I see no reason whatsoever to bother voting for George W. Bush in 2004. The Republicans have betrayed conservatives on nearly every important principle. I hope they enjoy all those votes they’ll be getting from the inner city, felons, and illegal aliens. The Republicans have truly earned the nickname “the stupid party.” Bush II’s betrayal is even worse than his father’s infamous “read my lips” sell-out.

You’re right Larry. So what do we do? What kind of alternative can we project for the 2004 election? An insurgency campaign in the primaries? A third-party? Forget the presidency and concentrate on congressional races?
We need some good alternative proposals. The GOP leadership is not on our side, but there is still great strength in the grassroots. If a good alternative were presented, this grassroots strength could be a powerful force. One thing’s for sure - without Middle America the GOP would be finished. From the wreckage, maybe some good could be salvaged.

The time to leave the Republican party is long overdue.

Sadly, a major figure has yet to emerge who has the audacity to lead those who wish to bolt.

Until that time, things will only get worse, and as a Junior at Auburn University, I can atest that they are getting that way FAST.

A piece I wrote just last week for THE AUBURN Plainsman on the exact issue of the Republican party selling out.

http://www.theplainsman.com/vnews/display.v/ART/2003/06/26/3efa3b80114c7

I’ll stick my two cents in, Mr. Wall (Thanks BTW for all of your very informative posts over at VDARE on the situation in Mexico): I think we should concentrate on congressional races. If there were a substantial block of votes in Congress of genuine conservatives - sort of a party within the party, the Republicans would have to start paying attention to at least a few of our concerns. On certain issues, like immigration and corporate welfare, a conservative block could actually vote with some of the union-controlled and environmentalist members on the Democratic side to scuttle some of the Bush/Tranzi/NWO agenda. (The recent transfer to China of an Indiana factory responsible for making smart-bombs for our military being a good example.) As it stands, the attitude of the Republican leadership is that they’ll do whatever they please because Middle American religious consrevatives have nowhere else to go.

Dr. Sam Francis put it well in his 5/26/2003 column, when he described the ruins of the “Conservative movement” —

“…frankly, not only is what remains of that “movement” not worth staying in; it’s not even worth leaving.”

And I think there is only one reason why those of us here at VFR have no good answer to Mr. Wall’s question as to what to do: There is nothing we can do. We’re finished.

I join with everyone else here in agreeing that we should go down fighting, and standing for what we know to be right. But realistically, we are done.

And if anyone believes otherwise, and has any concrete plan to rebuke this tidal wave, then please, PLEASE, step forward, as I would so love to be proven wrong!

I don’t have a plan, I have an anecdote. About ten years ago I was watching Stanley Fish being interviewed by Richard Hefner on the PBS program The Inquiring Mind. The sheer audacious evil and nihilism of the post-modern, truth-denying Fish—which was not opposed at all by the courtly, old-fashioned liberal Hefner—was incredible. But as I was watching this unutterably disgusting, evil man, an odd thing happened—I began to believe all the more in God. It struck me that such evil COULD NOT EXIST unless there was a good that it was rebelling against. After all, the very motive of the evil was to deny truth and goodness. Which means that such evil could not exist of itself. It is purely a derivative phenomenon. Therefore the greater the evil, the more that proves the existence of the good, and its power to defeat evil.

The evil that seems to be taking over America is like that: it calls us back to the truth of which it is the opposite and the enemy. So there is a plan. It is to know the truth and to resist the false—whatever particular political form that resistance may take.

There isn’t much room for hope, but it’s all we’ve got and all we’ll ever have. Who ever said life was fair? Britain was a sure loser in the Battle of Britain until Hitler acted irrationally. British culture seems a sure loser in the culture war unless something dramatic happens. America was a sure loser in the immigration war until 9/11 changed America’s focus, slightly. The Soviet Union surely was expected to last far into the future, but somehow things changed. It seems these and many other changes were not orchestrated. The changes happened, and the hopeful were there to reap the benefits. But many cultures have perished, and American culture is not immune to fate. All we can ever do is strive to better our lot in life. Others might say, “seek first the Kingdom of God.” The result is mostly out of our hands.

As William Safire might say, this sounds like something from the “nattering nabobs of negativism.” Maybe Bush’s reputed arrogance will cause Congressman Tom Tancredo of Colorado to finally tire of saying good things about Bush and lead his immigration caucus out of the Republican Party.

