Somebody’s Got to Build It
Somebody’s Got to Build It
A new book examines J.D. Vance and the end of libertarian illusions.
J.D. Vance’s ascent from Rust Belt despair to vice-presidential power is more than political theater. It signals a fundamental rupture in conservative thought, one that Frank DeVito’s JD Vance and the Future of the Republican Party takes seriously as both biography and diagnosis.
The subtext throughout is class. Vance’s rise captures the voice of forgotten workers, fractured families, and a culture frayed by globalization. When factories shuttered and communities crumbled, many fathers found themselves adrift, their roles reduced to relics. Mothers bore the brunt, juggling survival amid addiction and absence. After decades of such erosion, Vance emerges not just as a politician, but as a diagnostician of decline.
DeVito’s core thesis deserves attention: Vance’s vision isn’t mere opportunism, but a corrective to a party long captive to libertarian illusions. This matters for more than Ohio voters. It reshapes how we value dependence, dignity, and the common good.
DeVito, an occasional contributor to The American Conservative, recounts Vance’s chaotic upbringing, replete with addiction and instability, and the escape hatch provided by Marine Corps. He then pivots to broader ills: trade policies favoring elites, safety nets failing the vulnerable, and political rhetoric ignoring cultural rot. His argument feels grounded in real lives, homing in on America’s deindustrialized core. The problem, as DeVito frames it, is that our entire system is built for the autonomous individual, the median entrepreneur. Eventually, even the strong are left behind. With families and communities cut out of the equation, the number of “standard” Americans gets dangerously small.
What kind of politics bestows dignity? Is it measured by tax cuts alone, or by who thrives in the end?
DeVito argues that dignity flows from ordered loves: family, faith, and fair work. “Line go up” economics has dominated Republican politics for far too long. We’ve chased GDP so fiercely that other measures, such as birth rates, marriages, and community ties, have plummeted. Vance rejects this calculus, advocating for pro-worker tariffs, family tax credits, and foreign policy restraint. Such a politics would honor unseen labor: the caregiver’s vigil, the father’s provision, the community’s mutual aid. It would serve all, able or dependent, prosperous or precarious.
Vance’s Catholic conversion, as DeVito explores, underscores this reorientation. From vague Evangelical roots to Augustinian order, his faith teaches that autonomy is illusion. We are fundamentally dependent creatures, on God, on each other, on structures of mutual obligation. The question becomes: How can a party embody this without theocracy? Some values can be supported through policy, but the reframing demands cultural shifts as well.
Our culture expects much that goes unspoken—that workers forgo family for flexibility, that dependence equals weakness. DeVito exposes how shortsighted this is. Mothers stepping back from careers sustain the nation, raising the next generation of taxpayers while contributing to systems themselves. If autonomy’s slogan is “Just achieve it,” perhaps conservatism’s should be, “Somebody’s got to build it.”
DeVito places stock in Vance’s preference for pragmatism, incremental pro-life wins, and manufacturing revival over rigid ideology. He praises bills like the Dismantle DEI Act, yet notes Vance’s moderation on IVF as electoral realism. If Vance’s governing philosophy rests on recognizing human dignity from conception, on rejecting utilitarian calculus that treats persons as a means to GDP growth, then his equivocation on assisted reproduction technologies that routinely destroy embryos represents more than a strategic compromise: it suggests the whole edifice may be built on unstable ground.
DeVito asks whether this is wise accommodation or troubling compromise, then moves on. But the question demands a sterner examination: When does “incremental” become “incoherent”? When does political expediency erode the moral foundation one claims to defend? These questions are central to whether Vance’s synthesis can survive contact with power, or whether it will dissolve into the same poll-tested mush it claims to transcend.
The tension runs deeper still. In every chapter, DeVito probes dependence: the child’s need for stability, the worker’s for fair wages, the convert’s for grace. But what happens when dependencies clash, when protecting one constituency means constraining another? DeVito gestures at this problem when questioning libertarianism’s advocacy for unchecked markets: Can one class really thrive at another’s expense? Yet he doesn’t fully grapple with the trade-offs his own vision demands.
DeVito’s aim isn’t exhaustive policy prescription; it’s to expose the GOP’s false anthropology. If truth bends to relativism, workers become widgets and families become optional. But if men and women are irreducibly social beings, needing each other for survival and sanctity, then they need a party that sees them as fully human.
The book’s synthesis of Vance’s intellectual journey proves its greatest strength. DeVito traces how Vance moved from viewing Trump’s rhetoric as excessive to recognizing America’s institutions as genuinely corrupted, requiring not merely restraint but active reformation. This evolution reflects intellectual honesty in the face of changing circumstances, not opportunism.
DeVito demonstrates particular skill in positioning Vance within broader conservative intellectual movements. He shows how Vance bridges multiple worlds: the populist energy of MAGA, the philosophical depth of Catholic social teaching, and the policy sophistication of think tanks like American Compass and the Claremont Institute. This makes Vance uniquely qualified to translate Trumpism into a coherent governing philosophy that could outlast Trump himself.
Whether Vance becomes the party’s standard-bearer in 2028 or fades from the spotlight, this book documents something crucial: a moment when Republican politics confronts its own contradictions. The question isn’t whether the party will change; Trump has already ensured that. The question is whether it can articulate a coherent philosophy beyond one man’s raw instincts.
In Vance, DeVito sees that potential, a leader who combines Trump’s populist instincts with intellectual depth and political skill with genuine conviction. Whether voters agree remains to be seen. But DeVito makes a compelling case that the future of American conservatism may well run through a son of Appalachia, the man from Middletown, Ohio.
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