The Enlightenment Gap: How the Right Forgot Its Own Culture

Let me ask a direct question, especially to anyone who identifies as conservative or right-wing: Do you know what the Enlightenment is?

I’m not asking to be patronising. I’m asking because it might be the single most important question in Western politics today.

We hear the rhetoric constantly, from populist parties in the UK to the US: "We’re losing our country." "Our culture is being replaced." "London is a Muslim area." The stated goal of the right wing is to "put things back" to a perceived golden age, maybe the 1960s or 80s.

But what if the very "culture" you're fighting to defend is the one your movement is actively campaigning to dismantle?

This article explores a strange and dangerous contradiction: that a significant portion of the modern populist right is built on a collective misunderstanding of what built their nation. It argues that this movement, in its quest to "save" Western culture, is unwittingly attacking its very foundations. And those are very fragile foundations that require the consent of the many to ensure they remain. Where a majority in government can very quickly upset that balance.

I will focus this on being an educational issue, and it's not a small one. It's part of a wider, troubling trend. When you see the rise of vaccine denial or people earnestly arguing the Earth is flat, you are seeing a testament to how hard humanity seems to try to forget the painful, revolutionary lessons of its past. There's a fascinating quote, I can't remember where from, but it went something like "Safety regulations are written in the blood of the dead". Which I always think of whenever some right winger wants to completely rip up our rules, regulations and institutions.

_{Twitter user complains about fire regulations}

^{Statistics show fires at an all time low}

This gap in understanding is, in my view, the central vulnerability that explains the most toxic and baffling contradictions in our politics. It’s why so many political debates feel futile, ending in gridlock rather than agreement.

This article is an attempt to get back to basics. We will explore:

1. What the Enlightenment actually is.

2. Why it is the fundamental operating system for modern Britain and the West.

3. How a misunderstanding of it explains the paradox of a movement that claims to "defend" a culture while advocating for its core principles to be torn down.

4. We'll also reference some pretty funny examples I've seen from the right, and highlight how insane it is.

What is the Enlightenment?

The Enlightenment was a transformative intellectual and cultural movement in 17th and 18th century Europe that championed reason, science, and individualism.

1. It fundamentally challenged long-standing traditions, superstitions, and the absolute authority of the monarchy and the church.

2. This "Age of Reason" promoted critical thinking, liberty, and human progress, laying the essential groundwork for modern democracy, human rights, and secular society.

Now, this might be news to you, as someone that has seen the United States the past few months, and now the UK with our right wing groups going out with "Christ is King" posters. Fundamentally flying in the face of what this aimed to achieve.

Why It’s the Bedrock of the West

Enlightenment is the operating system for modern Western society. Its importance lies in the fact that it provided the core principles for the very institutions that shape our daily lives - institutions that are now increasingly under attack.

While institutions like Parliament or the courts existed in some form before, the Enlightenment provided the "why." It was the intellectual and moral justification for shifting their purpose: from serving the Crown or the Church to serving the people based on reason and law.

Using the UK as an example, this is what was born...

1. Parliament and Government (The Social Contract)

• The Big Idea: Before the Enlightenment, a king's right to rule was seen as God-given (the "divine right"). Thinkers like John Locke flipped this, arguing that government is a "social contract." People voluntarily give up some freedoms in exchange for the state protecting their "life, liberty, and property."

• How It Shaped the West: This idea is the DNA of modern democracy. It establishes that government doesn't have power by default; it has it by the consent of the governed. If a government breaks this contract, the people have the right to change it. This principle fuelled centuries of parliamentary reform, gradually shifting power from the monarch to elected representatives.

That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed

United States Declaration of Independence

• The Modern Rejection: Today, this "social contract" is challenged by attempts to de-legitimise or shrink representation. Arguments for abolishing devolved bodies like the Scottish Parliament (Holyrood) or past rhetoric questioning the political rights of specific groups (religious or ethnic) are, at their core, an attack on the idea that government must derive its power from all the governed.

2. The Judiciary and Rule of Law (Separation of Powers)

• The Big Idea: Thinkers like Montesquieu (a French philosopher deeply impressed by the British system) argued for the "separation of powers." To prevent tyranny, he said, the power to make laws (legislature), enforce laws (executive), and judge laws (judiciary) must be kept separate.