P.S. This is not stoicism, though it may sound like it. I believe truth has the power not just to keep its own integrity in a decaying social order, which is the stoic view, but to prevail actively over the false. So the attitude of “holding onto the truth” that I’m describing is not the whole picture, it is the base that we need for whatever action we may take. If we have the determination that we will never surrender to the false (meaning never tell ourselves that it is true), no matter victorious and overwhelming it may seem, then there is the possibility of active as well as spiritual resistance. But people for whom the highest truth is pragmatism, like the neocons, will end up surrendering.

Thank you, Mssrs. Auster and Murgos. As it is written: “the gates of hell shall not prevail.”

The men of the East may spell the stars,
And times and triumphs mark,
But the men signed of the cross of Christ
Go gaily in the dark.

— G. K. Chesterton, The Ballad of the White Horse

Carl writes: “As it is written: “the gates of hell shall not prevail.”

Carl points us to our only real hope. The nations are turning away from God, and God will not sit idly by. As the Psalmist said:

“The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together against the Lord, and against his annointed, saying,
Let us break their bands asunder, and cast away their cords from us.
He that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh: the Lord shall have them in derision.
Then shall He speak to them in His wrath, and vex them in His sore displeasure.

Be wise, now therefore, O ye kings: be instructed ye judges of the earth.
Serve the Lord with fear, and rejoice with trembling.
Kiss the Son, lest He be angry, and ye perish from the way, when His wrath is kindled but a little. Blessed are all they who put their trust in Him.”

From Psalm 2. The only thing that really explains what’s happening in our country and the world.

I didn’t get the impression that Lindberg doesn’t care; his article sounded elegiac, like some of the above posts that say that since we can’t win in the political arena we must look to the spiritual. In any event, I think Lindberg performs a service in reminding his readers of Bush’s decision in the stem-cell-research controversy, putting it in the same context as affirmative action, diversity, and the legalization of sodomy.

Other columnists should follow Lindberg’s example in this respect, and remind us of the dozens of statements and positions that prove that Bush is not a conservative (something he telegraphed years ago when he placed “compassionate” in front of the noun). Just this morning we learn that Bush is against the Constitutional amendment defining marriage as between a man and a woman.

If enough writers keep listing Bush’s left-leaning actions and statements, thus making sure that they will not be forgotten, the cumulative effect of this list will perhaps make it plain that the Left and Center are not all that he should feel the need to mollify and accommodate. So far, most of the pressure has not come from the Right. By now it should be clear that traditionalists have nothing to lose by exerting it.

Already, surveys are showing that Bush has lost the votes of many conservatives who are Jews, for his repeated pressure on Israel to refrain from retaliating against murderers of its people, and for his inability to learn that the terrorists see his promise of a state of their own as a reward for their terrorism. Let the surveys start showing that traditionalists are adding up the compromises, subtracting the principled positions, and finding that the balance has shifted way left, and therefore that we have no stake in helping to rewarding this administration in November 2004.

The Republican Party is not on our side. It has not been at least since it was willing to nominate the globalist liberal GHW Bush as its presidential candidate in 1988. I wonder whether the Republican Party - established in unconstitutional consolidation and war - ever really was on our side, except perhaps during the Harding-Coolidge years. It surely was not under Theodore Roosevelt and Richard Nixon, and even Reagan did almost nothing to counter our social and cultural decline. The party had an opportunity to go conservative with Robert Taft, but spurned him for an easy score with Gen. Eisenhower.

Mr. Auster’s 2000 article was prescient. I wish I had read it at the time - it would have saved me from voting for GW Bush. Of course, I would then have voted for Buchanan, of whom Mr. Auster does not approve!

I agree with the comments saying we must focus our efforts on the Congress, with the ultimate goal of breaking away enough conservative Republicans to challenge the GOP from the right. It might then be possible (and this is in no way the end result I hope for) to create tactical alliances with the rump Republican Party to stymie Democrats. A Conservative/Republican alliance, while imperfect and transitory, would still have a center of gravity to the right of the Republican Party. What we now have is soft liberals (Republicans) squabbling with hard liberals (you know who) over non-essentials. As Bush’s recent performances make clear, soft liberals and hard agree on essentials. Then again, expecting any good to come of an alliance with Republicans might be just another triumph of hope over experience.

Other arenas in which to fight are the state legislatures and governorships. There are still many states where it remains possible to elect legislatures and governors who are to the right of the Washington mainstream (and those where it is only possible to elect ones to the left, it’s true). In that connection, and I know this is a long shot, conservatives should work to repeal the 17th Amendment. If we could return election of U.S. senators to the state legislatures, I believe we would have a more conservative U.S. Senate than we do today, with all that implies about containing our legislating federal judiciary. Paradoxically, senators from conservative states would be more accountable to political currents in their states - as it is today, I think many senators are above the local politics of their states, whose largely comatose electorates keep returning them even as they drift left in Washington. State legislators are a more politically aware, if not more honorable, electorate than the people at large.

