Conservative radio show host Erick Erickson published an article last week detailing how self-described “warlord” Charles Haywood has been building an “armed patronage network” (again, Haywood’s own description) that has infiltrated Christian and secular conservative organizations. According to Erickson, those in Haywood’s orbit embrace “white nationalism, antisemitism, and even Nazi sympathies … to varying degrees.” The article went viral. Praise and criticism were both intense.
Erickson’s supporters insisted that the long-form, densely cited essay was sorely needed. Erickson provided receipts and connected dots. Or did he? Charles Haywood is a University of Chicago-educated lawyer-turned-entrepreneur who sold his shampoo company in 2020. In his 2021 article, “The Foundationalist Manifesto,” he outlines his vision of the ideal society.
The manifesto identifies the “singular” problem with modern society as “autonomic liberalism, the philosophy of the Enlightenment” which Foundationalism “plans to destroy.” His new order will usher in a “limited dictatorship” or “aristocratic” rule but it “will not be democratic, because [democracy] is unnatural and destructive at scale.” The government will have “unlimited means” to enact their virtuous goals with a “light touch.” What are those goals?
According to Haywood, the ideal government would deport “all illegal immigrants and legal immigrants of the past several decades [who are] not culturally compatible.” It would forbid men and women from “freely choosing the path they want.” Women will “not be permitted to choose career over family” and “men will not be permitted to choose not to have a family.” A “free society” will exist, but “virtue” will always take precedence over “the free market” such that “political choice will dictate the limits of economic choice.” Finally, “Christianity will be the officially favored religion” such that Christians will “receive state preferment” as well as “preferment in the private sphere, from jobs to social status.”