Last month Paul Gottfried wrote a brief note in Chronicles about an event hosted by The Philadelphia Society. The event was a virtual debate between Christopher Owen and Glenn Ellmers on the topic of which is the more important founding document, the Declaration of Independence or the Constitution. Presumably, this is some sort of old person role playing game where the two men reenact the debates between Harry Jaffa and Willmoore Kendall from half a century ago.
In fairness, revisiting this topic is useful for those wondering why conservatives have a fetish for Lincoln. Maybe not this debate specifically, but the debate between Kendal and Jaffa in the last century. So-called conservatives embraced Jaffa’s rewriting of American history because it solved their race problem. If one wants to understand the “conservative case for” and the “democrats are the real racists” memes, you start with Harry Jaffa’s Lincoln project.
Putting that aside, the purpose of Gottfried’s post was to point out that these sorts of conservative groups operate like eccentric museums. They claim to exist in order to promote debate, but in realty they exist to prevent debate. Gottfried could be describing all of Conservative Inc. with this line. “Although founded by Frank Meyer in 1964 as a center for vigorous debate on the intellectual right, the Philadelphia Society now exudes the freshness of an ancient Egyptian tomb.”
That is a slander against Egyptian tombs. At least when someone finds a tomb, there is some curiosity about what is inside it. There is a chance that archeologists will find something new or maybe answer an ancient question. Inside conservative institutions there is nothing new. No one needs to be curious about what is inside because everyone knows what is inside. The point of these operations is to make sure nothing new ever happens on the so-called Right.
Gottfried goes on to call for some new voices to be invited into these institutions in order to freshen up the debate. Even if the geezers inside are not interested in new ideas, at least they can freshen up their old arguments a bit. Even museums spruce up the exhibits from time to time. Of course, this will never happen and Gottfried concedes that it can never happen as long as the tomb managers remain. Politics on the Right advances one funeral at a time.
The thing is though, it is not all that clear that the actuarial tables will solve the problem that haunts Conservative Inc. Look around at the various institutions and you see plenty of young people, but they were selected for their obsequiousness rather than their willingness to challenge old thinking. They get picked and promoted in the same way the Chinese exam system promoted people in the Song dynasty. Conformity is the highest virtue in the conservative ecosystem.
The model for this is National Review. When Bill Buckley started searching around for a successor, he went through a few talented men until he found Rich Lowry. Those talented men threatened to change things at National Review. Lowry was simply too stupid to change anything. More important he was an obsequious rumpswab who would tend to Buckley’s lifelong project like the men assigned to keep Lenin’s body on display in the Kremlin. He was the ideal museum keeper.
This is not just a problem with conservatism. The ruling class of the Global American Empire is the product of the 20th century. It evolved for the 20th century and therefore seeks to maintain the conditions that made it possible. It is why the origin point of every subculture within it is the 20th century. Every issue is jammed into a narrative structure that dates to 1938 or 1968. Every foreign enemy is a new version of Hitler and every domestic villain is Bull Connor.
This is why there can be no airing out of the institutions. Even if the crypt keepers of conservatism fling open the windows and let in some fresh air, they will be forced to close those windows. The survival of conservatism depends on it fitting into that 20th century narrative structure that controls the ruling class. The only way those windows remain open is if it is a bankruptcy sale. That particular institution is being sold off because it is no longer needed.
It is also why the new “conservative” operations quickly begin to conform to the old narratives as soon as they get attention. As long as they are not an explicit rejection of the old thinking, they are assimilated into the collective. First some famous people show up to look around, then the money begins to flow. Before long, the “rebels” are beginning to enjoy the perks that come with submission. They are assimilated into the blob and become another node of the system.
Modern conservatism suffers from the same malady that plagues most of the institutions of the empire. That is, it has no purpose. Once the Soviet Union collapsed, the organizing purpose of the West collapsed with it. The difference was the West thought it won the Cold War and therefore was validated. The communists were under no such illusions, so they got busy escaping the 20th century. The West thought it had arrived at the end of history.
While it would be nice to see a wrecking ball smash through these decrepit institutions of conservatism or maybe see a peasant revolt against them, the reality is they will stagger on as long as the empire exists. A feature of every dying empire is a fear of change and we are clearly in that stage. Those old men keeping the museum exhibits going on the Right, as well as their youthful apprentices, care only for keeping the lights on for another day which means keeping the doors locked.
If you like my work and wish to kick in a few bucks, you can buy me a beer. You can sign up for a SubscribeStar subscription and get some extra content. You can donate via PayPal. My crypto addresses are here for those who prefer that option. You can send gold bars to: Z Media LLC P.O. Box 432 Cockeysville, MD 21030-0432. Thank you for your support!
