Note the complete business-as-usual noise from Conservatism, Inc. Despite embarrassing themselves by not only supporting a nearly complete non-entity who obviously, quite obviously, had no chance of winning the presidency, they continue to act as if their shtick isn't well past its sell-by date. At its leading journal, National Review, a type of sick stasis has sunk in: Lopez on why the Catholic Church is the best, Lowry on whatever the liberal media has decided he talk about today, Stuttaford on why the Euro will fail any second now, Kirkorian on how insane our immigration policy is, Steyn mocking all the above, yet not offering ever even the slightest hint on how to correct the situation.
I'm just a lowly worker bee in the monstrous USG, while these people are given the public microphone, yet who called the election? Who called it right down to the election triggering a growing Euro-American feeling of alienation with USG, to the point where even MSNBC has noticed that "Seceed" bumper stickers are very, very popular in Texas?
How can it be that what is absolutely obvious to me is a complete mystery to those who write for politics as a living?
I claim no special genius. I understand what is happening in America today for the same reason that the sweet, 6-year old Pakistani child in front of me today speaks Urdu miles better than I ever will: because I was born to it.
I am the lower-class, White, European-American, who grew up told to play by the rules. I know one thing: I know my people. We are millions, hundreds of millions. And right now we are in thrall to a decrepit and dying culture, degraded at every turn, we have forgotten who we are.
But, here's the thing. I was right about the election and I'm right about this: Conservatism, Inc. and the Republican Party are dead, dead, dead. All it will take is one man, one man with the right stuff, to light the match, and my people will burn this whole rotten status quo down.
As my people used to sing, a long, lost time ago.
Which side are you on, boys?
Which side are you on?
Jourdan is right. We should all either hang ourselves or convert to Islam. All is lost.
ReplyDeleteThe American Way has always been to crawl into a hole and die after a setback. That is why the United States surrendered to Japan on December 8, 1941. That is why General McAuliffe surrendered his troops at Bastogne during the Battle of the Bulge. We have always been a nation of quitters.
Yeah, Mitt Romney was a loser of a candidate. He caved on every issue. He did not articulate his positions very well. He did terribly in the debates. He had loser written all over him.
Yes, I have a serious problem with the Republican elite and the RINOs. My quotation in the banner at the top of this page was addressed to them. However, we need to look ahead. I believe that the current path of the nation is wrong and that it is unsustainable. So why should we run away from conservatism? We need to embrace it even more. Let us work to have someone such as Allen West as our candidate in 2016.
Barack Obama is not a politician: he is a cultural phenomenon. What are the recipients of "Obama Phones" going to do when there is no more money to pay for those phones? What are they going to do when there are no more companies left to provide those phones? Those people are lazy scum. Will they really be willing to pitch in if things get really dark? Of course not. So who will be left to rebuild? -- the backbone of America, those who are willing and anxious to be productive. We shall overcome.
Being depressed about the election is one thing, but we need to get right back up and keep fighting the good fight. Anyone willing to raise the white flag has no business being on our side. Those people are as useful as those "moderate" muslims who remain silent as other muslims murder people in the name of Allah. If we can't depend on you, we can't trust you, so please go away.
Excellent post, Matt, TY.
DeleteMatt, your post only makes sense if you think that the Republican Party and the mainstream conservative movement constitute a conservative resistance to the status quo. Recognizing that that assertion is laughable on its face--even more so now as both are hurriedly revising their positions to please the experts and the leftist media--is not surrender; rather, it is the necessary first step towards realizing that politics in this country as we have known it is incapable of either solving the problem at hand. In fact, it is not even capable of *speaking about* the problem at hand.
DeleteCase in point: Matt, please point me to a Republican or mainstream conservative leader who speaks out against the Obamaphone voters?
You can't. Becuase they don't exist.
Pretending that your mainstream movement is still viable is more akin to surrender, as your position merely makes Charlie Browns out of conservatives, forever and ever complaining that, gosh darn it, Lucy pulled the football away at the last minute! Maybe if we tune our approach more adequately next time, Lucy will let us kick the ball.
She's not going to let you kick the ball, Matt.
What you need to do is write your own rules, shoot Lucy in the head, and take the damn ball by force.
Jourdan, it's a shame that your hundreds of millions didn't show up at the polls a few weeks ago. Where the hell were they? What, they didn't like Romney so they stayed home? Effing brilliant.
