Explaining why Trump emerged on the right, why only liberals debate filibuster reform, how anti-vax became a partisan issue, how David Shor is half right, "Dems are the real racists" and much else.
There is something to be said, however, about how our culture's system of social incentives and prestige—in which the left holds a dominant position—impacts even what preoccupies the time and energies of thoughtful and motivated right-leaning activists and intellectuals.
Consider law professors. I don't have a empirical study handy to prove this, but I read many right-leaning legal scholars, and this is my impression.
Generally, these scholars focus on arcana—carefully avoiding hot-button issues like race—whereas leftist have no qualms with making radical, incendiary proposals.
For instance, a conservative prof may write about arcana like restoring the original understanding of some equitable remedy, whereas—in her essay "Whiteness as Property"—leftist professor Cheryl Harris advocated for the U.S. to model its constitution on South Africa's to enable the expropriation of whites in perpetuity.
Even libertarian lawyers, who in theory would support abolishing civil rights laws, tend not to focus on this topic. They instead prefer to write about issues that appeal more to their leftist colleagues, like immigration.
So social incentives move even the educated class on the right—those who actually read— away from tackling the very issue that is determinative of whether they can have a moderately successful political movement.
Beyond just social incentives, there might be something about the disposition of centre-rightist intellectuals that drives them towards pilpul and proceduralism. Though, I am not sure how well this translates outside of law.
This is a great comment, I noticed the same thing when I was in law school. We had a lot of right leaning professors at Chicago, and they stuck to bean counting, “law and economics” showing how some liberal intervention might have some unintended consequence. They rarely challenged the left’s morality directly. Richard Epstein wrote a book against anti-discrimination law and even his argument lacked much passion or moralizing. That’s something you can get away with only if most people already agree with you.
Both share altruism but Rightists compromise until Leftists condemn that. Thus both have increased govt power since the late 19th century. Rightists created the 1890 Sherman Antitrust Act, defending it with Leftist political equality, not economics.
The reason that the right doesn't have the written word culture is that the left has successfully made it impossible. They use their control of institutions to destroy people who seriously oppose them or have any real ideas. A right-wing written world culture would be led by canceled people like Charles Murray and Steve Sailer. The issue is that the left can make you lose your job and whatever else you have by disagreeing with their ideas.
Consider the fact that any real right wing party would run on repealing the Civil Rights Act because it is the skeleton key the left uses to pass every insane social policy. (They're even using it to enforce masks in schools) Who can say that publicly? We live in a totalitarian system where dissent is punished, not a real two party system.
I say that all the time, and I have not been “destroyed.” If a conservative is likely to be destroyed by such views, it’s by other Republicans, who are suspicious of and annoyed by anyone who takes ideas too seriously.
I personally would be fired from my job if I said publicly that the civil rights act should be repealed. The left is able to share ideas on social media, organize publicly, and advocate for their ideas. We are not allowed to do any of those things. We are just trying to stay alive here.
You’d be more likely to be able to say it if it was normalized by Republican politicians and thought leaders, as they can say whatever they want and keep their jobs. But they don’t, and their activist base doesn’t demand they do, because they’re too focused on Let’s Go Brandon.
Anonymous has a point. Powerful established institutions that emphasize the written word put up barriers to conservatives who try to move into that space. There are exceptions, but often it seems like conservative writers fill a fixed number of slots at these institutions (Douthat at NYT, George Will at WaPo) and they aren’t allowed to write about certain topics with any clarity.
At a more fundamental level, I think that many conservative principles are much harder to articulate than libertarian or progressive ones. Everyone understands the appeal of freedom from coercion or protection of the vulnerable, but it takes a masterful communicator like Yuval Levin to make a verbal case for civilizing institutions.
Progressives tend to view institutions as the source of human corruption rather than something inherent to the human condition. They feel justified in correcting corruption that already exists, but ultimately with the aim of freeing them from societal constraint. “Man is born free yet everywhere he is in chains”
Conservatives believe that man’s natural passions need to be constrained to cultivate virtue. Family structure is not just a lifestyle choice, it needs to direct individuals towards the duty of raising children in a stable environment. Religious observance is not just an expression of your preexisting values, it needs to serve the role of helping parishioners cultivate the virtues of humility and charity.
They're focused on Let's Go Brandon because they've been put into a schizophrenic situation where their only access to mainstream right wing thought and analysis are ones that deliberately confound their instincts.