Promotions: We have a new addition to the list. Above Time Coffee Roasters are a small, dissident friendly company that makes coffee. They actually roast the beans themselves based on their own secret coffee magic. If you like coffee, buy it from these folks as they are great people who deserve your support.
Havamal Soap Works is the maker of natural, handmade soap and bath products. If you are looking to reduce the volume of man-made chemicals in your life, all-natural personal products are a good start. If you use this link you get 15% off of your purchase.
Minter & Richter Designs makes high-quality, hand-made by one guy in Boston, titanium wedding rings for men and women and they are now offering readers a fifteen percent discount on purchases if you use this link. If you are headed to Boston, they are also offering my readers 20% off their 5-star rated Airbnb. Just email them directly to book at
sa***@mi*********************.com
.
Thank you Zman for this fine essay. I often wonder why conservatism is so feckless, and your idea, that it’s conserving only its power structures from last century, is very helpful.
[…] ZMan does some dusting. […]
Good description of “Conservatism, Inc.” One has to understand that the intellectual debates on the Constitution, the reverence for the American founding etc. is mostly low-cost decoration for a lower, more economic agenda. Here is what I think: 1. The movement exists in order to mobilize patriotic, traditional whites in favor of an agenda authored by the extremely wealthy, the natural resources industry and the defense-industrial complex. 2. The movement’s priorities reflect the concerns of its funders: low tax rates at the upper end, business deregulation, foreign war and an expanding defense budget. Lowering labor costs is also a priority:… Read more »
“anecdotal observations over the years have led me to believe that the CIA was involved with the creation of the conservative movement”
Well, Buckley was a CIA man, so there ya go.
Probably the closest thing we have had to real conservatism in the past century was the Lodge-Coolidge-Taft-Lindbergh faction of the Republican Party, but of course those guys all got effectively neutralized by the “Look! Evil Mustache Man wants us all speakin’ Jar-mun!” trick.
LoFi: “…a large amount of Jewish money… keeps the movement onside… [t]he “Conservative Movement” in America was conceived and, at its higher levels, is sustained with the goal of directing white middle-class concern away from its own interests and more toward the interests of moneyed power.” Does anyone remember the case of the elementary school teacher in Newport News, Virginia, who was sh0t by a six year old gr0id with a gμn? We learn today that her name is (((Abby Zwerner))). Which, of course, is the only reason we ever heard of the shooting in the first place. If, say,… Read more »
“I cannot prove this assertion, but historical reading and anecdotal observations over the years have led me to believe that the CIA was involved with the creation of the conservative movement”
Right on here. Buckley himself was at the Mexico station, possibly the same time as a future Watergate burglar…
And looking at post WWII conservativism, it was on the front line of anti-communist interventionalism.
Speaking of the CIA. I almost forget to mention that one of the Limbaugh show’s heirs, “Buck” Sexton is a “former” CIA man.
I really wonder if these guys aren’t controlled opposition being run straight out of Langley. The idea that you have a former CIA guy named “Buck” and a former lawyer-turned-sportsball guy named “Clay” giving the “conservative view” is simply not sheer random probability.
“Clay and Buck”? Ye-haw, Bubba. You couldn’t come up with a more transparently contrived plan to sucker the rubes in if you tried…
R2RV: “Buckley himself was at the Mexico station, possibly the same time as a future Watergate burglar…” I’m convinced that Meyer Lansky instructed Jack “Rubio” Ruby to liquidate Oswald because of something Oswald learned whilst he was inside the Russian Embassy in Mexico. Note that C1it Romney’s father, George Romney, was born in a polygamist compound in Mexico, in 1907 [a compound which has been associated with every manner of organized crime and mass murder]. Similarly, recall that in 1940, Saint Joseph Djugashvili hunted down and drove an icepick through the skull of Lev Davidovich Bronstein, in Mexico [to which… Read more »
Sadistic hard choice 😈 :
What’s worse
a) Democrat LGBT transgender blue hair satanist communist doxxer journalist for Salon prowar/covidist
b) Republican DRRR, conservative case for transgenders, cabin, antifa, pro-ALENA, fan of Ryan, Raynd worshipper, McCain/Lincoln’s ballsucker, secretly employ illegal and relocate his factory in Guatemala
At least the first lot aren’t hypocrites and backstabbers. They’re honest about being evil.
The left is honest about wanting to turn the USA into South Africa.
ALWAYS better an enemy in front of you than a traitor in your ranks.
I question if there is even such a thing as conservatism, beyond the label. There is the regime, the “uniparty” as it is often called, which shows different faces to different people, to keep them all on board with the regime. Employing designated charlatans who make empty pronouncements so that people think they have representation in the regime. Political actors now fall into three categories: complicit, useful idiot, or irrelevant. Those 3 categories are bipartisan, they apply equally to the facades of “left” and “right.” Power is concentrated. No bottom up movement is tolerated. As soon as it begins to… Read more »
Of course, conservatism exist!
