[Trump's Return and the American Series] VI. The Rise of the New Right and the Future of America

I. Introduction

This study seeks to explore how the medium- to long-term changes within the Republican Party will shape the American political landscape. Triggered by events such as the 2008 financial crisis and the inauguration of President Barack Obama, the Republican Party has gradually become ideologically extreme right-wing as the Tea Party movement and the Make America Great Again (MAGA) movement successively captured the party apparatus (Son Byung-kwon 2024). The identity of the Republican Party as a conservative party, which was based on neoliberal economic policies and the principle of color-blindness since Ronald Reagan, has largely vanished. Instead, the current reality of the "Grand Old Party (G.O.P)" is that of a radical right-wing party advocating populism and white nationalism (Linker 2024b). This paper's fundamental premise is this transformation.

This paper will first analyze the ideological system of the New Right, which has led the de-liberalization of the Republican Party in the (post-)Trump era, focusing on the thought of J.D. Vance and Patrick J. Deneen. Subsequently, Chapter III will examine in detail the vision of the future America they aim to create, centered around keywords such as anti-elitism, white Christian nationalism, conservative social democracy, and neo-patriarchy. Finally, the conclusion will critique the New Right's "regime change" project from the perspective of the corruption of communitarianism and explore the possibility of constructing another form of de-liberal paradigm.

II. Mainstreaming of the De-liberal Right

1. J.D. Vance: The Apostle Paul of the MAGA Movement

Vance's nomination as Vice Presidential candidate at the Republican National Convention in July 2024 was significant in many respects. It serves as an indicator of where the ideological center of gravity of the Republican Party will shift after Trump and what identity the party will evolve into, symbolizing the consolidation of the New Right's position within the party, which seeks a complete break from the Republican establishment (Wallace-Wells 2024). In other words, Vance's "coronation" by Trump signifies the possibility that the Republican Party will be dominated by de-liberal forces that dogmatize Trumpism, laying the groundwork for far-right populist movements to exert long-term influence on American politics by using the Republican Party as an institutional vehicle.

In fact, Vance had already emerged as a key leader of the New Right or de-liberal ideological movement, going beyond being just another Republican politician loyal to Trump. By adding intellectual depth to Trumpism and leading efforts to further systematize the radical conservative revolution or counterrevolution initiated in the Trump era, Vance has positioned himself at the center of the "regime change" project pursued by today's young far-right forces (Klein 2024). For this reason, Steve Bannon predicted that Vance would play a role akin to "Apostle Paul" as the "nerve center" of the MAGA movement. It is a prophecy that Vance will undertake the mission of an ardent "convert," spreading the "gospel" of Trumpism far and wide, much like Apostle Paul doctrinalized and widely disseminated the teachings of Jesus Christ (Ward 2024a). Bannon, in particular, expressed great expectations that Vance would contribute to the restoration of the middle class by returning America, which had been dominated by Wall Street's financial elites, to a productive economy and dismantling its outward-expanding empire (Pogue 2024).

A brief look at the intellectual trajectory of Vance, a figure of such historical significance, is as follows. His autobiography, "Hillbilly Elegy," which catapulted him to fame by explaining the socio-economic causes of Trump's election in 2016, vividly portrays Vance's challenging upbringing. As someone from the Rust Belt's less educated white working class, the heartland of Jacksonian populism, Vance calmly narrated the tragedy of those referred to by derogatory terms such as hillbillies, rednecks, and white trash in America—generational poverty and alienation, widespread drug addiction and suicide, the decline of ethical norms, and the disintegration of families. However, at the time of writing this autobiography, Vance was a proponent of libertarian thought, emphasizing individual responsibility for poverty and proposing self-reliance and diligence as solutions (Vance 2017).

However, Vance experienced a kind of intellectual conversion in his mid-thirties when he converted to Catholicism. Influenced by the social teachings of the Catholic Church, he learned a critical perspective on the existing neoliberal social structure (Ahmari 2024b). What is also important here is that Catholicism provided a foundation for an anti-liberal worldview that resonates with the aforementioned "traditionalism." In 2020, he published an essay in a Catholic journal explaining the significance of his conversion, recounting his life from his upbringing as a Protestant, influenced by his devout grandmother ("Mamaw") and hillbilly culture. However, he confesses that his faith weakened after experiencing the horrors of war as a Marine deployed to Iraq. After his discharge, while attending Ohio State University and Yale Law School, he became assimilated into the liberal and secular elite culture there. In that environment, believing in religion was treated as ignorant or outdated, so he consciously tried to become an atheist. However, he soon became deeply skeptical of the competitive culture obsessed with material success, experienced a period of spiritual wandering, and finally found salvation and the true meaning of life through baptism in 2019 (Vance 2020).

