Good article. "I suspect that institutions, especially when large, naturally tend towards leftism, and this isn’t anything unique to the current American political landscape."
Robert Conquest’s second law: "Any organization not explicitly and constitutionally right-wing will sooner or later become left-wing."
Probably not something Richard has thought much about, but note that his statements are largely true about Protestant denominations. Leftist activists tend to capture the denominational machinery and use it to create problems for the actual believing Christians on the ground. Just like Richard's observation about doctors and the AMA, it turns out that believing Christian leaders have a preference for building churches and preaching the Word, not administering denominational machinery.
Conservatives have had a few successes in retaining or recapturing the machinery (e.g. the SBC and LCMS in the 1970s-80s). But mostly defeats (all the Mainlines, most recently the UMC). This is one reason that evangelicalism is largely congregational in polity -- which is to say, independent and decentralized. The centralized churches were almost all captured by a cabal of their enemies. My understanding is the same thing happened to European Protestant state churches (e.g. Church of England).
Although a lot of complaints could be made about the bureaucracies of the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches, they don't function quite the same way because they have a lot more institutional inertia.
I have sometimes thought about incorporating UBI, or some other welfarism, as part as the conservative agenda in response to this. Hear me out.
Modern liberal democracies create rent. The government can tax and regulate a significant amount of the economy, before everything starts crumbling. The left has a myriad of ideas on where to spend this rent on, which is partially handouts to all kind of groups, and partially themselves, their jobs and hobbies. Libertarians say "Well, don't". The people however, are typically not smart enough to understand pro-market arguments, and are happy to be bribed with their own money.
Well then, why not acknowledge the "power of the people" that exists in a democracy, and actually bribe the people with their own money in a straightforward way. "Tear down the administrative state and handout the money to the people" might be more of a popular platform then "Mostly cut benefits, and lower corporate tax". The latter might be more true and efficient from an economic perspective, the first might be more effective from a political perspective. Give the poor a tangible and visible slice of the dividends created by making the state more libertarian.
This is essentially no different than a private equity firm convincing it's fellow shareholders to let them take charge of the corporation, to cut waste and boost dividends. A vote in that sense is just a piece of stock, that for archaic reasons cannot be sold.
“among [the GOP] base there is organic demand for conspiracy theories, fake news, and other kinds of stupidity”
Richard being Richard again- 85% brilliant, 15% infuriating. Mixed in with an otherwise very good piece is this ridiculous assertion.
So the Dem base isn’t equally into conspiracy theories and fake news? Russia collusion remains the ultimate conspiracy theory of our time. Trump is a dictator, Hunter laptop was fake, COVID didn’t come out of Wuhan, Trump is antisemitic, etc., etc., etc. One of the few places calling for balance, and yet Richard feels compelled to take the leftist position.
Yes, we get it that you feel the need to distinguish yourself from the alt-Right fringe, Richard. And that you dislike the MAGA base. But the idea that it is only, or even primarily, the right that eats up conspiracy theories and fake news is absurd.
I’d be happy to wager that a larger percentage of Dem voters believe their fake news and conspiracy theories than do GOP voters.
More importantly re what Richard claims to care about, a massively higher proportion of “High Status” leftists believe their conspiracy theories and fake news than do “High Status” rightists.
The most interesting line in this is "the man is just extremely aesthetically unappealing to educated Americans. That is to their credit." I am indifferent to Trump, have no skin in the game, am educated but am not disturbed one whit by his vulgarity, look or feel. So are you saying educated Americans are snobs? And that you are too?
1)Also reducing college to 2 years (by eliminating general ed which is where most leftwing classes are and making lower div online)
2)eliminating masters degrees and making law/med school under grad
The faster these people get out of school and paying taxes the faster they meet criteria for conservative and it reduces the social influence of a very leftwing institution that elites have to filter through.
"...look at those in the idea generation space, namely education, journalism, academia, activism, and the arts. I call these the High-Status, Low Pay (HSLP) professions..."