It would also help if someone conservative could mount a strong challenge to Bush in the Republican primaries. While Bush probably has the nomination locked up, it might scare him out of some of his more liberal tendencies. I think he is vulnerable about Iraq, especially if the drip, drip of American casualties continues, and about immigration and borders.

In a cultural struggle to reclaim tradition, our strongest ally should be the Roman Catholic Church. Sad to say (for reasons Mr. Auster has addressed elsewhere), under current management the Church is on the other side of many of these issues. A globalist Pope who, God knows why, appears to be philosophically committed to the destruction of nation-states and the death of Western Christendom has just given us another indication of his hostility to allowing Americans to preserve anything American in America. The see of Orlando is coming vacant. John Paul II’s nominee for the post is Bishop Thomas Wenski. Wenski, the head of the USCCB’s Committee on Migration, is a vociferous advocate of open borders and unconditional amnesty for all illegal aliens. Himself the son of Polish immigrants (could that be why JPII likes him?), Wenski was the architect of the unprecedented joint appeal by American and Mexican bishops to throw open our southern border to Mexico. What this indicates (and this is no surprise to Catholic traditionalists) is that there is no longer any institution in Western society where traditionalists are not a counter-culture. Still, we are commanded to hope, and so we shall. Happy Independence Day! HRS

I think Carl’s congressional-strategy suggestion is excellent. And, Howard is right, a primary challenge to Bush would also be good.
Even if he loses, a knowledgeable, articulate and courageous candidate could put a lot of these issues on the front burner and provoke people to think about them. But we’re running out of time, somebody better step up to the plate soon!

Mr Sutherland’s post gives a good example of why we should resist the power of the Papacy in America. On this day especially, we remember that we rejected one King who placed himself above Christ, let us not simply swap him for another.

I would not assume Mr. Auster chose not to vote for Pat. Suffice it to say that W (like his Daddy) was and ever will be a hard pill to swallow for traditionalists.

The 17th Amendment: oh what a high snooze factor, even though Mr. Sutherland’s arguments always have merit.

Yes, statements by the dear John Paul II (or maybe his handlers) can be hard to take. I made sure I saw his motorcade speed by on the Interstate one evening when he visited my Catholic hometown. I take comfort in the Creed and the Magisterium, which John Paul II has never called into question.

I often wish Protestants would stop fearing the Pope, although there is reason for Protestants and Catholics to fear one another.

“But increasingly, Republicans will find it convenient to repair to a “principle” of pragmatism:”

Lindberg ends his column with the above quote. By putting principle in quotes, he seems to recognize that pragmatism is not a principle but a rejection of principle. Yet, he fails to realize that the Republican Party ever stopped being the pragmatic party. Other than ending slavery, the Republican Party has never been the party of big ideas. The Republican Party has always been more the party of Chaffee, Specter and Dole than Reagan. Conservatism has never been an easy fit.

TCB is making an interesting point.

But still there have been elements of something higher in the Republicans. TR expressed higher values. Or read Coolidge’s inaugural address, in which he speaks of both the white race and the cross.

Also, Republicans did stand for the principle of small government and federalism, and then progressively backed away from it. By the time of the Clinton health care insurance proposal, it didn’t even occur to Republicans to oppose it on grounds that it was unconstitutional. As for small government and the Republican abandonment of principle, Dole’s response to the proposal said it all: “A good idea, but how do we pay for it”?

The Republicans’ triumph in the Reagan ‘80’s was due to their adoption of previously Democratic ideals, which the Democrats had in the main abandoned. In the nineteenth century, it was the Democratic Party that was for state’s rights and a constitutionally limited federal government. The Republicans were the party of federal control. The Republicans supported Lincoln’s unconstitutional war on the American people in the South, and enacted in its aftermath (by fiat) THE single most destructive, cancerous anti-Constitutional amendment in our history. It was the Republicans, not the Democrats, who set the stage for the big-government takeovers of the twentieth century.

By the time it actually began to occur, however, the Democrats on a national scale were far enough gone in that direction to actually promote overtly nationalistic leaders like FDR and Johnson, while the people were evidently far enough gone to elect them. With the popular political tide appearing to be turned the Democrats’ way, especially in the ‘60’s, and in the ‘70’s after Watergate, Republicans naturally sought to differentiate themselves and pick up new voters. They did this by returning, or seeming to return, to the immensely popular and previously Democratic idea of states’ rights and a constitutionally limited federal government. This was the Reagan gambit. But alas, it did not last. National politicians being themselves naturally at war with the idea of states’ rights, small-government conservatism soon gave way to the Republicans’ traditional brand of big-government interventionism—albeit in a direction different from the big-government interventionism of the modern Democrats—and that is where we are today.