In a way, this presents a typical "prodigal son" narrative. Interestingly, Vance defines this conversion to Catholicism as participation in "resistance." That is, he frames his conversion not as a personal choice but as a political act of resistance against the secular, individualistic currents of modern society, an intellectual counterattack against the liberal trend centered on the "meritocratic master class" (Vance 2020; Elie 2024). Indeed, there has been a noticeable trend of conversions to Catholicism among young post-liberal right-wingers recently, and many New Right intellectuals, including Deneen, whom we will discuss later, share this commonality. This can be interpreted as the Catholic Church, with its 2,000-year history, providing a point of origin for nostalgia related to "tradition," "morality," "homeland," and "community," in direct contrast to the fluid and unstable modern society (Boorstein 2024; Liedl 2024; Linker 2024a).

Following his religious "repentance," the content of Vance's anti-liberal political thought has been shaped by various discourse from radical right-wing intellectuals. For instance, he has maintained close ties with the Claremont Institute, a stronghold of West Coast Straussianism, which developed philosophical support for Trump from his initial rise and has recently been engaged in culture wars against "wokeism" (Wilson 2024; Zerofsky 2023). Furthermore, Peter Thiel, a leading figure of the far-right trend within Silicon Valley, known for his anti-democratic and techno-libertarian philosophy, is known as his long-time mentor. Vance has even had contact with figures from the alt-right online subculture, such as Curtis Yarvin, a guru of the "neo-reactionary (NRx)" movement and a monarchist (Ward 2024b; 2024c).

Although numerous ideological currents have influenced Vance's anti-establishment political views, the most prominent is the group of de-liberal Catholic thinkers led by Adrian Vermeule, a Harvard Law professor, and Sohrab Ahmari, editor of the populist magazine Compact Magazine. Among them, Patrick Deneen, a professor of Political Science at the University of Notre Dame, is identified as the leading ideologue of this group. Today, New Right forces consider Deneen's work a philosophical roadmap for their political movement (Ward 2024c). Therefore, by tracing his thought, we can gain a more systematic understanding of the political vision pursued by the de-liberal right-wing group emerging as the new mainstream in the Republican Party.

2. Patrick Deneen: The Ideologue of De-liberal "Regime Change"

On the late afternoon of May 17, 2023, shortly before the launch of the "Regime Change: Toward a Postliberal Future" book launch event at the Catholic University of America, Vance appeared and rushed to embrace Deneen, the day's protagonist, warmly. During the panel discussion following the author's lecture, Vance self-identified as "post-liberal right" and stated that his role in Congress was "explicitly anti-regime" (Ward 2023). He publicly declared himself a follower of Deneen's thought. In response, Deneen praised Vance's nomination as Vice Presidential candidate in July 2024 as an "ideal candidate" who would further advance Trump-style populism (Liedl 2024).

In his academic journey, from undergraduate to doctoral studies, Deneen was mentored by Wilson Carey McWilliams, a prominent communitarian of his time, and developed an interest in the non-liberal traditions that had been lost in American political history. Amidst liberalism's absolute dominance in American political thought, he rediscovered the existence of counter-currents emphasizing values such as solidarity, custom, and community, and developed a minority conviction that these traditions hold significant implications for solving the urgent problems facing contemporary American society. In his early years, Deneen's anti-liberal philosophy was heavily influenced by post-war Marxism and had a decidedly left-leaning character, and anti-capitalist tendencies persisted in his thought thereafter. Later, while teaching as a professor at Princeton and Georgetown Universities, Deneen became deeply immersed in the Catholic faith and gradually shifted to the right. He interpreted the Great Recession of 2008 as an event that definitively exposed the economic and natural limits of liberal civilization (Ward 2023).

