A call for more scrutiny and consideration of the role of elite grantmaking institutions and what they’re doing in, and to, America.
National conservatism is on quite the ascendance. The Edmund Burke Foundation’s energetic National Conservatism conference in Washington, D.C., followed by Donald Trump’s naming of Sen. J. D. Vance as his running mate, earlier this month are both seen as evidence of that rise. They might actually better be seen as trailing indicators, in our opinion, of what has been its growing presence and strength in public discourse about the refinement and redefinition of conservatism itself leading up to and in the wake of Trump’s 2016 election.
Reflecting those adherents’ beliefs, almost all of the NatCon conference’s speakers and panels had one thing in common: an understanding that we need to radically reevaluate our traditional postures toward the full spectrum of American institutions.
At one point, conservatives thought of colleges and universities as the cradles of traditional values, corporations as the source of economic prosperity, and the rule of law as the solid ground of social order. None of that is the case anymore.
Colleges and universities are vehicles of deeply anti-American values, corporations fund the most corrosive of avant-garde cultural views while shipping our jobs overseas, and the rule of law is turned against anyone who dares oppose the regime. Like so many other institutions and institutional arrangements, they are essentially broken and therefore justifiably mistrusted.
More largely, facts and science as they used to be known, and language and meaning as they used to be known, are abused and turned into mere tools to be used for achievements of an end.
We strongly urge an expansion of conservatism’s ongoing reevaluation of institutions into one important sector that has so far escaped it—philanthropy. As in the other contexts, there needs to be far more scrutiny and consideration of the role of elite grantmaking institutions and what they’re doing in, and to, America.
Beneficial pressure
We may be able to roll back progressive wokeness in the other sectors, given various public-pressure points that are already showing results. But big foundations and other grantmakers are more or less insulated from any such pressure.
Overwhelmingly and monoculturally, they are ideologically—maybe even systemically?—committed to progressivism. They are staffed increasingly by the products of universities and activist nonprofits where wokeness is the standard fare.
“Charity” itself seems the mere means to an end.
Even if it’s possible to appreciably slow down the advance of DEI et al. in the academy and business, as soon as conservatives avert their eyes and turn their backs, there will be a radical resurgence funded therein.
The populist NatCon speakers presented a wide variety of approaches to sectoral reevaluation—some sensible and some not so much, in our opinion—but the debate is being more widely joined, to great existing and even-wider potential benefit. There is no more relying on blind conservative loyalty to what were once-hallowed institutions. No more necessary, automatic, defensive, friendly alignment with them.
There are potential non-conservative allies in the overall project, by the way, who share an inclination against the non- or anti-democratic and oligarchic nature of Big Philanthropy. To the degree possible, they should earnestly and honestly be engaged. Vance himself, who spoke at the conference, has shown a similar inclination to approach problems cross-ideologically in several other policy areas.
Beneficial non-pressure
We don’t pretend to know how national conservatism might best apply its healthy, useful, realigning questioning to philanthropy. In 2021, before he began running for the Senate, Vance floated the idea of eliminating or attaching certain conditions to the special tax privileges given in policy to big foundations. At the NatCon conference, Claremont Institute chairman and philanthropist Tom Klingenstein called into question the tax-exempt status of private colleges and universities.
We do think grantmaking should be more seriously and prominently subject to questioning like this, to deeper reevaluation and reconsideration—perhaps especially, from our conservative standpoint, given the fact that progressive wokeness riddles it to a degree unparalleled in other sectors. Non-reevaluation and non-consideration of any reform options at all almost wholly benefit what thus remains an entirely unpressured, big-monied progressivism and its activities.
Philanthropy is an essential subject for all of conservatism to address, however riskily, wherever the conversation may go. Ascendant national conservatism in particular, wherever and whenever its adherents may or may not succeed politically, seems best-placed to aggressively and effectively do so during the coming years.