The Republican party, like any major party in a modern democracy, is essentially a coalition party. Within that coalition are a number of different groups who share some basic ideals, but who also disagree on many others. Any man who wishes to become POTUS, must not only balance the various factions within the party, but he must attempt to gain enough of the centrist middle ground within the whole nation to win election. It is therefore naive to think that traditionalists and other conservatives are always going to get their way.

The Republican party remains the only viable vehicle for conservatives. Merely because POTUS does not always take a consistent hard line, does not mean there are not many genuine conservatives within either the party or Congress, and it does not mean Bush himself is the problem. He has to lead a country of 350 million people at a time of deep national crisis. We do not.

Bush remains the most genuinely conservative President in decades. No, he is not perfect, especially on immigration, but he is a vast improvement on previous Presidents, even Reagan, who is a man I greatly admire, and who, for all his faults, was a great President.

Conservatives have a choice. We can work to build a real base of patriotic and traditionalist conservatism within the party, or we can, like some Plaecons, throw all our toys out of the cot and refuse to play because we dont always get our way. If we take the latter approach, and if we waste time with third parties that have no chance of real power, the all we do is ensure Democratic victory. Anyone who believes that it does not matter if the Democrats or the Republicans hold power is, quite frankly, ignorant.

911 has given conservatives a real window of opportunity to make our case on issues like immigration, border control, citzenship, a foriegn policy that serves the national interest, and traditional morality. Lets not waste it.

Posted by: Shawn on July 5, 2003 01:40 AM
“Conservatives have a choice. We can work to build a real base of patriotic and traditionalist conservatism within the party, or we can, like some Plaecons, throw all our toys out of the cot and refuse to play because we dont always get our way.”

do you honestly think bush and the republican party elect give two hoots for conservative principles? if it walks like a duck, it is a duck, and republican party elect walks like a leftwing duck.

the only opportunity the republican party is giving conservatives is the opportunity to drive off a cliff. accept reality and move on.

Sadly, I can’t agree with Shawn. How can one think of Bush as conservative when he has supported (and played a key role in) the placing of race preferences in the Constitution? Opposition to race preferences, the supposed belief in race blindness and equality under the law, had been the basic common defining belief of conservatives, i.e., of right-liberals. And not just of conservatives but Republicans going back to Lincoln, with his idea that each man should have an equal chance “to run the race of life.” Bush has now signed onto racial socialism, i.e. the total organization of society according to “diversity.” No one was requiring him to do that. Every element across the board in the conservative movement and the Republican party was against that. He himself chose to go in that direction.

What has Republican victory led to? Seven of the nine justices who voted in the majorities in the affirmative action case and the sodomy case were Republican appointees. Bush’s own next choice to be a justice is assumed to be Alberto Gonzales, the very person who pushed Bush to take the pro-diversity position, which in turn undoubtedly influenced O’Connor to vote the way she did.

This is not a matter of conservatives “taking our toys home” and refusing to play, as Shawn described it, but of facing reality. The fact of the matter is, Republicans seem to have more conservative principles when they’re out of power than when they’re in. At least when they’re out of power they oppose the left.

Yes, in response to both abby and Lawrence I do consider Bush a conservative. Merely because he does not conform to a specific kind of conservatism, or that he has to sometimes make compromises, does not mean he is not a conservative. Sadly Lawrence gives an example of exactly what I am talking about; if the current administration does not in every degree and on every issue conform to our desires then lets just give up on the party, or as in abby’s case, make the laughable and absurd claim that the Republican party is left wing.

A good excersise is to take a visit to left wing and Democratic forums. There you will find the current administration described as “the most right wing in decades”, as “fascist”, as “white southern redenecks pushing states rights”, and so on.

So on one side of the extreme fringe, you have the Republicans described as left wing liberal sell outs, and on the other as extreme right wing zealots.

The truth is somewhere in between.

Bush has nominated Bill Pryor for the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Pryor is a strong defender of states rigts and totally opposed to abortion. He has also ended federal funding for overseas aid organisations that promote abortion. He has strengthened the right to religious freedom and practice in our schools. He has promoted faith based alternatives to welfare, and he has overturned eight years of Democratic cowardice and taken on America’s enemies in an uncompromising war of national self defense. And the fact remains that, the two recent decisions aside, the Supreme court has been slowly but surely undoing the liberal nightmare for the last twenty years. Under Rehnquist, the court has been returning power to the states.