• How It Shaped the West: This is the entire basis for the rule of law. It means the government is not above the law; it is bound by it, and an independent judiciary can hold it accountable. The UK's 2005 Constitutional Reform Act, which created a separate Supreme Court, was a recent step to make this separation clearer. This principle is precisely why government law-breaking during the COVID pandemic (the "Partygate" scandal) was so explosive: it was a direct violation of the idea that the rule of law applies to the rulers, not just the ruled.

• The Modern Rejection: This is one of the most visible battlegrounds. In the US, we see constant challenges to judicial independence. In the UK, this manifests as rhetoric against "activist lawyers" or the infamous "Enemies of the People" headline a term used by a few newspapers to describe judges who simply did their job: holding the government accountable to the law. This is a direct assault on the separation of powers.

3. The Civil Service (Merit Over "Who You Know")

• The Big Idea: The Enlightenment championed rationality and individual merit over tradition and aristocratic privilege. The best person for the job should get it, not the person with the best-connected uncle.

• How It Shaped the West: This led to reforms like the 1854 Northcote-Trevelyan Report in the UK, which argued that the hereditary, patronage-based system of government jobs was corrupt and inefficient. It recommended a professional Civil Service chosen through open, competitive exams. This is the meritocratic system that is supposed to run our public services today.

• The Modern Rejection: The modern attack on this is the 'war on woke' or the rejection of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) initiatives. The populist rejection of 'the blob' (a dismissive term for the civil service) is often a veiled desire to return to a patronage system, replacing neutral, merit-based administration with one based on political loyalty. You'll note that nearly all of Trumps appointments are based entirely on their ability to be loyal to him, not even his political party.

4. Science and Universities (Progress Through Knowledge)

• The Big Idea: Reason and observation could lead to human progress. Thinkers of the Scottish Enlightenment (like Adam Smith and David Hume) argued that knowledge should be shared, tested, and used to improve society.

• How It Shaped the West: Institutions like the Royal Society became engines of this idea, professionalising science and making it a key driver of the nation's progress. Our modern universities, scientific advisory boards, and public health bodies are all built on this core belief: that we can use reason and evidence to solve problems.

• The Modern Rejection: Here, the rejection is blatant. We see it in the denial of climate science, the attempts to roll back abortion rights based on religious or moral arguments rather than medical evidence, and the culture-war-driven efforts to ban books or curb transgender rights in defiance of medical and psychological consensus. This is a direct return to a pre-Enlightenment model, where dogma is empowered to overrule evidence. Feelings now matter over direct fact, a complete projectionist take from the right which always cited the left using moral arguments to justify their positions. If you wanted to be shallow about it and not dig as deep, you can't come away with any other conclusion other than; now the right is in power, they're doing the same thing they accused everyone else of doing.

Differences in the Conservative Movement

In writing this I did have the overwhelming feeling that I was being unfair to a sect of conservatives that are pushing back against this Agenda that is trying to take hold of their political parties. BUT, my woke empathic liberal feelings only go so far, as in my experience while there are people pushing back, they're still at the end of the day either not voting at all and withdrawing from the process. Or still voting for these parties anyway. But to give them a fair shake, I'll quickly dive into the two different sects.

• Classical Liberalism: These are the free-marketeers, the individualists, and the "rule of law" conservatives. The Left will often butt heads with this group of how much regulation for example is too much.

• Traditionalist/Nationalist Conservatism: This is the movement that is skeptical of universal "abstract rights" and champions tradition, faith, and national identity instead they emphasized: “each nation has its own spirit (Volksgeist), history, and traditions.” (Herder, Burke, later de Maistre)

Now, you are always going to have figures to point to within Conservative parties as being the "ideal" conservative. Rishi Sunak. He is the technocratic Enlightenment champion. Sunak represents the Adam Smith and Northcote-Trevelyan (meritocratic civil service) wing of the Enlightenment. His entire political brand is based on being a "rational," data-driven, non-ideological problem-solver. But, he is still someone that has to contend with that culture war part of his party, and more often than not he simply folded whenever they challenged him. Or he stoked the tensions despite doing nothing to address the underlying problems. IE: Championing the party of law and order, but not investing at all in our prisons system.

When it came to Brexit however, this is where it became a civil war in ideals of the enlightenment. Locke's National Sovereignty vs. Kant's Perpetual Peace.

The pro-EU position argues that in the 20th century, the nation-state itself proved to be the single most dangerous threat to individual, Enlightenment-era rights (e.g., in Nazi Germany).

