I do hope you will read John Davidson’s rejoinder to my defense of free markets and my accompanying monologue. He captures the failure theater of the right I have been growing concerned with.
Using the buzzwords with which the hyper-online right echo chamber catechizes itself, he says it is time to move past the three legged stool of conservatism, because it has failed us, and…well… like the good kids at Columbia, start a (counter)revolution, purge the enemy, and, I guess, get clicks.
“We have to stop thinking of ourselves as conservatives and start thinking of ourselves, and our movement, as restorationist and counterrevolutionary. In a very real sense, we have to re-found our country, and to do that we will have to seize power from the left — and use it,” he writes, continuing, “Following Erickson’s advice, eschewing power because of allegiance to a political fantasy, means certain defeat. It means permanent dhimmitude for conservatives in a country run by people who hate them and are determined to destroy them and their way of life. The other option is to fight back, establish a beachhead, and use whatever power we can marshal to push back the left in hopes that future generations of Americans can live in true peace and prosperity. ”
“Counterrevolutionary,” “seize power — and use it,” “political fantasy,”1 “dhimmitude,” “fight back,” “a beachhead,” I was actually kinda disappointed he didn’t throw in “America will be free from river to sea” and “doesn’t Erickson know what time it is?”
It is apparently time for Isildur to use the ring for a bit. Trust him.
The vision too many on the right are now advocating is one of power for the sake of power to keep it from the left. Put plainly, these right wingers are the ones who have surrendered and have decided to let the left dictate the terms of the fight instead of choosing to fight differently, smartly, and strategically. Our ways do not have to be their ways. But this branch of the right has embraced the left’s power dichotomy, which means, wittingly or not, they’ve presuppositionally embraced post-modern Marxist power structures and views. In so doing, they’ll advocate for progressive means to non-progressive, but also not conservative, ends. They’ll also lose doing that because the left is collectivist and the right is individualist, which makes it easier for the left to herd their lemmings while the right struggles to herd their cats.2
Post-modern Marxism sees the world through the lens of power and power dynamics, believing words themselves can shape reality. John’s vision of the right does just that; thus we need to “stop thinking of ourselves as conservatives” like progressives rebranded to liberalism before rebranding back to progressivism.
John also totally missed the point of my piece and monologue.
But that’s what has happened with the online right who have become deeply serious about “permanent dhimmitude” and deeply unserious about actual public policy.
What’s the best way for people in this country to conduct their lives?
Should they embrace government guidelines and fiats on how best to order their lives determined by an elite of the left or right? Or should they, through arms length transactions with others individually decide and operate for their own self-interest and that of their families with the government ensuring a fair and level playing field?
If you say the former, you are a progressive. If you say the latter, welcome to the free market. If you say we need to stop calling ourselves conservatives, I suggest going with “trans-conservative” because increasingly this wing of the right is progressive in its means, but still identifies as conservative in its outcomes.
As an aside and unrelated to John’s piece, it has been really fascinating to watch the level of butt hurt among some on the right for my defense of free enterprise — particularly some think tank careerists in DC who think I, down here in Macon, Georgia, am the establishment. One of the most vocal think tank careerists upset about my piece works for the Heritage Foundation, which describes its mission this way: “Heritage’s mission is to formulate and promote public policies based on the principles of free enterprise, limited government, individual freedom, traditional American values, and a strong national defense.”
John has much to say about the failure of conservatism and “American Empire,” which is, by the way, a Marxist idealized slur for American leadership of the Western world order. He claims that the two, or at least limited government, is incompatible with American Empire, but note he does not want limited government. He wants to give up America leading the world while wielding expansive government power at home. Abandoning American leadership in the world actually will drive up the cost of wielding power here, exacerbating the fiscal crisis both parties have created.
I advocate for conservatism, not some post-modern Marxist power grab for the sake of grabbing power like too much of the rightwing Twitterati want.
Win elections and gut the government. Stop playing victim and whining about the mean old left and how we need to be just like them, but different.
John laments conservative failures, but actually conservatives won elections and put enough people in Congress that they got both the Republican Party and Barack Obama to embrace sequestration, which cut the government in real dollar, real world terms, not just cuts to future growth.
In the late nineties, conservatives led the GOP and Clinton into a balanced budget. To the extent Republicans, not conservatives, abandoned fiscal sanity and conservative principles, it is because those Republicans were doing what John wants right now — using left wing means for right wing ends. They’d spend money, just not as much as the Democrats. Again, that wasn’t the conservatives. That was the Republicans. There was and remains a difference between the party politicians and the movement from which it has gotten so many ideas.
John pulls a nice and intellectually dishonest sleight of hand on the social conservative front writing, “On traditional values, we legalized gay marriage and then quickly moved on to normalizing transgenderism and acquiescing to so-called ‘gender-affirming care,’ even for minors.”
Actually, we did not do anything with gay marriage. Even California rejected gay marriage. It was five members of the Supreme Court who imposed it on us — four progressives and a moderate. And we did not and have not normalized transgenderism. In fact, a large number of states run by conservative Republicans have pushed back on it. There is some heavy self-loathing in John’s “we” when we, you, he, and I did none of those things he attributes to “we.”
What we conservatives did, however, was keep winning elections by making the case for our ideas and slowly over 40 years adding Supreme Court Justices who ended Roe v. Wade and helped rein in the excesses of Washington, D.C. Also, how about the whole right to keep and bear arms thing? Conservatives preserved that. Or the religious liberty protections for churches, charities, religious schools, and Jack Philips? Conservatives not only preserved that, but persuaded progressive Supreme Court Justices to agree.