Subsequently, in 2018, Deneen gained international renown with the publication of "Why Liberalism Failed," which synthesized his critique of liberalism. Although the initial draft was completed before the 2016 election, it garnered significant praise from progressive circles by explaining the emergence of the controversial Trump phenomenon within the macro-analytical framework of the trajectory of modern Western liberalism. Criticizing the unchecked libertine individualism of modern liberalism, or the inequality and concentration of power in government/corporations resulting from the pursuit of private interests, the atomistic fragmentation of society and loss of traditional norms, and the destruction of the natural environment, he made the unconventional argument that the alienation and anger felt by contemporary Americans were due not to liberalism's failure but its success. He argued that since the worldviews of both the existing left and right, Democrats and Republicans, are based on liberal consensus, established political forces share responsibility for the crisis of legitimacy in the current liberal democratic system, and that civilizational solutions can only be found outside liberal philosophy, thus posing a fundamental question to American society. This non-liberal alternative signifies the restoration of the civic community (=republicanism) tradition that cultivates virtue in the ancient sense and aims for the common good—the town democracy that Alexis de Tocqueville discovered and praised during his visit in the early 19th century (Deneen 2019).

However, Deneen's critique of liberalism later radicalized, evolving into a transformative ideology advocating for a post-liberal systemic transition. His recent book, "Regime Change" (Deneen 2023), posits that revolutionary change is necessary to transcend the liberal consensus—embraced by both conservatives and progressives within the existing liberal democratic system—and to pursue a path beyond it. In the conclusion of his 2018 work, Deneen had indeed noted the potential of small, local communities, suggesting their revival and the expansion of local autonomy could offer an alternative to the liberal order—a "post-liberal freedom" (Deneen 2019, 262-269). Yet, perceiving the global rise of populist movements as a positive historical breakthrough, Deneen came to believe his earlier proposal was too moderate. Consequently, he has set a new goal: a "regime change" where the New Right seizes powerful, centralized state apparatuses to radically implement a vision of "common-good conservatism" (Ward 2023).

More specifically, this regime change is a project to expel the corrupt liberal ruling class, regardless of left or right, and establish a new post-liberal order. It involves maintaining the framework of existing constitutional institutions while fundamentally injecting a different, non-liberal ethos (Deneen 2023, xiv). To drive this political transformation, it is necessary to build a class alliance between a new conservative elite armed with post-liberal philosophy and populist masses—"aristopopulism"—borrowing from Machiavelli's observations of mixed government and plebeian tactics in ancient Rome (Deneen 2023, 151-185). In this process of ideological evolution, Deneen visited Hungary in 2019 at the invitation of Prime Minister Orbán, who declared himself a defender of "illiberal democracy," and discussed the future of the post-liberal order with him, thus demonstrating solidarity with authoritarian forces abroad. He particularly praised Hungary under Orbán as "a model of resistance against contemporary liberalism, demonstrating that a nation and political order can actively promote conservative policies" (Ward 2023).

III. America After "Regime Change"

Like many New Right forces, Vance's worldview is underpinned by an apocalyptic fear that American civilization is in "decline." He has indeed assessed the current state of America as similar to the late Roman Republic in the first century BCE. The greater problem, however, is the absence of will and capacity within the existing political class to address this stagnation and decay in American society. Therefore, as with Deneen's view, the conclusion is that a fundamental "regime change" by a new political force is necessary. In this context, the New Right believes that Trump's presidency was merely the first step in a broad populist nationalist revolution—an endeavor to restart the cycle of history. This nascent MAGA revolution must be further radicalized to lead to the restructuring of American society as a whole. Vance explains his project as a long-term endeavor that will take decades (Ward 2024a).

Hereafter, using the major discourses of Josh Hawley (R-MO), Vance's strong ally in the Senate, as evidence, we will examine the vision of future America that de-liberal forces aim to realize through their long-term project, broken down by sector.

1. Populist Nationalism: Division Between "Us" and "Them"

1) Anti-Elite Elitism

On a general level, New Right forces possess a dichotomous worldview according to the definition of populism. That is, they explain the world by dividing people into "villains" and "victims." On one side are the pure working people living in "the forgotten places excluded from America," "small towns," while on the other side are the numerous villains, both domestic ("the American ruling class," "corrupt Washington insiders," "Wall Street aristocrats," "multinational corporations") and foreign ("the Chinese Communist Party," "millions of illegal immigrants"), who exploit and oppress them (Vance 2024). Through such clear distinctions and antagonisms between in-groups and out-groups, self and other, the MAGA movement accumulates its populist energy.