Therefore, the only way to truly protect an individual's rights (life, liberty, etc.) is to have a trans-national layer of protection, like the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). By "pooling" sovereignty, each nation agrees to a set of rules that prevents any one national government from becoming tyrannical and violating its citizens' rights.

You cannot have a position against this in 2025, considering the genuine "peace in our time" moment that the EU has provided. It provides such a shield that countries outside of it beg to join it.

This tends to be where a lot of conservatives disagree internally on best approaches going forward. While our Enlightenment period ended, it hasn't stopped the modern day conservative from referencing all those debates years past, to effectively rehash them in the modern context - which is fine. The problem stands when it becomes entirely ideological, steeped in echo chambers via social media amplification, and in doing this rather public fighting, allows populist movements internally to seize control. It's why so many people will point to the conservative party as being champions of these ideals, the status quo, whereas Labour often inhabits those on the left that seek to change it rapidly. I think that's being insanely charitable to the Conservatives though as they have numerous times now enacted their experiments on the rest of us to challenge a settled narrative, over and over again.

Is This Just a Problem on the Right?

It’s tempting to frame this as a simple story: the "pro-Enlightenment" left vs. the "anti-Enlightenment" right. But we're going to get into specifically why this is such a problem on the right. And why actually the left is very honest about it.

The left has its own powerful traditions that are deeply skeptical of the Enlightenment. They argue not that it is "bad," but that its promise of universal reason and liberty was a lie, or at least a flawed project that served to centralise a very specific type of power (often white, male, and European). This isn't to say the Enlightenment is a perfect, finished project. One could argue that DEI initiatives, for example, are an attempt to progress and fulfil its promise of individual rights, not a contradiction of it.

1. The Marxist Critique (It’s About Class, Not "Individuals")

Karl Marx: both a product of the Enlightenment (believing in a "scientific" analysis of history) and one of its greatest critics.

Marxists argued that the Enlightenment's focus on individual rights was a bourgeois sham. What good is the individual "right to property" (from Locke) if it's used to justify one class (the bourgeoisie) owning the factories and exploiting the other (the proletariat)? For Marxists, Enlightenment institutions like Parliament were a "superstructure" built to protect the economic power of the ruling class. The "rational individual" was a fiction; only class struggle mattered.

2. The Postmodern Critique (It's About Power, Not "Truth")

This is arguably the most dominant critique of the Enlightenment on the left today, originating in 20th-century French philosophy.

Thinkers like Michel Foucault argued that "reason" wasn't a force for pure liberation; it was a new, more efficient form of power and social control. The Enlightenment didn't end tyranny; it just disguised it. Instead of a king's visible power, we now have "experts" and "scientists" using "rational" systems to define what is "normal" and control populations.

Which, when you think about it is entirely what the brexit campaign said, when they had enough of experts.

So Why Focus on the Right?

If both extremes are critical, why single out the right? Well it's about the transparency and nature of those critiques from each of these groups.

The left-wing critiques are largely explicit. They are academic, systemic, and upfront about their desire to move beyond the Enlightenment's framework. They are explicit about their desire to replace the system. You can agree or disagree, but the terms of the debate are clear.

The problem on the right is one of profound contradiction.

Many right-wing and nationalist groups don't openly say "we reject the Enlightenment." On the contrary, they frame their entire platform as an act of conservation. They advocate for "putting things back to the way they used to be" and "defending" traditional Western culture.

But... the very "culture" they claim to be defending is the culture built by the Enlightenment the one based on the rule of law, individual rights, and meritocracy. Their proposed policies are often profoundly anti-Enlightenment. Whenever they give you a time period they want to go back to, it's always to a time of peak Enlightenment. And I fundamentally don't think they understand this, or know it is the reason why things are the way they are. When I was in school, I was never taught this. It wasn't core to the curriculum, probably was in some other subject that I could have taken instead of something else.

Anyway, that aside let's take the example of extreme anti-immigration and "remigration" movements often within the right wing:

1. The Claim: "We must protect British identity."

2. The Policy: To achieve this, some propose revoking the citizenship of 4th-generation British citizens and "remigrating" them to countries their families haven't seen in a century.

3. The Contradiction: This policy is a complete assault on the most basic Enlightenment principles.

• It rejects the rule of law (which guarantees rights to all citizens).