Just last week, Bush, Biden, and Obama appointees on the D.C. Circuit unanimously affirmed a Catholic school’s ability to fire a teacher who married his same-sex partner because of Christian sensibilities on marriage. Across the nation, school choice reform is happening — a long time idea advocated by free market reformers of the right who thought bringing free market competition to the education monopoly would improve schools. Hello, Jeb Bush. Conservatism has conserved a whole hell of a lot actually, despite the best efforts of both Republicans and Democrats.
As for the free market, was it government intervention or individuals operating out of their own self-interest in the market that got Target to reduce and restrict Pride displays? Was it government intervention or individuals operating out of their own self-interest in the market that pushed Bud Light out of the top stop for beers? Was it government intervention or individuals operating out of their own self-interest in the market that got the NFL and broadcasters to disappear taking knees and open protests during games?
What did the progressive trans-conservative do? They advanced a bunch of fringe candidates in 2022 who lost winnable elections so the GOP has a two seat House majority, no Senate majority, and a habit of now griping about not being able to get anything done and needing to seize power. Surprise! Peter Meijer wasn’t loyal enough so they went with a Federalist blogger who lost a winnable seat giving it to the Democrats.
Just as the left interprets that Marxist power dynamic through an intersectional lens, John is doing the same thing in reverse. The left sees the non-white, non-heterosexual, non-Christian class as the one with the moral authority because it is the chief victim of the oppressor class of conservatives. John sees the white, heterosexual, Christian class as the one with moral authority because it is the chief victim of the oppressor class of progressives. In both, the oppressed must rise to power and suppress their oppressor for peace in our time. Or, in John’s words, we have to “start thinking of ourselves, and our movement, as restorationist and counterrevolutionary. In a very real sense, we have to re-found our country, and to do that we will have to seize power — and use it.”3
Miroslav Volf wrote, “Forgiveness flounders because I exclude the enemy from the community of humans even as I exclude myself from the community of sinners.” Both the left and right are doing this to each other. It’s the other side that is at fault and we must build a beachhead against them and exclude them. They do it to us. We do it to them. They do it to use. The cycle repeats.
I don’t know about y’all, but I’m not really into post modern Marxism and I don’t think the right needs to become progressively trans-conservative. There is no such thing as a permanent political majority in the United States. The only way to permanently eliminate the left’s attempt at gaining power is to throw out our constitutional order and impose a dictatorship.
My point has been and remains that when the right next takes power, it should cut government again and remove the left’s ability to use the power of government once the left gains back the power of government. John reads my position as surrender and an unwillingness to use power. No, my position is throw the damn ring into the lava instead of creating a generation of gollumesque freaks on the right chanting “river to sea” demanding power to punish those they disagree with at TPUSA conferences and in group chats. You will eventually lose any power you gain so take it away from everyone.
John’s rejoinder replaces reason with emotion. We must beat them and crush them because they are beating us and crushing us. The last time a highly online horde of aggrieved activists decided to do this, they pushed Harry Reid to scrap the judicial filibuster. And how exactly did that emotional outburst work out once the left lost power? Or does this wing of the right just presume it’ll never give up power once it gets it back? There are already some on the right getting comfortable with declaring us in a post-constitutional order in need of a dictator. Get a load of this from Pastor Joel Wellborn. It is where all this sort of stuff leads, even if presently those who want the power for the sake of power will not admit it. John does not go this far, but much of his argument echoes this from Wellborn:
Isildur promises that once he establishes his beachhead he really will toss the ring in the volcano. Just trust him.
As an aside, and not connecting this to John or his piece, much of what is going on right now with the right really is not about conviction and principle. It’s a recognition that the working class has moved right and a great many people who once saw conservatism as the path to power are now rejecting it because they’ve decided they have to sell something else to the working class. So we’re getting “rightwing” think tanks funded by progressives designed to tell conservatives they should embrace old-left economic ideas as something new and shiny. The bulk of those vocally against my defense of free markets have taken their ten rings of power from the progressive donor class and we just need to trust them or something.
So much of the reaction to my defense of the free market is about elections, not ideas — power for the sake of power. So much of the shift on the right is from people seeking political solutions to spiritual problems. I’m sorry, but I just am not willing to operate like the secular left. I’ve read the end of the book. There’s hellfire coming.
A Substantive Conservative Policy Proposal
Let me put my thinking in action for you guys.
Reconciliation is a legislative procedure that bypasses the Senate filibuster rules. To comply, the legislation must lower the deficit. You know what lowers deficits? Money from oil revenue. If the GOP wins in November, use reconciliation to legislatively undo Joe Biden’s prohibitions on Alaska drilling to drive up federal income from oil production. Likewise, use reconciliation to prohibit states from impeding the free market through state legislation that prohibits the sale of internal combustion engine vehicles sold in interstate commerce. You’ve reduced the power of the left, promoted the free market, and brought fiscal sanity in one fell swoop.
Also, thanks to Chuck Schumer’s precedents, budget reconciliation could happen twice in a year.
1 Principles are not political fantasies.
2 It is not a coincidence there are growing voices on the right that demand we be less individualist oriented and embrace “the common good.”
3 Seize power from whom? The GOP controls 4060 legislative seats at the state level while the Democrats only control 3278. 41% of Americans live in states with total GOP control and 41.7% of Americans live in states with total Democrat control. 17% live in divided government. The GOP would actually have more, but candidates like Kari Lake sank their chances in Arizona. Likewise, in Texas, it is conservative Governor Greg Abbott who has aligned with conservative school choice activists to throw Republicans out in primaries, thereby adding free-market school choice reformers to the legislature.