Tag Archives: Conservatism

The Trump Realignment

You often see the lament from conservatives and the accusation from the left, of how the GOP has abandoned it principles by electing Trump. This is wrong, the Trump realignment is not a shift of principles, but a shift of power between groups with differing principles within the GOP.

The GOP is largely made up of 4 general groups.

The establishment (eGOP), also known as country-club Republicans or Chamber of Commerce conservatives is numerically one of the two smallest factions, primarily made up of the rich and upper-middle class. It’s the Buckleyian alliance of neocons and smallish-government “principled” conservatives who hold gate-keeping power over conservatism and the GOP. While numerically small, due to their riches, connections, and institutional power they hold tremendously outsized power within the GOP. Most major conservative institutions are controlled by them. eGOP principles are low taxes, somewhat limited government, business-friendliness, American Empire, playing by the rules (set by the Democrats), and being respectable. The eGOP is the right wing of the Washington uniparty and they set what “conservative principles” are.

The right-wing libertarians are the other small faction. Best exemplified by Ron Paul, they believe in small government, governmental non-interference, and are generally against foreign interventionism. They were numerically very small and had no real power in the GOP, but they controlled a few academic/think tank institutions, and their strict adherence to their ideology and their strong dedication to government policy solutions often had influence on GOP policies beyond what their lack of numbers and power would suggest.

The religious right (RR), also called the Moral Majority or evangelicals (although much broader than just evangelicals) were numerically a much larger faction. Made up of religious conservatives, it is where the bulk of solid Republican voters came from. This faction cares deeply about and votes on family values and anti-abortion. The RR has created a whole set of parallel institutions, none of which have much real impact on federal politics. Despite it’s numerical superiority and large institutional capacity, it wielded only moderate influence on GOP policies. Hated with a passion by the left and as basically single-issue voters, they were a reliable voting bloc for the GOP, needing only the occasional anti-abortion speech or small regulation here or there, to get keep them coming out to vote. Ultimately nothing concrete or lasting on the national level was ever implemented for the RR bloc, despite their loyalty and numbers.

The final and numerically largest faction, is the Middle-American Radicals (MARs). The MARs are not, strictly speaking, a GOP faction; they lean GOP, but are, as a group, not particularly partisan or ideological; they’ll vote for blue dog or union Democrats and probably think fondly of JFK. This group is by far the largest faction in US politics, comprising most all non-urban, working-class to middle-class, white Americans.

The MARs overlap the RR almost completely, the primary difference between the MARs and RR is that while the MARs may be sympathetic to the RRs on family values issues, they don’t particularly care and do not generally vote based on moral wedge issues. The RR are basically a subgroup of the MARs that attend church regularly and vote on their faith.

This difference though, is huge in political terms as it makes RR a reliable, loyal voting bloc for GOP as long as the GOP pay lip-service to family values and anti-abortion, but at the same time, the non-RR MARs are not particularly reliable. They’re not particularly partisan in voting and may not vote much at all. Unlike the other groups I’ve mentioned, who anybody can recognize, they are not a particularly well-defined or well-recognized faction.

The MARs do not have a particularly coherent ideology and their general political sentiments are “politicians are corrupt liars in the pockets of corporations stealing from little guy, except maybe this one guy from my hometown/state I like.” This is why there was a seemingly odd fluidity between Trump and Bernie, both tapped into this general sentiment.

They are strongly patriotic, pro-America, and pro-military and while not particularly in favour of international intervention, can be easily led to support war against America’s enemies if they are convinced there’s a threat. They are generally socially conservative-libertarianish (“I don’t like homos, but it’s not business”). They are wary of free trade as it tends to result in the factories they work for shutting down. On economic issues, they are generally for “fairness” for the average Joe. They hate socialism, big government, high taxes, handouts, and freeloaders, but they’ll also support government intervention they see as looking out for the little guy, supporting Medicare, Social Security, and such things. They’ll hate regulations that interfere with their farm or plumbing small business, but think somebody should rein in those corporate fat cats and bankers.

The MARs political beliefs are defined not by a coherent ideology, but by a general sentiment that government should work to make sure the working man gets his fair share and can live well without giving their hard-earned money to freeloaders. The Tea Party was the quintessential MARs political movement.

Illegal immigration is the one major issue the MARs stake out a clear policy stance: opposition. Illegal immigration hits every MARs button: it’s unfair that some get to jump the line, it’s wrong that criminal freeloading illegals get to take advantage of American tax dollars, they take jobs, and they lower wages.

The interesting thing about the MARs, is that despite being by far the largest constitutency in the US, they have minimal political power. They vote inconsistently, have no coherent ideology, and have no real political organizing (before the Tea Party) which makes it difficult for them to influence policy. MARs control only one notable institution, the NRA. This is why the NRA is so outsizedly powerful, because they are the only real interaction node between the MARs, the largest bloc of votes in the US, and the federal government.

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Following the Bush administration’s many failures, the right was in chaos.

