The other day, C-list conservative chat-bot Quin Hillyer made a comment in National Review Online stating that the publication has been on the forefront of immigration restriction. He made it in the comments of his article in which he tries to ball-gargle Bobby Jindal. Hillyer is one of those guys who hangs around the local Fox studio on weekends, on the off chance Fox needs a talking head for one of their segments, so there’s no reason to pay attention to him.
What got my attention though was the assertion that NR has been anything but stone silent on the issue of immigration. They used to run Steyn and Derbyshire, who have written eloquently on the details of the topic. Mark Krikorian is given space in their on-line blog to post immigration numbers. Otherwise, the official position of the magazine has been to give it a good leaving alone.
John Derbyshire has often talked about editorial meetings at NR when he was employed there. He was the only person to ever raise the topic and when he did, everyone would slide their chairs away from him, like he had just farted. To be seen sitting next to a bad thinker can only be remedied by looking horribly uncomfortable whilst doing it. That way, the other good thinkers know you are a good thinker just stuck in the same room with a bad thinker.
It’s why I call it the “I” word. Immigration has been sacralized on the Right as a magic talisman that wards off the charge of racism. After all, how can you call these good thinkers racist when they are forever championing the people of the world to come to America? Open borders has become the anti-venom that lets them tangle with the Progressive snake handlers on the chat shows and on-line.
You see that in this Jonah Goldberg column from last week.
If I sound dismayed, it’s only because I am. Conservatives have spent more than 60 years arguing that ideas and character matter. That is the conservative movement I joined and dedicated my professional life to. And now, in a moment of passion, many of my comrades-in-arms are throwing it all away in a fit of pique. Because “Trump fights!”
That’s a very revealing comment. You note there’s no mention of winning. The point of political movements is to win political fights and move the polices and presumably the country, closer to what the movement imagines is best. What Jonah reveals, unintentionally I suspect, is that his game and the that of his coevals does not include winning, at least not winning political fights.
Instead it is an intellectual and spiritual exercise. As the Left runs up and down the field, the Right is supposed to stand aside, congratulating themselves on being men of ideas and character, unlike the the uncouth lefties winning all the battles. In other words, the end game of conservatism, according to Goldberg, is to be a good sport and losing with dignity. Conservatism is a form of assisted suicide where the adherent accepts defeat as a condition of joining the movement.
Of course, what radiates from these columns is the class issue. Jonah Goldberg, despite being a big hulking guy, spent his youth in NYC in fear of the street toughs. Those crude sounding bullies of his youth have suddenly risen up in the form of Donald Trump, threatening to take his lunch money away all over again. The refined men of taste who thought they outran the reality of the street are horrified at the prospect of a proletarian bully moving in on their movement.
All of this reminds me of the scene from Brave Heart where Longshanks confronts his feminine son and his “assistant” after Wallace sacked York.
The Professional Right has a revolt on their hands because they have failed. Their response to the revolt has been a hissy fit that confirms, in the minds of the revolting, that they are right to replace these men of no action. It’s not that the replacement is better or more likely to win. The first step in every revolution is to first exact revenge on those responsible for the current conditions.
That’s why we are revolting.
I like this piece.
Like me some revolt, some rebellion, its overdue.
Andrew Brietbart said something beautiful, (lord I miss that guy), he said “culture is upstream of politics”
So is a plurality.
So is consent, its withdrawal.
He was right.
It made me think of something upstream of that when he coined that axiom.
Liberty is upstream of tyranny.
Liberty has this kind of motive power. Unlike tyranny it evolves, those who believe in it, they outflank the sonofabitches, the tyrants, the corruptocrats. Liberty is an insurgency, natural born grass roots like.
I really miss Breitbart, too. He could really take the Left to the woodshed; he had no fear.
Ya, you got that right. Andrew was a warrior.He had audacity, fearless, and he handed them their worthless arses every day. I think they killed him. He was very dangerous. A leader people believed in.
He was the Micheal Collin’s of our time.
Boehnor, McConnell, Justice Roberts … often look to me like men who are in fear. The Right SAYS that the left is a treasonous criminal gang, but I think we are still in denial about the fact that it is literally true and have not really internalized the DANGER to those who resist the left.
Think: criminal gang accustomed to loot in the trillions, whose supporters mostly live off some form of govt. money. If they lose control, some may face the dreaded prospect of earning a living in the private sector, paid only what the free market determines they are worth. We might even get the justice department cleaned out, and pursue some of the bigger frauds.
I’ve dealt with criminals before, I think there is great cause to fear -that massive pile of money and power can “justify” great evils. Our “leaders” are in the front facing some really terrible people who really hate them.
By all means, lets get rid of bad leaders who may be blackmailed or have their families threatened. And for goshsake let’s end this whole “lifetime judge” thing. Maybe we can find replacements cocky enough to fight the EVIL which besets our country. But that scared look tells me it is going to take some real courage to face the leftists and I can’t be too enthusiastic about condemning McConnel et al.
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NRO epitomizes the professional right. You get the impression there is a detachment between the columnists and and the commenters, who are viewed as little more than nuisance that the magazine probably wishes they could do away with.
“Same thing we do every night Pinky”
The Professional Right is run by the same Tribe that runs the Professional Left in NYC.
For most American Jews, and perhaps those everywhere else except Israel, the only battle worth winning is the moral battle. Show that you care more, and it matters not what the consequences of your caring are. The country you inhabit, its history and traditions, its demography — irrelevant. They are just anchors to the past, impeding the ship of state sailing full speed to the Land of Milk and Honey, run by the government for the good of all. Anything that weakens the anchor chain, from delivering atomic bomb secrets to the USSR to population replacement, shows the tribe’s superior priorities.
You have it exactly right – we are tired of those who would go along to get along instead of standing up. “They’re really gonna like us now that we agree with them, right?” The Right just never understood, and it seems like they still don’t, that the Left was always in it for The Win, and that the ends always justifies the means. The Right wants to float above it all with the better ideas but the inability to convince enough people why those ideas and values trump (no pun intended) Leftist thought and policies. They are thinking, well, everyone will just “see” that our ideas are superior, and come on over to our side and the country will turn around in no time. Impossible, though, when you can’t fight the battles that matter, like immigration, and when you allowed the Left to take over every institution in the country. Moral cowards.