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Think
of the last time an anonymous think-piece captured the imagination of
the public so completely, the server hosting the article melted down.
Rush Limbaugh calls the commentary “a nuclear bomb.”
And it starts like this, with the Never-Trumpers in the Republican
Party the target of the indictment: “2016 is the Flight 93 election:
charge the cockpit or you die. You may die anyway. You – or the leader
of your party – may make it into the cockpit and not know how to fly or
land the plane. There are no guarantees. Except one: if you don’t try,
death is certain. To compound the metaphor: a Hillary Clinton
presidency is Russian Roulette with a semi-auto. With Trump, at least
you can spin the cylinder and take your chances.”
Authored by “Publius Decius Mus” and published by the Claremont
Institute in California, the article has social media ablaze after
Limbaugh quoted widely from it, something he seldom does, and hailed it
as explosive analysis key to the election of 2016. It’s also a
wholesale indictment of conservatism over the last 30 years.
“[T]hose most horrified by Trump are the least willing to consider the
possibility that the republic is dying.”
“If you’re among the subspecies conservative intellectual or
politician, you’ve accepted – perhaps not consciously, but unmistakably
– your status on the roster of the Washington Generals of American
politics. Your job is to show up and lose, but you are a necessary part
of the show and you do get paid.”
“Let’s be very blunt here: if you genuinely think things can
go on with no fundamental change needed, then you have implicitly
admitted that conservatism is wrong. Wrong philosophically, wrong on
human nature, wrong on the nature of politics, and wrong in its policy
prescriptions. Because, first, few of those prescriptions are in force
today. Second, of the ones that are, the left is busy undoing them,
often with conservative assistance. And, third, the whole trend of the
West is ever-leftward, ever further away from what we all understand as
conservatism.”
“All of Trump’s 16 Republican competitors would have ensured
more of the same – as will the election of Hillary Clinton. That would
be bad enough. But at least Republicans are merely reactive when it
comes to wholesale cultural and political change. Their ‘opposition’
may be in all cases ineffectual and often indistinguishable from
support. But they don’t dream up inanities like 32 ‘genders,’ elective
bathrooms, single-payer, Iran sycophancy, ‘Islamophobia,’ and Black
Lives Matter. They merely help ratify them.”
“A Hillary presidency will be pedal-to-the-metal on the
entire Progressive-left agenda, plus items few of us have yet imagined
in our darkest moments. Nor is even that the worst. It will be coupled
with a level of vindictive persecution against resistance and dissent
hitherto seen in the supposedly liberal West only in the most
‘advanced’ Scandinavian countries and the most leftist corners of
Germany and England.”
“For two generations at least, the Left has been calling
everyone to their right Nazis. This trend has accelerated exponentially
in the last few years, helped along by some on the Right who really do
seem to merit – and even relish – the label. There is nothing the
modern conservative fears more than being called ‘racist,’ so alt-right
pocket Nazis are manna from heaven for the Left. But also wholly
unnecessary: sauce for the goose. The Left was calling us Nazis long
before any pro-Trumpers tweeted Holocaust denial memes. And how does
one deal with a Nazi – that is, with an enemy one is convinced intends
your destruction? You don’t compromise with him or leave him alone. You
crush him.”
“On trade, globalization, and war, Trump is to the left
(conventionally understood) not only of his own party, but of his
Democratic opponent. And yet the Left and the junta are at one with the
house-broken conservatives in their determination – desperation – not
merely to defeat Trump but to destroy him. What gives?”
“Oh, right – there’s that other issue. The sacredness of mass
immigration is the mystic chord that unites America’s ruling and
intellectual classes. Their reasons vary somewhat. The Left and the
Democrats seek ringers to form a permanent electoral majority. They, or
many of them, also believe the academic-intellectual lie that America’s
inherently racist and evil nature can be expiated only through ever
greater ‘diversity.’ The junta of course craves cheaper and more docile
labor. It also seeks to legitimize, and deflect unwanted attention
from, its wealth and power by pretending that its open borders stance
is a form of noblesse oblige. The Republicans and the ‘conservatives’?
Both of course desperately want absolution from the charge of ‘racism.’
For the latter, this at least makes some sense. No Washington General
can take the court – much less cash his check – with that epithet
dancing over his head like some Satanic Spirit.”
“This is insane. This is the mark of a party, a society, a
country, a people, a civilization that wants to die. Trump, alone among
candidates for high office in this or in the last seven (at least)
cycles, has stood up to say: I want to live. I want my party to live. I
want my country to live. I want my people to live. I want to end the
insanity.”
“Trump’s vulgarity is in fact a godsend to the conservatives.
It allows them to hang their public opposition on his obvious
shortcomings and to ignore or downplay his far greater strengths, which
should be even more obvious but in corrupt times can be deliberately
obscured by constant references to his faults. That the Left would make
the campaign all about the latter is to be expected. Why would the
Right? Some – a few – are no doubt sincere in their belief that the man
is simply unfit for high office. David Frum, who has always been an
immigration skeptic and is a convert to the less-war position, is
sincere when he says that, even though he agrees with much of Trump’s
agenda, he cannot stomach Trump. But for most of the other
NeverTrumpers, is
it just a coincidence that they also happen to favor Invade the World,
Invite the World?”
The answer to the subsidiary question – will it
work? – is much less clear. By ‘it’ I mean Trumpism, broadly defined as
secure borders, economic nationalism, and America-first foreign policy.
We Americans have chosen, in our foolishness, to disunite the country
through stupid immigration, economic, and foreign policies.
The level of unity America enjoyed before the bipartisan junta took
over can never be restored. But we can probably do better than we are
doing now. First, stop digging. No more importing poverty, crime, and
alien cultures. We have made institutions, by leftist design, not
merely abysmal at assimilation but abhorrent of the concept. We should
try to fix that, but given the Left’s iron grip on every school and
cultural center, that’s like trying to bring democracy to Russia.
A worthy goal, perhaps, but temper your hopes – and don’t invest time
and resources unrealistically. By contrast, simply building a wall and
enforcing immigration law will help enormously, by cutting off the
flood of newcomers that perpetuates ethnic separatism and by
incentivizing the English language and American norms in the workplace.
These policies will have the added benefit of aligning the economic
interests of, and (we may hope) fostering solidarity among, the
working, lower middle, and middle classes of all races and ethnicities.
The same can be said for Trumpian trade policies and anti-globalization
instincts.
Who cares if productivity numbers tick down, or if our already
somnambulant GDP sinks a bit further into its pillow? Nearly all the
gains of the last 20 years have accrued to the junta anyway. It would,
at this point, be better for the nation to divide up more equitably a
slightly smaller pie than to add one extra slice—only to ensure that it
and eight of the other nine go first to the government and its
rentiers, and the rest to the same four industries and 200 families.”
“The election of 2016 is a test – in my view, the final test
– of whether there is any virtù left in what used to be the core of the
American nation. If they cannot rouse themselves simply to vote for the
first candidate in a generation who pledges to advance their interests,
and to vote against the one who openly boasts that she will do the
opposite (a million more Syrians, anyone?), then they are doomed. They
may not deserve the fate that will befall them, but they will suffer it
regardless.”
| I've
obviously been sitting
on this for awhile.
But, if you haven't seen it, here's your chance. You're welcome. |
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