that some things are better than others and that natural inequality is to be embraced and worked with rather than seen as an enemy. It’s this element of right wing thought which has been more concerned with actually “conserving” in latter decades, and has been pushed to the fringes. Roger Scruton’s thought and writings often encapsulate many key tenets of this world view.
This hierarch wing has been rather marginalised since the 1980s, when individualism and the cult of economic growth forced it from the front line of politics. Being in favour of a hierarchy eventually calls for someone to be at the top of the pyramid, and the modern leader is anything but this. Certainly believing they know better than the plebs over whom they rule, but they are no real elite or aristocracy. They are simply the clique who currently have their turn at the trough, looting and burning the things which took generations to build up.
This ideological mismatch and confusion is only likely to grow. We see it in responses of the left and right to war between Israel and Palestine, we see it increasing distrust of institutions which were formerly valued and how ever greater numbers of people are coming to the realisation that their government doesn’t like them or rule in their best interests. It’s how strongly opposed groups have all ended up on the same side, and how especially since 2016 this has massively accelerated - yoga moms, pagans, homesteaders, gun rights advocates, hedonists, traditionalist Catholics, hardcore evangelicals, Nazis, stay at home mothers, home-schoolers, monarchists, Muslims, libertarians and believers in genetics are all on the same side. There’s no really unifying factor beyond what they’re allied against.
I’m not sure what this will mean in terms of political success or activity, but we’re already seeing a political swing back away from the more extreme leftist policies. Like any broad movement, eventually a new elite of “lions” will hijack the sentiment and ride it to power driving out the “foxes” of our current regime. We can but hope that this happens whilst something our forebears built still remains to be conserved.