Saturday, March 03, 2018

They Won't Just Leave Us Alone

Rod Dreher of The American Conservative is a man that lives in two worlds. On the one hand he writes a book, The Benedict Option (see my review here) that calls for a new monasticism that is based on a 6th century monk and essentially calls for a Christian retreat to ride out the culture wars until we can emerge afterward to restore Christianity and Western culture. On the other hand he constantly is telling us, and with reason, that the far Left in this country will never be content to leave us alone. You can't have it both ways. The Left in America has gone from "Love is love" and "Keep the government out of our bedrooms" to truncheon wielding masked thugs and attempting to destroy the lives of anyone that dares stray from the ever-changing political orthodoxy. Don't think for a moment that appealing to "Muh First Amendment!" is going to dissuade them from crushing you underfoot if you are not properly obsequious.

He wrote an essay yesterday, Enemies Of The People, that rehashed several interesting interactions with readers but also dealt with some new examples of the "progressive" war on Thoughtcrimes, including Mike Huckabee being forced off of a Country Music Association philanthropic board in large part because a homosexual record producer was upset about his appointment. I am not sure who the CMA thinks buys their music but I would guess that the majority of the votes of country music fans didn't go for Hillary. This is the comment I left on Rod's post...
Most normal people just want to be left alone to live their lives in peace but that is going to no longer be an option in the very near future. We are not going to be able to retreat into new monasteries or become Amish and hope they will just leave us alone. They won’t. It might not come next week or next month but it is coming when being a White, heterosexual Christian is going to make you untouchable and that is going to have catastrophic effects on our society. Right now most of us are distracted by the day to day drudgery of life (by design) and just flip the channel when the latest outrage pops up on our TV but it won’t be long until that no longer works. Your reader Zapollo is hardly unique. In fact I sense that a lot of what he is saying is precisely what you yourself are thinking, even if you are still unwilling to write it. The Trumpian movement, nationalism/populism, White racial tribalism, etc. all represent people who are not trying to see people like you and me and millions of others stomped into the ground and literally exterminated, by silencing us and/or attrition if by no other means.
What happens when you have millions upon millions of Americans who feel that their family and livelihood are under immediate threat? A brief look at the 1860’s should answer that question. We are close to some sort of triggering event that will push this nation over the edge and when that happens no one is going to care about the topics at a Heritage Foundation symposium. The Right in this country needs to redefine itself as something more than an uneasy alliance between religious conservatives and globalist corporate interests. If outlets like The American Conservative are afraid to do it, then the Dissident Right or Alt-Right or what-have-you will do it for you. The only question left is this: when will you get off the fence?
The hard truth facing the American Right is that the old model isn't going to work anymore. Conservative thinktanks, AM talk radio hosts, stodgy neo-con magazines, are not up to the task. Trump exposed that in 2016 and the recent behavior of giant corporations granted tax breaks by us that turned around and took the side of the Left against gun owners reinforced it.

A new path forward that either expropriates the current machinery of the Republican party or a path that seeks leaves the GOP entirely behind is something I am think a lot about. I am considering a new webpage with a real domain name and everything to house my thoughts on that topic as I am not sure how many of my admittedly few regular readers here are all that interested in what I think on this question. Although I grew up politically aware and conservative, I don't feel like I have a good grasp on the lineage of the political Right in America so I am reading a lot about the conservative movement in America, especially as it existed before Reagan, and other forms of Right-wing thought from books like George Hawley's Right-Wing Critics Of American Conservatism. Also on tap some paleoconservative writers like Paul Gottfried and the venerable Pat Buchanan, who at nearly 80 is still pumping out columns and has entered into something of a renaissance in his old age. We need to know where we came from to realize where we are, how we got here and the way forward.

Being on the Right can be frustrating. I would argue that we have all of the best ideas and the firmest grasp of reality. Our side produces such good content in such volume that it is nigh impossible to take it all in. I could quite literally spend all of my waking hours listening to podcasts, reading essays, watching videos, checking social media and of course reading books and still miss a lot of great content. I am not talking about unstable boobs like Glenn Beck that will say whatever they think will get them more content subscribers to subsidize their snack food habit. I am talking about people who are actual "deep thinkers", who occupy the public square of today as intellectuals, people who often have taken a career hit to stand for what they believe and who constantly battle the forces of social media censorship just to get their message out. The Left has late night talk show hosts, celebrity bimbos/actresses and faux scientist Bill Nye. But the Left also controls the media, the academy and the educational system and so it seems like we are constantly losing ground.

For too long we have been on the defensive, just reacting to whatever new outrage comes along and in doing so we have often let the Left change the battlefield. They keep advancing and we keep retreating, a fighting retreat to be sure but a retreat nevertheless. The "If liberals are for it, I am against it" model has been a catastrophic failure and it is time to get on the offensive. If anyone knows about being offensive, it is me.....

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