An excellent hobby horse of a handful of intellectuals is to ponder what the results would be if the conservatives ever unified aesthetics and conservative politics. Here are some insightful articles for you that frame the problem and offer some solutions and insights.
The first article comes from Danielle Charette from ISI, who gives a great synopsis of the difference between what she calls “electoral” and “aesthetic” Conservativism. This article is short and to the point, and gives a good background to the real issue at play with modern american conservative movement: it is all too often banal and merely a rat race.
The second post you should read, which will give plenty of things to think about and digest, is James M. Wilson’s article. Wilson, who I met in AZ at a Catholic Phoenix event is a great man. He and I hit it off talking about the need for conservatives to adopt and appropriate realism. There is a reason, I believe, that the ancient Roman republicans employed realism in their statuary, and interestingly enough, as the Republic shifted to an Empire, the art became less realistic and more and more fantastical and spectacular (verging on propaganda). Anyway, there’s a connection between Republicanism and Realism, and Wilson picks up on this in a series of articles. Here’s Part I of James Matthew Wilson’s “The Treasonous Clerk: Art and Beauty against the Politicized Aesthetic.”
https://www.firstprinciplesjournal.com/articles.aspx?article=1302
Last of all, for the ambitious reader, there’s a review of Wilson’s articles by a Witherspoon fellow here.
There’s hope,
Peter
James Matthew Wilson is currently releasing a new chapbook: https://finishinglinepress.com/product_info.php?cPath=2&products_id=1848. Just so y’all know.