The American Right needs to revitalize itself after a generation of decay where the Left took control over most of the corporate sector, the military, and the press, according to a Claremont Institute expert on American political thought.   

That decay has resulted in corporations pushing racial division and leftist ideology after the Right gave corporate America almost everything it wanted for the last decade, he said. Corporate America has given or pledged about $100 billion (nearly $310 per person) to left-wing causes, including Black Lives Matter, between the summer of 2020 and now, says Arthur Milikh. Milikh is the executive director of the Claremont Institute’s Center for the American Way of Life.   

“The Left has the whole country backing them up … institutional power, so it’s easy to be courageous. The Right needs that kind of power,” Milikh told Heritage President Kevin Roberts on his “Kevin Roberts Show” podcast.  

When you compare what the Right and Left “own” in the country, the Right doesn’t come up well, he said. The Left has gained far more ground in the institutions. How this happened, and the consequences of it are in Milikh’s new book, “Up From Conservatism.”  

“In this regard, the Establishment Right seems to have tacitly accepted its subordinate position in America. We do the economic policy while the Left governs the culture, controls the moral consensus, and holds the levers of real power,” says Milikh in his book.   

“They continuously want to treat us as serfs,” says Milikh. They want conservative Americans to “obey and pay” for the Left to rule as the Right “take[s] the slings and arrows relentlessly … telling you you’re garbage.”  

One place the Right has lost ground is higher education. The Left has taken control of universities, and the Right needs to act against this by saying, “No, this is my neighborhood, my university, and my state,” says Milikh.   

The Right shouldn’t just accept defeat, because their tax dollars fund universities. “Money is being taken from red America, spent on making more of blue America,” says Milikh. Therefore, citizens should have a say in how universities are run, and if the universities don’t like it, they shouldn’t receive funding, he said.  

“Universities that spread poisonous doctrines no longer believe in the purpose of a university,” said Milikh in “Up From Conservatism.” “While it is their right to disagree with this purpose, they should not be the beneficiaries of public funds. No society should be expected to subsidize its own corrosion.”  

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