Getting Right

Vox Day posted something the other day that was particularly wrong in some important ways. This bit is what caught my attention.

As John Red Eagle and I chronicled in detail in Cuckservative: How “Conservatives” Betrayed America, conservatism has not only failed, it was always doomed to eventual failure by virtue of its very nature. It was an attitude and a defensive posture, not a coherent ideology or an identity, and it lacked positive objectives, so it never had any hope of resisting the relentless ideological onslaught of the Left.

The first thing I think he has very wrong is to call Official Conservatism an attitude. That’s pretty much the opposite of reality. Official Conservatism is a collection of policy items held together by a pose, which is just a sales strategy. Things like low taxes and limited business regulation are policy goals. The stuffy smugness you see from big foot conservatives is a pose, a sale pitch they think helps sell their proposal. It is intended to inoculate them from being called simple minded by the Progressives.

This is in sharp contrast to the traditional American conservatism which is, in fact, an attitude or a temperament. It is a set of preferences that Michael Oakeshott spelled out a million years ago in his essay On Being Conservative. “To be conservative is to be disposed to think and behave in certain manners; it is to prefer certain kinds of conduct and certain conditions of human circumstances to others; it is to be disposed
to make certain kinds of choices.” In other words, conservatism is a disposition.

This is why Buckley-style conservatism could never outlive its age. It was tied to a specific set of public polices that only made sense in the context of the age in which they were conjured. In the Cold War, business friendly taxes and regulation, along with a muscular defense policy make perfect sense as a rebuttal to the dominant Progressive ideology. Once the Cold War ended, the justifications for Buckley-style conservatism ended. It became a body with no soul to animate it.

That touches on the another error in the Vox post. Buckley Conservatism did not fail because it lacked an ideological underpinning. It failed because it had one, or at least tried hard to fashion one, out of the collection of policy goals we associate with Official Conservatism. As Russell Kirk observed, “conservatism is the negation of ideology: it is a state of mind, a type of character, a way of looking at the civil social order.” Put another way, Buckley built a movement that he dressed up in the garb of of conservatism.

The attempt to create an ideology that could coexist with a despairing acceptance of the human condition, meant that the movement would always be riddled with cracks. Just as important, because it was a political movement, it was always willing to toss aside that which it found politically inconvenient. It’s why the Buckleyites purged so many people over the decades. Guys like Steve Sailer were shipped out because they were politically inconvenient, not because they were wrong about what was happening in the culture.

Inevitably, an ideology demands that the adherent accept things that are in direct contradiction with observable reality. That’s both the attraction and the defect of ideology. Those with a conservative temperament were always going to be skeptical of the projects championed by the Official Right. Public policy is about accepting less than perfect trade-offs. In the Cold War, the threat of the Soviets enforced a degree of accommodation. When that ended, the divorce was inevitable.

The interesting thing about what is happening is that the guys calling themselves “conservative” are fighting against what is, in fact, the reemergence of the old traditional conservatism. The mild isolationism, practical nationalism and biological realism are just the old ideas that were once common in America, before the ideologues gained the upper hand in the 20th century. All those fringe types the Buckleyites purged, turned out to be a majority and now the Buckleyites are looking like a collection of fringe weirdos.

That’s the other thing Vox has wrong. The alt-right is not an ideology and it is never going to be one. As soon as guys like Vox are able to create one, it will cease being of any interest to anyone outside it. The reason this thing they call the alt-right works is that it is not an ideology. It is just a long series of inconvenient observations repeated daily on social media and elsewhere. Posting FBI crime stats on Facebook is not the makings of a mass movement. It is the undoing of one. That’s what makes it so dangerous.

