From 1994 to 2002, Spruyt worked as a journalist for the Reformatorisch Dagblad, the sixth largest Dutch daily newspaper, with a mainly Protestant readership and an explicitly Calvinist editorial line.
As one of the leading voices of intellectual conservatism, Spruyt was instrumental in founding the Edmund Burke Foundation, the Dutch conservative group, in the second half of 2000.
The Foundation also defended the Bush administration's war on terror, argued for increased defence spending, stronger American-European links, and played a major role in the Dutch campaign against the European Constitution in June 2005.
During parts of 2004 and 2005 Spruyt, among other prominent Dutch intellectuals, had to hire private security services, given the bad political climate in the Netherlands following the murder of Theo van Gogh.
When Dutch politician Geert Wilders started a conservative party in 2004, Spruyt supported that move, hoping that it could spur a movement inspired on the basis of American conservatism.
Spruyt believed that Wilders should have formed a broad conservative front with other politicians like Marco Pastors (of Leefbaar Rotterdam) and Joost Eerdmans (of the LPF).
In April 2006, Spruyt delivered the second Roosevelt Study Centre Lecture in Transatlantic Relations in Middelburg on the topic "The Defence of the West: Neoconservatism and the continuing need for new Churchills."