Search






Jeff's Amazon.com Wish List

Archive Calendar

November 2024
M T W T F S S
 123
45678910
11121314151617
18192021222324
252627282930  

Archives

The state of “conservatism”: principles that are politically problematic need be abandoned

From the magazine of Buckley to the magazine of anti-Hobbit pragmatism, where it is actual conservative principle (re-defined as extremism) — as opposed to the newly branded conservatism of staunch principled Republicans like Joe Scarborough (who we know to be conservative, else how could he be selected to speak at a conservative summit by a conservative magazine?) — that is destroying the GOP.

The people evidently want more centrism, and more big government.  What they don’t want are unworkable and politically counterproductive ideas like a balanced budget amendment capped off by a percentage of GDP.  Because that could allow Democrats to offer fake support, knowing the votes aren’t there for passage, and prevent Republicans from being elected as fiscal reformers, which they won’t be, because to be a fiscal reformer of the kind who would push for balancing the budget is politically counterproductive!

Round and round and round we go.

At some some point, we just have to break with the GOP establishment and enter the political wilderness — allowing Democrats and Republicans to complete the job of crashing the system, remaining poised and ready to bring the message, via a new Party movement that very consciously and with extreme prejudice rids itself of permanent political creatures,  of limited government, fiscal responsibility, sound monetary policy, a renewed commitment to private property rights, lower taxes, judicial originalism, and individual sovereignty and autonomy to the American people who we can then show were living in a government-created mirage that enriched the ruling class while creating a permanent dependent underclass, a sprawling unelected shadow legislature inside the administrative state, and created the systemic and institutionalized conditions for molesting the private sector and shrinking wealth creation by and attacking the middle class they’ve pretended to champion.

As Rove and the big government neo-statists work to marginalize traditional conservatism or classical liberalism — usurping those designations while pushing constitutionalists to the fringe (with the help of Democrats, who are always willing to paint those who believe in first principles fetishists or potential domestic terrorists) — we need to remain firm in our willingness to teach them that we will no longer act as their base if they will no longer represent us the way we wish to be represented.

Build conservative foundations at the local level, and then, when it all goes to shit, be prepared to enter the breech with a plan that runs counter to the plans of the progressive socialists who are hoping to build on the ruins they created.

Hell, if that means breaking off into separate “countries” — or reaching a compromise where we agree to reinstitute federalism and see which system provides more freedom and more opportunity so that people can vote with their feet — I say let’s do it.

Because let’s face it:  we can elect conservative leaders and hope they remains strong; but as the recent orchestrated attacks on Cruz and Paul and Rubio have shown, the activist media will work to bring them down, and the GOP establishment, through unnamed Republican Senators, will work to marginalize them in order to keep the status quo gravy train of cronyism, power, and influence running, with themselves always comfortably nestled in the luxury sleeping cars.

 

17 Replies to “The state of “conservatism”: principles that are politically problematic need be abandoned”

  1. @PurpAv says:

    BBA in post-Constitutional America makes no sense.

  2. mc4ever59 says:

    You listening, Senator McCain?

  3. McGehee says:

    The word “budget” makes no sense in post-Constitutional America.

    Also, “law,” “liberty,” and “citizen.”

  4. Gayle says:

    I’ve decided to no longer support any national-level GOP candidates (well, except for my senator Jeff Sessions; the man rocks). Both national parties are pretty much irretrievably corrupted, and now with the Rovians (who I’m convinced make up most of the national level) openly making war on conservatives, why would I vote against my own interests? I’m solely engaged in state-level politics now.

    States’ rights, decentralization, devolution of centralized power – all these are starting to trickle into mainstream thought, and not a moment too soon.

    A great video, and one which shows how closely conservatives are starting to track with *gasp* anarchists:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mFE_6DqpBvU

  5. LBascom says:

    While we fight the elite politicians, proggs are busy conquering the culture. Despite happyfeets assertions, social issues are where the war is fought. We better understand that fast, and figure out how to fight it.