In a 2021 interview, Vance likened his awakening to the realities of elite society to taking the "red pill." This realization led him to understand that the populace in the contemporary United States holds virtually no power, and that all authority is monopolized by an "oligarchy." He argued that combating this would require rather radical and extreme actions, a modus operandi that would likely make established conservative right-wingers uncomfortable (Konstantinou 2024).

In an interview in 2021, Vance likened his awakening to the reality of elite society to being "redpilled." Through that realization, he understood that the people in America today have almost no power, and all power is monopolized by an "oligarchy." He stated that to fight against this, one must act quite radically and extremely, which would be an uncomfortable approach for the established conservative right (Konstantinou 2024).

The reason for this late-republican situation is that the ruling class of America, up until Trump's presidency, continuously prioritized its own self-interest, leading to a catastrophic failure in governance. For example, Biden, a representative of the establishment, supported disastrous policies throughout his political career, such as the creation of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), China's accession to the World Trade Organization (WTO), and the initiation of the Iraq War. The cost of such wrong decisions, which only served the interests of the elite class, has been borne entirely by ordinary Americans (Vance 2024). To dismantle these structural contradictions, it is paramount to dismantle the so-called "deep state" or "administrative state" that has obstructed Trump's reforms. Vance argued that if Trump is re-elected, the reorganization of federal agencies should be prioritized. In other words, in a second administration, all mid-level bureaucrats and civil servants of the administrative state should be fired and replaced by "our people," and if the courts obstruct this process, they should be ignored, as Andrew Jackson did in the past (Konstantinou 2024).

One notable point here is that Vance's critique of the establishment is not bound by the traditional left-right spectrum. Rather, he considers even the existing Republican leadership as part of the "liberal regime" and calls for revolutionary change against the entire system built by liberal elites steeped in market fundamentalism and interventionist foreign policy. In this context, it is understandable why Vance has often collaborated with Democrats like Elizabeth Warren on legislative activities. This is because they share the concern of criticizing special interests of big capital. Vance assesses that although Warren is a staunch leftist, ideologically poles apart from him, she is someone who recognizes and contemplates the fundamental brokenness of American society, thus offering occasional opportunities for cooperation (Ward 2024a).

2) Restoration of the White Christian Nation

On the level of national identity politics, de-liberal right-wing forces aim to present an antithesis to the Biden-Harris camp's concept of a "creedal nation." Following the long mainstream liberal tradition, Biden has defined America as "an idea," "the most powerful idea in the history of the world," and has repeatedly quoted the core phrases of the Declaration of Independence, accepting the rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness as "self-evident truths" (Biden 2019; 2024a; 2024b).

In contrast, Vance, in his acceptance speech for the Vice Presidential nomination, delineated the meaning of the nation of America and its people in terms of "homeland" and "nation." Aligning with the far-right agenda, for him, America is not an abstract set of "ideas" or "principles" ("American is not just an idea") but "a group of people with a shared history and a common future." Particularly interesting is Vance's use of his ancestral burial ground in the Appalachian Mountains of eastern Kentucky as an example to elaborate on the nature of this group identity. According to his account, his ancestors have been buried in that cemetery since the Civil War, and if he, his wife, and their children are buried there, seven generations will be reunited in one place (Vance, 2024). This suggests that a modern European-style nationalism, fundamentally defining national identity as a community of "blood and soil," is deeply embedded in Vance's political thought (Luce 2024).

In a similar vein, Senator Hawley advocated for Christian nationalism in his speech at the National Conservatism Conference in July 2024. According to him, America was originally a society founded by Puritans pursuing Christian ideals, a realization of Augustine's vision of the "City of God" in the form of a "City on a Hill." Furthermore, he argues that core American democratic principles such as limited government, freedom of conscience, and popular sovereignty are all legacies of Christian nationalism. The problem is that this national essence of America is now under attack from both the left and the right. The progressive side, as is well known, treats Christian civilization as an outdated shackle from the past and attempts to replace it with the ideology of progressive multiculturalism. However, the greater problem lies with the right-wing elites, who have neglected the Christian tradition for the past 30 years and have been eroded by secular ideologies such as neoliberalism and globalization. In contrast, Hawley emphasizes that Americans who marry, raise children, and attend church on Sundays are the true backbone of the conservative movement, arguing that the only future blueprint the Republican Party can offer America is that of Christian nationalism (Hawley 2024).