• It throws out the Enlightenment concept of citizenship a legal status based on individual rights and replaces it with a pre-Enlightenment, ethnic-nationalist one based on "blood and soil."

• It fundamentally violates the ideas of individual liberty and property (in this case, the 'property' of one's own citizenship) that John Locke championed.

This is the paradox: they are attempting to "defend" a culture using methods that would destroy its very foundations, it's almost like when some twitter users wanted Biden to give himself god king powers to ensure Trump wouldn't win and then lock the door behind him. When populist leaders attack the "tyranny of judges," they are not defending tradition; they are attacking the separation of powers that was designed specifically to protect the people from a tyrannical government.

It’s one thing to have an open debate about replacing the Enlightenment framework, as some on the left do. It’s another thing entirely to claim you are defending that framework while, through a lack of understanding, actively setting it on fire, and probably not even knowing the country was built on it.

The Bizarre "Role Model" Contradiction

This is where the right seems to have some serious misunderstandings of what their culture is. In a baffling act of intellectual self-sabotage, some nationalist groups "defending" Western culture point to Hungary as a model for the future.

Major conservative conferences (like CPAC) have been held in Budapest, and leaders from the American and European right have openly praised Prime Minister Viktor Orbán for building what he himself calls an "illiberal democracy."

They praise him for defending "Christian heritage" and "national identity." But what they are actually praising is the systematic rejection of the Enlightenment. They are praising a model that bases national belonging on ethnic and "bloodline" identity (jus sanguinis) rather than on the core Western principle of civic, legal citizenship (jus soli).

This is the truth staring them in the face: The only reason the UK and US are different from these illiberal models is because of the Enlightenment.

And, please for the love of all that is holy, don't make me go into my twitter feed and reference the thousands of tweets calling for the West to emulate the Chinese model. For those wondering the differences...

So, the two models:

1. The Western Model (Civic Nationalism): This is a direct product of the Enlightenment's "social contract." A nation is a political community of people who agree to live under the same laws and rights. Your citizenship is a legal status, not an ethnic one. This is the Lockean idea that the state exists to protect the rights of its individual members, regardless of their ancestry. This distinction is at the root of the confused debate around Scottish nationalism. The SNP's platform is based on civic nationalism (anyone living in Scotland can be Scottish), yet it is constantly mis-attacked by its opponents as a "blood and soil" ethnic nationalism, a peak projection and a total misunderstanding of both models.

2. The "Bloodline" Model (Ethnic Nationalism): It argues that a nation is an organic, ethnic entity bound by shared blood and ancient culture. Your "right" to belong comes from your lineage, not from a legal code. While it grew from Enlightenment, it has tensions with many of the ideas. These are pretty obvious as it's the one the right often wants to emulate these days in the west. IE: Strip certain ethnic groups of rights so we can deport them to wherever we want.

When a group in the West points to China's, Hungary, whoever it may be, jus sanguinis ("right of blood") system as an example, this is what they are actually saying, whether they know it or not:

In order to save our unique Western culture (which was built on the Enlightenment principles of individual rights and the rule of law) we must immediately abandon those principles and adopt the ethno-nationalist model championed by the Chinese Communist Party.

It is laughable. They are advocating for the total rejection of the very "Britishness" or "Westernness" they claim to be defending.

To be clear, this isn't a moral judgement on other nations. Many countries run on an ethnic nationalism model; it's not for me to tell them how they should operate.

The entire point is that the West made its choice. We had this debate hundreds of years ago. The intellectual and legal shift away from a "blood and soil" identity and towards one based on individual rights, law, and civic participation was our Enlightenment. It has been the bedrock of our nations ever since. To demand we copy others is to demand we tear that foundation down.

Thought Experiment: Would "The Fix" Even Work?

Let's engage with the core complaint in good faith. If a system isn't working, you should change it. That's a very rational, Enlightenment-era idea in itself.

But what is the evidence that the Enlightenment project itself has failed? By almost every conceivable metric, it has been the most staggering success in human history.

• The societies built on this framework have generated the highest standards of living and personal safety ever known.

• We have systems of democratic accountability and individual rights that, while imperfect, are the envy of the world.

• The system allows for progressive change. The very fact that we can fight for and win greater rights for more people is a feature of the system.

• Our culture of free inquiry and intellectual property fosters genuine innovation. It's the whole reason other nations resort to IP theft - they are trying to copy the results of our open system without adopting the system itself.

