The death of political conservatism

In an e-mail under the above title, Jason, a Republican activist in New Jersey, writes:

Good evening, sir,

I am hoping the community in here can tell me that I am wrong. That John McCain’s nomination and eventual victory does not mean the title I have posted above. So if anyone wants to tell me where I am wrong please feel free to do so.

About this time last year, when I was still a fool and thought George W. Bush was something he was not. I was sitting with friends right after a huge rally to get all us volunteers all pumped up for the coming weeks. The left in it usual fashion had shown up to protest, made violent threats, screamed and yelled while we prayed and said the Pledge of Allegiance. This of course only deepened our resolve.

A friend who came to have dinner with us but did not attend the rally, shook his head at us and said that if we want to save conservatism, the only way to do so was to have John Kerry win. The current President would see to it that real conservatism was redefined, and that would allow the left to move even further in their direction, and would eventually leave real conservatives to be seen as fringe. We told him he was crazy.

He of course turned out to be right.

Here is what I heard from John McCain. I heard an attack on oil and drug companies, I heard him quote La Raza as the migrant worker and her daughter are also G-D children. (a.k.a. the illegal alien and her anchor baby) I heard him mention that the USA has enemies but refused to name who they are, other then the old generic terrorist mantra, which is a tactic of the enemy but not the enemy themselves. I heard him mention more useless Solar and Wind energy as part of his policy. I heard him mention how he would have Democrats in his administration. I heard him brag about how he has destroyed political speech in this country. This of course has led to his nomination.

John McCain and his so called campaign finance reform has seen to it that another Ronald Reagan can never again grace our country. The politics that permitted a Reagan to get his message out are illegal today. Essentially, as I see it, in order to win national or even state wide office. You have to have one of three things. You must spend decades making sure everyone knows who you are (Hillary Clinton and John McCain), you must be independently wealthy (John Corzine, Michael Bloomberg, Mitt Romney) or have a cult like charisma and charm that draws people to you (Barak Obama and to a much lesser extent Mike Huckabee). Without these things, you cannot win, thanks to John McCain.

The Republican party has become what the Democrats used to be, Joe Lieberman is the best example of this. Patriotic liberals, who have no real idea what patriotism is supposed to be mean anymore, but at least they sincerely try. The Democrats have a become the party of sedition and in many cases out right treason. A party of malcontents that truly belong at the bottom of society, a group of people that for some unknown mental instability hate their country that provides them with what they have, and wish to see it fall.

My issue is where does one go from here. If this is negative and depressing it is because this is how I see things right now. My conservatism is now seen as that of a child, I am patted on the head and told they want my vote, but beyond that just go away.

I invite all to tell me where I am wrong, because I pray to G-D I am.

Thanks for the time sir, what you do is as always, most important.

LA replies:

This is a powerful statement.

I also have been feeling that conservatism has come to an end this week. But haven’t I always said that there is no real conservatism in existence, only partial fragments of conservatism, and that if there is to be a real conservatism, it has to be created? So, in that sense, nothing has changed.

What has changed is that the existing conservative movement, which, despite its profound flaws, at least had some conservative principles and some life, now has no principles and is dead. A dead thing shrilly shouting and pretending it’s alive.

- end of initial entry -

Mark J. writes:

Jason wrote: “[If Kerry didn’t win, Bush] would see to it that real conservatism was redefined, and that would allow the left to move even further in their direction, and would eventually leave real conservatives to be seen as fringe.”

The root problem is that the Democrats have the black/Latino/homosexual/feminist vote permanently locked up. So they only need a minority of normal white voters to win. When the black and Latino vote was a tiny fraction of what it is now, they needed a lot (though not the majority) of normal white votes, and they had to be more mainstream, more the party Lieberman came from. But though the homosexual and feminist vote is probably not going to grow much, the black and Latino vote is projected to grow ever larger as a percentage of the population. This means that the Democrats need fewer and fewer normal white votes beyond the leftist white votes they already get, and thus can win with a less and less mainstream appeal as time goes by. Meanwhile, Republicans, who can realistically only count on the votes of white people, have to appeal to a larger and larger proportion of white people in order to have a chance of winning. That means moving more and more to the left to try to capture as many left-leaning white votes as they can.