The Trump campaign's dissemination of fake news during the election, such as the false claim that Haitian immigrants were eating pets in Springfield, Ohio, based on anti-immigrant nativism, or the "Great Replacement" conspiracy theory that Democrats are deliberately opening the borders to bring in minority voters who will support them, replacing the existing white electorate, can be seen as a product of the ethno-religious national conception described above (Serwer 2024).

2. Return of "Tradition" and Promotion of "Virtue" in the "Private" Sphere

In economic and family(/gender) policy areas, which fall under the traditional distinction between public and private spheres, the New Right exhibits a stance that clearly differs from Trump. This is because they systematize reactionary values conceptualized as anti-modern, anti-liberal, and traditionalist to a much greater extent than Trump. This is precisely the point where the New Right "radically" intensifies the existing MAGA movement. In reality, in the private sphere, Trump is not in a position to emphasize any socially conservative principles. As is well known, Trump's life trajectory, in terms of his financial enrichment and relationships with women, approaches the realm of judicial condemnation, making it very distant from classical virtue. In contrast, de-liberal forces like Vance and Hawley tend to approach economic and family issues "principledly," from their personal lives to public policy.

1) "Conservative Social Democracy" Economics

It was, of course, Trump who began to change the orthodoxy of Republican economic policy. His success in winning the votes of less educated white working-class voters in the Rust Belt, who had strong Democratic leanings, in the 2016 presidential election and breaking the "Blue Wall" was largely due to presenting new political and economic alternatives to those disillusioned with mainstream politics, especially liberals who had shifted rightward during the "New Democrat" era (Berman 2023; Posner 2024b; Zelizer 2024). However, examining Trump's economic policies after taking office, while he succeeded in deviating from the established free trade line through protectionist measures such as large-scale tariff impositions in the external domain, the neoliberal stance largely continued in the domestic sector. Contrary to his anti-elite rhetoric, he maintained the Republican Party's pro-corporate stance by enacting significant corporate tax cuts (Scheiber 2024; Posner 2024a). This point made him unable to escape criticism of so-called "plutocratic populism" (Sandel 2023, 364-365).

In contrast, the New Right group has clarified its anti-laissez-faire stance. Ahmari assesses that they possess the instincts of "conservative social democracy"—conservative in socio-cultural values but with a left-leaning tendency economically (Ahmari 2024a). Particularly in their principled stance against monopolies and support for labor unions, the de-liberal right stands in opposition not only to the Reagan-era Republican Party's pro-business, anti-union stance but also to libertarian populism represented by the Tea Party. As the New Right forces expand, the most intense competition surrounding the future of the Republican Party is expected to unfold over the economic policy paradigm.

In actual legislative activities, New Right members have co-sponsored progressive bills with Democratic representatives such as Warren (D-Mass.), Sherrod Brown (D-OH), and Raphael Warnock (D-GA), including a bill to recover executive bonuses from banks that received bailouts, a bill to control excessive efficiency-seeking in the railroad industry, and a bill to lower insulin prices (Ahmari 2024b). They have not shied away from "bipartisan" actions on political and economic reform issues. Furthermore, they publicly supported the United Auto Workers (UAW) strike in 2023 and supported the appearance of the president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, one of the largest and oldest unions in America, to speak at the Republican National Convention for the first time in history in July 2024.

2) Patriarchy 2.0

While Trump's anti-women rhetoric is an expression of raw, primitive machismo, the New Right has systematically constructed sexism on a philosophical level (Field 2024). That is, Vance not only engages in sexist remarks or causes scandals related to women but also represents the New Right's agenda to revive "traditional" family and gender roles as a political agenda (Lewis 2024). At a deeper level, their establishment of a neo-patriarchal agenda is based on the de-liberal (/integrative) ideology that the state must actively define moral values and impose them on society, pursuing the mission of moral reconstruction of American society (Beauchamp 2024a).