72 thoughts on “Getting Right

  1. Great post, great discussion. I’m late to the party, but I’d like to tag on to the part that (correctly IMHO) demonstrates that, at bottom, Liberalism today is adequately described as a religion. I believe that, particular in its Marxist variants, it can be further described as a christian heresy that incorporates yet perverts the story line of the Bible/Gospel: A previous golden age undone by various villains (capitalists, males, Anglo culture, etc.), but a newly awakened vanguard of the oppressed (proles, wymyn, 3rd world people of color, etc.) will easily defeat the earthly enemy if only given complete power thereby enabling natural progress towards the earthly millennial kingdom to finally resume by extirpating the dark forces holding back humanity’s natural goodness and innate perfection. In their end times there will be perfect (economic equality, androgyny, global vibrant happiness) forever after here on earth.

    If one is a practicing Christian it is possible to perceive the unifying thread that underlies Burk, Oakeshott, etc.’s seeming unconnected positions/attitudes: They reject the heresy, starting with the idea of the perfectability of humanity. It takes a LOT of religious faith to ignore and reject the vast corpus of historical evidence of human depravity.

    • Evil does morph into various forms throughout history and calls itself by different names but the nature of the beast remains the same. I agree with much of what you say, except the last which is that I don’t think it necessarily takes “a LOT of religious faith” but rather common sense. Combine that with Biblical understanding and knowledge of human nature and history and you have the Good Housekeeping stamp of approval on your good common sense.

      • Infidel:

        Left off the /sarc symbol, I guess.

        But you do have a serious point that Christian faith is usually defined as ‘hoping with assurance for something that is not yet’. That is different from economic Marxism and feminism where their quasi-religious faith consists in blindly ignoring both common sense and a vast body of readily available evidence that contradicts your worldview. Or, as with the Anthropogenic Global Warning crowd, their quasi-religious faith lies in doggedly adhering to a view/premise despite a lack of solid physical evidence (not model runs) that it is true.

        I was incorrectly, though inadvertently, conflating the former with the latter two definitions in my comment.

  2. I tried reading “On Conservatism”, but my eyes started to spontaneously bleed. Good lord, half the problem with defining conservatism is that it takes 13 pages to say “We don’t much like change unless it actually solves an identifiable problem, and the solution will most likely solve that identifiable problem. We don’t like taking unwarranted risks. Fiscally, we spend money we have, not money we hope someday to be able to repay. Socially, we like to leave people alone and to be left alone. We’re privately generous, and publicly stingy. Publicly, government has a few important jobs, almost all of which have to do with building roads, maintaining social order, defending the country against barbarians, and law enforcement. Internationally, we recognize that there are other countries, and that their business is their own unless they seek to impose change on us. Politics is something we have to endure, and generally avoid, because just engaging in politics means abandoning virtually all of the above.”

    In short, I have no place in the world.

  3. My leftie acquaintances were immune to my arguments that the Tea Party was not radical in the least, were quiet, kind, thoughtful people only searching for a way, and were not even a party but a collection of groups without a king. They knew what they knew. They cannot recognize themselves as radical, unkind, thoughtless people who know everything and love the Emperor. Well, now they have the Alt-Right. That works much better for me. Let them get the vapors over something that will actually shine the light under their rock.

  4. “Alt-Right” was, according to my readings of various actors, an alliance of anti-Leftists that treated the Left in the same way the Left treated everyone else. That is that the Left is in a state of warfare and will use any and all tactics against the anti-Left. If there were a simple word/idea to attach to the Alt-Right, as I have observed, it would be something akin to classical Liberalism or “conservatarian.”

    I agree with you Z in that any attempt to pigeonhole a specific political philosophy outside “alliance of anti-Marxists” or “Pro-Western Civ” will be its undoing. I think Vox Day has said this before, but he may be changing tack – it’s hard to say.