The libertarian faction had generally worked well together with the eGOP and the MARs. The non-ideological love of freedom of the MARs and lower taxes and less regulations of the eGOP gave the libertarians a home on the edges of the GOP.

But right-wing libertarianism is dead. It had it’s high water mark in 2008/2012 Ron Paul campaigns. With Ron Paul’s retirement, the “pot and sex” and bleeding heart libertarians took over libertarianism, while most right-wing libertarians moved on as they began to realize that mass immigration and libertarianism were incompatible and many began to think as Peter Thiel said, “I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible”.

The religious right reached the high point of their power electing “compassionate conservative” George W. Bush. After 8 years, nothing was done about abortion or family values, meanwhile demographics shifted strongly against the religious right and its power has since faded. It is now a marginalized GOP voting bloc, rather than a major GOP power player; just a enough power to get a token VP, but not much more. They RR was betrayed and has permanently lost, and they know it.

The eGOP spent a lot of political capital on the Iraq War and other foreign interventions which turned out poorly. The 2007-2008 financial crisis and great recession was a powerful hit to their legitimacy on economic issues. After 8 years of Bush, the eGOP had burned through most of their legitimacy.

At the same time, libertarianism and the religious right were dying, and the eGOP was delegitimized, the Tea Party took off. The Tea Party was a MARs movement: lots of flags, lots of patriotism, libertarianish, less taxes, and less government, except where it helps the little guy. The Tea Party organized and began to throw out politicians of the other factions. It was then somewhat coopted by the eGOP during the Obama years.

This is where Trump’s realignment kicked in.

Trump decided to bypass the eGOP and in fact played on the anti-eGOP sentiment that had always been part the MARs and RR. Trump became the political avatar of the MARs. He attacked eGOP principles which had dominated the party for so long. He pushed a non-ideological Americanism for the little guy. He hit on illegal immigration. He brought the RR into the MARs: he’s not going to try to enforce family values, but he will at least try to be anti-abortion and will protect the defeated religious right from the left’s vengeance, while appealing to the RR’s sympathy to the more broadly-appealing MARs issues they support.

The Trump realignment is not an abandonment of conservative principles by conservatives, it is a fundamental realignment of ownership of the GOP from conservatives (the eGOP) to the middle-American radicals, who have fundamentally different values.

The RR’s embrace of Trump is not an abandonment of their religious values, but a recognition that they lost, that they will no longer hold even the moderate influence it once did in the GOP, and that they have to ally with the MARs to not be entirely crushed by the left.

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Finally, beyond Trump: any authoritarian right-wing regime in America will have to make the MARs the base of their power. The MARs like (small-r) republicanism, because it is American, but they are also not particularly ideologically opposed toauthoritarianism. An American anti-democratic authoritarianism would be embraced by the MARs if it was American and patriotic enough.

While neoreaction is strongly in favour of converting elites, elites’ power comes from authority over and legitimacy from people. Any reactionary elite who pulls restoration off will have to have a power base to do so, and the natural reactionary power base is found in the MARs.

Conservatism is Always Doomed

Let us posit that society is at point “X” on a particular issue.

The conservative position is to conserve X.

The liberal position is to ‘progress’ to X+10.

We can posit there are some hardcore conservatives that wish to conserve X-10, the society of a few years back.

We can also posit that some hardcore liberals wish to progress to X+20.

Now we posit an overton window is accepting of the range: hardcore conservative to hardcore liberal. There are some rightests who want x-50 and some leftists who want x+50, but these are radicals and fall outside the overton window, the debate is generally kept to the conservatives and liberals, with the hardcore of each allowed a voice but being outside the mainstream.

From this we now see the range of acceptable opinion is from X-10 to X+20, while the mainstream and centrists would be be in the range of X to X+10.

Any positive deviation from X is a liberal victory and a conservative defeat. The liberals might want X+10, but X+5 is still better for them, while X+5 is still farther away from the X conservatives are conserving.

Yet the moderate opinion is almost always X+Y, it is never X-Y, and only rarely just X. So, the vast majority of acceptable choices are conservative losses and liberal gains, while non-loss is the best a conservative can realistically hope for.

The conservative will almost always lose this game.

Of course, the game is never a single competition; in real life it always iterated. In an iterated game, the conservative will always lose eventually.

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To make matters worse for the conservatives, is that after the conservatives have lost, the centre changes.

Let use say the game is played and a compromise was reached, neither the conservatives nor the liberals got everything they wanted and the decision to implement X+5 was reached. After a few years or a decade or two, point X+5 has become the new norm for society, point “Y”. A conservative is now conserving point Y.

The game is now being played over the territory of Y to Y+10.

If one more compromise results in a decision to implement Y+5, it has come to the point where where liberals have obtained X+10, while the conservatives have lost completely.

As more iterations occur, society will always move towards the liberal position, with only slight slowdowns and the rare win of hardcore conservatives.

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So in any political body where conservatism and liberalism are the opposed choices, conservatism is always doomed.

To not lose the conservatives have to win completely every single time. Compromise is always a long-term liberal gain and conservative loss. Any liberal win is almost always permanent, while any conservative win will likely be lost after a few more iterations.