They believe that liberal individualism, which prioritizes self-realization and personal satisfaction above all else, and its derivatives such as feminism and LGBT ideology have led to a crisis in the family, with declining birth rates being a visible consequence of that crisis. The solution proposed by the New Right forces to this demographic collapse crisis in American society is the revival of "traditional" male-female binary gender roles, and furthermore, the restoration of a "neo-patriarchal" family model. That is, following the image of the "tradwife," women's roles should be reduced to childbearing and caregiving, and men should fulfill their duty as breadwinners to support the family (Beauchamp 2024b).

For instance, Vance argues, "We must fight for the right to have a middle-class job that is sufficient to support a family, maintain dignity, and live a good life." He also stated, "If my vision is realized, my son will grow up in a world where his masculinity—his support for his family and community, his love for his community—is more important than whether he works at McKinsey" (Field 2024). On the other hand, Hawley goes a step further, tracing the lineage back to ancient myths and the Bible to explore "the masculine virtues that America needs." He diagnoses that modern society threatens masculinity, causing men to lose their proper role models and view their own instincts and inclinations negatively. Therefore, he explains the need to rediscover masculine virtues such as courage, temperance, responsibility, integrity, and self-sacrifice through the stories of heroes in the "Iliad" and "Odyssey," and virtuous rulers like David in the Bible. He argues that by restoring such healthy masculinity, men can once again become pillars of society, thereby resolving various social confusions and problems in contemporary America (Hawley 2023).

On a more concrete policy level, they look to Hungary's Orbán government as a role model, praising its success in promoting traditional family values through constitutional amendments banning same-sex marriage and pro-natalist policies that provide benefits proportional to the number of children for married couples (Field 2024). In this context, Vance criticizes the trend of people "changing spouses as easily as changing underwear" and proposes policies such as prohibiting no-fault divorce, imposing heavy taxes on childless individuals, and granting weighted voting rights to families with children. This is a plan to penalize adults who do not marry or have children (Beauchamp 2024b). Vance's controversial "childless cat ladies" remark, which became known after his Vice Presidential nomination, was not simply a slip of the tongue in this regard. The logic underlying his thinking was that women who do not have children are irresponsible beings who do not consider the future of the nation, and therefore, are unqualified to govern (Lewis 2024).

IV. Conclusion

The de-liberal direction in contemporary American society can be seen as a trend of the times. The rise of traditionalist or fundamentalist forces advocating anti-modernism and anti-liberalism within America's mainstream political space, which has symbolized the cutting edge of liberal modernity in almost every aspect, is a highly unusual situation. Of course, the radical and authoritarian nature of the MAGA movement represented by Vance undeniably arouses caution. Nevertheless, the attention paid to the white working class, excluded and forgotten in the process of neoliberal globalization, is a pertinent issue in the search for America's future amidst chaos. In other words, regardless of whether one agrees or disagrees, the Republican Party of the Trump era has merits for evaluation in that it presented, in its own way, criticisms and alternatives to the consequences brought about by the established neoliberal consensus.

In this regard, it is noteworthy that the Democratic Party, the opposing camp, has not yet seen a full-scale mainstream power shift comparable to the de-liberal right. Hillary Clinton's disparagement of Trump supporters as "deplorables" during the 2016 presidential campaign, and Biden's recent characterization of them as "garbage" in the current election, reveal the unreflective nature of liberal elites. This lack of reflection forms the current limitations of the defeated Democratic Party. They must acknowledge their complicity in paving the way for far-right populism by pursuing neoliberal globalization projects alongside the Republican mainstream for decades, which led to economic polarization. Simply pushing the MAGA camp as "weird" will result in tribal politics that only agitate their own supporters, rather than progressive reform politics (Sandel 2024; Stephens 2024).

Of course, the call for revisions to the established liberal consensus has been reflected to some extent in Democratic Party policies. Notably, the Biden administration, invoking the memory of the New Deal revolution, has pursued overcoming the Washington Consensus. At the same time, the young progressive bloc, represented by Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, is exploring non-American (or Nordic-style) paths such as democratic socialism—paths that have long been marginalized in American history—which is noteworthy (Lipsitz 2023). As evidenced by the recent pro-Palestinian protests on university campuses that surprised the mainstream Democratic Party, the de-liberal paradigm from the left may gain momentum depending on the extent to which anti-establishment sentiment among millennials grows.