ReplyDeleteMatt nailed it when he described Obama as a "cultural phenomenon". I'm not sure anyone could have beat him. Between his iconic cultural status, enthusiastic media collaboration, voter fraud, and block voting by government hacks and unions, who COULD win against him?
I think we ARE sitting on a tinder box. I've never in my life seen race relations this strained. However, lighting a match isn't the best answer. Surely we're smart enough not to burn down our own country because we're in a snit.
I've laid out why they didn't vote for Romney: he is a terrible candidate and person. He is the founder of state run health care, when conservatives were looking to fight the Federal version. He is a connected Wall St power broker, when conservatives are rightly worried about crony capitalism and bail outs for the connected.
DeleteFor God's sakes, he was the GOVERNOR OF MASSACHUSETTS.
My people are not, repeat not, New Engladers. New England is a whole different ball game. I don't know New England and I don't care to know it. All I know is that the leaders their and their institutions have declared my people's time as dominant on the continent at a end and are now carrying out their goal.
Given a choice between having an obvious enemy in charge and one who people would call "conservative," we'd rather have an obivious enemy in charge.
Makes things more clear.
Obama could have been beaten. But, not by the Republican Party as it has been to date. No one really took all of the Democratic Party's antics to the woodshed. I kept waiting. I had faith...they lost and I have no more faith in compromise as practical politics.
DeleteWhat you need to do is write your own rules, shoot Lucy in the head, and take the damn ball by force.
I am very nearly there already. It is not what I want, but I've been through similar hostility before. Sometimes you just have to shut the power grabbing greedy mother fuckers up by any means necessary. You betcha there are rich progressives...they intend to take what you have. It is what they do.
Consider this new SOP which targets "insider threats" to the government. Some of that is for rooting out fifth columnists...and more of it is aimed at legitimate whistle blowers...under the guise of "national security"...which now includes suppression of any dissent. In short, the "party" is going to shut you up by any means necessary. How dare anyone question Susan rice?! Etc. Etc. Got it?
This is not the world I wanted for my daughter. I have to hope she's mean enough and tough enough to defend herself. She's self made, a finance professional, without a ton of college, and falls in the class Obama calls "rich".
In case I wasn't clear about the new *insider threat* SOP...it is NOT to be revealed to the public or to federal employees in general. It is "secret" for why? How does "secret" deterrence work, eh? Oh, it aims at dissenters per se, not just fifth columists,...well okay then, we trust you completely. NOT
DeleteHad I not retired when I did I would have been fired by now, perhaps even brought up on charges.
Speaking of race relations lady red, did you see that some Slate idjit says that liking white turkey meat is raaaaaaaaaaaaaaaacist. Yup, no joke.
ReplyDeleteBwahahahahaha :))
I saw that Fay! :))
DeleteDon't forget that people like chocolate because they secretly want to be black.
DeleteDon't forget tanning.
DeleteI think Jourdan's comments need to be read closely. I don't read them as defeatist at all, and I think that's an unfair criticism.
ReplyDeleteWhat he is saying precisely is... exactly what he said. The Republican Party is dead, and "Conservatism Inc" failed miserably.
The Republican Party cannot adequately anything at the national level. Romney gave it a good shot (more on that in a minute) but now his defeat is being taken in all the various "wings" as license to abandon this plank or the other. Take whatever view on issues you like but wherever you stand the Republican Party is, right now, incoherent.
Success at the state and local level - in the House, and in the State Houses - does not indict conclusion, it reinforces it. It is precisely where conservative politicians can run as they see fit that they are successful.
Whatever we think of the Republican Party, the donors are pretty disgusted.
Issue-wise, it stands for little. Romney should get credit for dragging a timid apparatus (and an arguably Statist governing history) as far as he did. He lost by 4 states and 400K votes.
The defeat was largely tactical and the political crafting was abhorrent. Read this article in the Atlantic. on just how far ahead the Obama technology team was. (Even more here. I got hints of this through the campaign - I think I recall mentioning this months ago - but what I didn't expect was how incompetent the Romney group was.
Romney was in it to win. His campaign staff was in it to get paid. #fail
Ultimately this has to fall on Romney - not only was he a bad manager, he had no idea what he didn't know. Do I expect someone with Romney's resume to do better? Hell yes. By his own logic - which I fully support - he deserved to lose.
