As the culture war rages, conservatives rush from issue to issue, chasing whatever the media dangles in front of them. Each time they come armed with facts and logic, well-constructed arguments designed to do battle in the marketplace of ideas, and yet Republicans continue to lose.
The mainstream right has fully embraced the idea that in a democracy, political battles are about making the most logical case to win over the majority, but this is terrible way to understand political loyalty. In a democracy, people lend their political support to those who will deliver benefits to themselves and their communities. There are plenty of true believers on the left, but the reason they are so deeply invested in progressive ideology is that it delivers the goods.
The political contest in the United States is asymmetrical for several reasons, but one of the most glaring is the way both sides approach the idea of patronage. Patronage is the most ancient and powerful bond of political organization. The patron provides protection, material rewards, and access to the patron’s client base. The clients provide loyalty and support to their political patron.
The left embraces this model and is proud of its ability to deliver for its clients. The right rejects this model as a violation of its principles and thereby denies itself one of the most powerful tools with which to build power.
When progressives identify another front in the civil rights revolution, they do not just see an opportunity to exploit identity and advance ideology; they see an opportunity to profit. From the redefinition of marriage to the redefinition of woman, each battle requires massive amounts of funding. New infrastructure is created as universities open academic departments dedicated to studying the latest ideology and NGOs are founded to employ the latest crop of activists.
Media campaigns are launched, concerts are held, movies are made, and foundations generate research to bolster awareness about the latest progressive crusade. Yes, there is a religious fervor in the advancement of progressive ideology, but behind that wave of revolutionary zeal is a network of activists and academics cashing checks. These clients owe their status and income to the progressive machine, which is why they will lie down in traffic, or more often attack opponents in traffic, for the cause.
Benefits of the patronage model reach far beyond the activist class. The left has established a vast network through its capture of most public intuitions, of which the most powerful is arguably the education system. Teachers’ unions understand that the left keeps its leaders in power and its members employed. Due to this direct infusion of power and cash, unions are motivated to ensure that their members stay ideologically aligned.
Public education is completely dominated by leftist radicals and progressive doctrines. Few conservatives can obtain a degree from a college of education while expressing their views, and any who manage to do so know that one ideological misstep in the classroom will mean the end of their careers. As a result, leftist propaganda is present in almost everything a student hears, sees, and reads in class. Students are graded and promoted on their ability to reliably repeat progressive narratives. The leftists’ investment in patronage ensures them the loyalty, not just of one generation of teachers, but of most students who will pass through the public education system itself.
Government employees have an obvious incentive to seek the expansion of government power and bureaucracy. With the growth of government comes an increase in jobs, benefits, and status for public employees. An ideological commitment to government expansion allows the left to win the loyalty of most public-sector employees, and politically motivated hiring follows, ensuring that those who make critical decisions inside of the federal bureaucracy are progressive loyalists.
Key agencies like the State Department, FBI, and CIA become staffed by individuals who owe their status and livelihood to the Democratic Party, and it is political patronage that builds this monolithic control of the deep state.
While the influence of political patronage is easy to see in the public sector, its influence is felt deeply in private corporations as well. The left has been so effective in the realm of law and culture that it is illegal to offend leftists. Corporations spend billions in compliance to avoid legal action when it comes to discrimination or the creation of a hostile workplace.
This means that leftist political commissars, also known as human resource departments, are a legal requirement for all major corporations. Armies of progressive activists are employed by corporations to monitor every interaction between employees and purge wrongthink from their staff. Those HR departments deliver mandatory re-education to all employees, ensuring that the latest progressive dogma is memorized and repeated back to them by anyone who wants to keep his job. Again, these jobs and the status they grant are complete creations of the leftist patronage machine, and every corporate HR director knows this. The bond of loyalty to the Democratic Party and its ideology could not be stronger.
In order to defeat wokeness, the right must understand not just its ideological origins or poplar arguments, but its material incentives. Most people are not simply cynical actors adopting ideology for a paycheck, but they will naturally invest in the systems on which they depend for status and employment. Everyone needs to pay the mortgage and feel important. If woke ideology remains the best way to climb the social hierarchy while landing a payday, people will pledge their loyalty without worrying about logical contradictions.
Facts might not care about your feelings, but in a democracy, facts lose to feelings and cold hard cash every time. In a democracy, vote-buying is the best strategy, but it is usually illegal, so proxies are created through make-work jobs and government benefits. Many on the right will be offended by this truth, but it remains the truth nonetheless, and any group of political actors who ignore that truth do so at their own peril.
The classic conservative response to this truth has been to limit the size and scope of government. If the government does not have jobs or cash to hand out, then the left cannot use those resources to gain power. This makes sense in theory, but in practice it has been a disaster. Despite conservative efforts, government has exploded in size, and its influence over American life is enormous.
Even if government can be curtailed, the progressive patronage network has expanded well beyond the bounds of its original host, and wokeness is now firmly implanted in private corporations and the NGO complex. Containment has been an unsuccessful strategy, and the right must acknowledge the political reality of patronage if it wishes to survive.
Creating a competing patronage network will not be easy. While Democrats eagerly redistribute funds to their base, conservatives have been told that their ideology only allows tax dollars to go to arms manufactures and bank bailouts.
While reducing the power and funds available to our current regime would be ideal, it is not a long-term strategy for building and maintaining our own patronage network. Mainstream conservatives are already good at funding some institutions, like think tanks, but they must expand their ambitions and take on more substantive endeavors.
The efforts of individuals like Corey DeAngelis and Chris Rufo to decouple our educational spending from the progressive patronage network is a good start. If that funding can be redirected into a network of schools that are committed to an explicitly conservative worldview, it could strip the left of one of its greatest weapons while creating a blueprint for how patronage could work on the right. Progressives spent many decades creating and expanding their patronage network, and it will not be undone in one fell swoop, but if the right is to succeed, it must understand the inescapable power of political patronage.