TRHFIM

I came across this today while reading an article that linked to it. The title is "Conservatism is No Longer Enough." The first line of the text I quoted eloquently says something I have felt but haven't been able to put to words, and is why I call myself a cultural or social conservative, but never a conservative.

https://americanmind.org/salvo/why-...-not-conservative-and-you-shouldnt-be-either/

Practically speaking, there is almost nothing left to conserve. What is actually required now is a recovery, or even a refounding, of America as it was long and originally understood but which now exists only in the hearts and minds of a minority of citizens.

This recognition that the original America is more or less gone sets the Claremont Institute for the Study of Statesmanship and Political Philosophy apart from almost everyone else on the Right. Paradoxically, the organization that has been uniquely devoted to understanding and teaching the principles of the American founding now sees with special clarity why “conserving” that legacy is a dead end. Overturning the existing post-American order, and re-establishing America’s ancient principles in practice, is a sort of counter-revolution, and the only road forward.
 
Last edited:
Dave is even less optimistic about our chances of getting this train back on the tracks than I am:

https://davereaboi.substack.com/p/national-divorce-is-expensive-but


Over the last decade especially, we’ve seen how these conceptions expand with great intensity and speed into areas that were once relatively apolitical and would’ve perplexed our grandparents, like the reality of human biology or its malleability according to ideology (via the trans issue). As time goes on, even more of reality itself will become a battleground.

If we disagree on these big things—which will necessarily manifest in every political issue, large or small—what strong force could possibly re-unite us? Or, to ask a question that’s perhaps more pertinent—maybe not today or tomorrow, but soon: what force could keep us from coming apart?

The most perceptive observers of America have known that this was always a perilous position for a large, multi-ethnic, ideological (or “propositional”) constitutional state. As time goes on, and the ideology on which the legitimacy of the state rests necessarily changes or becomes contentious between large segments of the population, what’s left around which the great majority of citizens can rally?

Not ethnicity or religion; these are two strong identity conceptions that have the power to unite people in smaller, less diverse states. Not patriotism emerging from a reverence for the nation’s history and heroic founding story, either. The Left has worked with great zeal to undermine all of these things because it wants to unite Americans under nothing but its own ideology. The 1619 Project is only the most successful, high-profile effort to undermine the legitimacy—and, even more importantly, the virtue and goodness—of the American regime and its Founding. It, along with related cults like Critical Race Theory, forms the political ethos that has thoroughly consumed Blue America.

As the late Angelo Codevilla wrote, these differences amount to nothing less than a “cold civil war,” and the primary role of the responsible statesman is to prevent it from going “hot.” Codevilla’s answer was federalism—but the great man was wise enough to know that, by itself, our old conception of federalism was no longer a reasonable or viable answer.

For more than a century, Progressives have dedicated themselves to abolishing the legitimacy of federalism, and then reconstituting the federal government and the courts in order to make its application and practice all but impossible. Over time, as their fanaticism grew, the Left’s position hardened, from the mere undesirability of local differences and state sovereignty to the illegitimacy, unjustness, and unfathomable evil of such an arrangement.

In order to return to a time of relative public consensus on these things, one side must impose its will on the other. While Red America isn’t really interested in imposing its will on Blue America, it’s clear that the reverse is emphatically not true.

In a famous 1964 speech, Ronald Reagan said about last century’s Cold War, “there’s only one guaranteed way you can have peace, and you can have it in the next second: surrender.” This might be the unstated solution proffered by mainstream right commentariat, but is this the best we can do?

 
Jaw said:
I came across this today while reading an article that linked to it. The title is "Conservatism is No Longer Enough." The first line of the text I quoted eloquently says something I have felt but haven't been able to put to words, and is why I call myself a cultural or social conservative, but never a conservative.

https://americanmind.org/salvo/why-...-not-conservative-and-you-shouldnt-be-either/

Practically speaking, there is almost nothing left to conserve. What is actually required now is a recovery, or even a refounding, of America as it was long and originally understood but which now exists only in the hearts and minds of a minority of citizens.

