Why Iconoclasm Will Fail

by Michael Lucchese

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 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…