    I also agree that contemporary conservatism is a sales posture less than a policy initiative or even a cogent philosophical stance. I suppose that’s where RINO comes from. I also recall that, in the US at least, every “conservative” would roll over and let Lefties control the stage as long as a Planned Parenthood got a smaller parking lot. Not exactly a resistance…

    • Good points. To me the alt-right is a big mix, not worthy of picking at right now. The very public social fight the alt-right is taking to the progs , using the progs tactics, is unnerving the progs, ergo, the exposure on TV shows or quips in speeches. The left has enjoyed the snarky corner forever. The alt-right attracts all sorts of folks. I appreciate that they are fighting back and hitting the progs where it hurts and denies them their safe social platforms.

      • Exactly. I give a great deal of credit to the Alt-Right. You don’t win a bar room brawl with Marquess of Queensberry rules. You don’t defeat a religion with reason. And the Alt-Right understands that.

        And they are definitely winning. And the press will be their first colossal victim.

  5. I think comparative examination of the lives of Cicero, Burke and Churchill are instructive in regards to this issue. These men were all defenders of the republican form of government as expressed by their particular cultures whose manner of expressing and defending republicanism changed according to the alterations in circumstances of their respective times, and who have been criticized by various commentators for those tactical turns, but who, because of their commitment to that form of government and their eloquence in defending it earned them places in the pantheon of great men.
    These men cannot be called ideologies because it is obvious that they lacked any ideology other than defending their culture and way of life against the onslaughts of their days, and if they had been committed to an ideology this would have in all likelihood prevented them from altering their positions politically in ways that would have allowed for their defenses, whether successful or not.
    I’m not going to go into specifics as that would make this post too long. But I will say that using these men as examples is more consistent with conservatism as being the negation of ideology, and that this position is more in tune with the focus of the alt right’s stance as the Savior and preserver of Western Civilization. Just because you favor doing something with your utmost strength and enthusiasm doesn’t make you an idealogue, it makes you a champion.

    • re: Cicero, Burke and Churchill @ teapartydoc

      Interesting group you picked as luminaries. While in college in the early 60s I remember an honors lecture by an refugee East European scholar describing failed politicians throughout history. It was a survey of supposed Great Men whose reputations still are celebrated but objectively did great harm to their nations by omission or commission. Those three, Cicero, Burke and Churchill, were among his examples. It has been too many years to remember the entire argument but what I do recall is this:

      Cicero–he was too late realizing that the Republic was gone and should have bided his time, withdrawn from politics to the sidelines to be ready to serve the eventual winner in the struggle for being the new Caesar. He could have been a moderator in setting up the machinery of Empire, especially in succession of power. Instead he picked the wrong horse and was run through with a Gladius.

      Burke–he had talent and intellect but sided with the Revolutionaries in the New World. His influence was actually stillborn as forever he would be regarded as being unreliable because the hard realists in government on all sides saw him as a being a fool because England had LOST its true crown jewel, the American colonies. Burke then tended to the story of the French Revolution.

      Churchill–a true single issue ideologue (Germanaphobe) who through two stupid wars lost the British Empire. He bankrupted the mother country: wasting both its fighting men’s spilled blood and treasure (finances).

      Dan Kurt

      • The key words in your post: Sixties. And East European.
        Communists aren’t exactly on the up and up. Especially commie scholars.
        It was in the sixties that these three were being established in the conservative pantheon just as I described.
        If Cicero had sat on the sidelines he would not have been able to influence any outcome. If you recall (apparently not) he was backing the eventual winner the whole time in Octavian, who allowed Marc Anthony to proscribe him in order to keep peace in the triumvirate.
        Burke was defending the rights of the American colonists because they were English citizens and he saw in the English mistreatment of the Americans the display of a similar attitude toward his own people, the Irish.
        Churchill had little or nothing to do with whether or not England entered into WWI.
        Your “scholar” is a sack of shit.

        • re: Especially commie scholars @ teapartydoc

          He was a refugee from communism similar to Petr Beckmann, an anticommunist.

          re: “Churchill had little or nothing to do with whether or not England entered into WWI.” @ teapartydoc

          Never implied he did in my comment above but he was considered to be wearing “War Paint” and welcomed WW1 according to contemporaries. Churchill was head of the Admiralty at the outbreak of the war and had been since 1911. Persistent rumors exist that he through inaction permitted the sinking of the Lusitania to insure America’s entry into the war.

