I've long been a traditional liberal and antiwoke, and honestly I see a lot to like here. The Christianity would be a problem for me. But I'm a believer in strategic alliances, not ideological purity.
"National conservatives... They have fetishized limited government when the times require a stronger government that defends national traditions against cultural revolution, national economic interests against globalization, and national sovereignty against transnational institutions and universal norms."
National conservative governments, they insist, must curb the excesses of the free market by using economic policy to serve the national interest. In specific circumstances this may require protectionism, limits on the activities of transnational corporations, and industrial policies to bolster manufacturing and national defense."
This is just opinion and it is wrong.
First, please, please, please... go back and read up on the concepts of capitalism as conceived of and designed. Capitalism is an economic system that serves a social system. But "free markets" never meant economic anarchy. It also never meant that four large corporations would own all the brands in the supermarket. And capitalism as designed never conceived of a situation where domestic jobs would be exported to low wage countries and then the products sold back to the domestic consumers. The working invisible hand of capitalism does not translate to globalism where jobs are treated like a commodity only to consolidate corporate wealth in the hands of a few multi-billionaires.
Capitalism works when the returns of domestic capital investment are shared by domestic labor. Otherwise, it does not work... but then it isn't really capitalism. It is globalist corporatism.
So we allow the globalist corporatists and their ivory tower elites to export our working class economic opportunity to China and Mexico and other countries while we import their poverty. And then to protect the great wealth the cabal has accumulated, they buy up all the media to get their puppet POTUS elected and then repeat that those that oppose this are fascists and a threat to democracy. They ramp up the young to oppose capitalism and to demand socialism, no-work and free everything.
News flash... THERE IS ABSOLUTELY ZERO EXAMPLES OF ANTI-CAPITALIST SOCIALISM WORKING ANYWHERE IN THE WORLD AND AT ANY TIME! It always leads to abject misery and suffering of the population before it turns murderous to try and hold only power as the people starve and rebel.
If you disagree, prove it. Provide examples of that utopian model we should aspire to. If you lack a model, it does not exist. If you still demand that it does, you are a hazard and should stop voting from self-diagnosed ignorance.
So National Conservatism is to prevent that fatal destructive crash. National Conservatism is a movement against the political establishment, the globalist corporatists, the billionaire boys club and the woke Marxist radicals that support the former for reasons that they, the woke radicals, don't even understand.
National Conservatives don't want larger government. They want constrained and controlled smaller government. They want efficient government. They want to get the government out of collusion with big business with the goal of gaining their personal wealth instead of a goal of serving the citizens.
And if getting this done means flexing the Constitution as intended, and being bold to use the power of law to fix what is broken... that is a movement to save democracy and to fix what is broken with our capitalist system. The Bidens can move to China if they don't like it... and take all their friends.
And there is no aversion to libertarianism except the left-leaning type. In fact, this best represents the National Conservative ethos from an ideological perspective. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libertarian_paternalism
The reality is that 'wokeness' has rejected everything that Western Civilization is based on. To the 'woke', 2 + 2 = 4 is just a statement of 'white supremacy'. Pronouns are mandatory and the sexual binary does not exist (actual Biologists might not agree). If you doubt this, go read 'A Pathway to
Equitable Math Instruction' (the basis for California's new math framework). 'White racism' is the 'real' problem and actual math is irrelevant. The California DOE (Department of Education) framework actually states 'We Reject Ideas of Natural Gifts and Talents'. Of course, they have no evidence to support this nonsense. But rejection of the enlightenment is a religious dogma on the left and the insanity does not stop at the California border.
I have been ahead of my time on this... seeing the need more than 15 years ago. Christopher DeMuth absolutely covers my previous epiphanies that left drift was toward nihilism, and not the old liberal progressive vs conservative tug of war that had sustained the politics of the nation since not long after its founding. Something was broken in my liberal friends, and I could see it. They were developing into monsters well before Trump.
There are many components of contributing cause to the situation we find ourselves in now. But the primary one I blame is that the Republicans played the media popularity game instead of fighting to preserve conservative values. We elected the same brand of rent-seeking charlatans in the GOP party that played a part but really lacked the conviction to serve the principles of their party.
So the radicals grew and spread and have taken over most of the institutions of power and influence. Now, because the GOP establishment failed to fight the old battles on the field, we are having to wage a new war from a grassroots beginning.
The first step is to purge those from the old GOP establishment unless they take a firm stand against the radicals.
There is another hope I see. The young people and minorities need to wake up that they continue to support the political establishment that colludes with the corporate oligarchs that are both pursuing their own wealth generation at the expense of working economic opportunity for the rest. The reason that the GOP is not beating that message into the people is that the GOP is still filled with those same establishment rent-seekers... AND since the media is controlled by the corporate oligarchs... getting that message out takes a collaborative resolve from all members of the GOP.
