“(It seems even insane academics aren’t insane enough to choose to go broke defending those policies.)”
It shows what frauds they are to abandon a sincerely held moral belief of theirs for filthy lucre. Good thing they’re not the founding fathers or something.
James Burnham and Sam Francis wrote about this topic.
Power is what matters.
The weaklings in large bureaucracies will surrender once power is demonstrated—whether on the left or the right.
That is why intellectual debates are less important than they seem—and controlling governments is what really matters.