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I think this is the key difference. I also think there's a racial angle here. Whites in the US (and in the West more generally) have been the most ardent defenders and practitioners of individualism. The people who told them to do this were using arguments very similar to the ones employed by Jordan B. Peterson.
How did that go? The right has been losing on nearly everything. The only area where the right has won is on economics, but even here there's a question to what extent we should treat neoliberal victory as "right-wing". Previous incarnations of US conservatism (think late 1800s, early 1900s) were deeply critical, if not outright hostile, to capitalism. Those intellectuals viewed capitalism as uprooting traditional ways of life, destroying the countryside and spoiling nature.
It was only with Reaganism (about the time when Cowen was a young lad) that the shift towards equating rampant capitalism somehow became associated with being "right-wing". Perhaps there is a generational divide here.
So to me, the two big differences with the New Right are: A) understanding that working collectively, including using state power, is necessary and dogmatic individualism has failed to reap benefits together. B) neoliberalism is less important than cultural and social issues and can in fact work against you, e.g. many corporations are very woke and have done next to nothing to push back at social trends that the New Right views as harmful or unwanted.
Are we watching the same movie?
Because from where I'm sitting it doesn't look like the right is loosing at all. We're watching 60 years of progressive academic dogma implode before our eyes in exactly the way that old school Republicans have been predicting it eventually would. The Gods of the Copybook Headings have returned and this is somehow supposed to be a strike against Kipling? I don't buy it.
Sure the Libertarians are loosing but that is as was expected. Their alliance with the wider right wasn't so much a matter of shared values and ideology as it was an accident of history. The US' founding as a frontier state allowing many who were anarchists by temperament to kinda-sorta paint themselves as "conservatives". In any other democratic nation they'd be caucusing with the rest of the utopian radicals.
Not to mention abortion wins.
That's the thing, from where I'm sitting the the right is winning on economics, winning on, gun rights, winning on abortion. The trans/groomer stuff has proven hilariously unpopular and has rendered a bunch of formerly "safe" progressive seats competitive for conservative candidates for the first time in decades, ditto the "defund the police" nonsense. While I would advise against getting cocky I think it's indicative of the current state of the Democratic party that Biden is already a lame-duck less than half way through his first term.
The right is winning on economics only in as much as we're not headed towards actual Communism. The right is winning on gun rights and abortion only in red states. And for gun rights, not at the Federal level in particular -- NFA1934 and GCA1968 stand unencumbered, as does ATF and its burdensome variety of regulations. The "defund the police" nonsense is unpopular but happening (just not as much as the left would like), as are DAs who don't want to charge crimes.
You're kidding me right? Gun Rights advocates have not just been winning but winning decisively for the last 15+ years. 94 AWB repealed, 2nd Amendment incorporated against the states, magazine bans struck down, may-issue permitting struck down, transport bans struck down. "Constitutional carry" has gone from being legal in 3 states to 24 states, and gun-control is viewed as electorally toxic in all but the bluest of blue enclaves.
Far from being evidence of impending defeat, the fact that things like national permit reciprocity and the possibility of amending or repealing the NFA are even in the conversation is a mark of just how far we've come.
Sunsetted, and effective only in red states because blue states went and outlawed all that stuff anyway.
In theory only.
NJ magazine possession ban upheld at the appeals level. Case vacated and remanded by Bruen but not overturned.
So maybe 10 years after getting "caught" transporting a gun through an anti-gun area you'll clear the felony charges hanging over your head. Unless they decide the gun was too readily available (and thus not subject to the safe transport law) because you could have lowered the rear seat to access the trunk.
If there was a real win here, I could go to a gun store tomorrow -- in my home state of New Jersey or in New York or Pennsylvania or any other -- plunk down some cash, get a gun and ammo and a holster, strap that gun to my hip, and take that gun to my office in New York City without breaking any gun laws. I cannot do most of that. I cannot buy a gun in New Jersey because there is an onerous permitting system to buy a gun; I need to disclose some information I do not know and get two unrelated adults to swear I'm moral enough to buy a gun. I cannot buy a gun in New York or Pennsylvania because interstate sales of guns are forbidden. I can buy the ammo in Pennsylvania, at least, though what good it does without a gun I don't know. If I strap a gun to my hip, that's a felony; there's ANOTHER onerous permit system in New Jersey (THREE unrelated adults now to swear I'm moral enough to carry a gun) and yet another in New York (and one in PA which I believe is less onerous). And even if I had the permit, the various restrictions on carry would make it impossible to get to my office without violating some gun law or another.
Consider what a real win looks like. Obergefell. All the gays could get married, everywhere in the country, almost immediately. Officials who resisted (and I only know of one) were punted aside like nothing.
Sunsetted because every attempt to renew or extend it went down in flames. Likewise when you say "effective only in red states" what you actually mean is "effective in 43 states out of 50", the 7 exceptions being California, Connecticut, Hawaii, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey and New York. (Fun aside, a lot of cold-war era battle rifles are over 50 years old now and can be exempted as antiques )
California's magazine ban has been struck down so if New Jersey's ban was upheld as you claim we now get to see the supreme court rectify the disagreement between the circuits.
As an aside, we've been going back and forth on this and other topics for 10 years now (since summer 2012), and that whole time your schtick has always been that wokeness is all powerful, wokeness is omnipresent, the right is doomed, resistance is futile, etc... etc... Has it occurred to you that it only seems that way because you keep seeking it out? Like I get that a FAANG job in NYC is a big status boost, but you were ultimately the one who made the choice to step into the lion's den.
Those 7 states are 24% of the population
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