It seems though like the tide is turning. The Democrats are so out of radical control that voters are waking up anyway. Even with a terribly incompetent GOP political machine, their best performance is simply to let the Democrat keep sinking into more radical absurdity and destruction.
National Conservatism is a rearguard action that does not have an effective philosophy for governing a healthy constitutional-democratic-republic. It is too exclusionary to have the consent of those it would attempt to govern. However, how healthy is our democratic-constitutional-republic?
The Germans were sold on the concept of a "German People" instead of a bunch of different groups speaking versions of the German language. In the United States, we share cultural traditions, but you would be hard pressed to identify a majority identifying as the "American People".
The most salient point that should leap out at us is this inclination by National Conservatives toward government imposed religious tyranny. Former New York Governor, Mario Cuomo, made a sage comment in 1989 when he said that it is a contradiction for the religious right to preach to us about limited government and then turn around and try to tell us, the American people, what God to believe in how to apply the judgment of that God to our bodies and to our bedrooms.
How far would these people go? Would they allow a Christian majority in a given region to be able to legally force LGBTQ people to move out of the area? Could atheists who argue against the existence of a supreme being by way of public speaking and writing be prosecuted under now enforceable blasphemy laws?
The Founders were clear that the number one priority is the defense of freedom conscience for everyone, believer or nonbeliever. Do these National Conservatives really want to abandon the notion of limited government by allowing the police power of the state into the bedroom?
"replaced by a new absolute and unfettered autonomy"
Yeah that's the problem with a progressive woke utopia, too much autonomy. Come on. Ask the Christian bakers, dissenting professors, school choice supporting parents, about all that autonomy. Before even getting to covid lockdowns, mask mandates and vaccine passports.
It's a big problem that conservatives are souring on liberalism but misrepresenting or downplaying the illiberal behemoth on the left doesn't help.
(Good summary though and thank you, other than that characterization)
I can respect the Benedict option as an alternative to overt promotion of conservative Christianity in the public sphere. If people who (for valid and natural reasons) wanted to maintain old fashioned lifestyles within a secular society took the approach of “leave us alone and we’ll leave you alone,” that would be a wonderful counter to the intolerant kind of progressivism that bashes crisis pregnancy centers and thinks kids know perfectly well what gender they “really” are.
Sadly, that kind of approach (retreat from the world instead of trying to change it) doesn’t seem to have much support. Even Dreher seems to be all in on the aggressive counter-woke approach. A movement pushing its brand of Christianity onto nonbelievers is no less of a threat than leftists doing the same with their beliefs.
This is simply false: 'When the American left was liberal and reformist, conservatives played our customary role as moderators of change ... But today’s woke progressivism isn’t reformist. It seeks not to build on the past but to promote instability, to turn the world upside-down'.
Most of us on the left are not interested in turning the world upside down but in leveling the playing field and promoting genuine equality of opportunity through good government.
'National conservatives also want to bolster traditional institutions such as the nuclear family with pro-natalist policies, including economic support for childrearing'
Count me out on that too--if, as I suspect, the subtext of 'economic support for child rearing' means support for women to stay home to take care of their kids at least temporarily rather than support for childcare so that women who have children, as I do, can hire others to take care of them.
If the values articulated in this piece are what Persuasion stands for I'm cancelling my subscription. That is not to say I want Persuasion 'cancelled'--no way. I support diversity of opinion and free speech. I just oppose these policies and do not want to support Persuasion if this is the agenda. Count me out.
A very good and accurate analysis in general. Right-wing collectivism is anti-liberal and anti-cosmopolitan. The thing is that national-conservatism is already used and applied in even moderate right-wing organisations as The Conservatives in the UK or Christian Democrats in Sweden. So its ideas will continue to grow in different right-wing organisations in Europe and America
Best refutation of the pernicious drivel remains Madison’s Memorial and Remonstrance against Religious Assessments, 1785, when Virginia was considering establishing Episcopal Church
This is deeply reverent argument: that state sponsorship or patronage corrupts belief and practice and encourages hypocrisy
Not witty Voltairean aphorisms: those who believe absurdities will commit atrocities
Rather, insistence that one’s debt to Creator is PRIOR to civil society or political contract and must be matter of individual conscience
Some measure of how crazy the dominant left is, is provided by Keith Olbermann. He has described Joe Rogan and Elon Musk as f!@#$%^ fascists (literally, not figuratively). In real life, Joe Rogan and Elon Musk are left/far left of center.
I've long been a traditional liberal and antiwoke, and honestly I see a lot to like here. The Christianity would be a problem for me. But I'm a believer in strategic alliances, not ideological purity.