Conservatives are not always going to get everything we want. We have to face reality, and learn to take those victories we can, and learn to fight another day when we lose.

“do you honestly think bush and the republican party elect give two hoots for conservative principles?”

Yes, far more than you do.

“if it walks like a duck, it is a duck”

This from someone who posts articles from rabid left wing web sites attacking our leaders in a time of war. While real Americans are shedding blood overseas fighting the Islamo-fascists, people like you are spitting on our President and giving ammunition to our enemies. So using your “if it walks like a duck” theory, I think I am right when I consider you a traitor to your country and a person without any honor. Bush has more dencency and more conservatism in his little finger than you will ever have.

“Sadly Lawrence gives an example of exactly what I am talking about; if the current administration does not in every degree and on every issue conform to our desires then lets just give up on the party …”

Bush’s failure is not that he “does not in every degree and on every issue conform” to conservatism; it is that on fundamental issues he does not conform to conservatism. What degree of non-conservative acts by Bush would persuade Shawn that Bush is not merely “failing to be perfectly conservative,” but that he is, indeed, not a conservative? For example, if Bush endorsed government control of the means of production and a guaranteed income for everyone, I imagine that even Shawn would agree that Bush was not a conservative. So there are certain objective markers by which we could determine that a person is not a conservative. The question of race preferences is such a marker. Bush supports the imposition of racial socialism, aka diversity, on every institution in America. This move, in and of itself, signals a radical break with everything America has been; it takes the ground from under our feet. Yet this leftist (no longer “liberal”) revolution, endorsed by Bush, is what Shawn characterizes as a mere failure “in every degree and on every issue [to] conform to our desires …”

I respectfully disagree. Shawn should understand how unutterably demoralizing the Grutter decision is to principled conservatives, including those who had voted for Bush in 2000 and who now feel they can’t support him. They are not feeling that way because of a failure of Bush to be perfect; they are feeling that way because of his betrayal of the most fundamental principles.

I would add one thing to what Larry says above. By moving to the left on racial preferences, Mr. Bush is taking the GOP with him. Would O’Connor have gone the way she did if Bush had taken a strong public stand against “affirmative action?” Probably not.

If Gore had been elected, he would have drawn opposition from the mainstream right for doing what Bush has done. When Bush does the same thing, the right meekly accepts it. I think if Mr. Bush is re-elected in 2004, he will move even farther left than he has so far. However, I have a hunch that Bush is going to find a way to lose in 2004.

Mr. Auster writes:
“Bush supports the imposition of racial socialism, aka diversity, on every institution in America. This move, in and of itself, signals a radical break with everything America has been; it takes the ground from under our feet. Yet this leftist (no longer “liberal”) revolution, endorsed by Bush, is what Shawn characterizes as a mere failure “in every degree and on every issue [to] conform to our desires …” “

This is how liberalism has always moved forward. Mr. Bush makes a few unprincipled exceptions to his fundamental liberalism, sucks in the “natural” conservatives who don’t have a strong intellectual defense against liberalism, and moves the entire country to the left, cha cha cha. The lefties will always naturally move further leftward without a need to carry them along; the real action is always on the right hand side of the dynamic, where fresh new heretics are born and raised and where the tradition that sustains liberalism (despite being its antithesis) still has some life to it.

The only legitimate option for men of good will is complete and unequivocal repentance from liberalism. Otherwise conservative men of good will just become the right wing of the liberal revolution, providing an endless supply of the unprincipled exceptions that keep liberalism alive.

Without its right wing liberalism would not fly. Shawn is right that the right wing of liberalism is where paleos and traditionalists should engage; but that engagement should be to detach men of good will from the Lie not to form empty coalitions with liberal modernism. In order to detach men of good will from the right wing of liberalism they have to be engaged and treated with respect, though — that is the primary place where paleoconservatism fails, and underneath that appears to be a failure in Christian charity.

Sure Mr. Bush is willing to defend the country from the Islamic threat; but even there he is unwilling to frame the defense in anything other than liberal modernist terms. Beneath the apparent coalition lies the knife in the back. The Bush/neocon reaction to the latest SCOTUS decisions is as clear an example as one could ask for. Hope is a virtue to be sure, but the sort of hopefulness that has always been evidenced by the right wing of liberalism is suicidal.