The Republican Party is not going to attract big money to any national campaign without, well, let's call it resurrection. 'Cause it's pretty much dead. I don't think Jourdan should be called out for recognizing this simple fact.
And while have as much fun reading Mark Steyn as the next guy, and while I "vehemently agree" with some stuff I read at the Weekly Standard, National Review and whatnot, the fact is that there is such a thing as Conservatism, Inc... and it's not a movement, it's a business model... your function as a Conservative is to buy their stuff and if they care about your opinion, they will give you one. If Romney wins they peddle ideas and content and if he loses they peddle ideas and content... the truth is that bloggers and the Tea Party threaten them more than MSNBC does. The New York Times cannot destroy their business model; a genuine grassroots conservative revolution can.
So within this scope - which encompasses much (but not all) of what Jourdan wrote - I have to say I'm in complete agreement. I don't see it as defeatist... If you see quite clearly that a certain path runs into a wall or off the cliff, it is not defeatist to point this out.
I think Jourdan's comments need to be read closely. I don't read them as defeatist at all, and I think that's an unfair criticism.
DeleteAgreed, wholeheartedly.
It is time to be frank amongst ourselves, without taking offenses. We will get nowhere with an echo chamber.
I've said it before here and elsewhere...in the 1960's a great diverse group could sit down, argue, debate, yell, and change our minds from time to time. I shared many evenings with white, black, cbrown, pale yellow, etc...Communists, Socailists, and right wingers all the way to John Birchers,...as a student in night school among others who worked full time to go to school. It was grand, everything from Locke to Marx was a perpetually open thread, with civility. And this was at an inner city university, and we all weathered the riots of '67 without rancorm in the midst of them.
I do not believe such an intellectual & social environment can exist today, or ever again without a national sea change. Some one new and different is not automatically the enemy. Someone who has a philosophy opposed to mine is not a threat, per se. I at one time was brilliantly naive, even in combat zones half a world away, and lived through it.
What I came home to was tatters by mid 70's and I have never understood why...just that it is and is continuing to fray and crack across the fabric of what was once us...all of us.
I am old. The young better get their shit together or they will also have the sanguine opportunity of combat and it won't be a half a world away.
And now, to Jourdan, what I do disagree with you on...
ReplyDeleteAll it will take is one man, one man with the right stuff, to light the match, and my people will burn this whole rotten status quo down.
I agree that the prairie is ready to burn.
I grew up here too - different part of the country but same idea - and I don't think you'd really get much disagreement. There is a technical term for this - preference cascade - which Glenn Reynolds has been tossing around recently. His usage is correct, and from what I know of network theory, objectively conditions are ripe.
But "that one man" is unlikely to show up, and if he does, he is unlikely to be who you think he is going to be.
Consider that the preference cascade ran through the Middle East - the Arab Spring. How did that work out, precisely? For a big part of the population that participated, not so well.
If "your guy" shows up, you were lucky, not prescient. It's just as likely you will end up as part of the "we wuz wobbed" faction.
As my people used to sing, a long, lost time ago.
Your people (and mine) were in fact lost - a long time ago.
Roughly a third of European Americans are permanently on the "other side". They have a nice home in the new coalition and they will not risk it for anything. They have, in essence, convinced themselves that they are now what they always wanted to be - "people of color". This is what the "reality based community" sees when they look in the mirror at their smug selves. It's the fairy tale that Obama has sold them, and as a triumphant capstone to the monument of their supreme Awesomeness he is the Best. Thing. Ever.
So no, they ain't your people. Never will be, anymore.
That makes the remnant European Americans a minority. And even a 100% felling of the preference cascade dominoes will not effect material change.
I see the dominoes falling differently.
First of all, what we're going to see is a civil war - among the elite. Since the pie isn't growing, it will be fought over. The truly rich will go after the "near rich" and the "mass affluent" - and each other. Think Russia. This is what Buffet and Soros are after - they don't care who the small business owners, ranchers, farmers support or how they think - they just want their stuff. Koch, Peter Thiel, et al - sucks to be you. There will be a great outcry about the consolidation of wealth and their will be "strong action" taken (read: ignoring the rule of law) and the result will be... more consolidation of wealth.