And by "idea generation" you mean "bad idea generation." Those morons have been taught (er, educated) to think alike, virtue signal, and regurgitate exactly what they have been taught by the previous generation of morons. Ask anyone (off the record, of course) where the worst hires come from nowadays and they come EXACTLY from your "High Status" fields. If cancer had half the PR machine the no accountability "High Status" morons had, people would be drinking heavy water like it was the new Pfizer vaccine.
You do have a point that these people dominate the noise and willingly accept whatever anyone says as long as they promise an abortion to boot, including wars. What idea has this group generated that has any significance outside of self-promotion (ultimately self-abuse)? What benefit have these geniuses imparted on society?
Low-morals, low-pay, low-common sense, low-critical thinking people is what they are.
Things could definitely be improved within the current setup, but the Right will always struggle with Low Human Capital as long as it clings to it is, well, "conservatism".
Trump or not (some may say he's not even conservative), conservatism just doesn't click with young people and "HSLP" people (and of course students, since they fall into both categories). Inherently, these categories are all about energy, idealism, and innovation, drawn not necessarily to left-wing ideas, but to notions of actively shaping the future for the better.
Conservatives don't really offer that. By definition, their whole deal is about "conserving" things, but where's the excitement in that?
As Hayek put it, the main flaw with conservatism is that it's destined to lose because it's all about resisting change (in our context, complaining that things are going too woke or something) without offering any real direction forward. To win over High Human Capital, you can't say we should keep "traditional values." Alright, maybe you could pick some of these values that you prioritize, but you have to weave them coherently into a fresh, bold framework filled with inspiring new ideas.
That's why, even though he's supposedly on the right, Javier Milei managed to draw in so many young, educated folks during Argentina's last presidential election. Sure, his approach might not fly in the US because the context is different. But in HIS context, he wasn't about "conserving"; he was all about shaking up the system to pave the way for a brighter future.
This is an excellent post. One detail worth discussing, however: it's true that the Trump executive branch didn't expand the civil rights regime, but it's not exactly true that all they did was keep the existing regime in place. They also helped entrench it deeper. The Supreme Court had been poised to reject disparate impact liability under the Fair Housing Act in the Inclusive Communities case after already construing identical language in the ADEA to prohibit it, but it ended up upholding it with Kennedy still on the bench. It wasn't necessary to wait for a change in the Court's composition to fix this - all that had to happen was for HUD to issue a reg. Unfortunately, Trump's HUD, under Ben Carson, did in fact issue a reg on the issue but instead of clarifying that the FHA does not cognize disparate impact, it endorsed the incorrect Kennedy-majority ruling and made it that much harder to reverse that ruling even though the current Court would never heave reached it.
Interesting stuff, thanks. I don't agree with much of your worldview but I think you make a good case for it.
I'm just curious, what's your check and balance on plutocracy? Smother by bureaucracy is not a failure mode that's observed too often historically, whereas there is plenty of examples of societies where plutocratic elites become too powerful, power becomes hereditary, and society is led by degenerates until invaded.
I think your article is excellent, as always when you talk about those things, but I don't think the situation is that grim for conservatives. Even in 2020 elections, less than 60% voted for Biden, in a bad year for republicans. They still have 2/5 of the educated electorated to recruit from. But they need to find a way to do this without scare way low education voters.
Richard the only high-status people left in the GOP are religious conservatives, there's a reason the Supreme Court is almost all Catholics now. Without pro-life positions there would be no one left.
>It does not matter how much elite human capital doesn’t like it, wide swaths of the country no longer have abortion clinics, which means that women who aren’t responsible enough to use birth control and who don’t have the means to go to other states are being forced to give birth.<
The idea that a woman who has a child after consensual sex is somehow "undergoing forced birth" is nonsensical. This is the same logic that leftists apply to black people when they riot or engage in other destructive behaviors; the narrative is that these people lack agency because somehow white people actually "made" them do these things, and thus we can't hold them responsible for their actions and must simply allow the behavior to continue unimpeded. Either people have agency or they don't, and the only coherent position is that they do. Selectively applying Schrodinger's Agency when it suits your personal whims is intellectually lazy. Thus "forced birth" could only be argued in cases of rape, which are of course some extreme tiny outlier of abortions. Something like 98% of abortions are "elective," meaning abortions of convenience.