“Shawn is right that the right wing of liberalism is where paleos and traditionalists should engage; but that engagement should be to detach men of good will from the Lie not to form empty coalitions with liberal modernism. In order to detach men of good will from the right wing of liberalism they have to be engaged and treated with respect, though …”

An excellent insight by Matt, and one well worth remembering in debates with paleocons. It also connects with an unpublished draft of mine in which I call the mainstream conservative movement “Ground Zero in the Suicide of America.” The mainstream conservatives are the one group that has the ability to turn things around; therefore their failure to confront the left seriously is the key factor in the ongoing victory of the left. From which it also follows that the mainstream conservatives must be persuaded, not merely denounced in endless choleric fury in the manner of the paleocons.

“The only legitimate option for men of good will is complete and unequivocal repentance from liberalism. Otherwise conservative men of good will just become the right wing of the liberal revolution, providing an endless supply of the unprincipled exceptions that keep liberalism alive.”

This reminds me of the theme of Atlas Shrugged, in which the central plot concerns two characters who keep supporting the leftist status quo and thus help maintain it in existence (just as Matt says conservatives do with their endless supply of unprincipled exceptions) even though it is destroying everything they believe in, because out of misplaced loyalty they are unable or unwilling to make the decisive break from it. Of course, Rand’s overall philosophy is completely unacceptable to traditionalists and Atlas Shrugged as a novel has much that is bad and ludicrous; in particular, I have found that seriously religiious people are unwilling to read such a radically atheist book. However, if people could read the book selectively, they would find in it much that is of enduring value, indeed a prophetic account of the very dilemma in which we find ourselves.

I’ve often wondered whether Ayn Rand’s real value lay in her ability to arrive at some sound conclusions in spite of the fact that her ‘root’ principles were founded on sand. She shows that by intelligent observation and rigorous thought, one can still theoretically find at least some useful, ‘surface’ truths, and therefore stands as an indictment of modern Liberalism in her own peculiar and, at times, fascinating way.

In the end though, her Godless philosophy goes the only way it can go — nowhere, because in the end we are all destined for eternal oblivion anyway. So what does it all REALLY mean? Some of her adherents seem to put her on a divine pedestal. Somebody evidently has to fill the void and take the place of the Missing Deity, but she’s a poor substitute.

Repeal the 17th Amendment:

http://www.articlev.com/repeal_the_17th_amendment.htm

Matt’s post above was an article of uncommon polemical brilliance. His analysis of the defects of conservatism is profound and profoundly true. Well done.

It is gratifying for a sometime commenter like myself to receive a complement from someone who clearly spends a great deal of time and thought on his own must-read blog. Thanks, Mr. Cella.

Thanks to Mr. Cella for that link! I had seen that a while back on newsmax.com, but had since lost it.

That article demonstrate the great foresight of our Founders, and how so much of our decline can be traced to specific departures from their plan.

Thank God the Electoral College at least is still intact, for now.

I believe in charity but not in enabling. Talking with disrespectful people is counterproductive. If there are psychiatric issues at play, the psychiatrist is the only person that has any chance of treating the issues.

On to unrelated matters. Matt speaks of engaging the liberal “right.” Does engaging include belonging to and supporting their political party?

A more accurate and productive sentence is, “Talking to people acting disrespectfully is counterproductive.”

Matt:

The comment deserved it. And thanks for the compliment about my blog. Feel free to set me straight in my own comments box!

Speaking of my blog, I just posted a length essay on the relationship between conservatives and democracy. I hope VFR readers will take a look and offer their thoughts.

http://cellasreview.blogspot.com/2003_07_06_cellasreview_archive.html#105752435459542429

I may have misunderstood Matt when I wrote the below. He was speaking of peeling people away one person at a time from right-liberalism, while I seemed to be talking about converting the right-liberal movement as a whole, or at least significant parts of it, into an anti-liberal movement. Matt’s approach is probably more realistic.

“An excellent insight by Matt, and one well worth remembering in debates with paleocons. It also connects with an unpublished draft of mine in which I call the mainstream conservative movement “Ground Zero in the Suicide of America.” The mainstream conservatives are the one group that has the ability to turn things around; therefore their failure to confront the left seriously is the key factor in the ongoing victory of the left. From which it also follows that the mainstream conservatives must be persuaded, not merely denounced in endless choleric fury in the manner of the paleocons.”

Mr. Auster writes:
“I may have misunderstood Matt when I wrote the below. He was speaking of peeling people away one person at a time from right-liberalism, …”

Well, I wasn’t deeply concerned with how many at a time repent from liberalism as a tactical matter. I was concerned with the notion that a coalition can be successfully formed with liberals. It can’t. Liberalism always uses such coalitions as a source of unprincipled exceptions. It consumes them like the parasite it is.