The concept of "conservative" in the current landscape is itself schizophrenic and unselfaware or, if pushed deliberately, dishonest.
I suggest you look into the major antagonists of the successful self deportation laws in Alabama and Arizona a decade ago. Those are the direction Trump voters want. Cut to the chase, that's what we want. Go on and look into the major, moneyed, broadest-platformed groups and individuals who mobilized against this
Well, the reason is that most people consider the civil rights act to be a great achievement, and claiming stuff like it should be repealed will probably lead one to be put into the alt-right corner...and that's not something where most people want to be...advocating for reasonable conservative issues, on the other hand, is very much acceptable...
You're commenting on a blog whose most popular posts explain why the Civil rights act enables all of the unpopular things the democrats do, so I recommend reading it.
For example, "get men out of women's restrooms" is the same thing as "repeal the Civil rights act. 70% support at minimum.
You're commenting on a blog whose most popular posts explain why the Civil rights act enables all of the unpopular things the democrats do, so I recommend reading it.
For example, "get men out of women's restrooms" is the same thing as "repeal the Civil rights act. 70% support at minimum.
You're commenting on a blog whose most popular posts explain why the Civil rights act enables all of the unpopular things the democrats do, so I recommend reading it.
For example, "get men out of women's restrooms" is the same thing as "repeal the Civil rights act. 70% support at minimum.
Saying discussion of repealing the CRA is acceptable as long as you don't make moral arguments is a good way to shut down most of your base. People are only celebrated for statements like "Affirmative action should be mandated because it is right for black people to look out for their own kind"
The jews themselves are now calling for the end of the civil rights laws just as soon as white people figured out those laws could be used to protect them from the anti-white attacks of the jewish marxists.
The same way women started fighting against alimony the moment men started winning.
It's a bad example... and one so bad I can only imagine it was chosen deliberately for this hebrew to pick apart. The amount of jewish dishonesty required to say with a straight face that the jew-owned jew-controlled media networks don't allow the left to get away with murder while the jewish-led mobs don't search-and-destroy anyone for the slightest wrongthink that opposes them is... well. Jewish.
I don't think most folks grasp that the most significant and longterm paradigm shift triggered by of the Civil Rights Act was that of making private spaces public. The idea of the government ordering one to not light up a cigar in one's own privately owned or mortgaged business (in saloons!) .. would have been as equally offensive or more likely laughable to the average pre-Act American as the idea of the government monitoring the ashtrays in one's own home. It took an AMENDMENT to the CONSTITUTION to regulate alchohol consumption and even that did not differentiate between a home or a business space.
Most people don't grasp this, I think, because there is no real way to critique this aspect or even discuss it without prefacing the discussion with an unbelieved and overlong denial that one's true motive is to undermine the goal of the Civil Rights Act, rather than it's substance, that is the means to achieve that goal. (Parallel I think to the aversion of hard core environmentalist conservatives to engage in the climate change debate, so it appears we don't exist).
But I digress .. I remember being in the Sixth Grade and having an epiphany (I was wierd in that I had been reading the editorial pages of every newspaper in the local Army Fort library since I was 9) of the difference the between Republican and Democrat Parties .. it wasn't ideology (especially back then) .. it was that Republicans cared about means and Democrats cared about ends. It was a childish simplification .. but I rarely go wrong even now when I step back and try to make sense of how partisans are able to talk so far past each other. They aren't having the same conversations, they are not in the same conversations, and they both battle straw men. But they both sure get awfully mad.
Failure to acknowledge this when he surely understands it fundamentally dishonest.
I suspect Hanania knows full well not only this reality but who the most aggressive, moneyed, connected, and effective groups and individuals responsible for this and what their motivations are. It's a community he knows well.
Richard reminds me of a Curtis Yarvin on this issue
One piece of evidence in favor of your thesis is that, in my experience, the liberal intellectual class-- the "middle" people you talk about-- is prone to openly disparage television and television-watchers (e.g. referring to the TV as "the idiot box", quoting the Minow "vast wasteland" speech approvingly) and to valorize bookishness as a sign of virtue. This has been the case for my whole lifetime, since before the present iteration of the culture wars. It's actually gotten a bit less intense since the cable- and internet-era fragmentation of the TV channel landscape and the rise of "prestige" TV dramas, but it's still there.
