Fellowship of the right

Team Frodo or Team Boromir, anybody?

THE AMERICAN right wing has split into distinct philosophical camps, writes Tony Woodlief for The Spectator.

He’s not talking about MAGA and Never Trump. Mr. Woodlief’s conclusion comes on the heels of his attendance at NatCon, the admittedly ominous-sounding event which serves as the annual conference for The Edmund Burke Foundation’s National Conservatism project.

Keynote speakers included senators Marco Rubio, Josh Hawley and Tim Scott and Gov. Ron DeSantis.

Philosophically, American conservatism currently consists of Team Boromir and

Team Frodo, Mr. Woodlief suggests, channeling his inner nerd with a fairly spot-on

“Lord of the Rings” analogy.

For readers who actually were popular in school, an explanation: Frodo was the hobbit entrusted with the Ring of Power, a tool that would enable the dark lord “Sauron” to control the world and had proven the downfall of kings who sought to use it with the best of intentions. Frodo’s mission was to deliver the ring to the one place where it could be destroyed, Mount Doom.

Boromir, one of Frodo’s companions in this fellowship, reasoned that possession of the ring represented divine opportunity: Let the good guys wield the ring against its master.

“It is mad not to use it, to use the power of the Enemy against him. The fearless, the ruthless, these alone will achieve victory,” the character argues in one of the LOTR books.

At NatCon, much debate centered on this theme, with the administrative state subbing in for the Ring of Power. Mr. Woodlief says the majority at NatCon clearly stood with Team Boromir, anxious to use the state to nullify the extreme woke left, should the GOP retake Congress.

Quoting Israeli philosopher and political theorist Yoram Hazony, who spoke at NatCon: “This country is on the brink; it’s at the very end of what decadence can sustain.”

Team Frodo, meanwhile, argued in more classical conservative terms that the best approach is to destroy the ring, i.e., rein in the power of the state. Mr. Woodlief wrote that its less-crowded membership invoked the writings of conservative patron saints Burke and Russell Kirk: conservatism never seeks to wield national power, government coercion of virtue usually backfires.

The Boromir instinct, he writes, is to fight fire with fire—admittedly, sometimes necessary. But . . .

“We in the Frodo faction don’t disagree about the threats posed by unaccountable federal agencies, unlimited wars, critical race theory in our schools, and other NatCon targets. It’s just that where NatCons would replace federal agency personnel with loyalists to reward friends and punish enemies, we Frodoists would fire the lot of them, remand their authority to states and communities, and go back to our gardening.

“While NatCons would ban CRT, Frodoists would break up big school districts, with confidence that local citizens can best decide how their children should be educated. Where NatCons would tax or even seize university endowments, Frodoists would route all federal subsidies through state legislatures, forcing greater accountability for universities to the publics they claim to serve.”

History reveals that political retribution usually comes home to roost. Will Mr. Frodo finish this conservative quest? Or will Team Boromir regain possession of the ring, and if it does, can it (finally) ignore the state’s seductive powers?

This story’s ending remains to be written.