And so: among ordinary people, various elements of the Left coalition will become disillusioned. More and more people will feel "jacked up by the Man". When I suggested last year that the Tea Party should work with the Occupy people I was way too early, but that Merry-Go-Round will spin again... I will predict that people who swore they would never work together will end up working together. (And personally, I don't worry about the Occupiers as much as I do the Ron Paul people - who will be both problematic and indispensable).
I strongly suspect that people will come to understand they've been jacked up and lied to and that the fascists are in charge and need to be stood up to - and they will understand this way before they understand it as some kind of European-American thing...
...or, to be even handed, some "small government / personal responsibility / taxed enough already" thing. No, I doubt my own political preferences and outlook represent the winning narrative, either.
The "winning narrative" will likely be quite a bit cruder, whatever it is.
About the only thing that can be predicted successfully about the Cascade is that it will surprise everyone. This is the nature of cascades.
But this much I will agree with - there will be a Cascade.
So no, they ain't your people. Never will be, anymore.
DeleteThen there will be blood. It may run. Funny thing is, "my people" has always been whomever was around me that wasn't trying blatantly to kill me. That'd be the majority in the parts of the world I've visited, lived in or fought in, or both. When I perceive differences, curiosity is what I initially feel, not fear.
As I said elsewhere today, I have been brilliantly naive. I have honestly felt at home in some truly third world places. I can find joy in the littlest things. I know how to be humble in or to not have to be...if you know what I mean.
But don't threaten me seriously...I will kill you.
Erik Erikson at Red State did a nice analysis of the connected insiders who scammed $80M from Romney's campaign and did a sh*t job.
ReplyDeleteSomeone call me when these a$$clowns are out of a job and on foodstamps.
Till then I sure as hell won't be contributing a dime to "Republican National Whatever".
This is an idea, of restricted donations, that became the rule in this household after 2008. My better half invested 4 figure amounts in the Republican cause and countless hours (100's) as well...only to discover that the local very wealthy *insiders* did not support the candidacy much, if at all. Michigan is a *Republicrat* whorehouse. Always has been and always will be...hell our longest serving governor was a Repulican RINO who imposed the highest most egregious taxes on us ever....not to mention formally endorsing Kerry in 2004.
DeleteIn my opinion, both parties have been taken over by self-interested money whores, of the very same ilk in fact, that give graft and greed a bad name, as if that is possible.
I totally agree with your description of the power in the parties. Watching and listening to the statements the last few days about the upcoming automatic budget cuts makes me so angry. I can't write what I think here.
DeleteAnd it is true at every level. Our port is trying to squeeze another 5 million out of us property owners to spend on nebulous "future projects". I don't see any way out of this mess.
Watching the "fiscal cliff" bullshit and Obama's stark power-grab has put me over the edge of civility.
ReplyDeleteI've come to the conclusion that I have little in common with many of my "fellow" Americans. These people are not my fellows; they are the enemy, and I despise them. They are trying to take from me everything I've worked for. They are destroying a country that my forefathers struggled mightily to build and protect.
I will not comply, you effers.
Sorry for the rant. I'm very angry, and still trying to absorb everything that's happened, and is happening.
Don't be sorry, lady red. Tom & I feel exactly the same way, as I'm sure do millions of others.
ReplyDelete“… your post only makes sense if you think that the Republican Party and the mainstream conservative movement constitute a conservative resistance to the status quo
ReplyDeleteOK. Who ever said that the leadership of the Republican Party reflects the values of the mainstream conservative movement? Not I, nor most members of the Tea Party Movement. You cannot make any argument more made of straw then that.
“ …both are hurriedly revising their positions to please the experts and the leftist media--is not surrender; rather, it is the necessary”
What kind of absolute defeatist bullshit is that? Neville Chamberlain did that in Munich in 1938. See what that got him.
“Matt, please point me to a Republican or mainstream conservative leader who speaks out against the Obamaphone voters” And name me who you consider a “conservative” leader? Surely no one in leadership of the Republican Party. There are many conservative voters who spoke against the “Obamaphone” voters. But how far will they get when the leadership of their own party tells them to go fuck themselves? The MSM sure won’t grant them any quarter.
As far as the Republican Party is concerned, conservatives are only useful in winning off-year elections. When the stakes are big, then the Republican Leadership tells conservatives to go fuck themselves.
