Seems like a reaction (no pun intended) to a false dilemma: either unlimited direct democracy (majoritarianism) and equality of outcomes or unlimited monarchy and lack of what is termed "equality of liberty" (every individual is treated equally before the law).

Whenever I hear someone who claims to like liberty preach against democracy in favour of reaction and monarchy, I feel they miss that when classical liberal enlightenment thinkers (who were the first to speak of individual liberty, advocate for free trade, property rights, and abolition of compulsory membership in guilds) critized democracy, the word democracy didn't mean what it means today: it meant direct and unlimited Athenian-style democracy, that lead to Socrates' death.

To add to this, they mistake traditionalism/conservatism of Edmund Burke (in a way, the intellectual founding father of the US republican party and modern Tories) who happened to criticize French revolution with actual continental reactionary politics (of Hegel, Metternich, De Maistre, etc...) Here's a tendency to explain Burke's support of American Revolution followed by opposition to the French revolution for a change in his views: in reality, they were consistent -- he was appalled by the Jacobins, but supported constitutional law, equality of freedom (arguing for emancipation of Catholics and against imperialism/subjugation of India), and so forth...

When reactionaries speak against democracy they do so for entirely different reasons than when US founding fathers (or the philosophers that inspired them) warned against democracy. The reasons reactionary thinkers from Plato onwards despised democracy had more to do with the fact that they saw democratic cities as having _too much_ freedom. They absolutely despised private property, trade, and the middle/upper-middle classes (all of which are likely sacred with these neo-reactionaries).

Their idea of monarchy was far more similar to Byzantine absolutism, as opposed to constitutional monarchy of e.g., Franz Josef of Austro Hungarian Empire (who, incidentally, also despised nationalism and presciently saw it as an incredibly destructive force) or even "enlightened absolutism" of Fredrick The Great.

So here's a "radical" thought: despite all of its flaws, limited (de-facto or de-jure) constitutional government (a.k.a. "rule of law" in English speaking countries, and "rechstaat" in German speaking countries), genuine social _and_ economic liberalism (aka "classical liberalism"), and democracy have (overall) greatly increased human liberty, happiness, and productivity. There's tons of rooms for debate -- but I'd imagine most honest left-liberals would much prefer to live in, e.g., US under Reagan or UK under Thatcher than in Fidel's Cuba, while most honest libertarians/conservatives would much prefer to live in social-democratic countries of Western Europe/Scandinavia than in Spain under Franco, Portugal under Salazar, or Chile under Pinochet[1]. Conservatives may wax enthusiastically about low taxes in semi-authoritarian Singapore, but I'm not sure if that enthusiasm would continue if they realized that the country also punishes firearm possession by death.

Personally, I hope that a broader centrist liberal party emerges in the US (which would also include libertarians as part of its big tent coaliation -- Reagan and Thatcher parroted libertarian ideas, while expanding perhaps most anti-libertarian agenda, namely the War On Drugs). The NSA spying scandal was awful, but one of its results was the begging of a left-right coalition focused on civil liberties.

So in all, I think the idea that rule by a new generation of philosopher kings will somehow make us more free seems silly: it's ease to get caught up in the aesthetics of the idea, but it's bizzare to think as to how this may actually strengthen the rights to life, liberty, and property.

[1] Obviously all sane people would not want to live in Stalinist USSR, Nazi Germany, or North Korea -- but totalitarianism is a far more rare phenomena than "mere" authoritarianism and isn't really a danger at this point: its bloody record speaks for itself.