"National conservatives... They have fetishized limited government when the times require a stronger government that defends national traditions against cultural revolution, national economic interests against globalization, and national sovereignty against transnational institutions and universal norms."
National conservative governments, they insist, must curb the excesses of the free market by using economic policy to serve the national interest. In specific circumstances this may require protectionism, limits on the activities of transnational corporations, and industrial policies to bolster manufacturing and national defense."
This is just opinion and it is wrong.
First, please, please, please... go back and read up on the concepts of capitalism as conceived of and designed. Capitalism is an economic system that serves a social system. But "free markets" never meant economic anarchy. It also never meant that four large corporations would own all the brands in the supermarket. And capitalism as designed never conceived of a situation where domestic jobs would be exported to low wage countries and then the products sold back to the domestic consumers. The working invisible hand of capitalism does not translate to globalism where jobs are treated like a commodity only to consolidate corporate wealth in the hands of a few multi-billionaires.
Capitalism works when the returns of domestic capital investment are shared by domestic labor. Otherwise, it does not work... but then it isn't really capitalism. It is globalist corporatism.
So we allow the globalist corporatists and their ivory tower elites to export our working class economic opportunity to China and Mexico and other countries while we import their poverty. And then to protect the great wealth the cabal has accumulated, they buy up all the media to get their puppet POTUS elected and then repeat that those that oppose this are fascists and a threat to democracy. They ramp up the young to oppose capitalism and to demand socialism, no-work and free everything.
News flash... THERE IS ABSOLUTELY ZERO EXAMPLES OF ANTI-CAPITALIST SOCIALISM WORKING ANYWHERE IN THE WORLD AND AT ANY TIME! It always leads to abject misery and suffering of the population before it turns murderous to try and hold only power as the people starve and rebel.
If you disagree, prove it. Provide examples of that utopian model we should aspire to. If you lack a model, it does not exist. If you still demand that it does, you are a hazard and should stop voting from self-diagnosed ignorance.
So National Conservatism is to prevent that fatal destructive crash. National Conservatism is a movement against the political establishment, the globalist corporatists, the billionaire boys club and the woke Marxist radicals that support the former for reasons that they, the woke radicals, don't even understand.
National Conservatives don't want larger government. They want constrained and controlled smaller government. They want efficient government. They want to get the government out of collusion with big business with the goal of gaining their personal wealth instead of a goal of serving the citizens.
And if getting this done means flexing the Constitution as intended, and being bold to use the power of law to fix what is broken... that is a movement to save democracy and to fix what is broken with our capitalist system. The Bidens can move to China if they don't like it... and take all their friends.
And there is no aversion to libertarianism except the left-leaning type. In fact, this best represents the National Conservative ethos from an ideological perspective. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libertarian_paternalism
The reality is that 'wokeness' has rejected everything that Western Civilization is based on. To the 'woke', 2 + 2 = 4 is just a statement of 'white supremacy'. Pronouns are mandatory and the sexual binary does not exist (actual Biologists might not agree). If you doubt this, go read 'A Pathway to
Equitable Math Instruction' (the basis for California's new math framework). 'White racism' is the 'real' problem and actual math is irrelevant. The California DOE (Department of Education) framework actually states 'We Reject Ideas of Natural Gifts and Talents'. Of course, they have no evidence to support this nonsense. But rejection of the enlightenment is a religious dogma on the left and the insanity does not stop at the California border.
I have been ahead of my time on this... seeing the need more than 15 years ago. Christopher DeMuth absolutely covers my previous epiphanies that left drift was toward nihilism, and not the old liberal progressive vs conservative tug of war that had sustained the politics of the nation since not long after its founding. Something was broken in my liberal friends, and I could see it. They were developing into monsters well before Trump.
There are many components of contributing cause to the situation we find ourselves in now. But the primary one I blame is that the Republicans played the media popularity game instead of fighting to preserve conservative values. We elected the same brand of rent-seeking charlatans in the GOP party that played a part but really lacked the conviction to serve the principles of their party.
So the radicals grew and spread and have taken over most of the institutions of power and influence. Now, because the GOP establishment failed to fight the old battles on the field, we are having to wage a new war from a grassroots beginning.
The first step is to purge those from the old GOP establishment unless they take a firm stand against the radicals.
There is another hope I see. The young people and minorities need to wake up that they continue to support the political establishment that colludes with the corporate oligarchs that are both pursuing their own wealth generation at the expense of working economic opportunity for the rest. The reason that the GOP is not beating that message into the people is that the GOP is still filled with those same establishment rent-seekers... AND since the media is controlled by the corporate oligarchs... getting that message out takes a collaborative resolve from all members of the GOP.
