Keeping Out the Jacobins

The real problem with gatekeeping is that the right doesn’t do it enough and to the right people.

I’ve been reading The New Jacobinism: America as Revolutionary State by Claes G. Ryn, first published in 1991. It’s a short but insightful polemic about the pernicious influence of neoconservatism—the “New Jacobinism”—on American affairs. Here is a brief overview:

This strongly and lucidly argued book gave early warning of a political-intellectual moveme…