In a two-party, winner-takes-all system, I think that logically it can’t be any other way. Which means that white conservatives will find the Republican party less and less welcoming as the country becomes majority non-white. Currently we are in the transition phase where dedicated folks like Jason are beginning to wonder uncomfortably if they have any future in the party. At some point it will be evident that there is and will be no place in the Republican party, ever again, for real conservatives. It will become more and more just a generic white people’s party, and will have to represent the whole spectrum of white people to get enough votes to have a chance. And if whites become a minority as is currently projected, it will have to attract significant numbers of non-whites to have a chance.

A parliamentary system would allow an outlet for disaffected white conservatives by giving us a chance to win at least some seats and have some representation. But as the country becomes more non-white, white conservatives will find they have fewer and fewer real representatives in Congress and, I predict, will never again see a real conservative as President. Which in a way may lead to a revolution sooner since we will feel increasingly marginalized and the other side will have more power to implement policies that marginalize us, persecute us, outrage us, unify us, and motivate us.

So, to Jason: yes, real conservatives will have to get used to being seen as fringe. It’s why I think our future lies in building a new movement with a new political agenda oriented around explicitly racialist, traditionalist, separatist goals. We need social and political organizations where we can meet one another, build business and social ties, and provide one another with moral and financial support in the coming decades as the USA fragments. This sounds tinfoilish, but I think there will come a time when we will be in real danger from those in political power. Now is the time to start making connections among one another.

Tim W. writes:

The phenomena discussed by Jason and Mark J. are not only dooming conservatism, but are making it increasingly difficult even to dissent from the zeitgeist. When Barack Obama promises to unite us, while accusing Republicans of divisive politics, he intends nothing less than stamping out all opposition. He may not be literally able to accomplish it in an Obama administration, but he’d move us further in that direction. There would be an attempt to revive the Fairness Doctrine, a further expansion of speech codes, and a media culture in which opposition to social liberalism is increasingly seen as “beyond the pale.”

The EU is further along this route, with its wars against racism, sexism, homophobia, Islamophobia, and other heresies, along with threats to control internet blogging. There was a thread on Free Republic today about an EU proposal to ban advertisements which reinforce gender stereotypes, which would include such things as wives doing the cooking and husbands doing the lawn work.

We’re just a bit behind the EU in heading off in this direction. Leftists on many college campuses think nothing of shouting people down anymore. Thoughtcrime is looming on the horizon. Most conservatives are already self-policing about controversial topics. With “human rights commissions” now sprouting up in America, how long will it be until we follow Canada and the EU into this new world where we don’t permit divisiveness, being defined as opposition to liberalism?

LA replies:

Why only name the left as suppressors of speech? The GOP would ban everyone from asking whether a female politician with a small infant can properly attend to her duties as a mother and as an office holder. The person who gave the keynote address at the Republican convention said:

One final point. And how—how dare they question whether Sarah Palin has enough time to spend with her children and be vice president. How dare they do that.

When do they ever ask a man that question? When?

The most fundamental, obvious problem in the world, and we don’t DARE even ask a QUESTION about it.

And it’s not just the liberal Giuliani who has this view. He was giving the keynote address of the Republican convention. And his statement was cheered.

And it’s not just Republicans as distinct from conservatives who have this view. Lisa Schiffren writes at the online edition of National Review Online, America’s leading conservative magazine:

A woman running for office with five kids is a bad mother, the msm have established. But a man who ran for national office with ten kids at home, including a six month-old, and a pregnant wife—became a hero, a martyr, and an icon to which all dreams of what liberalism might have been were attached for a generation. Was Robert F. Kennedy ever vilified for ignoring his family? Did anyone sneer at his failure to abort or use contraception? No and no.

Translation: To suggest that there are any differences between men and women in their responsibilities for child care is to practice a vicious double standard and should not be done. The question of natural differences between the functions of men and women is henceforth prohibited.

There was a time when conservatives commonsensically pointed to the differences between men and women, especially concerning such things as their natural role in childcare. There was a time when conservatives argued that of course women earn less than men, since women care for children and put less energy and time into career. But now, according to the conservative writer Lisa Schiffren, such arguments are out of bounds.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at September 06, 2008 07:08 PM | Send