There is a growing fascination within a segment of the Australian right for the American movement now calling itself ‘post-liberal’ or national conservative. This has seen articles. This has seen articles – including here in the Speccie – new websites and interviews promoting the idea of National Conservatism (NatCon) as the magical way ahead for Australian conservatives to combat the left. To some, it feels like an invigorating rebellion, a stirring alternative to woke domination of our institutions and the loss of common sense in our society. But before it is embraced as the new truth of conservative politics, we must examine its origins and contradictions and recognise why its prescriptions are fundamentally incompatible with Australian reality.

Superficially the NatCons align with conservative instincts. They identify real cultural maladies: the scourge of identity politics, DEI conformity, the obsession with minorities, and the creep of technocracy hollowing democratic consent. On this, and on energy, immigration and national resilience, their postures reflect the desires of most mainstream Australian conservatives. However, on the economic front they promote muscular protectionism.

Yet National Conservatism in America does not grow out of the Anglo-liberal conservative tradition that shaped Australia’s centre-right.

As Laura Field shows in Furious Minds, its origins lie in a project that imagines elite moral direction from above: in Straussian ‘wise guardians’, in pre-Vatican II Christian-integralist aspirations for state-guided virtue, and in a peculiarly American appetite for political romanticism and ‘virtuous statecraft’. This is not the conservatism of restraint, but of command. It regards the state as an instrument of cultural formation – mirroring the leftist institutional takeover conservatives have long complained about. Field, a genuine conservative, concludes this is not regeneration, but a revolution disguised as conservatism.

The NatCon mindset has been built around Donald Trump’s personal political instincts – hostility to institutions, rules and continuity. Trump displays no gratitude – only contempt – for inherited traditions or long-evolved wisdom. The US NatCon movement does not merely tolerate but adopts this posture: seeing institutions as corrupt, requiring overhaul, not as structures to reclaim through competence. Nothing could be less conservative.

There is hard-wired elitism coming from the American NatCons. This is reflected in the curious tendency by Australian NatCon commentators to fawn over, of all people, 19th century British prime minister Benjamin Disraeli. Disraeli was in fact a figure who, if known to Australian conservatives, would be regarded by most as a tosser: if Gladstone was Tony Abbott, Disraeli was his Turnbull.

Disraeli may have been gifted, and a flamboyant, charismatic orator, but the idea he speaks to the Australian conservative imagination is fanciful. This reflects the NatCon instinct to cultivate cultural superiority – an elevated caste of sophisticates telling the public what is good for them. Again, a mirror of progressive elites. Nothing could be more alien to our sense of egalitarianism.

Then there is the NatCon insistence, including in Australia, on identifying as ‘post-liberal’. National conservatives reject liberal-democratic premises about pluralism and autonomy, desiring a return to ‘common good’ doctrine and a moral-polity defined by virtue rather than rights and responsibilities – positioning themselves explicitly against Enlightenment liberalism. Conservatives have long railed against identity politics and state power, yet here is a supposedly conservative philosophy proposing the same – merely swapping identity categories for heritage, religious belief and ‘virtue’.

The NatCons now claim to be heirs to Robert Menzies. Yet Menzies’ conservatism rested on decentralisation, not state-directed economics or morality. He trusted the nation’s life to its ‘little platoons’: families, associations, small businesses and citizens. It strains credulity to claim a US movement calling itself ‘post-liberal’ is heir to the man who created the Australian Liberal party.

It would be pure folly to abandon our liberal-conservative gratitude for our inheritance in favour of a post-liberal export adopted without genuine debate. While sincere, its lack of genuine conservative credentials should concern us. It treats our foundational underpinnings as something casually traded for an imported manifesto that has not proven workable in its home country.

America has always been where the big democratic experiments occur. It is trite but true that Australia’s political temperament is different. America was founded in revolution, had its second founding after civil war, and has a presidency built for hero narratives. Our political system and compulsory voting privileges the pragmatic Australian. Our preferential voting demands coalition-building rather than ideological purism. Even in a more polarised society, and in fractured society, our system usually keeps extremes on the sidelines.

Yet it is the economic thinking of the NatCons that should raise real alarm. Tariff-driven protectionism in the US has already proven costly: raising prices, distorting supply chains, and smashing farmers by hurting agricultural exports. America might survive such experiments because its enormous domestic market can absorb shocks. Australia has no such cushion. It was Menzies who had the wisdom to open our iron ore resources to world markets – a conservative act of economic confidence. That marked Australia’s turn in the 1960s to an open trading economy. With some of the highest wages and energy prices in the developed world, the delusion of full industrial self-sufficiency is not patriotism – it is economic lunacy.

It is increasingly obvious that global progressive hegemony is disintegrating. This is not the result of Trumpian disruption but of ordinary people – and now CEOs – finally unzipping the cultural straitjacket imposed on them. No fundamental institutional realignment is required – it is happening naturally and will accelerate if we fight anchored in our traditions.

The task before Australian conservatism is not to copy and paste radical US philosophical recasting, but to recommit to our strengths. The fight ahead is to be unafraid to prosecute policies that can confront a crumbling and incompetent Labor government – policies that will not be populist, but popular. Policies reflecting our long-standing values of civic freedom, personal responsibility, national resilience, institutional humility and economic openness. These are the values that won Menzies, Howard and Abbott their victories. We need to face our challenges with confidence – and meet them in the Australian way.