Ancestor of Democratic party was named “Democratic-republican party”
So was also the ancestor of Republican party 😂
And there is an historical scam in British political history.
Cavaliers, tories and jacobites collapsed before 1750/1760.
Conservative party was created near 1835/1840.
By old Wighs members.
Thus, conservative true mission (and it did it perfectly) is to conserve liberal legacy.
(PS : I used your american word “liberal” but I prefer the word “left”)
It used to exist, sure. I’m talking about here today 2/7/2023. Now it’s just a show. Like Dancing With the Stars.
Yep. The entire “left vs. right” thing for the past fifty years has been mostly a charade. Back in the early 2000s, I noticed that NR guys like Lowry and Ponnuru started appearing on roundtable discussion shows on NPR, and the Sunday morning network political shows like Meet the Press, to “debate” lefties like Katrina Vanden Heuvel of The Nation. My initial reaction was “Excellent! The conservatives are finally starting to become mainstream.” After a while, though, I realized that they were in fundamental agreement with the lefties, and were only “allowed” to disagree on arcane, insignificant debating points, viz.… Read more »
This reminds me of my college years back in the 90’s. Back then I thought for sure that if “the right” got rid of the olds, put a new, younger group of people in there, it would cease being dominated by the Clinton machine. What I found out, a rude awakening, as the years progressed, especially during W’s term, circa 2003-2004, was that the young people being installed were virtual clones of the old. And they were in some way even creepier. My age group went through way different experiences than the boomers. Yet somehow, these new (back then) people… Read more »
I believe this is when the bow ties, v-neck sweaters, and yes, penny loafers got started. In hindsight the only thing I can conclude is that they were all aping Michael J. Fox or the “square kid” (Fred?) from Scooby-Doo. Lacking any real culture, they had to pick one off the musty shelves of Hollywood. I suppose it was a choice between the “gay conservative” look, and “Nazi mit monocle und riding crop”.
The political idealizing of “youth” of course is part of this problem. While it is true “youth” can bring energy not seen in us oldsters,and an optimism beat out of us, they are often energetic and optimistic about what oldsters pumped into their soft little heads. Am I really the only one who finds the humor in the Groypers following a mestizo? Aside from a positive White movement being led by a Mestizo, their attitudes are very much shaped by the last 20 years of politics and culture and schooling. There simply could not have been an identical Groyper movement… Read more »
Not just a Mestizo, one who’s into tranny- porn. Some autist online was analyzing his video practically frame-by-frame and caught him doing it, brazenly, during his show. He couldn’t hide it, that’s when he started lashing out. I never trusted him from day one. He just gave off a vibe, the same weirdo vibe that I saw in the 90’s only 25 years later. This is someone who was interviewing for the Charlie Kirk position and was passed over, and shaking his fist at everyone who passed him over. Another con artist in a long line of them. By 2040… Read more »
I would have thought the catboy thing was proof enough. Is it not perfectly normal to go on a platonic date with another man to clothing stores? Men love shopping for clothes, straight men particularly, and love nothing more than to go try on outfits at a store with their totally heterosexual buddies.
I think the problem is much deeper than simple resistance to change. When a young person shows up at one of these museums, he’s been raised in the system. He had, at minimum 12 years of schooling. He’s read all the right websites and papers. He’s likely to have attended university as well, maybe even taken some political science classes. All of his “priors” are wrong. How many people graduate from the system and believe that system is fundamentally broken beyond repair or even a bad system at the core? Unless he was extremely curious and found authors on our… Read more »
“ The model for this is National Review. When Bill Buckley started searching around for a successor, he went through a few talented men until he found Rich Lowry. Those talented men threatened to change things at National Review. Lowry was simply too stupid to change anything. More important he was an obsequious rumpswab who would tend to Buckley’s lifelong project like the men assigned to keep Lenin’s body on display in the Kremlin. He was the ideal museum keeper.” Ouch. Remind me not to get on your “bad side”. 😉 However, as one who used to watch Bill Buckley… Read more »
Rumpswab is a mighty tough insult to bounce back from.
“Lowry was simply too stupid to change anything. More important he was an obsequious rumpswab who would tend to Buckley’s lifelong project like the men assigned to keep Lenin’s body on display in the Kremlin. He was the ideal museum keeper”
That statement alone was worth the price of admission.
But we did that! Over and over and OVER again for the last 20,000 years! And here they come, heeere they come, the sticks-and-mud bunch. Cripes. To steal our stuff then tell us we didn’t make that. What’s our grand vision gonna be, the Proud Family or the Pride Family? I’ll tell you one place we can start: Religion. “”I come ONLY for the Lost Sheep of the house of Israel” The commenter goes on to say: “…(Jacob). NONE but the children of Jacob. All others go into the flames.” But He didnt say Jacob. The cuck did, was taught… Read more »
Oops, sorry, my fevered response to Chet Rollins “Negative identity is poison” towards the bottom.