Romney was a terrible person and candidate? Oh, Obama is the savior of the free world? Romney won me over. While I don’t think that he was the best candidate that the Republican Party could have offered, he did comport himself well. I have no qualms saying that I voted for him.
“No one really took all of the Democratic Party's antics to the woodshed.” No, we didn’t. But when you consider that preferring white meat of a turkey as opposed to dark meat is racist, then what else was going to happen?
I notice that two people suggest that I read Jourdan’s comments more closely. No one suggested that anyone read my comments more closely.
Mitt Romney was not Jesus Christ. We should just take him out and shoot him. We should all just surrender to Our Lord Obama of Chicago (I’m sorry, it is racist to say “Obama” and “Chicago” in the same sentence). To do anything else means I am closed minded and should be sent to a re-education camp. I am truly sorry.
Conservatism is not going to win this battle if we worry about what the MSM and RINOs think about it. We can either win this battle or we can kiss civilization goodbye and usher in a new dark age.
I know where my sentiments lie. If you want to bow down and say, “Don’t beat me, masser,” then go ahead. I just wont be joining you.
I must admit, I'm coming at this thing from Matt's point of view.
ReplyDeleteI'm listening to everyone else, and trying to understand exactly what's being said (and not said). My nifty TCKT decoder ring isn't working too well on this thread. I'm not sure I'm catching the "nuances" of some of these posts.
May I suggest we get down to brass tacks? Let's start with the very basics:
Define the problem.
Define "my people", and whether this designation is based on race, culture, or ideology. Until we do this, we don't even know if we're in the same camp.
Define the enemy in explicit terms.
Suggest realistic methods of fighting the enemy.
Until we find somewhere for a toe-hold, a brick or two to build on, we're just dancing in circles. We obviously have differences; let's get 'em on the table, and look at 'em in the clear light of day. We're not going to agree on every point. We may not even agree on MOST points. That's okay, as long as we're clear on what those points actually ARE.
I also understand that there are some sentiments that are best left unexpressed on a public blog, including some of my own. I think we all know each other well enough, after all of these years, to "read between the lines" on some things.
This is an excellent thread. Please don't let it fizzle and die. Let's hash this thing out, my friends.
Part 1
ReplyDeleteI was in the Honor Society in the seventh grade. In the spring we took chartered a tour boat on a cruise on the Puget Sound. Everyone brought a bagged meal. The seventh and eight graders ate kept things neat on the upper, outside deck. The ninth graders came up and totally trashed the place. Once they finished trashing the place, they pointed out to the teachers, who were chaperones for the evening, what a mess the place was. The ninth graders then cleaned up the mess that they, themselves, had made. They pointed out to the teachers how good they were for cleaning up the mess (that they had made). As a reward, for cleaning up their own mess, they had exclusive use of the top deck for the rest of the evening and the seventh and eighth graders had to stay on the lower, inside deck.
That is what I feel like after elections. How many in Republican Party leadership blame the loss in 2008 on Sarah Palin rather than on John McCain? The RINOs gave us an absolutely worthless candidate but it was conservatism that lost the election?
It is always the conservatives. The mantra is always that conservatism is dead and if the Republican Party were more moderate then it would win more elections. Never mind that the Republican Party never wins big in elections when being moderate – the party wins big when being conservative. And when the party makes big gains, the RINOs always step in and say, “But think how much better we would do if we were just more moderate.” So the party is more moderate in the next election, the party gets its clock cleaned, and the party blames the loss on conservatism.
This has to stop.
Part 2
ReplyDeleteLady Red has some valid suggestions.
What is the problem? The problem is that the United States is being taken farther and farther away from its heritage of self-responsibility. People are being taught that they will never have anything; they will never amount to anything if the government does not provide it. To suggest that people take responsibility for themselves is dog whistle racism. Now if you look at people who say that, they are, in reality telling minorities that they are totally incapable of taking care of themselves and are, perhaps, sub human. It is conservatives who say that minorities are better than that, but it is conservatives who are plastered with the “racist” label.
People in the United States are spoiled and they are, if not ignorant, then mis-educated. They are told that if they don’t have something it is because others are conspiring against them. They think that things, such as rights as defined in the Constitution, or the ready availability of food and material goods are the norm. The simply do not know that people have to work to provide those things. They are told that if those people who become rich by working to produce those things were taxed more and more – punished for their hard work – then everyone would be better off.