According to Louis Hartz's classic definition, America has always been an imagined community dominated by Lockean liberalism (Hartz 2012). In that sense, the challenge posed by de-liberalizing trends emerging from both the left and the right spectrum can be considered an unprecedented juncture in American history, capable of fundamentally altering America's core identity. The outcome of the competition among social forces within the United States in the 21st century will have significant ripple effects not only on America but also on the entire liberal international order, meaning we are, in a sense, at a world-historical moment. ■

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Pogue, James. 2024. “Steve Bannon Has Called His Army to Do Battle—No Matter Who Wins in November.” Vanity Fair, October 9. https://www.vanityfair.com/...order (Accessed: 2024.11.4.).

Posner, Eric. 2024a. “Is a Pro-Labor Republican Party Possible?” Project Syndicate, August 29. https://www.project-syndicate.org/...2024-08 (Accessed: 2024.11.4.).

______. 2024b. “Why Many Workers Now Vote Republican.” Project Syndicate, October 29. https://www.project-syndicate.org/...2024-10 (Accessed: 2024.11.4.).

Sandel, Michael. Translated by Lee Yang-soo. 2012. *The Limits of Justice*. Goyang: Melon.

______. Translated by Lee Kyung-sik. 2023. *Democracy You Don't Know: The Uncomfortable Coexistence of Capitalism and Liberalism*. Seoul: Wiseberry.

______. 2024. “How Kamala Harris Can Win.” The New York Times, July 27. https://www.nytimes.com/...strategy.html (Accessed: 2024.11.4.).

Scheiber, Noam. 2024. “Can the G.O.P. Really Become the Party of Workers?” The New York Times, August 24. https://www.nytimes.com/...vance.html (accessed November 4, 2024).

Serwer, Adam. 2024. “J. D. Vance’s Empty Nationalism.” The Atlantic, July 19. https://www.theatlantic.com/...679116/ (accessed November 4, 2024).

Stephens, Bret. 2024. “There’s One Main Culprit if Donald Trump Wins.” The New York Times, October 22. https://www.nytimes.com/...democrats.html (accessed November 4, 2024).

Vance, J.D. translated by Kim Boram. 2017. *Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis*. Seoul: Hurem Publishing.

______. 2020. “How I Joined the Resistance.” The Lamp, April 1. https://thelampmagazine.com/...resistance (accessed November 4, 2024).

______. 2024. “Read the Transcript of J.D. Vance’s Convention Speech.” The New York Times, July 18. https://www.nytimes.com/...speech.html (accessed November 4, 2024).

Wallace-Wells, Ian. 2024. “The Rise of the New Right at the Republican National Convention.” The New Yorker, July 18. https://www.newyorker.com/...convention (accessed November 4, 2024).

Ward, Ian. 2023. “‘I Don’t Want to Violently Overthrow the Government. I Want Something Far More Revolutionary’.” Politico, June 8. https://www.politico.com/...00100279 (accessed November 4, 2024).

______. 2024a. “Is There Something More Radical than MAGA? J.D. Vance Is Dreaming It.” Politico, March 15. https://www.politico.com/...00147054 (accessed November 4, 2024).

______. 2024b. “The Seven Thinkers and Groups That Have Shaped JD Vance’s Unusual Worldview.” Politico, July 18. https://www.politico.com/...00168984 (accessed November 4, 2024).

______. 2024c. “Is There More to JD Vance’s MAGA Alliance Than Meets the Eye?” Politico, September 13. https://www.politico.com/...00177203 (accessed November 4, 2024).

Wilson, Jason. 2024. “Revealed: JD Vance Promoted Far-Right Views in Speech about Extremists’ Book.” The Guardian, August 22. https://www.theguardian.com/...book (accessed November 4, 2024).

Zerofsky, Elisabeth. 2023. “How the Claremont Institute Became a Nerve Center of the American Right.” The New York Times, June 15. https://www.nytimes.com/...conservative.html (accessed November 4, 2024)..

■ Cha Tae-seo_Professor, Department of Political Science and International Relations, Sungkyunkwan University.

■ In Charge and Edited by:Lee So-young, EAI Research Assistant

    Inquiries and Editing: 02 2277 1683 (ext. 205) | sylee@eai.or.kr