Apologies to all- this is not a religion blog. I find everyone else’s responses incredibly insightful outside of my own painfully narrow focus.
Meeting with a last uncle later this year in Dairyfarmerland; he had a thousand men of God standing beside him at a ceremony. These people know things. TomA, I’m sorry to tell you, most here have absolutely no idea how truly fuqt up the gangs are. That must come later.
As a test of “conformity is the highest virtue in the conservative ecosystem”, an airing out the tomb, and keeping the museum exhibits going – I suspect a demonstration by a youthful apprentice keeping the lights on will be on full display in her response to the Joey B show this evening.
Someone let us all know tomorrow if I was correct (I sure won’t be watching any of it).
“… Gottfried goes on to call for some new voices to be invited into these institutions in order to freshen up the debate. Even if the geezers inside are not interested in new ideas…” ———————— Being something of an old fossil…I might take a little umbrage at all these rude jokes. What kind of new voices do you young, informed whippersnappers want? You asked for new voices before…and you got Buckley, Jonah Goldberg, David Fwench and Sloppy Williamson. I’da thunk you young punks woulda learnt ya lesson from all that…but no. Then came fags like Milo, Vox Day, Cerno and… Read more »
I would pay good money to see Cerno debate David French. Granted, I would hear little of it due to laughing like a lunatic, but it would be a great time.
Since he still has a presence in that world, Gottfried should take the next step and name names by publicly proposing debates between various DR folks (Z, RamzPaul, Jared Taylor, Derb, etc.) and specific individuals from Con Inc.
In his piece, Gottfried only names one side.
They would, of course, say no, but they’re unwillingness to debate would be open a few eyes. Z was shut out of Am Greatness but Gottfried has an audience in that world and they’d notice Con Inc’s refusal to debate.
Screw those guys, C. As some rude DR wank (who shall remain nameless) said recently, any argument with Con Inc. is going to devolve into a “purse fight”. 😂👍 Get off your butt, Z. Your shows are great…why not put on your big-boy pants and invite some guests on? I’d be willing to bet you could do a bang-up job of it. You could do a reverse-Phil-Donahue with it. Bring in some tasty chitlib/con morsel… and have 4 rabid DR cranks ready to rip him to shreds…! Who was that mutt on Blab? The one that got set on fire… Read more »
True. What’s the point. Part of moving away from the system is moving away from the America first CivNat crowd as well.
Whatever his faults may be I don’t think cernovitch is a fag. He hit on my daughter. She told him she isn’t interested in coke heads.
The troll phenotype tends to be more solidly heterosexual when compared to the goblin or were-rat phenotypes.
“Conservatives” can be destroyed in a word: slavery. Forget “for,” what’s the conservative case against slavery? Offhand, I can’t think of a single human culture, anywhere in the world, that hasn’t practiced slavery (or had a caste system of such rigidity that it’s a distinction without a difference). If anything is a human cultural universal, it’s slavery. And there IS a “conservative case for slavery,” quite a long one. Southern intellectuals were preoccupied with it from about 1820; one of the big names in intellectual history explicitly argued that “defending slavery” was the price of admission back then — if… Read more »
The Conservative Case against slavery is the trillions of dollars their descendants have inflicted on Americans since the 1850’s. Even if kept slaves, the financial burden would have still happened. It was short-sighted and destructive. Any talk by radical blacks about reparations because they “built this country” needs to be laughed and mocked as though the person said tractors or cattle built this country.
As has been said many times, Black contribution to the building of this country was the equivalent as the “pick and shovel”—if that! But then again, Blacks always get ahead of themselves in this argument, their self-esteem being notorious and only a little bit behind their proclivity to violence.
I should send an email to The Atlantic’s house intellectual, Ta-nehisi Coates (my, how “intellect” has been defined down!) regarding reparations, I’ll suggest that if he is so willing to bestow a few piasters my way, I should be happy to receive them. But, just to be honest with the IRS, I would insist that they not be in cash. As for the amount…well, I’ll let his conscience be his guide.
And it’s not only the cost in treasure but the cost in blood. How many innocent white people had their lifes snuffed out by the ruddy savages? How many white women have been raped? We’re talking six figures here, maybe even pushing seven. None of this would have happened had we shipped them back to Africa where they belong.
Let me sum up all of that. Conservatives/Con-Inc. have surrendered.
“We already know this story” is the core of any real conservatism (so, not the American kind). A conservative case against New World slavery could begin with something like:
Truistic admonishments against “kicking a man when he’s down,” “adding insult to injury,” etc., are old wisdom, the voices of our ancestors warning us that opportunistically enlarging the gap between our own and others’ fortunes is a wrong—or at least some kind of bad idea. Moralistic clichés fit for memetic survival quietly point to history and familiar example.
