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November 10, 2025

An Open Letter to the Conservative Movement

The battle for the heart and soul of the American Conservative Movement is being fought on many fronts, with the latest trench warfare occurring in the boardrooms of its long-standing and most influential foundations and think tanks. The recent controversy
@Heritage
points to how Conservatism’s venerable institutions have been infiltrated and quietly taken over by a tight-knit, fringe group of post-liberal thinkers who believe America has been “off the rails” since the Founding.

In their minds, the Declaration and Constitution must take a backseat to usher in a new, post-democratic, post-capitalist economic system that advocates isolationism, an immigration ban, and a domestic policy that blurs distinctions between church and state. While often described as MAGA or populist, this group is more tightly aligned to the philosophy of media crank
@TuckerCarlson
than President Trump’s agenda.

As longtime board members and leaders of
@ISI
, the oldest conservative campus organization in America, founded in 1953 by William F. Buckley Jr., we have fought to preserve ISI’s longstanding mission from falling victim to a post-liberal hijacking. That battle was lost at a board meeting held last Friday, at the conclusion of which we tendered our resignations.

We hope our experience will serve as a wake-up call that the integrity and longstanding values of conservative institutions are being systematically and intentionally undermined by post-liberals who promote a “no enemies to the right” mindset.

We urged our fellow trustees to terminate ISI’s current President,
@johnnyburtka
, who formerly served as executive director of the post-liberal journal
@amconmag
, and return ISI to its core academic work of “Educating for Liberty” by helping American college students to learn and appreciate the perennial ideas and timeless values that have made America great.

ISI has largely abandoned its on-campus philosophical programming, which equipped future leaders to better uphold American ideals. Instead, it focuses on ideological and political podcasts that introduce audiences to alt-right online personalities, such as Tucker Carlson and others who seek to undermine the liberal ideas of the American Founding.

This fundamental shift in ISI’s focus was done behind the board’s back. It’s new signal program, the podcast Project Cosmos, was dropped on X (formerly Twitter) on August 19, featuring postliberal icon
@PatrickDeneen
and neo-reactionary
@curtis_yarvin
. Despite two board meetings taking place between the podcast’s release and the start of the costly production in February, the board was never informed of the existence of Project Cosmos.

Three Heritage Foundation directors,
@LarryArnn
of
@Hillsdale
, Michael Gleba of the Sarah Scaife Foundation, and Heritage’s current president,
@KevinRobertsTX
, are trustees of ISI and attended the Friday meeting. None objected to or questioned the judgment of platforming Yarvin in Project Cosmos’s inaugural episode. This, after being confronted with a long list of damning quotes from Yarvin.

Yarvin is a self-described neo-reactionary, unapologetic monarchist, and a leader of the Dark Enlightenment movement who advocates for “rebooting” and replacing liberal democracy. He writes, “If Americans want to change their government, they're going to have to get over their dictator phobia.” He has also said, “Although I am not a white nationalist, I am not exactly allergic to the stuff.”

Rather than peeling away disaffected young males who flock to the noxious ideas of Fuentes and Yarvin, ISI’s Project Cosmos fawns over their anti-liberal philosophies. They appear to be successful in appealing to the Yarvin-Fuentes-Carlson echo chamber, as Project Cosmos reported that the video garnered six million views on X, with a skewing of more than 90% male.

What is unclear is how many women and other traditional ISI students, professors, alumni, and donors are turned off by ISI’s celebration of the odious and un-American ideas espoused by Yarvin, Fuentes, and Carlson. Traditionally, ISI’s mission was to teach American ideals to curious students on college campuses. The mission of helping students search for truth is now replaced by the post-liberals’ lust for political power in Washington.

The Heritage Foundation and Hillsdale College are not the only pillars of the modern Conservative Movement to subsidize
@TCNetwork
. Carlson was the headliner at ISI’s gala two years ago, and this year, one of its three $75,000 annual fellowships went to the Tucker Carlson Network. Before Burtka’s arrival, fellows were found at genuine journalism outlets, including
@WSJ
,
@USATODAY
,
@NRO
, and
@dallasnews
.

What happened at Heritage and ISI in recent weeks underscores how a cadre of post-liberals has worked together, behind the scenes, to wrest control of conservative institutions from actual conservatives. They have quietly filled boardrooms with post-liberals, integralists, and other fellow travelers who disdain traditional conservatism’s central tenets of free markets, limited government, individual liberty, and personal responsibility. These usurpers of conservatism, as Yarvin puts it, find America’s core principles to be “historically leftist” and prevent the right from defeating the left both philosophically and at the ballot box.

The leaders of the postliberal project continue to be close friends with Carlson, Yarvin, and their ilk, to be open to discussion with the likes of Fuentes and other racists and antisemites, and to praise autocrats like Hungary’s Viktor Orban—and Carlson even lauds the “social values” of Venezuela’s dictator Nicolas Maduro. They echo Yarvin’s call to overcome the fear of dictatorship and relinquish respect for representative government and the checks and balances the Founders established.

Traditional conservatives who believe in America’s Founding principles and look back at the Reagan Revolution as a step in the right direction need to wake up and understand the battle currently underway.

Heritage’s Founder and longtime ISI Chairman Edwin J. Feulner, Jr., presciently warned in the final article he penned in
@NationalAffairs
before his death this past July:

“An existential identity crisis now grips the American right. A political movement once united by commitment to limited government, moral order, and a robust defense of American ideals now appears fractured, its purpose clouded by populist grievances and ideological drift.”

Supporters of ISI, Heritage, and other mainstream Conservative institutions must be on notice that the programs and purposes they are funding may no longer be what they think they are. Today is the time for choosing. We hope all conservatives will choose to fight on the side of William F. Buckley, Jr. and give no corner to those preaching white supremacy, antisemitism, eugenics, and bigotry.

Onward!

Christopher Long, former President, Intercollegiate Studies Institute

Thomas Lynch, former Chairman, Intercollegiate Studies Institute