Further evidence for this is that the reader parts of the right have a disdain for TV and TV Watchers that rivals that of the left. We don't call it "the electric Jew" for nothing.
Ah, thank you for the explanation, but I must tell you that it is not correct. As a Hebrew myself, I can personally attest that I do not have poor hygiene, in fact, I wash my crotch at least once every 5-6 weeks. I might also caution you to be careful in what you post online, as our ZOG/Rothschild bank bots are everywhere monitoring the internet and doxxing folks who cross the Elders. I would not be surprised if sometime in the middle of the night you get a visit from the FBI, also known as the "Soros Brigade" of the Mossad, so good luck out there.
Hanania started with "Liberals Care More", then he switched to "Liberals have baked political leverage into the law" and built bureaucracies inside and outside government that shift everything to the left, now the left has more ideas?
I'd suggest an alternative argued by Angelo Codevilla: patronage.
The left hold power by rewarding their members and supporters with tangible benefits of desirable jobs, money, and status. They grow government to build the machine and give more benefits to a larger group of supporters. The universities have broadly built a culture of driving out people with right-wing views and reserving admission and promotion for political allies.
The Trump Campaign's philosophy was to marry libertarian ideas with a populist, "Donnie from Queens", mass media savvy frontman. Trump frequently praised and quoted Adam Smith in his early speeches and his MAGA book. Trump chose reputable libertarians Moore and Laffer and Kudlow as top visible advisers on his economic team. He choose prominent libertarian Scott Gottlieb to run the FDA and school choice advocate Betsy DeVos to run education. The book Trumponomics was entirely libertarian.
In Hanania's circle, libertarianism is predominantly or even exclusively about increased immigration and an activist alliance with the Democratic Party, run by so-scalled "libertarians" that have spent their entire adult lives in political patronage careers as government university professors. Many libertarians, or people who identify as libertarians, support immigration restriction, but that position, has been forbidden from academia, and arguably even forbidden by the law of the US and Europe. A charitable view would say open borders is this principled idea, but a large part of it, is clearly might makes right, and a ruling class built on patronage.
Not a huge part of the piece, but I disagree that Russiagate is in the same boat as Qanon and birtherism. Russiagate was not an IQ test and was constantly pushed hard via TV and the written word. Sure, there was plenty of low hanging fruit pushed by MSNBC like Vladimir Putin shutting the heat off in North Dakota. However, there were so many complicated plot lines, lengthy documents, actors and so-called bombshells that translated into 10,000 word editorials every other day. There was no threshold of IQ, respectability, or socio-economic status where Russiagate fever wore off. In my experience, the most educated, highly professional and wealthy people believed the most insane Russiagate nonsense. This morphed into them believing its dangerous offshoots (i.e. Bountygate, Assad gassing kids) and ultimately, siding with the worst elements of our intelligence and military apparatus.
I think it has more to do with psychological warfare which apparently a high IQ doesn't necessarily inoculate one against. I find that the smarter someone is, the greater the ability to deceive oneself.
You write "You might be a conservative and go to Vox to learn something, as I sometimes do. No liberal is going to Breitbart to learn anything unless they want to specifically study the conservative movement." Well, I am a liberal who goes to Breitbart to seek information that cannot be found in most liberal media.
Liberal media seldom publish information critical of Islam. When in 2011 a Brazilian Muslim shot about 30 schoolchildren, everyone in Brazil knew that it was a Muslim who did it. Outside of Brazil few people found out because the news agencies negelcted to report his religion. Even the Russian wire service omitted the fact that Wellington Menezes de Oliveira was an observing Muslim. Read about it at:
Breitbart doesn’t have those blinkers. But it’s not only crime. The Syrian-German sociologist Bassam Tibi, who attended lectures at Frankfurt University by Critical Theory celebrities like Horkheimer and Adorno and through them overcame the anti-Semitism he had learned as a child in Syria, is critical of Islam, so liberal media never publish hum, but Breitbart does. And Bassam Tibi is no Donald Trump. He’s an enlightened intellectual who taught at Göttingen university for many years.
An exception to the left not watching TV was the huge influence of Jon Stewart and the Daily Show, and to a lesser Colbert and John Oliver today. In the 2000’s it was Stewart and not the New York Times who determined the liberal perspective and pretty much the opposition to the government of George Bush.
