# JD Vance Ideology Map of [[JD Vance]]'s belief system — the synthesis of three currents that are normally incompatible, and how each entered the executive branch through him. The running developments live on the canonical [[JD Vance]] page. > Vance is the **political vehicle** by which several intellectual movements reach state power. Read this with [[JD Vance Inner Circle]] (the people) and [[JD Vance Campaign Finance]] (the patronage). ## The three currents | Current | Short form | Source / vehicle | |---|---|---| | Dark Enlightenment / NRx | "Fire every mid-level bureaucrat… replace them with our people" and defy the courts (the RAGE idea) | [[Curtis Yarvin]] (called a "friend"); [[Dark Enlightenment]] | | Catholic post-liberalism | Liberalism has failed; order the regime to virtue | [[Patrick Deneen]] (*Regime Change*); Augustine's *City of God*; [[Catholic Post-Liberalism]] | | Tech-populist nationalism | State power for American workers *and* American tech oligarchs | [[America First]]; tariffs + crypto/AI/defense priorities | ## How they fit together The synthesis only holds if you don't look too closely at the contradictions: economic nationalism (reshoring, tariffs, anti-free-trade) fused with tech-industry priorities (crypto deregulation, AI dominance, defense-tech procurement). The unifying move is **anti-regime** posture — the shared vocabulary across all three currents ("anti-elitist, anti-regime," pure [[Patrick Deneen]]). ## The NRx pipeline into the executive Vance is the clearest case of neoreactionary ideas reaching real power: - Calls [[Curtis Yarvin]] a friend; proposes a version of Yarvin's **RAGE** ("Retire All Government Employees") plan. - His mentor [[Peter Thiel]] funded Yarvin's software company (Urbit) — the funding-to-office throughline. - Uses the explicit vocabulary: "anti-regime," "the regime." See [[Peter Thiel Ideology]] for the upstream system Vance operationalizes. ## Conversion & the Catholic turn Converted to Catholicism in 2019 — the period of deepest embedding in post-liberal circles. Told a post-liberal Catholic conference "I have admired a lot of you from afar"; appeared with [[Patrick Deneen]] at a *Regime Change* discussion. The 2026 clashes with [[Pope Leo XIV]] (see [[JD Vance Quotes]]) show the tension between his integralist allies and his nationalist politics. ## Foreign policy as ideology - **Ukraine skepticism** — the Senate's most vocal opponent of aid; "pivot to Asia… resources exist in a world of scarcity." Aligns with Thiel's preference for reduced European commitments. - **China/Taiwan** — arm Taiwan but reshore chip fabs (industrial policy that benefits the Thiel-network defense-tech portfolio). ## See Also - [[JD Vance]] — canonical biography - [[Dark Enlightenment]] · [[Catholic Post-Liberalism]] · [[Curtis Yarvin]] · [[Patrick Deneen]] - [[JD Vance Inner Circle]] — the people who carry the ideas - [[Peter Thiel Ideology]] — the upstream system - [[JD Vance Dossier]]