Look at the environmental movement. What is the answer to fixing things? Let the government control everything. Never mind that the concept of global warming, global cooling, climate change, do not stand up to scrutiny. Anyone who challenges the concept is branded a heretic and should be silenced.
I too have always said that it's actually the ones yelling "racism" who are the racists, re: voter ID for instance. It's that expectation that it's more of a hardship for a minority to get the ID that is the actual bias, not the requirement for all to obtain one.
DeleteDitto school testing. They want to lower the bar for certain minorities, what is that saying?
We are soon approaching a majority of people who want free stuff. I'm afraid that once that number is reached, our economy will go the way of Greece.
Good points, Matt, and I read them closely ;-)
Part 3
ReplyDeleteWhy are these things done? People have always wanted power. They can be arrogant and think that they are so much better than anyone else. Others are not capable of taking care of themselves, so those superior beings need to control everyone so that others may live. Of course, in order to have this kind of control the government (of the elite) needs to restrict what the common people can do. No such restrictions are placed on the elite, of course. No matter how limited the food supply is, for example, the elite will always have food. No matter the squalor in which the common people live, the elite will always have their palatial homes. No matter how dire the environmental situation is, the elite will still have their limousines wait with their engines running to keep the air conditioner on, or they will still have their helicopters so they can quickly get around while the common people are caught in traffic down below. The elite deserve those things because they are so much more important than we are.
Who are “my people?” Humans are my people. I don’t care about the color of their skin, about their sexual preference. I just want decent people. People who take responsibility for themselves and show human decency. I believe in the old-fashioned notion that a person should be judged by the content of their characters rather than the color of their skin. I don’t believe that certain people should be given special treatment.
If someone wanted to make an argument that the things that President Obama has done are good, or are at lest not as bad as conservatives say they are, then they are free to make that argument. However, we hear no such arguments – we are told that they only reason conservatives are critical is because Obama is black. We are not allowed to question the actions of Dear Leader.
The country is being split along racial lines. Why? Are people of different races incapable of getting along with one another? I do not believe that for a moment. However, race is a handy thing that tyrants can grab in order to divide people so they will not form a cohesive group that is hard to exploit. Other societies in history have faced some of the divisiveness that the United States faces now. The exploiters will always find something to use as a wedge.
How can we fight this? For one thing, we can stop eating our own whenever there is a setback. Many people saw Bob Dole and John McCain as losing propositions from the get-go. But they were moderate and it “was their turn.” Conservatives need to lead the Republican Party and the party needs to stop putting up RINO hacks as their candidates. The party needs to support conservative candidates. I have read in the past that the party goes out of its way to support RINOs, but gives little or no support to candidates who are truly conservative.
A third party is not the answer. For better or for worse, it would be almost impossible for a third party today to jump over all the legal hurdles needed to make it a national presence. The Republican Party is in place. The structure is there. Conservatives just need to get involved and make the Republican Party the party of true conservatives.
Will a conservative Republican Party win every time? I doubt it. But we must stop letting RINOs run the show and then blame it on conservatives when the inevitable happens.
Matt ...Are people of different races incapable of getting along with one another? I do not believe that for a moment.
DeleteNor do I. In fact it is my mantra that we can. For my entire life. For today. I am living proof if you consider that while living in Korea as a hard nosed sergeant I considered when the day came that I could walk in to a room or place of business of only Koreans and no one looked up or outwardly noticed as a supreme vindication victory. I had "gone native" in the opinion of some military brass, but they had no problem using me and my contacts when it served their purposes. That was almost weekly for a while. I was accepted among the native nationals...and spoke their language with awkward fluency. I laughed at myself frequently for their benefit...better than kow towing any day, trust me. Stand for something, as you do Matt, and others will follow.
When in Vietnam, relatively briefly and mostly with ROK Marines, we shared a goal, and a trench at times, and I came to understand their noted savagery as the product of a conscious decision to kill, not an unconscious presumption of the right to do so. No ROK formation ever tolerated more than one instance of fire from a village or compound...the compound or village was reduced to ashes immediately. It was said that nothing would even grow there for five years. They stood for something and made it brutally clear. The had to fight fewer battles in the waning years as a result.