Insert history (optionally Biblical) and familiar example (your stolen bike) here.
“the Southern slave was far better off, on any metric that makes sense, than the immigrant workers used and abused and cast off to die by the great Northern capitalists.”
Still waiting for a treatise of this abomination. Very true and most know nothing about it. Jim Goad did address it in his Red Neck Manifesto, but I don’t know much else has been done.
George Fitzhugh, Sociology for the South. I bet it’s online, probably at Google Books. Cannibals All! is also of interest; there are still physical copies of at least that one floating around.
Thank You, will look into it.
David – If you have the time and patience, search through the years’ of older posts at ThoseWhoCanSee blog – I recall the subject being addressed at length there and supporting links provided.
I also recall Derbyshire mentioning it in a column (and again mentioning what evidence he read that convinced him of the truth) some years back.
James LaFond (of all people) has done a lot of research and writing on this subject. evidently, black slaves were too valuable to use on dangerous projects, like ditch digging, etc. so irish immigrants typically got the dirty dangerous work, and if they perished, no cost to the whomever was funding the work.
Ryan Faulk did a deep dive of slavery in America. Not only are blacks today infinitely better off because of slavery, blacks back then were much, much better off because of slavery, at least in America. Blacks weighed more in America than most Eastern Europeans. They were taller than most Eastern Europeans. They even had higher rates of literacy than Eastern Europeans. They worked fewer hours as well.
The trans-Atlantic slave trade was the best thing to ever happen to the negro race and it’s not even close.
Can you even imagine those dirtbags acknowledging it? Hell to the no…
They Were White and They Were Slaves by Michael Hoffman. You want a treatise – there you go. Truly exhaustive, not light reading, but incredibly well documented. If you have a fetish for primary sources, your cup with floweth over.
That brings up the weird ideological contortions that Southern conservatives had to twist themselves into after 1876, and the First Rule of the Lost Cause, that was so beloved of the United Daughters of the Confederacy as they refashioned the Civil War into “The War Between the States”- It Was Never About Slavery, which it so very, very obviously was. By pretending that the slaveowning South (and not all of them, at that) seceded because of anything but the Peculiar Institution, because that was now, according to the post 1865 consensus, Bad and that the Yankee victory was Good, conservatism… Read more »
If you’re paying close attention, you’ll see that the BLM crowd is beginning to come around to the “it was never about slavery” argument themselves. Throwing shade at Lincoln for his statements about blacks and cynical use of the Emancipation Proclamation.
I assume that this is because if they agree the war was about slavery, then they have to admit the war was reparations, and that cuts into the reparations push that is currently underway. They have to make the case that reparations have NOT been made.
If the North was fighting to abolish state rights, North and South, they were effectively fighting to enslave themselves, that is what those dumb white Northern Americans did to themselves.
With some time on my hands, I was recently poking around old newspapers from here in Yankeeland. I came across this article in a local paper from the summer of 1864: “Reasons Why Mr. Lincoln Should Not Be Re-elected”. Similar articles were probably published in Democrat/Copperhead papers around the Union that year. 1 He is at heart a secessionist. On January 14, 1848, he made a speech in Congress, in which he said: “Any people, anywhere, being inclined and having the power, have a right to rise up and shake off the existing government and form a new one that… Read more »
Severian: You are, of course, correct that every culture/society throughout history has had some sort of caste system and/or de facto slavery. Others have researched and proven the average African slave in the south had a better diet and life expectancy than the immigrant workers in the north. But totally aside from the case for slavery, we need to address the pseudo-Christian crowd who are convinced, in spite of all scriptural evidence, that Jesus was against any sort of earthly social hierarchy (while simultaneously insisting His followers today must unquestioningly obey the US government). I brought this up with my… Read more »
Slavery was such an integral part of the historical Jesus’s society that nobody would even think to question it. That’s simply not in dispute, any more than it could be disputed that the God of the Old Testament gives His chosen people very explicit instructions on the care and maintenance of their slaves. “Manumission” is a concept the historical Jesus would grok, but “abolition” is not.
The few people I associate with around here tend to be evangelical Christians. Good hearted people but in terms of their political views they always remind me of a quote from Hunter S. Thompson about Nixon, paraphrasing – “Nixon was so twisted he had to have servants screw him into his pants every morning.” Much of their theology revolves around modern day Israel, America as a sort of stand-in for Biblical Israel, and “End Times” as the answer to everything. Ancient and modern is all jumbled up together and they don’t know where Revelation ends and the latest neo-con propaganda… Read more »
Sad and true. The evangelicals’ commitment to wholesome living and family life is admirable. They’ve built a parallel culture outside of the degenerate mass culture: a huge achievement. All this makes their commitment to a neocon foreign policy doubly frustrating. If you ever want an excuse to drink, watch some of the “world news” programming on evangelical TV (e.g. TBN, CBN). The combination of Philo-Semitism, war propaganda and end-times wishful thinking is just embarrassing. Sadly this is the most visible and motivated group of conservative whites in America: the people who believe this stuff.