    Exhibit one, Stacy McCain:

    “In the hands of a skillful indoctrinator, the average student not only thinks what the indoctrinator wants him to think . . . but is altogether positive that he has arrived at his position by independent intellectual exertion. This man is outraged by the suggestion that he is the flesh-and-blood tribute to the success of his indoctrinators.”
    – William F. Buckley Jr., Up From Liberalism (1959)

    These skillful indoctrinators are still at it and, after many decades of propaganda from the population control movement, their ideas have been sufficiently diffused throughout our culture that the indoctrinators themselves don’t even know the etiology of their ideas, so that their students are entirely clueless.

    Exhibit two, William A. Jacobson:

    I learned what millions of very low-information young liberals already knew — there is this website called Upworthy which is one giant liberal activist social media machine which creates viral social media memes in the cause of liberal political activism.

    Upworthy was co-founded by the former digital media consultant for MoveOn.org. Upworthy touts its political agenda (emphasis in original):

    Upworthy is…

    …social media with a mission: to make important stuff as viral as a video of some idiot surfing off his roof. Here’s a piece by The New York Times‘ David Carr about our first 100 days….

    Our mission at Upworthy is to elevate and draw attention to the issues that really matter — from gay marriage to body image to global poverty — through irresistible social media. You should judge us by how good a job we’re doing at that. And please do, sincerely—we want you to hold us to that standard. Send us feedback on how we’re doing, anytime.

    For mission-driven organizations working in a business like lead generation, where you’re very tangibly and concretely building organizing power to create change, whom you work with is a moral decision. We promise that we’ll never do lead generation/membership-building work with groups that we don’t believe are, on balance, creating positive social change.

    Upworthy is the fastest growing website and already receives millions of visits a month despite being less than one year old, and has over 55 thousand Twitter followers. It recently received $4 million in venture capital funding.

  6. sdferr says:

    Biota seem to be self-organizing complexes. Life is highly ordered, so to speak. One doesn’t find maple trees growing from White Oak acorns. How exactly this is so I’m not sure human beings have fully understood.

    So also, we seem to find similar conditions in markets and prices, though inquiries into these aspects of economic phenomena are relatively young, as the nominal “life” of such inquiries go.

    Would political opinion ultimately be found to be something of the same sort? It shouldn’t surprise us too awfully much to find this is so (if it happens to be so found), since after all, political opinions are characteristics of a certain kind of living beings (biota).

    How, then, would we account for the interruption of otherwise ordinary or natural processes such as these, at least, that is to say, interruption for relatively extended periods of time — say a few generations beyond one generation (2, 3, 4, 5 or so)?

  7. Gayle says:

    An interesting secession scenario (county by county):

    http://www.amnation.com/vfr/archives/024257.html

  8. newrouter says:

    That high society in Washington had not brought Coolidge into its fold was not due to his style of dress , expression on his face, or his breeches in etiquette, Coolidge now realized. Alice Longworth slighted Coolidge because he represented a threat to the activist wing of the Republican Party and the legacy of her father, Theodore Roosevelt. …. Society ladies of the District had often mocked the Coolidge’s interest in Vermont and Massachusetts. But the ladies were mistaking federalism for provincialism. By talking about a state and its interests, you reminded Washington that the states had made the union.

    Coolidge a shlaes pg 247

  9. palaeomerus says:

    I’d love to stop reading NR because of this, but unfortunately I stopped reading NR already. To put it in uncivil terms, couched in implicit hostility, that do nothing to elevate the current tone of discussion: I shot my only bullet already.

  10. Jeff G. says:

    And there it is. A Colorado Democrat cites McCain, Kirk, Coburn as proof of the bipartisan nature of universal background checks.

  11. palaeomerus says:

    Sure and Quisling was cited as strong local support for the German Occupation of Norway.

    Now, will anyone in the GOP or the conservative press have the courage to make Akins of McCain, kirk, and Coburn for this? Of course not.

  12. LBascom says:

    will anyone in the GOP or the conservative press have the courage to make Akins of McCain, kirk, and Coburn for this?

    No. Those fellas know from legitimate rape.

  13. newrouter says:

    how about rape rape?

  14. Bob Belvedere says:

    As the Left and the Useful Idiots like Rove keep trying to provoke us into irrational actions, we should remember to: Keep Cool With Coolidge.

  15. newrouter says:

    for the laughs

    David Frum on Guns

Comments are closed.