          Dan Kurt

          • “two stupid wars”–sounds to me like blaming Churchill for WWI. And then you try to back it up in your reply. You are a fucking liar.

          • “refugee from Communism”–but everything the knew he learned there. How many refugees from California will you rely on for your knowledge of politics?

          • re: “How many refugees from California will you rely on for your knowledge of politics?”teapartydoc

            I’m a refugee from California.

            Dan Kurt

          • ha ha, I too am a refugee from Californistan. Specifically NorCal.

            But I have to agree with Teapartydoc that your last statement about Churchill being a war monger and bringing down GB was a bit much. There is a difference between being able to see “beyond the horizon” and knowing what is coming and preparing, and actively causing something.

            A moral dilemma of similar magnitude to the Lusitania might have been the scene in the movie “The Imitation Game” when a convoy was sacrificed so the German’s would not learn that their Enigma code had been broken. Who knows what transpired when that ship was sunk.

          • re: “You are a fucking liar.” teapartydoc

            You sound like my Physician sister but she avoids profanity. She was a professor of internal medicine for more than a quarter of a century and always resented me for my Ivy League credentials. Every argument with her devolved (almost) to a shouting match as our’s, teapartydoc, has on your part. Keep thirsty, my friend.

            Dan Kurt

          • Be as smug as you like. That doesn’t change your true character. And your credentials don’t mean a thing.

  6. I guess I’m a traditional conservative in the fact that I’m a cheapskate. I worked for my money and don’t spend it foolishly. When the Afghanistan campaign was transformed from a successful (and cost-efficient) raid into a $Trillion forever occupation, I suddenly realized just how far from conservative Bush and the neo-cons really were.

    Trump is reportedly a cheapskate and spent less than half as much as the failed Clinton campaign. That gives me some hope for his Presidency.

  7. The alt-right is about building and maintaining a culturally coherent nation, which requires a population that is substantially homogeneous genetically and culturally. Intelligence is at least 70% genetic, and behavior is at least 50% genetic. That’s why only such cohesive nations have long survived….That is also why the excellent institutions created by the Founding Fathers did not long survive the several waves of immigration in the last century. Non-Americans simply do not support Anglo-Saxon institutions.

    • Curt Doolittle argues that the USA prospered because the high trust society built on the rule of law was only possible because it was the product of thousands of years of active killing (through wars and hanging) of our fellow humans in Europe who could not be pacified to accept a cooperative and productive society. It also explains our generally higher IQ.

      Asians have a higher IQ than western Europeans, and were even more aggressively culled for pacification. Which explains why they generally do even better than Europeans in our society.

      He would argue that Africa and South America never went through these thousands of years of pacification eugenics demanded by the rule of law, and therefore struggle in our culture to a statistically significant extent.

      Don’t know if you have heard of him.

      • Professor Greg Clark analyzes the history of the Britain and its genetic effects in favor of higher intelligence and less violent behavior at length in A Farewell to Alms. It was also an evolution toward more limited government. The opposite happened in Asia, so Asians are extremely conformist to big Government. Hence they vote Democrat. Also, they are not creative at the level of western europeans.

  8. Just went and reread Oakeshott’s essay. I think it’s been about a decade since I last saw it, and it’s more relevant now than ever. Just endless quotable lines.

  9. The Age of Ideology has been over since the 1960s. Because they have Bolshevik discipline, we — myself most definitely included — still think of Leftism as an ideology. It’s not. It’s what you describe — a series of mutually contradictory policy positions held together by hatred of an Enemy. In the long view, WWI proved pretty decisively that Ideology is unsustainable, as the workers of the world failed to unite, instead marching off to the trenches to die in their millions. All politics is tribal, and the alt-right deserves a lot of credit for sticking that in America’s face, but any kind of ideology that can actually drive politics is bound to fail eventually. I’m really starting to wonder if Europe circa 1650 is as stable as human society is ever going to get.

