Despite Charles Kesler’s loathing of nihilism, his political theory thus has a hidden nihilistic side–not in theory but in practice. In theory, Kesler was battling for the restoration of a natural right anthropology, one grounded on the self-evident truth that all men are created equal and endowed with the right to pursue the good life. In practice, he and his colleagues at Claremont found themselves engaged in a cataclysmic battle against a great mass of enemies who inexplicitly failed to grasp these simply truth of nature. The Claremont scholars’ belief in this great, unbridgeable divide is the second, unarticulated part of their anthropology. They see the world, or at least the United States, as divided between good people who grasp the “principles and axioms of a free society” and wicked people who are blind to those principles. The Enlightenment aspiration to mediate political disagreements through rational persuasion has disappeared from their thinking, since they believe that the wicked cannot be persuaded. What remains is struggle
James Davison Hunter, Democracy and Solidarity, 269.