This recognition that the original America is more or less gone sets the Claremont Institute for the Study of Statesmanship and Political Philosophy apart from almost everyone else on the Right. Paradoxically, the organization that has been uniquely devoted to understanding and teaching the principles of the American founding now sees with special clarity why “conserving” that legacy is a dead end. Overturning the existing post-American order, and re-establishing America’s ancient principles in practice, is a sort of counter-revolution, and the only road forward.
Click to expand...

This is the way
 
Ryan Williams did a nice job in this interview with a hostile Atlantic writer

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2021/10/claremont-ryan-williams-trump/620252/

...
Green: ...You guys are basically a think tank too. Why aren’t you just a slightly different version of Conservatism, Inc.?

Williams: Fair enough. Our target is not to say that good work doesn’t go on at the large conservative think tanks. But we think we’re in a real regime crisis right now. Our political elites and cultural and corporate institutions seem to believe in a way of doing government that is fundamentally at odds with the original, founding view—or even the view of Lincoln. We disagree on what men and women are; on what human nature is; what rights are. That’s a real crisis. We would love if our bigger brethren focused exclusively on what we think are the real threats: identity politics; this ideology of anti-racism and wokeness, which you said we’ll get to; the notion that borders are anachronistic and even racist, and that citizenship is global rather than national; that China is our main rival; the rise of big tech.

Green: Let’s talk about identity politics and being “woke.” People throw those terms around a lot, and they can obscure more than they illuminate. What do you actually mean when you say you stand against them?

Williams: There are a few strands. The most ascendant one right now seems to be critical theory, which was born in France in the ’60s and migrated to American universities. It has birthed all of these academic centers—gender studies, anti-colonialism, African American studies. It has some core tenets: There’s no such thing as truth in politics; it’s all about narratives and power, and we can’t know truth, fundamentally. There’s no such thing as natural rights; politics is making sure discrete identity groups, especially the ones who’ve been oppressed over time, now have an opportunity to express themselves.

That means deconstructing and disrupting what was the dominant narrative for a long time, which was the Founders’ regime of natural rights. One of the institutional vehicles for it was the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which was meant to fulfill the promise of the Declaration of Independence for Black Americans coming out of segregation. But the courts and administrative agencies quickly turned against the color-blind, equal-opportunity vision of the founding and toward affirmative action—this calculation of current oppressor or past oppressor, and the pursuit of equity and social justice. Now this seems to mean that we’re really not going to be where we need to be until all groups are equally represented and have the same outcomes for, say, home ownership, wealth, the proportion of CEOs, or members of Congress. That seems to be the goal of wokeism.
 
This little intramural squabble in Idaho keeps getting more interesting.

[tw]1445506992014073857[/tw]
 
The Lt. Gov looks a little stupider ever time the real gov leaves the state. I don't think it will go over well with Idahoan voters.
 
Practically speaking, there is almost nothing left to conserve. What is actually required now is a recovery, or even a refounding, of America as it was long and originally understood but which now exists only in the hearts and minds of a minority of citizens.
Click to expand...

Good

Most of how this country was founded was bullshït anyway

Keep the couple decent things and start over

Make sure to do like in Europe did in the 1500s and kick the crazy religious puritan people out too and let them go elsewhere to act like they were sent by god

I’m down

I have always liked Jefferson’s idea that the constitution should be rewritten cause the country will evolve and new generations shouldn’t be beholden to the old way

It’s absolutely hilarious how some in this country worship a document from the 18th century. It’s embarrassing lol
 
goldfly said:
Good

Most of how this country was founded was bullshït anyway

Keep the couple decent things and start over

Make sure to do like in Europe did in the 1500s and kick the crazy religious puritan people out too and let them go elsewhere to act like they were sent by god

I’m down

I have always liked Jefferson’s idea that the constitution should be rewritten cause the country will evolve and new generations shouldn’t be beholden to the old way

It’s absolutely hilarious how some in this country worship a document from the 18th century. It’s embarrassing lol
Click to expand...

The left worships a document for 1848 so I'm not all that impressed with the progressivism
 
What a bunch of pussies.

The country I live in isn't exactly like how I expected it in my head so lets scrap it and start over?

GTFOH with that ****.

Grow up. The world doesn't you or anyone else a damn thing.
 
Tapate50 said:
What a bunch of pussies.

The country I live in isn't exactly like how I expected it in my head so lets scrap it and start over?