    • you might want to read up on the societal stability of the pharonic egyptians. they went several millenia without changing a bit!

          • Honestly, what is with that? Is that “whitelash” and guilt putting the frog face over the face of white men in historical pictures? I don’t get it. Serious times, serious subjects and some are playing with cartoons! Go figure.

          • Let’s Play, Pepe, Kek and the like are images used to fight the Great Meme War of 2015-16 on social media. For some mysterious reason these silly images “trigger” lefties and cause “normies” to reconsider their political positions. For a better explanation you would need to consult a true meme warrior such as Ricky Vaughn or John Rivers Too. I usually enjoy your comments, keep up the good work.

          • Appreciate the comments Tapman. I’ve researched the “Pepe” and “Kek” thang and it still bewilders me. Makes me think of the guys who live in their mother’s basement and play video games all day and don’t have much of a life. As for Ricky Vaugh and John Rivers … never heard of them. I’ll check them out. Other than blogs like this, I don’t do social media. Thanks again.

    • Liberalism is a religion. Usually the only difference between a religion and an ideology is that the former doesn’t merely deal with the corporeal world. Liberals managed to unite the two in a way not seen since the Holy Roman Empire. As many others have pointed out over the years – in far superior fashion – Liberals have their priests (Reid), prophets (Gore) and popes (Obama), they have their bibles and relics (fun to come up with once you think about it a little bit), rituals and distinct language, and they have co-opted other religious to borrow the things that service their religion while attempting to banish the rest. They have their witch trials, sacraments, and bogeymen.

      Everything about American Liberalism makes sense once you realize they’re a religion.

    • Sure it’s a series of mutually contradictory policy positions. But it is not held together by hatred of an Enemy; that is it’s current strategy.

      Progressivism / totalitarianism is a religion.

      It’s utopian vision song is ‘Imagine.’ They just chose hate-filled balkanization using identity politics because the old dichotomy of driving revolution enroute to earthly nirvana via peasants against capital failed to work. The goal remains the same; a totalitarian utopian commune after a cultural revolution in which some of us must sacrifice for the greater good.

      It is why their contradictory policies don’t matter. It’s why you don’t win arguments with reason with Leftists; religion is a faith.

      What matters to totalitarians is reaching their earthly heaven. It is their goal, which legitimizes all their actions. And it is why they must win in the USA; because it remains the last important bulwark against global dominance. They’ve won everywhere else. I’ll believe Western Europe can save itself when I see it.

      • Jim, you are absolutely correct! I would make one change to your statement though in order to clarify the level of hatred the Left has in achieving their utopian dream … a totalitarian utopian commune after a cultural revolution in which some of us must sacrifice for the greater good.” Make that … “many must be sacrificed … for the greater good.” The evidence from the last century speaks for itself in the numbers of dead this religion has left in its wake.

    • You are correct about the nature of the left as a an angry and mutually contradictory tendency. Likewise, and in result, I am a generic conservative defining myself as anti-Left, and generally friendly toward all shades of Right and Conservative opposing the Left.

  10. ‘The reason this thing they call the alt-right works is that it is not an ideology. It is just a long series of inconvenient observations repeated daily on social media and elsewhere.’

    Ricky Vaughn’s twitter account has been suspended (again). It seems Ricky’s observations are VERY inconvenient.

  11. I consider myself a common-sense conservative, a traditionalist in terms of social behavior, a minimalist in terms of social involvement, a mortal enemy of dishonorable behavior. My one obsession, if you will, is that without national monetary sovereignty and a way of life based on subsidiarity, there can be no true “conservatism”. Please pay a visit to http://subsidiarityinstitute.blogspot.com.ar/ if this theme is of interest.