That’s why I don’t see religion as much of a solution to our problems. The credulity of the evangelicals, that they’re so easily suckered into bullshit like prosperity gospel, the obvious con artistry of the 19th century American religious figures (Joseph Smith and his magic hat), and most of all Judeo-Christianity. What use are people that can be so easily led by any rat-faced semite promising them magic beans?
I shouldn’t, but I’ll take a crack at that one. Chattle slavery: no go. Especially when born into it. Might be a little controversial in these parts, but imo there’s a very minimum equality between humans AS humans. Iow, you can forfeit rights by acting like an animal, maybe even deserve being put down like one, but you’ll never be an animal. And yes, that means I think the death penalty is more just than life in prison. Again imo, being owned is lower than being dead. Indenture: People used to be sentenced to hard labor to pay their debts… Read more »
I’d like to know how to get in with one of these supposedly invincible conservative museums. I could use some job security and a decent, middle-class paycheck. I’m kidding, of course, but I’m also trying to make a point. It isn’t mere obsequiousness that will land you a gig like that. You have to have a family connection, or you have to be able to offer a quid pro quo, or you have to be utterly compromised in such a way that they know they can control you. I don’t think any institution, left or right, public or private, is… Read more »
conservatives never want to get their hands dirty (or bloody). they are just old ladies clucking at things they disapprove of. it really is a waste of time to discuss conservatism; and always has been. let them have their musty museums, that no one ever visits. a new world is emerging right now, without the help of conservatives. as usual, they are being left behind.
Reagan was a product of his era. He had one over riding goal, defeat communism. As a Cold War warrior, his world centered around the “evil empire”. A negative identity so to speak. In that effort, he “ … spared neither land nor gold, nor son nor wife, nor limb nor life…” and compromised on all other goals. His build up of the military was in exchange for expansion of the welfare state, while incurring increasing deficits. However, that does not change your conclusion, rather it confirms it. Reagan *did* succeed in bringing down the USSR through his uncompromising and… Read more »
But that’s the danger. A single minded pursuit of a single goal all else be damned often results in all else being damned. Autism is no way to run a country.
So pursuit, or failed pursuit, of many goals is preferable to success?
The seminal question is . . . “can a perfected debating society save the day?” IOW, can we really talk our way out of the mess we’re in? The Founders did a whole lot of takin’ & writin’, but at the end of the day, it was musket shot that made the difference. And it has always been thus. Jaw-jaw is a luxury of too much leisure time. But ask the violently conscripted farmers of Ukraine (who were rounded up, handed an AK, and sent into Bakhmut as cannon fodder), if they would choose rhetoric over more ammo and a… Read more »
TomA, I agree entirely that our situation is unlikely to change until there is resistance in the physical world and that much of our debating now is to occupy ourselves until then. However, debating now can prevent big mistakes later. Once we have an opportunity, how do we organize? At that time, our debating may prevent bad decisions of great consequence. Maybe the best example of the usefulness of our current debates is the rejection of civic nationalism as an organizing principle. Civic nationalism sounds great: everyone puts our shared values above the success of our particular racial or religious… Read more »
To be clear, I have no problem with either debate or erudite analysis unless that is all you’ve got to bring to the table. If all you can do is yak, then you’re not going to be of much help when hard part begins. Everyone who wants to make a real difference needs to be of sound mind, able-bodied, skilled in some basic survival arts, and possess a mindset that will keep you vertical in the tough times ahead. That is why the military screens its personnel, puts them through basic training, and properly equips them prior to entering a… Read more »
Excellent, Line, excellent! Had the same thoughts. Sure, debate away, hang the debate laundry on the line for all to see. Keep in mind this is “collapse” and we don’t know what it will look like and the new variables leaking in, i.e. a world made by hand\Kunstler all the way to Ed Dutton’s big collapse possibly back to the Bronze Age, i.e. IQ keeps dropping and heavy mutational overload keeps accumulating. Keep the ideas and observations given birth by debate in view yet don’t be wedded to them, keep flexible, new variables and new reality we never dreamed of… Read more »
CivNat could work in theory if everyone complies and noncompliance are punished. In reality that never happens.
This was outrageously great, Z. I can imagine the Empire sending out storm troopers to search for you. Until then, keep irritating them.
This is one of your better articles, I don’t understand how you write like this consistently. As a younger guy it is depressing to see almost all of my friends from high school and college slot themselves right into boomercon territory. At least the boomers had children themselves so their desire to grill made sense. Most of my friends, even the married ones don’t even have children. Conservative Inc is becoming a pathetic version of something that was silly even 30 years ago. All of these childless people walking around parroting Regan quotes and saying “imagine if the roles were… Read more »
Personnaly, I don’t understand how Z can write a long essay EVERY DAY.
