Today I’m sharing what may be one of Gunkel’s most controversial charts, especially in today’s highly charged political environment.
Titled “Advice to the Right on Policy & Ideology,” the chart is a visual list of around 30 Gunkel recommendations.
As I’ve written before, Gunkel’s most closely held political affiliation was libertarianism, a growing alternative political movement in the 1970s and 1980s that was also popular in science fiction circles.
But he also rubbed elbows with a number of right-leaning public intellectuals including Herman Kahn—a.k.a. “the Real Dr. Strangelove”—and the primary supporter of the ideonomy project, physicist Frederick Seitz.
Now before you intellectually flatten things out and decide that Gunkel can’t be trusted because of his beliefs or the company he kept, please recognize that Gunkel would have likely been just as willing to provide advice to the left as to the right, and much of the advice would have been exactly the same.
Therefore, this chart probably doesn’t reflect Gunkel’s actual knowledge of—or interest in—politics; rather, it likely presents his own vision for the future filtered through his interpretation of libertarianism and projected upon the right as a political instrument to achieve that vision. There are probably a number of layers to this, is what I’m saying.
I can’t provide you with any specific context about this chart, either.
I don’t know whether it came out of a political consulting gig Gunkel may have been hired on, whether he did it for fun, or who he shared it with.
The date on the chart is listed as ~198[X]. It was therefore likely created in the early 1980s, i.e., during Ronald Reagan’s first presidency, because later in the 1980s Gunkel was hard at work on ideonomy.
A red arrow with the word “Porterfield” indicates that Gunkel gave this chart to Billy Porterfield, a friend and newspaper columnist in Austin, Texas.
Note: I have the right to disseminate this material. It may not be copied, stored, reproduced, or disseminated without express written permission. However, excerpts can and should be used for scholarly purposes.
What makes this document interesting from a 2026 perspective is that it anticipated a number of developments that actually happened with the American right, although I have no idea whether these suggestions would have been obvious in the early 1980s:
It urged the right to stop merely defending the status quo and instead offer an affirmative cultural vision. That has become a major theme of many conservative intellectuals and politicians.
It suggested moving beyond pure laissez-faire toward some form of strategic industrial policy. Parts of today’s Republican coalition (especially national conservatives) have moved in that direction, while libertarians remain skeptical.
Perhaps most concretely, the chart also foreshadowed the tactics of modern conservatives by recommending: Give the Right its own set of minorities, “causes,” lobbyists, & media events.
On the other hand, several recommendations now look almost opposite to the modern movement—particularly abandoning opposition to abortion and gun control, embracing a much larger planning role for government, and de-emphasizing America itself in favor of broader political ideals.
These positions would likely receive little support from the mainstream U.S. right in 2026, but who knows where we would be now if the GOP had adopted these ideas much earlier?
One thing I find funny is that Gunkel still seems to be conflating libertarianism with Ayn Rand’s “Objectivism” even though the dating on the chart shows this was written well after Rand’s public 1976 smackdown of Gunkel in the New York Times opinion pages.
Full transcription of the chart is below.
ADVICE TO THE RIGHT ON POLICY & IDEOLOGY ~198[x]
Become thoroughly rationalistic. Give reasons for all your ideas.
Quit being on the defensive. Take to the offensive & outdo the Left.
Create tradition. Do not merely seek to perpetuate, like Mortmain, past traditions.
Become the ideology of ideas rather than of simple & rigid formulae.
Fashion a profound vision of the future. Speak for the future, destiny, & transcendence.
Discover & celebrate the power of freedom & pluralism à la F. Von Hayek.
Defend the sanctity, sovereignty, & centrality of the individual.
Embrace “qualitative” rather than “quantitative” defense.
Become experimental, scientific, & latitudinous.
Espouse a sophisticated, novel synthesis of laissez-faire & Japanese capitalism. Avoid any narrow, naïve economic policy or theory.
Understand & come to terms with the Left’s meaning.
Abandon such crude traditional tenets & positions as: opposition to abortion, gun control, & some psychopharmaceuticals; sacredness of the defense budget; America as highest & best; primitive religion.
By logic, facts, & rhetoric quietly stress America’s enormous past, present, & future value to the world as its scientific, technological, economic, political, & social fountainhead.
Defend & eulogize such things as: the ideal of progress, academic order & discipline, science, technology, industry, growth, evolutionary change, intelligence, education, method, institutionalism, health, & reality.
Truly justify things such as: class & income differences, inequalities, free enterprise, profit, limited democracy, strong defense, & traditional values (e.g., of the family, religion, neighborhood, life goals).
Steal the Left’s fire, e.g., by advocating or implementing its program in rightish ways or by absorbing & transcending it.
Give the Right its own set of minorities, “causes,” lobbyists, & media events.
Affirm sacramentalism, not religion.
Do not defend “America,” but what it helps point to, is part of, or itself falls short of. Define & give first allegiance to political ideals embracing yet transcending civilization as a synergistic whole.
Overcome your many contradictions.
Advance positive ideas. E.g., new future rights, doctrines fording excellence, & subsidizing of book publishing.
Formulate & espouse a great ethos (partly Swiss, Confucian, & Hellenic), e.g., of the primacy of excellence, order, duty, industry, thrift, civism, “patriotism,” authority, mutual respect, manners, ritualism & symbolism, universal meaning, self-development & self-control, integrity, cooperation, diversity, planning & wisdom.
Absorb or at least come to terms with certain libertarian or “objectivist” ideas & ideals.
See anew the positive values, roles, uses, & possibilities of government. E.g., vast support & guidance of science & technology; stress on gifted students; subsidizing & planning of future growth industries.
Abandon simplistic & shallowly ideological ideas (e.g., re superiority of state government, less government, causes of inflation, monetarism, or the evil of planning, intervention, taxes, or social engineering).
Ridicule & give the lie to the Left. E.g., as falsely, insufficiently, or inconsistently “Left.”
Stop contradicting & reacting against secular progress.
Call attention to the long-term GNP & P.C.I. loss that excess taxes & wages caused by lowering basic exponential growth. E.g., equivalent to 95% income tax rates.
Promote an equal sharing of responsibilities, costs, & power by the world’s nations to end an era of unfair American burdens.
Find ways to incorporate (as part of its ideological equipment) incentives, competition, ferment, etc. in (& as new forms of) socialism or statism.