It changed my life. I think in some ways those tough ROK's understood American principles better than most Americans. In Vietnam there were many Viets who also "got it" and for the most part we abandoned most of them. My former boss, who spent 6 years in Vietnam, still hears from some of those left behind...that survived...and he shares the email exchanges with me. He still tries to drag me back there to visit or invest in something. He understands that while he saw most of the country, rural and urban, the good and the bad, I did not...seeing only the northern boonies, except for Chu Lai...actually an American built town and base. I have no positive nostalgia about that time there. Other than those memories of the men with me there.
In short, I consider Jourdan's post both relevant and thought provoking and I am glad he made it...and I consider your response, Matt, as equally worthwhile. We need more of this here, not less.
Republicans and honest conservatives will neither truly join or succeed large scale until we can be rid of the RINO's who serve themselves in surrender and call it compromise.
Who are “my people?” Humans are my people. I don’t care about the color of their skin, about their sexual preference. I just want decent people. People who take responsibility for themselves and show human decency. I believe in the old-fashioned notion that a person should be judged by the content of their characters rather than the color of their skin. I don’t believe that certain people should be given special treatment.
ReplyDeleteThis is the heart of the matter. This is what I have always believed. Yet after 4 years of dedicated race, class and gender politics I've found myself more distrustful or downright disgusted with some minorities for their bad behavior being held to a different standard than others are. I'm disconcerted that successful people are being labeled the enemy. Fed up with women being portrayed as single issue voters and needing constant government help and supervision.
I totally agree with you, Matt, about not diluting our conservative priciples and platform. As you say, that's one of the reasons we're in the mess we're in right now.
Matt, I'm in complete agreement with your sentiments, and the voice you give them genuine and full of conviction.
ReplyDeleteAs to tactics, however... mistaken or not, I read your posts - and perhaps others did as well - as advocating a "stay the course" approach. Try to change the Republican Party where you can, support it where you must.
This is a tactic I've supported myself for some years and I no longer can.
Politics for the last couple years has been like trench warfare. This election there was a battle like the Somme or Passchendaele - much blood, much treasure, little movement.
The Tea Party movement was a great chance to "take back" the Republican party. It failed to do so.
The fact is that conservatives themselves are quite fractured. Among the "non RINO" groups you have to count the evangelical/religious Right, the Ron Paul crowd, and some oddball neo-con/defense hawk/fiscal conservative/otherwise libertarian misfits (such as myself). If we couldn't make common cause and work for the Republican ticket this time, I don't see why next time will be any more successful.
Back to lady red's questions:
Define the enemy in explicit terms.
Suggest realistic methods of fighting the enemy.
If autonomy, self sufficiency, liberty are the ideals we want our leaders to uphold, I'd suggest that way too much of the Republican establishment is already pitching their tent in the wrong camp. Many have been for a long time.
As to what to do, realistically - here I will say in advance that what I suggest hardly sounds compelling. So, reasonable people may certainly differ. But I hope to make the case better in the coming months.
Quite simply I believe many people on both the right and the left are fed up with their political classes. A big prairie fire / preference cascade might burn the whole thing down. The acknowledged risk is that the aftermath of a big preference cascade is always uncertain. But I'm betting on the latent characteristic of Americans - even (especially) young ones - that they don't like being told what to do. Authority reverence just isn't our thing. And so - hopefully - the big push to centralize power and authority will be delegitimized.
Tactically I'd go long cynicism. I think everyone who can be "converted" to "conservatism" probably already has been - but millions of Americans are utterly pissed about the financial crisis and the war on civil liberties that is waged on multiple levels - and many of them are Democrats.
Rather than reach "up" to try to change the Republican Party, I say tear it down, and reach across to disenfranchised and disenchanted Dems at the grassroots level.
A typical young person around here may be stridently pro-gay rights, feel entitled to free health care and subsidized education, and birth control, etc... let me suggest, gently, that these people are not "the enemy".
I think these people can be persuaded that they are being lied to - that their future is being mortgaged, that their free healthcare is a sham, that the people they voted for fight secret and not so secret wars all over the world for increasingly obscure reasons, and that they've been sold a bill of goods by a hypocritical corporate media empire which is more interested in making money off them than by advancing an actual progressive agenda.
Sounds crazy? Maybe. But sticking to what has been done on the Right for another four years... can we really do that and expect a different outcome?