Photo Illustrations by Luis G. Rendon/Flickr Commons/Pixabay
“Certainly, if American Conservatism has any core of consistency and purpose,” political philosopher Harry Jaffa said in 1974, “it is derived from the American Founding.”
The Claremont Institute, a prominent conservative think tank founded in 1979 by Jaffa’s students, aims “to restore the principles of the American Founding to their rightful, preeminent authority in our national life.” That’s why it’s puzzling that institutions and people within Claremont have been seduced by a weightlifting fetishist Twitter personality who calls himself Bronze Age Pervert (BAP), and who proclaims that “the Constitution, the ideology, the doctrine of rights, is all so much nonsense.”
Though their defenders insist Claremont was merely engaging with Bronze Age Pervert’s thought as a means of directing disaffected young men to better ideas, some of the Institute’s most prominent thought leaders helped popularize BAP’s (frequently deranged and often incoherent) philosophy—which rejects the American Founding, limited government, equality, and Christianity.