Mr. Murgos asks:
“Matt speaks of engaging the liberal “right.” Does engaging include belonging to and supporting their political party?”

That isn’t something I would do. But them I am a radical right-wing fruitcake who doesn’t vote at all. My not-voting isn’t rooted in apathy or protest though. I don’t vote because I view voting in a modern democracy as a vile act that sullies the soul of the one who does it. Voting in a modern democracy is a ritual that affirms equal choice formally. It represents the consent of the voter to governance under liberalism. I liken it to the requirement in pre-Christian pagan Rome to light incense to the pagan gods; except it is worse, because nobody is forced to vote while the Christians in pagan Rome were forced often and in many ways to light the incense. So voting is like a Christian lighting the incense without anyone holding a gun (or a crossbow I suppose) to his head to do it.

So no, for me personally I don’t vote because I consider it a vile act, a public voluntary Choice Ritual affirming ones fundamental support for liberal governance. It isn’t that I categorically wouldn’t do it ever under any circumstances, it is just that even if I ever felt compelled to do so for some tactical reason (such as an election to abolish democracy in favor of a restoration of monarchy or something) I would need to take a shower afterwards.

Matt wrote:

“This is how liberalism has always moved forward. Mr. Bush makes a few unprincipled exceptions to his fundamental liberalism, sucks in the “natural” conservatives who don’t have a strong intellectual defense against liberalism, and moves the entire country to the left, cha cha cha. The lefties will always naturally move further leftward without a need to carry them along; the real action is always on the right hand side of the dynamic, where fresh new heretics are born and raised and where the tradition that sustains liberalism (despite being its antithesis) still has some life to it…. I was concerned with the notion that a coalition can be successfully formed with liberals. It can’t. Liberalism always uses such coalitions as a source of unprincipled exceptions. It consumes them like the parasite it is.”

I sense the general truth of what Matt is saying, but I am dull this evening and am not “really” getting it. Could he give us a concrete example of the process he is describing?

Mr. Auster writes:
“Could he give us a concrete example of the process he is describing?”

Sure, I’ll take it from this thread.

Shawn wrote:
“911 has given conservatives a real window of opportunity to make our case on issues like immigration, border control, citzenship, a foriegn policy that serves the national interest, and traditional morality. Lets not waste it. “

That much is perfectly true. But Mr. Bush has apparently gotten Shawn’s support across the board just by taking physical threats to America seriously, even while expressing that seriousness in liberal terms and refusing to name the actual enemy. All of the other issues Shawn raises have been betrayed terribly by Mr. Bush and the Republicans. But by making one unprincipled exception they’ve signed up a whole slew of otherwise natural conservatives.

David said it above: “If Gore had been elected, he would have drawn opposition from the mainstream right for doing what Bush has done. When Bush does the same thing, the right meekly accepts it.”

Almost nobody is wrong about every single thing. All a liberal has to do to build a coalition of right-wing suckers is provide them with one little unprincipled exception; then he moves them all further to the left. The reason he can do that is because his useful idiots on the right have not fully repented from liberalism. Only by completely repudiating liberalism — completely repudiating government for freedom and equal rights — can the right make itself immune to this grand scale rope-a-dope.

This discussion peels back a layer on the problem with “issues conservatism”, by the way. Liberalism — government for freedom and equal rights — is the default. An issues-conservative cares about one, two, or ten issues. On those three or ten issues he will vote for a genuinely conservative policy or candidate. On the other thousand issues he is effectively don’t-care, so the default is automatically to a liberal policy.

Every “issues conservative” voter results in +3 (or +10) points for conservatism, +997 (or +990) points for liberalism. Just do the math.

No. The thing that has to be done — it seems impossible yet it is the only choice — is to eliminate liberalism’s status as the default. That means completely repenting of it fundamentally.

Ok. The right-liberal politician takes a few non-liberal positions, gains the support of conservatives on the basis of those positions, and thus drags them into accepting a more and more liberal agenda. Thus conservatives end up accepting Bush’s vast expansion of liberal federal involvement in education, his support for race preferences as a fundamental national principle, for multiculturalism, for language rights, and so on. This is a good analysis.

But what did Matt mean by liberalism consuming unprincipled exceptions as the parasite it is? I see the part where the right-liberal pol sucks in the conservatives to his overall liberal agenda by throwing them a few unprincipled exceptions, but how is he destroying the unprincipled exceptions? Aren’t the conservatives at least getting some genuine unprincipled exceptions out of this process?

“Aren’t the conservatives at least getting some genuine unprincipled exceptions out of this process?”

