Details, schmetails.
So here we are, discussing such things as "Ideological purity versus principled victory", and why small-L libertarians should vote for Republicans. All good discussions to have. But we actual conservatives are obviously getting lost in the details, and not thinking about what it means to be a "Big-C" Conservative. As in what "The" "American" "Conservative" considers to fall within its big tent.
To wit, consider this piece that they published last week (and which I missed until today), entitled "Obama is a Republican". As "proof" of that characterization, the author offers such things as Obama following through on W's commitment to pull the troops out of Iraq in 2011(!) and initiating the 2014 campaign against ISIS, the awesome budget austerity and deficit reduction on Obama's watch, Obamacare copying Romneycare (and we all know how conservative that was), Obama doing nothing to improve the economic conditions of blacks (IMO, that's as Democrat as it gets), and that Obama had to be pressured into coming out for SSM (like Brer Rabbit, I guess). Here's the pull quote from that piece, AFAIAC:
I don't expect any conservatives to recognize the truth of Obama's fundamental conservatism for at least a couple of decades -- perhaps only after a real progressive presidency.
Either that guy is writing in NewSpeak, or he's overdrawn his account at Wick Allison's company store and is gunning for a bonus. I sure hope there aren't many people who are wondering what it is that American Conservatives think, and who think they might find out from a 'zine named The American Conservative.
What is the function of intellectuals, but to tell us that things are not as ordinary people perceive them?
ReplyDeleteThe alt-Right has an architectural feature in common with the portside, which is the abiding belief that they're the smart guys in the room and you are stupid meat. The portside can usually port to a portfolio of scholars accomplished in various fields (though the fields themselves may be in a state of decay). The alt-right has a scatter of fringe academics (Th. Woods), cashiered government employees (Philip Giraldi), and opinion journalists with astonishingly inflated opinions of themselves. It's a reasonable inference that Bruce Bartlett got canned from the National Center for Policy Analysis because he was expendable (most of the center's fellows are working academics or retired academics and have other income; Bartlett was neither), deceiving his supervisor, and damaging the Center's brand by issuing polemical literature. That a libertarian think tank was going to eject someone for dissenting from the policies of a Republican administration was never very credible, but it's a career for Bartlett now, in lieu of any other.
What is the function of intellectuals, but to tell us that things are not as ordinary people perceive them?
DeleteThe alt-Right has an architectural feature in common with the portside, which is the abiding belief that they're the smart guys in the room and you are stupid meat.
Indeed. The beauty of the gig, for intellectuals, is that they are not accountable for anything they say, except to other intellectuals who can applaud their wisdom also without accountability. The incestual relationship ends up becoming "The Vision of the Annointed" (as described beautifully by Thomas Sowell). If only the rest of us stupid meat would stop listening to them, we'd be better off -- we pay the bills either way.