The second point to be made here is that your statement essentially endorses abortion as a means of birth control. If this is the narrative, I must always ask, why draw the line at birth? Children absolutely do not stop being burdens post-birth and I have seen many people say that the actual childcare part of parenting is much more difficult than the process of pregnancy and birth. Why then do we not allow parents to dispose of unwanted infants or toddlers?
This is the kind of thing you need to explain to pro-lifers if you want to "purge" them. The pro-life position rests on the foundational tenet that unborn children are human beings i.e. people just like me or you or a toddler or an infant, simply at an earlier stage of development. In much the same way that you can't defeat wokeism without attacking the underlying tenet that there are no differences between races/genders, you won't change a pro-lifer's mind by coming at them with leftist terms like "forced birth." Anyone who accepts that frame already agrees with you on this issue.
I almost never see abortion advocates seriously try to do this, and the very few times that they try, it doesn't seem to do them any favors. Instead they either stick to leftist framing or, when they're not leftists themselves, do their best to hold their noses and ignore the issue entirely. I would expect that so long as this is the case, with polarization continuing apace, the pro-life position will slowly gain steam on the right and eventually become dominant, in the same way that the old "Chamber of Commerce" Republicans have slowly but inevitably been pushed out and replaced by populism/MAGA.
From the title I expected a piece on Biden's travails. I now see it's mostly about the other dummy.
Mitt Romney, Thomas Sowell, and George Will are conservatives. Trump is not. Don't people realize that industrial policy and protectionism go against core conservative values - core liberal values as well.
Good article. "I suspect that institutions, especially when large, naturally tend towards leftism, and this isn’t anything unique to the current American political landscape."
Robert Conquest’s second law: "Any organization not explicitly and constitutionally right-wing will sooner or later become left-wing."
Re: "Deinstitutionalization"
Probably not something Richard has thought much about, but note that his statements are largely true about Protestant denominations. Leftist activists tend to capture the denominational machinery and use it to create problems for the actual believing Christians on the ground. Just like Richard's observation about doctors and the AMA, it turns out that believing Christian leaders have a preference for building churches and preaching the Word, not administering denominational machinery.
Conservatives have had a few successes in retaining or recapturing the machinery (e.g. the SBC and LCMS in the 1970s-80s). But mostly defeats (all the Mainlines, most recently the UMC). This is one reason that evangelicalism is largely congregational in polity -- which is to say, independent and decentralized. The centralized churches were almost all captured by a cabal of their enemies. My understanding is the same thing happened to European Protestant state churches (e.g. Church of England).
Although a lot of complaints could be made about the bureaucracies of the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches, they don't function quite the same way because they have a lot more institutional inertia.
I have sometimes thought about incorporating UBI, or some other welfarism, as part as the conservative agenda in response to this. Hear me out.
Modern liberal democracies create rent. The government can tax and regulate a significant amount of the economy, before everything starts crumbling. The left has a myriad of ideas on where to spend this rent on, which is partially handouts to all kind of groups, and partially themselves, their jobs and hobbies. Libertarians say "Well, don't". The people however, are typically not smart enough to understand pro-market arguments, and are happy to be bribed with their own money.
Well then, why not acknowledge the "power of the people" that exists in a democracy, and actually bribe the people with their own money in a straightforward way. "Tear down the administrative state and handout the money to the people" might be more of a popular platform then "Mostly cut benefits, and lower corporate tax". The latter might be more true and efficient from an economic perspective, the first might be more effective from a political perspective. Give the poor a tangible and visible slice of the dividends created by making the state more libertarian.
This is essentially no different than a private equity firm convincing it's fellow shareholders to let them take charge of the corporation, to cut waste and boost dividends. A vote in that sense is just a piece of stock, that for archaic reasons cannot be sold.