The only way for society to not become perpetually more liberal is to make conservatism the centre. If conservatism is not the political centre, the game is always rigged in the favour of liberals.

Conservatism is always doomed.

For any society to not inevitably become increasingly liberal, reaction must always be posed against liberalism, with conservativism as the centre.

Any conservative who opposes reaction is setting himself up for a loss. Reaction is the proper opposition to liberalism, conservatism is not.

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* All numbers used are arbitrary and meaningless, useful for only for illustrative purposes.

We’ve Lost

How can the left defeat the reactionaries? — They’ve already defeated us. http://t.co/WjbAgwC87h

— Free Northerner (@FreeNortherner) July 20, 2014

Reactionaries have been defeated, we have lost. Neoreaction was defeated before it began.

This is reality.

The left has either captured, killed, or subverted every major institution in the West: the family, the church, the government, the courts, the media, the education system.

The system is dying, we have lost.

In fact, having lost is almost definitional to the term reactionary. If we were winning, we would be called conservatives or centrists. A reactionary is one wanting a return to a previous order, meaning the previous the old order no longer exists. This implies that at some point in the past the reactionaries (and conservatives) were defeated.

I used the term ‘winning’ purposefully. Reactionaries and a conservatives can never win, entropy is eternal and unstoppable. Chaos is always pounding at the gates and there is never any rest nor relief for the watchmen. The barbarians are always encircling the fortress and only leave once the looting and raping is over.

There was far too much pushback on Twitter on this. Some reactionaries don’t seem to get this basic point. This is foundational reaction. Cthulu swims left. To be a reactionary is to suffer defeat after neverending defeat. As long as you are a reactionary, you are defeated.

Our goal then is to advance to the point where we can become conservatives. That is the end point of reaction, to have a society worth conserving. Once we start winning we stop being reactionaries and we become conservatives.

The goal of reaction is ideological self-annihilation.

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The reason conservatism is wrong is not because there is anything inherently wrong with conservatism, it is because modern conservatives have not yet realized there is nothing left to conserve. They have not yet realized that they have lost. It is over, it is done.

In fact, the conservatives have been so roundly defeated that the best of them are conserving liberalism thinking it to be conservatism.(The worst of them no longer even try to conserve liberalism).

This is the difference between the modern conservative and the reactionary:

The reactionary suffers in endless defeat, the conservative has not only been defeated, but has been so entirely and thoroughly pwned that he does not even understand he has been defeated, so he barely suffers.

My next post will outline how thouroughly we’ve lost, but to tide you over I recommend Derbyshire’s We Are Doomed.

If you are optimistic, if you think there is some hope of a “win”, if you believe it can be turned around, you are wrong and you do not yet understand reaction.

There is only the endless cycle of struggle against chaos, loss to chaos, and rebuilding during chaos so we can continue the struggle. Death and the final winnowing are the only relief from the cycle.

Reaction should not make you happy or hopeful, the only thing it can do is is help your children survive to create more children to survive to create more children.

It’s called the dark enlightenment for a reason.

From the Mailbox

Today, two things from the mailbox.

From Europia, one of my readers who wishes to remain anonymous believes that the tide will turn, but not in his lifetime:

You may find the following gem of some interest. The Anti-Family/Child Abuse PONZI Scheme Agenda will eventually cause TOTAL Social Collapse as some people have predicted. This will mean the END of the Cradle-to-Grave Western Social Welfare system. In the LONG-TERM Total Social Breakdown, which will make the Economic Mess TODAY look like a toddlers’ playschool tiff, will benefit Society, especially children. This will mean that a GOOD man of 40 – 50 years of age can marry a lady half his age and father 9 children. The young lady of 23 will have NO PROBLEM marrying a man of 35 years of age and having 8 children as HE will have a house & an income to make a family lifestyle practical. On the other hand a woman older than 35 will have great difficulties becoming a mother. We will see a return of LARGE families of 6 – 10 children as people will NEED the children to support the parents in old age. To a certain extent this return of LARGE families has started in Europe. In Portugal a new Pensions’ Law has linked a person’s pension to the number of children that a person had. So the BIGGER the family, the BIGGER the pension you get. I have NO ILLUSIONS that I might see this day. I reckon that Victory is about 40 years away of not firther away. But WHEN Victory comes and come it will, all the TOXIC PARASITES the “Family Court” judges, Legal Aid lawyers, psychotherapists, mediators, counsellors, social workers, etc WILL have to get a job as opposed to profiting from child abuse. We will also see, possibly QUITE soon, people grow their own food as people will be hungry as opposed to any sentimental reasons.

I found the part about the Pension’s Law interesting. I asked the reader about it, but he had only seen it on TV with no other information. If anyone else has more information or a link, that’d be great.

Second, comes a video sent courtesy of former manosphere blogger Will. It’s a video on how conservatism is a myth and a delusion. It’s pretty good:

Everything he say, more or less applies to Canadian conservatism as well.