With primary season having already been underway in the United States, June of last year may seem an odd time for Encounter Books to have released Arthur Milikh’s sensational compendium of essays, Up from Conservatism (2023).
Presidential aspirants and their campaign staff were no longer receptive to these kinds of intellectual tomes after launching themselves into the electoral fray. Neither were the voters. Even taking at face value what’s prescribed by his roster of contributors, the conservative lay reader was simply in no headspace to pay much attention to Milikh’s case for “revitalizing the Right after a generation of decay.” They faced the urgency of Trump’s legal troubles, on one hand, and, on the other, with debaters like DeSantis, Vivek, Pence, Christie, and Haley, politically engaged viewers were more consumed by their viral verbal skirmishes than by the nuances of their theoretical dissent.
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