“among [the GOP] base there is organic demand for conspiracy theories, fake news, and other kinds of stupidity”
Richard being Richard again- 85% brilliant, 15% infuriating. Mixed in with an otherwise very good piece is this ridiculous assertion.
So the Dem base isn’t equally into conspiracy theories and fake news? Russia collusion remains the ultimate conspiracy theory of our time. Trump is a dictator, Hunter laptop was fake, COVID didn’t come out of Wuhan, Trump is antisemitic, etc., etc., etc. One of the few places calling for balance, and yet Richard feels compelled to take the leftist position.
Yes, we get it that you feel the need to distinguish yourself from the alt-Right fringe, Richard. And that you dislike the MAGA base. But the idea that it is only, or even primarily, the right that eats up conspiracy theories and fake news is absurd.
I’d be happy to wager that a larger percentage of Dem voters believe their fake news and conspiracy theories than do GOP voters.
More importantly re what Richard claims to care about, a massively higher proportion of “High Status” leftists believe their conspiracy theories and fake news than do “High Status” rightists.
The most interesting line in this is "the man is just extremely aesthetically unappealing to educated Americans. That is to their credit." I am indifferent to Trump, have no skin in the game, am educated but am not disturbed one whit by his vulgarity, look or feel. So are you saying educated Americans are snobs? And that you are too?
Richard
1)Also reducing college to 2 years (by eliminating general ed which is where most leftwing classes are and making lower div online)
2)eliminating masters degrees and making law/med school under grad
The faster these people get out of school and paying taxes the faster they meet criteria for conservative and it reduces the social influence of a very leftwing institution that elites have to filter through.
"...look at those in the idea generation space, namely education, journalism, academia, activism, and the arts. I call these the High-Status, Low Pay (HSLP) professions..."
And by "idea generation" you mean "bad idea generation." Those morons have been taught (er, educated) to think alike, virtue signal, and regurgitate exactly what they have been taught by the previous generation of morons. Ask anyone (off the record, of course) where the worst hires come from nowadays and they come EXACTLY from your "High Status" fields. If cancer had half the PR machine the no accountability "High Status" morons had, people would be drinking heavy water like it was the new Pfizer vaccine.
You do have a point that these people dominate the noise and willingly accept whatever anyone says as long as they promise an abortion to boot, including wars. What idea has this group generated that has any significance outside of self-promotion (ultimately self-abuse)? What benefit have these geniuses imparted on society?
Low-morals, low-pay, low-common sense, low-critical thinking people is what they are.
Things could definitely be improved within the current setup, but the Right will always struggle with Low Human Capital as long as it clings to it is, well, "conservatism".
Trump or not (some may say he's not even conservative), conservatism just doesn't click with young people and "HSLP" people (and of course students, since they fall into both categories). Inherently, these categories are all about energy, idealism, and innovation, drawn not necessarily to left-wing ideas, but to notions of actively shaping the future for the better.
Conservatives don't really offer that. By definition, their whole deal is about "conserving" things, but where's the excitement in that?
As Hayek put it, the main flaw with conservatism is that it's destined to lose because it's all about resisting change (in our context, complaining that things are going too woke or something) without offering any real direction forward. To win over High Human Capital, you can't say we should keep "traditional values." Alright, maybe you could pick some of these values that you prioritize, but you have to weave them coherently into a fresh, bold framework filled with inspiring new ideas.
That's why, even though he's supposedly on the right, Javier Milei managed to draw in so many young, educated folks during Argentina's last presidential election. Sure, his approach might not fly in the US because the context is different. But in HIS context, he wasn't about "conserving"; he was all about shaking up the system to pave the way for a brighter future.