  12. Fantastic! I noted the same error and immediately recalled Kirk’s words about the negation of ideology.

    It is also crucial to remember the difference when reading polls about “conservative” or liberal sentiment. Pollsters often tie conservativism to specific policy issues, and then “prove” the waning of conservativism, when the actual conservative impulse is still (despite being weakened somewhat) very strong in the US.

  13. the Buckley style of the 1960s was definitely dispositional. Watch Firing Line episodes to get the flavor. With the success of Reagan and the infiltration of the movement and magazine by careerists and neocons, it morphed into the policy bundle conservatism of the 1990s.

    • I think “careerists” don’t get nearly enough hate, the proprietor and commentariat of this blog notwithstanding. When I’m dictator, I’m revamping the tax code such that any organization claiming nonprofit status — such as political parties, think tanks, National Review, NPR, etc. — must have total staff turnover every three years, and nobody drawing a paycheck from such an entity may be hired by another for a period of five years. If you want to play politics or punditry, well, human resources departments and humanities departments all across this great land still have a few jobs open…

      • Just make ’em pay taxes. If anyone pays a tax on gain, every entity raking in value should pay that tax, welfare recipients, pension funds, homeless shelters, cable channel charities et al. Then everyone would have a dog in the fight. The nonprofit rackets may well be the biggest contributor to our corruption problem, e.g. Clinton, Inc.

  14. Whatever we call ourselves, the fight goes on against now “The Purple Revolution.”

    Representative Keith Ellison ,,,“I am proud to announce my candidacy for Chair of the Democratic National Committee, and if given the opportunity to serve, I will work tirelessly to make the Democratic Party an organization that brings us together and advances an agenda that improves people’s lives,” Ellison said in a statement released Monday afternoon….

    Ellison, who played a prominent role in Sen. Bernie Sanders presidential campaign, has already been endorsed for chairman by Sanders and Sens. Chuck Schumer and Harry Reid, as well as Rep. Raul Grijalva, co-chairman of the Congressional Progressive Caucus. Sen. Elizabeth Warren also said Ellison would make a “terrific” chairman.

    “Tirelessly.” I bet he will.

    • Shhhhh . . . remember the old maxim about never interfere with your enemy when he’s in the process of destroying himself.

      The Ellison saga illustrates perfectly the danger posed by governing an organization by ideology rather than pragmatism. The Clinton era killed big government socialism as the dominant ideology of the Democratic Party. Diversity and Egalitarianism have become their dominant ideology, which to the left of the party have reduced to “fuck you whitey.” All policy prescriptions must flow from this ideology.

      The Democrats just got their collective asses handed to them in a presidential election by a brash, trash-talking billionaire with exactly zero years of political or government experience. In an attempt to be pragmatic during the election, Democrats argued that, without said experience, Trump was not qualified to be the chief executive of the federal government.

      Here’s the rub: This argument is, for the most part, correct and should have carried the day. The US government is a massive machine with lots of interdependent moving parts motivated by conflicting interests and constrained by an unwieldy legal system. It *WAS NOT* pragmatic for the American people to nominate someone with no experience in said machine to the position of the Chief Executive of the apparatus.

      The voting data reveals conclusively that Trump won precisely because white people began voting as a collective block *AGAINST* the “fuck you whitey” ideology of the Democratic party. A rational, pragmatic organization would respond to the voting data by moving toward the political center and purging or marginalizing the left wing of the party.

      By contrast, an organization driven by an ideology of “fuck you whitey” believes that nominating as its leader a black Muslim leftist from one of the most liberal districts in one of the most liberal states in America is a perfect response to such an electoral ass whooping. Because Diversity.

      I, for one, fully support the nomination of Keith Ellison to head the DNC. I hope you will join me.

      • I think Trump’s lack of “governmental” experience is not significant, He has been running big businesses most of his life and that is a much more useful background than that of “community organizer” or “politician”. I don’t understand why people think a lawyer makes a better leader than a soldier or a carpenter or a businessman.
        It hasn’t worked that well so far.