In the short run to be sure, but their days are always numbered because the issues-conservatives, in order to win their phyrric victory, have assented to the very liberal principles that will ultimately destroy the fruits of temporary victory. Even a conservative nirvana-moment such as the overturn of Roe vs Wade would represent at best a temporary setback for liberalism, and in the meantime will have made true believers out of a vast number of otherwise natural conservatives.

Life does become unlivable the more liberal a polity becomes. So a nice base of current unprincipled exceptions — which are consumed over time — keeps things afloat longer and brings more recruits aboard.

I’m starting to come around to Matt’s thinking on this. The ‘rope-a-dope’ process described has taken place in every single Western country. Look at what’s left of the “conservative opposition” in England and the EU. They’ve become just another flavor of Eloi-dom - so pale and weak that they’re quickly running out of unpricipled exceptions. Republicans here in the US are well on the way to becoming the same thing. Note all the deafening silence from Republican leaders on the two recent abominable SCOTUS decisions. Are there any societies that are immune from liberalism?

Of course, in order for there to be repentence there has to be some sort of awareness of sin, some prick upon the conscience of the one going along for the ride on the way to hell.

This comment is slightly off topic from the preceding discussion, but is still in the same ballpark, so here goes.

I was talking with a friend today who rejected the notion that liberalism was bound to lead to the current leftward veering of America. She said it was due to the cowardice of liberals, not to anything inherent in liberalism itself. I brought up the idea that the flaw in the American founding was that the liberal principles were explict, but the conservative principles were not explicit; they were only habitual, customary, so that when they were challenged by liberalism, there was no way within liberalism to to defend them. And so liberalism has progressively junked one aspect of traditionalism after another.

She said, “That’s ridiculous. ‘That’s like someone saying, ‘I have this delicious cake, but I’m going to throw out the cake and just eat the icing.’”

This gave me an opening. I said: “But that would not be as absurd as you’re suggesting, if from the very start the idea of the cake apart from the icing had never been articulated. Let’s say there’s a woman who makes a great cake with icing. But neither she nor anyone in her family ever talk about the cake part of the cake, because they have no words for it. When they eat a cake, they say, “Oh, this is delicious icing!” When they share the cake with friends, they say: “Have some this great icing.” They enjoy the whole cake, but they only have articulate language for the icing. If someone came along and said, this cake is too big, you need to get rid of the part made with flour, they wouldn’t be able to say why that’s a bad idea. Over time, they will throw out the cake and just be left with the icing.”

One other thing to note is that liberalism NEVER exists without unprincipled exceptions. A consistent liberal is an anarchist, so any liberal who actually wants to DO something politically (to end some tyranny or whatever) has his unprincipled exceptions. What happens over time is not that the number of unprincipled exceptions to liberalism goes down. Oh no. Liberalism exists in order to stamp out traditional tyrannies, so what happens is that discriminating authority (unprincipled exceptions) based in the traditional moral order are destroyed and _replaced with_ discriminating authority that is deliberately NOT based in the traditional moral order.

And that, my friends, is how we get the family tree of liberalism: capitalist libertarianism, new dealism, feminism, socialism, communism, naziism, etc. The differences between different classes of liberals reside in their unprincipled exceptions.

As Jerry Garcia sings, “its even worse than it appears”.

I wrote:
“…what happens is that discriminating authority (unprincipled exceptions) based in the traditional moral order are destroyed and _replaced with_ discriminating authority that is deliberately NOT based in the traditional moral order.”

To finish the thought, perhaps for myself alone because I am enamored of such models, we have three classes of assertion that occur within liberalism:

1) Assertions of liberal principles - these can only be used to REJECT or COUNTER some assertion of authority, they cannot actually ASSERT authority themselves.

2) Authoritative discriminations (unprincipled exceptions) based in the traditional moral order.

3) Authoritative discriminations which are NOT based in the traditional moral order.

As class 2 assertions are replaced by class 3 assertions the traditional moral order and all that it supports begins to break down. This causes all sorts of unanticipated problems, so the liberal ruling class is forced to replace the class 2 assertions with a far more comprehensive set of class 3 assertions. Thus the comprehensive bureacratic tyranny that marks the end state of every form of liberalism.

Of course the only way to have explicitly called this out at the Founding would have been to explicitly list out ALL of the unprincipled exceptions; or alternatively to change liberalism to be a list of explicit equalities (facts to ignore and circumstances in which to ignore them) as we discussed above.

Neither explicit list is possible to construct. Therefore liberalism is ALWAYS incompatible, in any form, with a polity based in the traditional moral order.