Brian Chau would probably suggest that "HSLP," as you outline it, is actually, largely "MWLP." (MidWit, Low Pay)
This is an excellent post. One detail worth discussing, however: it's true that the Trump executive branch didn't expand the civil rights regime, but it's not exactly true that all they did was keep the existing regime in place. They also helped entrench it deeper. The Supreme Court had been poised to reject disparate impact liability under the Fair Housing Act in the Inclusive Communities case after already construing identical language in the ADEA to prohibit it, but it ended up upholding it with Kennedy still on the bench. It wasn't necessary to wait for a change in the Court's composition to fix this - all that had to happen was for HUD to issue a reg. Unfortunately, Trump's HUD, under Ben Carson, did in fact issue a reg on the issue but instead of clarifying that the FHA does not cognize disparate impact, it endorsed the incorrect Kennedy-majority ruling and made it that much harder to reverse that ruling even though the current Court would never heave reached it.
Interesting stuff, thanks. I don't agree with much of your worldview but I think you make a good case for it.
I'm just curious, what's your check and balance on plutocracy? Smother by bureaucracy is not a failure mode that's observed too often historically, whereas there is plenty of examples of societies where plutocratic elites become too powerful, power becomes hereditary, and society is led by degenerates until invaded.
I think your article is excellent, as always when you talk about those things, but I don't think the situation is that grim for conservatives. Even in 2020 elections, less than 60% voted for Biden, in a bad year for republicans. They still have 2/5 of the educated electorated to recruit from. But they need to find a way to do this without scare way low education voters.
How is that graph about appointee ideology generated? Seems like one can make that graph show whatever you want based on how you scale the data.
I'm sure it comes from some standard measure, but it's not at all clear that measure has the desired meaning.
Richard the only high-status people left in the GOP are religious conservatives, there's a reason the Supreme Court is almost all Catholics now. Without pro-life positions there would be no one left.
>It does not matter how much elite human capital doesn’t like it, wide swaths of the country no longer have abortion clinics, which means that women who aren’t responsible enough to use birth control and who don’t have the means to go to other states are being forced to give birth.<
The idea that a woman who has a child after consensual sex is somehow "undergoing forced birth" is nonsensical. This is the same logic that leftists apply to black people when they riot or engage in other destructive behaviors; the narrative is that these people lack agency because somehow white people actually "made" them do these things, and thus we can't hold them responsible for their actions and must simply allow the behavior to continue unimpeded. Either people have agency or they don't, and the only coherent position is that they do. Selectively applying Schrodinger's Agency when it suits your personal whims is intellectually lazy. Thus "forced birth" could only be argued in cases of rape, which are of course some extreme tiny outlier of abortions. Something like 98% of abortions are "elective," meaning abortions of convenience.
The second point to be made here is that your statement essentially endorses abortion as a means of birth control. If this is the narrative, I must always ask, why draw the line at birth? Children absolutely do not stop being burdens post-birth and I have seen many people say that the actual childcare part of parenting is much more difficult than the process of pregnancy and birth. Why then do we not allow parents to dispose of unwanted infants or toddlers?
This is the kind of thing you need to explain to pro-lifers if you want to "purge" them. The pro-life position rests on the foundational tenet that unborn children are human beings i.e. people just like me or you or a toddler or an infant, simply at an earlier stage of development. In much the same way that you can't defeat wokeism without attacking the underlying tenet that there are no differences between races/genders, you won't change a pro-lifer's mind by coming at them with leftist terms like "forced birth." Anyone who accepts that frame already agrees with you on this issue.
I almost never see abortion advocates seriously try to do this, and the very few times that they try, it doesn't seem to do them any favors. Instead they either stick to leftist framing or, when they're not leftists themselves, do their best to hold their noses and ignore the issue entirely. I would expect that so long as this is the case, with polarization continuing apace, the pro-life position will slowly gain steam on the right and eventually become dominant, in the same way that the old "Chamber of Commerce" Republicans have slowly but inevitably been pushed out and replaced by populism/MAGA.
From the title I expected a piece on Biden's travails. I now see it's mostly about the other dummy.
Mitt Romney, Thomas Sowell, and George Will are conservatives. Trump is not. Don't people realize that industrial policy and protectionism go against core conservative values - core liberal values as well.