Maybe I’m biased by my laziness, but nevertheless… That’s an huge amount of work.
Is this guy never have headaches? (as migraine-every-two-weeks guy, I couldn’t have wrote on migraine day. Would have said FU, readers, need a break, they will not abandon me just because of 1 day off”)
Just think of these “conservative” organizations as holding pens for second-rate intellects who would otherwise get involved in GOP politics and make life unpleasant for the mainstream GOP grifters.
While leftist think-tank types actually rotate into politics when the Dems are in power (at least half the Obama group were in this category), you rarely see any right-leaning eggheads in government when the GOP is ascendant. This is because any minor attempt at doctrinal purity is an impediment to the nonstop surrender policy of the GOP. Meanwhile, the left has a doctrinal agenda and is effectively pursuing it.
When it comes to new ideas, again I have to thank Painter for this timeless gem: “Society is a debt.” We come into the world unwillingly and will leave it the same way. We are links holding together a chain, so make the best of it. A black guy wanted to talk racism last midnight in Philly. I began immediately with, “Society is a debt,” to our future and our past: that’s why I’m not just a racist, but a full-blown Nazi, and I expected no less of him. He got it right away. Our own come first. Everything after… Read more »
1. Thanks!
2.FWIW I’d caution against racial ideology. Flesh and blood aren’t ideas. I think that’s where the Nazis went horribly wrong. Others, too (looking at you, Gas Station Tranny 🤣).
You are, your people are. No justification needed!
“Every issue is jammed into a narrative structure that dates to 1938 or 1968.” For every liberal (when their party is out of the White House), it is forever 1933, and a fascist cabal is in the process of seizing absolute power. For every liberal (when their party is in the White House), it is forever 1968, and the vanguard of the revolution are in the throes of sticking it to The Man. For every conservative (when their party is out of the White House), it is forever 1980, and a man on a white horse is waiting in the… Read more »
That’s good. My only quibble is on your last point. When conservatives are in the White House, I would argue it’s 2000, and time to give the left everything it wants, but calling it compassionate conservatism.
This exactly why these old goats and lackeys didn’t support Trump and were only slightly less vitriolic than the leftards. He represented deviation from the company line club as well as threatening the cash flow. The entire DC tumor and all its tendrils need to be nuked from outerspace – it’s the only way to be sure…
That’s the big question: What comes next? Older Republicans remain stuck in a world of tax cuts and deregulation. Younger Republicans don’t seem to be for and against much at all, being mostly of a libertarian bent. (My suspicion is that their form of libertarianism is a back-door way to pushing against the anti-white agenda.) Older Dems just want to run the show and stick it to whitey. But it’s the younger Dems who are the real group to watch, and they seem to have no agenda at all, except the social side of Wokism. They claim to hate the… Read more »
I like the idea of these quadrants. The two older ones will not matter much longer. The young libertarians lack an ethos and are afraid of the truth. The young woke can only destroy.
Man that’s dark.
When Rome finally fell, the Germanic tribes had great admiration for the Roman system and adopted many of its institutions. Our barbarians hate our people and system, but like the German tribes, love our wealth. Young Dems want to destroy the system, but they know that it is the fountain of the wealth that they desire, so they’re left flailing about. There’s also the issue of the tribe. They don’t have much of a young cohort to take over, with many of them having married into whites. They also face a much more difficult situation than their parents and grandparents.… Read more »
I don’t think the young Dems have the first idea that the system they want to destroy confers the comforts they love. I don’t think they have the first idea that there are such a thing as systems. I don’t think if they do, that they have the first idea that what we have are layers of systems at work and each layer and how it interacts with the other is of critical importance. No person, with any concept of systems and a modicum of knowledge of reality would be a modern Dem. From the 60s on the Dems base… Read more »
Yeah, I probably overstated the awareness of AOC types on what exactly creates wealth. I suppose the real question is whether the younger cohort of her handlers understands what creates wealth.
That’s where the tribe comes in. I don’t think their younger members are numerous enough and capable enough to control their Frankenstein.
Very much agreed.
Public school teaches people the USA is rich because it’s a democracy.
The point to a map of Western Europe and Japan being “a democracy” and thus “prove” that democracy = wealth.
