Woodson

If proponents of participatory philanthropy are looking to attract receptive conservatives to their cause, it may be impossible if participatoriness comes to be—or even to seem—just another mechanism to rationalize tax-incentivized philanthropy in furtherance of one particular ideological or partisan political end. If conservative philanthropy is honestly and self-critically looking to exemplify anti-elitism in and improve its grantmaking, however, it would more aggressively explore options to humbly check what might be its own elitism and increase participatoriness in that grantmaking.

Both efforts can be resource-intensive and deeply misguided.

Handbooks and lectures rarely result in on-ramps to the “success sequence.”

“This will not be the first movement in human history to flourish by incorporating the wisdom of unorthodox groups hitherto exiled to the margins of respectable society. … [I]t’s time for a conservative parallel polis. But the outline of that polis is already there, to be discovered and nurtured, not created. It’s up to us to provide it the attention and resources that it deserves.”

N. S. Lyons will also be on same “Alternative Political Structures” panel. “Parallel polis” boldly urged by Lyons may already exist in latent form, Schambra has written.

In the framework of the “parallel polis” for which N. S. Lyons called at the National Conservatism conference in Brussels, there already exists a latent one in America’s central-city neighborhoods.