It seems though like the tide is turning. The Democrats are so out of radical control that voters are waking up anyway. Even with a terribly incompetent GOP political machine, their best performance is simply to let the Democrat keep sinking into more radical absurdity and destruction.
National Conservatism is a rearguard action that does not have an effective philosophy for governing a healthy constitutional-democratic-republic. It is too exclusionary to have the consent of those it would attempt to govern. However, how healthy is our democratic-constitutional-republic?
The Germans were sold on the concept of a "German People" instead of a bunch of different groups speaking versions of the German language. In the United States, we share cultural traditions, but you would be hard pressed to identify a majority identifying as the "American People".
The most salient point that should leap out at us is this inclination by National Conservatives toward government imposed religious tyranny. Former New York Governor, Mario Cuomo, made a sage comment in 1989 when he said that it is a contradiction for the religious right to preach to us about limited government and then turn around and try to tell us, the American people, what God to believe in how to apply the judgment of that God to our bodies and to our bedrooms.
How far would these people go? Would they allow a Christian majority in a given region to be able to legally force LGBTQ people to move out of the area? Could atheists who argue against the existence of a supreme being by way of public speaking and writing be prosecuted under now enforceable blasphemy laws?
The Founders were clear that the number one priority is the defense of freedom conscience for everyone, believer or nonbeliever. Do these National Conservatives really want to abandon the notion of limited government by allowing the police power of the state into the bedroom?
Excellent analysis of National Conservatism, a movement that is downright scary to me, personally!!
An entirely predictable response from the right to leftist extremism. The question is, where is the center?
"replaced by a new absolute and unfettered autonomy"
Yeah that's the problem with a progressive woke utopia, too much autonomy. Come on. Ask the Christian bakers, dissenting professors, school choice supporting parents, about all that autonomy. Before even getting to covid lockdowns, mask mandates and vaccine passports.
It's a big problem that conservatives are souring on liberalism but misrepresenting or downplaying the illiberal behemoth on the left doesn't help.
(Good summary though and thank you, other than that characterization)
I can respect the Benedict option as an alternative to overt promotion of conservative Christianity in the public sphere. If people who (for valid and natural reasons) wanted to maintain old fashioned lifestyles within a secular society took the approach of “leave us alone and we’ll leave you alone,” that would be a wonderful counter to the intolerant kind of progressivism that bashes crisis pregnancy centers and thinks kids know perfectly well what gender they “really” are.
Sadly, that kind of approach (retreat from the world instead of trying to change it) doesn’t seem to have much support. Even Dreher seems to be all in on the aggressive counter-woke approach. A movement pushing its brand of Christianity onto nonbelievers is no less of a threat than leftists doing the same with their beliefs.
No thank you. Count me out.
This is simply false: 'When the American left was liberal and reformist, conservatives played our customary role as moderators of change ... But today’s woke progressivism isn’t reformist. It seeks not to build on the past but to promote instability, to turn the world upside-down'.
Most of us on the left are not interested in turning the world upside down but in leveling the playing field and promoting genuine equality of opportunity through good government.
'National conservatives also want to bolster traditional institutions such as the nuclear family with pro-natalist policies, including economic support for childrearing'
Count me out on that too--if, as I suspect, the subtext of 'economic support for child rearing' means support for women to stay home to take care of their kids at least temporarily rather than support for childcare so that women who have children, as I do, can hire others to take care of them.
If the values articulated in this piece are what Persuasion stands for I'm cancelling my subscription. That is not to say I want Persuasion 'cancelled'--no way. I support diversity of opinion and free speech. I just oppose these policies and do not want to support Persuasion if this is the agenda. Count me out.
A very good and accurate analysis in general. Right-wing collectivism is anti-liberal and anti-cosmopolitan. The thing is that national-conservatism is already used and applied in even moderate right-wing organisations as The Conservatives in the UK or Christian Democrats in Sweden. So its ideas will continue to grow in different right-wing organisations in Europe and America
Thanks to Persuasion for this timely warning
Best refutation of the pernicious drivel remains Madison’s Memorial and Remonstrance against Religious Assessments, 1785, when Virginia was considering establishing Episcopal Church
This is deeply reverent argument: that state sponsorship or patronage corrupts belief and practice and encourages hypocrisy
Not witty Voltairean aphorisms: those who believe absurdities will commit atrocities
Rather, insistence that one’s debt to Creator is PRIOR to civil society or political contract and must be matter of individual conscience
That is and must remain our tradition!
Some measure of how crazy the dominant left is, is provided by Keith Olbermann. He has described Joe Rogan and Elon Musk as f!@#$%^ fascists (literally, not figuratively). In real life, Joe Rogan and Elon Musk are left/far left of center.