Why Iconoclasm Will Fail

The New Right is perhaps the most revolutionary force presently at work in American politics. Frustrated by the decadence of liberalism, many young men are turning to ideological combat and authoritarian politics for salvation. They hunger for new modes and orders. Understandable as their impatience is, though, it is no virtue.

Timon Cline, one of the New Right’s more expressive Protestant advocates, recently published an essay defending this revolutionary fervor and the “spirit of iconoclasm” inspiring it. Contesting the claim that the New Right is a nihilistic force, he insists rather that the New Right “hates empty forms” and seeks a true spiritual substance. “What is ‘vulgarity’ when the whole world is vulgar?” he incisively asks. “What is ‘anarchy’ when the world is disordered?” To Cline, at least, the New Right has less to do with twentieth century fascism and more to do with the seventeenth century republicanism of Oliver Cromwell. His hope is that somehow this revolutionary energy can be channeled into a neo-Puritan republican project, reordering America as a Christian commonwealth fueled by intense belief.

In the end, however, that kind of revolutionary attitude cannot preserve the strength civilization needs in this hour of crisis. Lest we forget, Cromwell’s republican experiment lasted merely eleven years—and many of the Founders of the more enduring American Republic later considered him a paragon of tyranny. Neither the English Commonwealth nor any other revolutionary regime can provide a model for genuine renewal. What is more needful than new modes and orders is an unwavering devotion to the defense of the Permanent Things. A truly conservative disposition, rooted in common loves more than common hates, is the real source of energy the West needs to survive. 

Read more in Mere Orthodoxy.