The core complaint from these groups isn't really that the whole system is broken. It's that they don't like one specific outcome of that system: immigration and a multicultural society.

The "Cure" Would Kill the Patient

So, let's follow their "fix" to its logical conclusion. What if we tore up the Enlightenment rulebook, abandoned the rule of law, and adopted a "bloodline" model?

If the UK or US were to actually implement the demands of the most extreme, to revoke citizenship and deport millions of their own citizens, what would happen?

The economic shock would make the dislocation of Brexit or trade wars look like a minor tremor. You are talking about instantly vaporising a massive percentage of your workforce, your tax base, and your consumer market. You are talking about a collapse of public services, followed by a permanent, self-inflicted depression.

It's an emotional tantrum in search of a policy, one that hasn't been thought through to its logical, catastrophic conclusion. It's a "solution" that wouldn't create the 1950s utopia they imagine. It would create a new, broken, impoverished, and internationally isolated pariah state that had just thrown away 300 years of its own cultural and intellectual heritage for nothing.

Conclusion: Who The Hell Is Benefiting From This?

This educational gap, the failure to teach people where their own culture of rights and reason comes is a strategic vulnerability. And like any vulnerability, there are those all too happy to exploit it.

When people are left to guess what their culture is, they become deeply susceptible to bad ideas. They are told they must "defend" their home, but are handed a lit torch and pointed at their own foundations.

So, who benefits?

1. Geopolitical Adversaries

The most obvious answer is nation-states that see strong, stable Western democracies as a threat. Regimes like Vladimir Putin's in Russia greatly benefit from the failure of Western countries. Their goal is destabilisation. They don't need to win a conventional war if they can convince us to tear ourselves apart. By funding divisive campaigns, they pour fuel on this cultural confusion, hoping we abandon the very Enlightenment principles that make us a coherent alternative to their authoritarian models.

2. Domestic Opportunists and Grifters

Closer to home, you have the media commentators, online personalities, and political grifters who seek to monetise the confusion. They don't need a consistent ideology; they just need an angry, vulnerable audience. They find people who feel left behind, validate their fear, and then crucially misdiagnose the cause. They rally people against their own cultural inheritance for clicks, book sales, and relevance. It is the political equivalent of turkeys voting for Christmas. You are now seeing them slightly lose control over this. With Candace Owens going on her own against Israel for... some reason, and the Republicans having a certified Nazi problem.

3. The Illiberal Power-Seekers

This is the final and most dangerous beneficiary: the politicians and ideologues who aren't just looking for money; they are looking for actual, unchecked power.

They use the chaos created by the first two groups as "proof" that the entire system is broken. They leverage the public's confusion to launch a direct assault on the institutions themselves.

When they attack "activist judges," "the blob," or "enemies of the people," they are not-so-subtly attacking the separation of powers, the independent judiciary, and the meritocratic civil service. These are the very safeguards the Enlightenment built to protect us from a tyrannical government.

Their "solution" to the chaos is always the same: "The rules are the problem. Give me more power. Let me bypass the system." They are the aspiring strongman offering to "fix" the country by becoming the very tyrant our entire culture was designed to prevent. Farage wants to leave the ECHR, to deport people back to countries that have no intention on taking them back. How on earth are you meant to square that as a right winger. He's obviously just using you. And when that doesn't work they'll blame something or someone else.

Ultimately, the confusion over our own history benefits everyone except the regular citizens who have to live with the consequences. The only real act of "defending" Western culture is to re-learn, re-assert, and re-commit to the foundational Enlightenment values that built it in the first place. Schools should have some class, lesson, agenda within them that actively teaches what built this country. Right wingers have a point here, although yet again come to the wrong conclusion. We should be proud of this country and what generations before did to get it to this stage. Problem is neither of us bloody know about it, unless we specifically do the university classes that cover it.

If you have gained anything from this article. I hope you have a better understanding at least of why your country has the systems it does, why it runs the way it does and if you aren't a fan of it, what the bar is in terms of replacing or changing that system. Advocating for populist parties to enact that change, won't fool the majority. Reform might poll around 30%, but that's still a minority. Considering Brexit won on 52% of the vote and has already slid all the way back to now 30% support. There's no telling how much regret the public would have with a minority, or even small majority passing radical systemic change.

The system's checks and balances are not magical. They only remain in place as long as we, the people, understand what they are, why they exist, and actively defend them.