They are actually this brainwashed
The young Dems can be summarized by the demographics of the 2022 election in PA. Fetterman is in office. There is another dimension – utter fealty to BLM and any other black supremacist org or person. One more – they hate free speech and celebrated when Trump was kicked off of Twitter. Not because of malice, but because of sheer stupidity. The young Repubs, well a perfect illustration is this young guy who has basically accepted and parrots the catastrophic climate change and environmental hoax of the left. He just wants the, “free market”, to deal with it. I wonder… Read more »
I see a lot of young conservatives flaying about looking at Jordon Peterson, Ben Shapiro, Joe Rogan, and others like that, recently Nick Fuentes got attention from the young crowd, but Nick blew a piston with his Kanye thing. I know there is a lot of boomer bashing and the Z here is not a boomer but where is the young equivalent to the Z? The kid who does Restoring Order is pretty good but kinda bland. Maybe in time he could do some things? Cotto is pretty good but he just serves a niche around Gottfried. I am not… Read more »
“The America of 2100 will bear no resemblance to the America of 2000, not in people, culture, institutions, principles and, possibly, borders.” I could see Canada merging with the USA. Anti-American sentiment is almost entirely a delusional, do-gooder white person thing. Their main reason for immigrating to Canada is that it’s America lite, and they couldn’t get into the real USA. Many simply come to Canada as a stepping stone towards the USA, either legally or illegally. The US has remarkable cultural power (their kids will be brainwashed in school but thats another story). By 2050 when Canada is pushing… Read more »
“The America of 2100 will bear no resemblance to the America of 2000, not in people, culture, institutions, principles and, possibly, borders.”
There will be strong borders in 2100, but they will be there to keep the people in.
Unfortunately, this issue also expands to most right-wing art forms. Someone once quipped that the easiest way for right wingers to read you is to be dead. This is a little unfair, since there is a treasure trove of right wing thought that is being revitalized after being ignored for decades. There’s also Caldwell’s Age of Entitlement, which is, no exaggeration, one of the most important works of the last decade. Luckily, new right-wing literature is starting to get real legs, even if other right-wing media like movies are still awful. The real issue is rich old guys who will… Read more »
>>Once the Soviet Union collapsed, the organizing purpose of the West collapsed with it.
I read something similar about twenty years ago. Paraphrasing, “The Irish had defined themselves as ‘not British.’ When the British left, there was no one left to hate and no one they recalled loving. So, with no point to exist, they are vanishing.”
The Irish example is one of the more mystifying phenomena of modern times. For literally centuries they fought tooth and nail to rid themselves of the English “occupiers” and then, within a generation, abandoned all that and embraced mass culture killing immigration.
I still find it hard to believe but there it is.
Proof that the Irish are in fact white.
Every single white country has gone down the same road, with the exception of Belarus, Hungary, and Russia.
Regardless of their history or ideology all white people have taken this route.
Dave Cullen is doing excellent, yet depressing work chronicling Irish decline on his, “Computing Forever,” channel.
The Irish are a heavily ironic case of a broader issue throughout the Western world: once the elites defined preservation of one’s culture and people as immoral, there could be no outcry against having one’s hegemony destroyed. What was once sacrosanct – the preservation of one’s people – has now become anathema. What the new moral order seems to be arguing is that if the preservation of one’s people in any way shape or form preserves an older order – and if that older order can be criticized on moral grounds – then the people must be destroyed in order… Read more »
Iron Maiden: “White people produce corrupt, exploitative societies, so as a category of people they must no longer be suffered to exist.”
*** cough ***
(((PROJECTION)))
*** cough ***
No mass of white people ever consciously “embraced” replacement. Their “leaders” chose it for them, began it incrementally, put in some agitprop effort to make it look sexy, and by the time any sizeable number of people began to be aware what was really happening, it was a fait accompli. The only big difference in Ireland from the USA is that it takes a lot less effort and time to replace an island of 5 million than a continent of hundreds of millions. When you control the institutions and the media, and you’re willing to tell any lie you have… Read more »
The people never chose it and didn’t want it.
In the USA or anywhere in the empire. The US government forces it on every country within the empire.
“The difference was the West thought it won the Cold War and therefore was validated. The communists were under no such illusions, so they got busy escaping the 20th century. The West thought it had arrived at the end of history”
Just including the rest of the paragraph. So good. Also the Irish paraphrase
Negative identity is poison and easily subverted.Whites fall into the same trap when they concentrate on being essentially not black or not jewish instead of building an identity and rapport with their own people.
And this at least the Rulers know, thus they attack our history, and delegitimize and bury teaching of the greatness of our civilization, or anything positive about it at all.
They do clearly see just what works to further their ends. Funny the Russians figured this out, and we here could not.
Ireland’s problem are the anti-Irish philosophical beliefs of the personnel of the ruling political parties in Dáil Éireann.
In other words, they are rabid libtards who are in a mad rush to catch up with everything wrong that the English did since the sixties.
ireland’s problem is the irish.
It seems like the ethnic Ukrainians are pretty much the same, defined by hate but in their case it’s hate of everyone who isn’t them. Evan though they’re pretty much the same they hate them. Probably there is a lot of envy in there for Russia especially.