        • Lawyers don’t make better leaders. It is all in the person’s character. In fact, I have been very vocal on this site about my disdain for all the lawyers who infest DC, business, and academia and have created all the laws and regulations that we face today. And the fact that all that “alleged” brain power could do nothing to stop someone like Obozo and his crew, says nothing credible about said industry. The money trap is too great and even good minds are warped by greed.

        • Businessmen are, by necessity, pragmatists. When something isn’t working, it is either modified or dropped. When politicians create something that doesn’t work, they try to double down on it until it does work. I’ll take the business approach, thanks.

          • We had a proposal to build a replacement bridge across the Columbia River. It was seen as a perfect opportunity for graft by the politicians on both sides of the river. They spent a lot of time on the light rail system they wanted and how they would change downtown Vancouver WA. They didn’t spend as much time on the bridge design, which is why the Army Corps of Engineers told them they couldn’t build it. It wasn’t high enough for ship traffic. The politicians insisted we had to go through with the project, despite voters turning down the light rail in three different votes. it took a businessman on the county commission, David Madore, to finally shoot the mess down. Of course, they got payback by voting him off the county commission. Sometimes, you have to shut down a project, no matter how much you’ve spent.

          • I wasn’t talking about most business people, just the crony capitalist types who only care about one thing … profits. Damn the customer, the environment, the local economies they serve. In the all out effort to “maximize” their profits, and they claim it is for shareholder wealth but it isn’t necessarily, they pull all kinds of crap by using lobbyists, and buying off politicians so they can do their shit whenever they want, wherever they want, and artificially limit competition without penalty.

            Take banks for example. The way they charge up the pitootie for every single unbundled transaction throughout the delivery chain, especially since this is all electronic, is criminal. They keep everyone’s payroll “until the next business day” but use those funds to invest around the world in real time. You can’t get your money except in small quantities and then “they” are monitoring you and charging you for the favor of giving you access to “your” money. This and more are all delivered to the Banks thanks to our Congress critters.

            Other businesses lie and cheat on product/service quality, hide behind price increases by reducing quantity, introduce harmful ingredients to realize “cost” reductions, and much more. This is where true “regulation” should be applied but the bought and paid for depts. of USDA, FDA, etc. do the bidding of big business, the TOO BIG TOO FAILS.

        • I think it’s depends on how you perceive government. If you think of government as being one big courtroom where a bunch of laws are made and decisions are made like a judge would make them, then the lawyer is a perfect fit to be president.

          However, I don’t think that model works anymore. I think the government has become one big corporation. The government’s job has to deal with the public and provide products and services. Under that model, process is more important and a businessman can be a perfect fit if he knows how to also play the political game. If anybody can do it, it’s Trump.

      • Actually, “fuck you white heterosexual males”. The thing is, those are the people who are best at quietly organizing and sacrificing for their families and communities. Making sacrifices in the short run for long term benefits. Avoiding impulse reactions and actions, and thinking out how to get things done in the long run. And then dedicating themselves, heart and soul, to see it through.

        Lo and behold, there are quite a few women and people of other cultures and colors who understand this, and want to be a part of it. It is an agreeable frame of mind for them. And there are some white males who just don’t get it.

        These attributes are frames of mind and manners of conduct. They have nothing to do with any particular ideology. Trump tapped into all of this, as the established political parties have been running away from it all as fast as they could, with their hair on fire along the way.

      • You are wrong. Do you think you can build in New York City without dealing in politics? You really think Trump isn’t familiar with how organizations work? We voted for Trump because you can’t “drain the swamp” using an insider. And, it’s high time that we have people in power that are not career politicians. We used to have politicians that had run their own businesses or worked outside of the government. We don’t have that any more and it’s part of the reasont that the government is so poorly run. They have no incentive at all to get the work done more efficiently or using less money.

        • that and the Money isn’t real to the politicians It’s Tax Dollars which magically appear in the treasury for them to spend wastefully and of course, to steal.