GTFOH with that ****.

Grow up. The world doesn't you or anyone else a damn thing.
Click to expand...

Williams and Claremont Institute are saying that the conservative strategy of holding the line and playing defense has failed, so now it's time for something similar to the Reagan Revolution where sweeping changes are made, especially a return to federalism and a massive reduction in federal power. Not scrap it and start over, not the conservative approach of beating dents out and touch up paint, but replace some body panels, sandblast, and paint it.

Dave is saying federalism is dead and can't be restored, so the options are for one side to subjugate the other, or both sides to go their separate ways.

I prefer the Claremont approach, but fear Dave is correct about the likelihood of success.
 
You have to recognize what is happening in real time and stop it.

There are no second chances once the communists take full control.
 
thethe said:
You have to recognize what is happening in real time and stop it.

There are no second chances once the communists take full control.
Click to expand...

How? The extreme left holds news media, Hollywood, big tech, and academia. It's the perfect propaganda machine. They literally make up new, convenient definitions for words that are then edited into dictionaries by their friends in the publishing industry. Their executive orders are held up as law by the courts when the next administration attempts to repeal them. Federal law enforcement plays on their side. They've convinced people that black Republicans are white supremacists, boys can be girls, and discrimination on the basis of race is anti racist.

And if all else fails, they can go to government handouts.
 
Jaw said:
How? The extreme left holds news media, Hollywood, big tech, and academia. It's the perfect propaganda machine. They literally make up new, convenient definitions for words that are then edited into dictionaries by their friends in the publishing industry. Their executive orders are held up as law by the courts when the next administration attempts to repeal them. Federal law enforcement plays on their side. They've convinced people that black Republicans are white supremacists, boys can be girls, and discrimination on the basis of race is anti racist.

And if all else fails, they can go to government handouts.
Click to expand...

Imagine being on the side of this.

Covid was a huge wake up call to me to understand how many people are so easily manipulated.
 
Jaw said:
How? The extreme left holds news media, Hollywood, big tech, and academia. It's the perfect propaganda machine. They literally make up new, convenient definitions for words that are then edited into dictionaries by their friends in the publishing industry. Their executive orders are held up as law by the courts when the next administration attempts to repeal them. Federal law enforcement plays on their side. They've convinced people that black Republicans are white supremacists, boys can be girls, and discrimination on the basis of race is anti racist.

And if all else fails, they can go to government handouts.
Click to expand...

The next administration will have enough of a bench to deconstruct the administrative state.

That’s how you end this.

And of course election integrity and letting go of some of the traditional Republican economic positions.
 
I am still liking JD Vance.

https://www.newsweek.com/stop-treat...y-groups-like-charities-opinion-1637733?amp=1

In May of this year, as the Biden administration proposed big tax hikes publicly, it secretly promised its allies that the tax increases would cause large amounts of additional money to flow into "charities."


"Mr. Biden's proposals would encourage the wealthy to find new workarounds to reduce the amount of tax they or their heirs pay," reported the New York Times. "Mr. Biden could have limited that workaround by proposing a cap on itemized deductions for high earners, as he did in the campaign, but such a plan was not included in his $4 trillion economic agenda introduced this spring."

This makes little sense if you assume Biden's tax policy is simply a way to raise revenue. But ask yourself who stands to benefit from this massive cash infusion, and it all becomes a little clearer. Among the biggest beneficiaries of left-wing donor money will be progressive advocacy organizations.
...
The Ford Foundation is hardly alone. It is merely one fish in an ocean of endowments and foundations dedicated to left-wing causes. Others include the Gates Foundation, the Macarthur Foundation and the Harvard university endowment. Taken together, they represent well over $1 trillion in wealth, and that wealth is deployed in almost exclusively partisan ways.
...
This is a troubling trend by itself, but the dirty little secret of this brand of well-endowed leftism is that it depends on a host of special favors from the government. Thanks to its endowment, Harvard operates as a hedge fund with a university on top. But the difference between Harvard's endowment and any other hedge fund is that normal hedge funds pay substantial taxes and Harvard pays almost nothing. That's right: when you call your hedge fund a charity, you get to pay your employees exorbitant salaries, accumulate billions in financial gains and then avoid any tax.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top