        • No, I am not wrong. Read the comment again and sharpen your reading skills. I did not say that a president needs to be a career politician or insider, or be devoid of the taint of political experience. I said it was not pragmatic for the American people to nominate someone with *ZERO* experience in government service to the position of Chief Executive.

          As evidence thereof, Trump is the only president in the history of the country with zero experience in government service. I believe that the only persons who served as Presidents without some form of prior elected experience were George Washington, Ulysses Grant, and Dwight Eisenhower, all of whom were military leaders and war heroes. The election of Trump is an aberration, albeit a good one.

          Trump would have lost in a landslide to a moderate Democrat untainted by the 40 years of scandal and crime that sunk Hillary Clinton. It was neither pragmatic nor prudent to elect Trump, but it was necessary above all *NOT* to elect Hillary Clinton. This was the entire point of the Flight 93 Election essay, and Americans understood this.

          In any event, the point of my comment was to illustrate that the Democratic Party is committing national suicide by adhering to a flawed ideology. Let’s do everything in our power to help them along. Placing a radical leftist black Muslim man with ties to Louis Farrakhan in charge of the DNC is a fantastic first step. Go Keith!

      • If the Democrat Party wants to brand itself as “the Muslim party”, get out of their way and let them do it.

        That said, I have always found the Iranians in our country as well as the Palestinians and Jordanians I’m acquainted with to be good people.

        • Probably most of those Iranians departed quickly in 1978 or were born to such. And among the Palestinians there are also Christian Arabs; they may dislike the Israelis, but also the Muslims, and are not jihad bombers. Probably the same may be true of Jordanians.

  15. What would otherwise be called kibbitzing, turned to deadly effect, can be turned deathly boring by systematization. Excellent observation, Z, I heartily concur.

  16. The interesting thing about what is happening is that the guys calling themselves “conservative” are fighting against what is, in fact, the reemergence of the old traditional conservatism. The mild isolationism, practical nationalism and biological realism are just the old ideas that were once common in America

    I think more than anything people got tired of all talk, no action. How long have they talked about shrinking government? And remember when Clinton’s excursion into Somalia was called “Meals on Wheels” by Rush Limbaugh. And the Republicans are supposed to be the fiscally conservative party that doesn’t care about the cost of wars or the fact that they gave Obama EIGHT TRILLION DOLLARS in stimulus money to spend. That’s right, EIGHT TRILLION DOLLARS. (Sundance over at Conservative Treehouse pointed this out and it isn’t something anybody else has.) Our debt would have remained basically unchanged if not for Republicans failing to stand up and do something about it for eight years.

    I’m ready for some good old fashioned, Taft/Nixon/Eisenhower Republicanism about now.

    • If you looked back at the history books a hundred years from now, what legislation or cultural sign would there be that proves Conservatism in the 20th century existed?

      That is the failure of Conservatism. They lost at everything. Including Reagan, who allowed and encouraged the Bush dynasty, mass amnesty and significant government deficit spending on his watch. And he is seen as the one hero.

  17. Perhaps an ideology is a clever way of justifying one’s failure to act according to one’s own interests. We want the survival of our kind and the civilization we created. That the Left brands us as poisonous ideologues for this most natural of desires is a dire projection.

    • An ideology isn’t just a justification for actions one might do anyway, it’s a complete framework for directing cooperative action and influencing the outcome of that action.

      Without an ideology, one cannot organize, and without organization, one cannot come to power, and without power one cannot secure the existence of his people and a future for white children.

  18. I usually end up thinking back to classical liberalism (Jeffersonian) and classical conservatism (Madisonian). This was another case where tracing American roots back to the convention debates and federalist papers would be instructive by way of background. (but that’s a different post is suppose)

    Linked at #Gab,ai
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  19. I don’t care if the astronauts suck their dinners through straws, I’m going to use a knife and fork as long as I can sup at a table.

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