In my experience, the typical woke leftist watches a ton of internet-streamed entertainment which is often brought up in conversation. Their awareness of the socio-political landscape seems informed by a few minutes here and there of consuming mainstream news media. They all have college degrees, but that doesn't prevent them from being mostly uninformed or disinformed.
Agree on much of your take, and have long thought that the right needs it’s own elite to drive thought and provide an intellectual foundation.
I am somewhat hopeful that such an intellectual elite on the right is forming, and oddly it is getting pushed a TV personality: Tucker Carlson. Tucker is very well read, and in many way the anti- Hannity. Tucker even embraces the non-practical written world of fiction, poetry and music. But most importantly he showcases many thinkers. Hannity isn’t driving viewers to substack, but Tucker does. And the Tucker Carlson Today part of his platform is even more friendly to the exploration of ideas. I can’t imagine Hannity or anyone else on Fox showcasing Curtis Yarvin.
Tucker may himself be an intellectual, a 'reader' if you will, but his show is every bit as dishonest as Hannity and no less geared towards entertaining 'TV watchers' with outrage. Tucker will continue to make a ton of money off the TV watchers while the conservative movement will be stuck in the exact same situation Richard describes here.
No, this is wrong. Tucker watchers all think they're watching something more substantive. But that's just his schtick compared to Hannity. He's got an intellectual background and used to work for CNN, which makes him perfect for infotainment that feels like intellectualism, something Hannity can't pull off. Carlson and Fox have even claimed in court that reasonable viewers don't take what he says as fact. If you think Tucker is substantive than you're simply a TV Watcher that Richard talks about. You don't want more than that, you just want to own the libs.
Tucker is controlled opposition and a CIA asset. His job is to say the most overwhelming truths about the world, about the jewish attacks against our nation, then reframe them in a way that the jews have already devised a counter for.
All media is jew media. No one is allowed to exist on the jew networks without working for the jew.
Pretend tough guy thinking calling me a jew means anything. You're the shit on society's shoe that the rest of us just can't scrape off our collective shoes. You're a nobody who makes lame shock posts like this. I don't believe in God at all, religion is our society's worst vice. But what we really need to do is get rid of excess baggage like you and people like you that only take and contribute nothing. We own you bud, keep getting mad champ. You're fucked.
“Those who want their children to actually live in a more conservative country, however, cannot feel good about the way things are going, and should probably be doing more to make the right more of a “written word” culture, where politicians are actually held accountable for what they do.”
The thing is that most people probably don't find living in a "conservative" society like this appealing... I mean, if they did, you'd expect more people moving to "red states", or in Europe, to Hungary or Poland...🤔
We could say the same thing about progressives—why don’t they move to Sweden?
And lots of people have been moving to red states:
“According to Florida's Office of Economic and Demographic Research, our state grew by an estimated 329,717 new residents between April 2020 and April 2021. Move.org reports Florida was the No. 1 destination for relocating Americans in 2020.”
It's true, but I doubt most people move to "red states" because of their politics...after all, don't Republicans in the US complain about people from "blue states" moving into their "red states"...
As for moving to Sweden, IDK, I guess language issues play a role...though, yeah, I would expect more movement inside the EU based on one's political views (e.g. conservative Swedes moving to Hungary, and left-wing Hungarians moving to Sweden, though only the latter seems to be happening much...).
One thing that occurs to me is that this is precisely the opposite view to that advanced by Curtis Yarvain, who in one of his big all-encompassing recent posts about politics and power hammered again and again his theory that the left seeks power for the sake of power, while the right seeks it in order to do things with it.
I’ll have to think more about this, because his arguments were also compelling, and I think half the issue is that when he talks about the right he’s talking about the small subset of it he is in and interacts with, which is most certainly a ‘reading’ culture and which you’ve explicitly excluded from your main dichotomy here as a sort of ‘right within the left’. I think you more substantively disagree about leftist motivations.
I tentatively think you might have taken the mainstream left at its word about its motivations a little too much. Freddie deBoer has a lot of content from his experience in left circles that convincingly make a case that not as many are ideological believers as you seem to think here.
If this piece doesn't magnificently capture the intellectual hubris, and practical uselessness of today's Liberal then nothing does! 9000 words to brag about the rich aroma of your mahogany libraries and rows of leather-bound books!
Meanwhile, if your pipes clog, car stalls, microwave stops, basically anything that requires a real man from times past, you puffs have an app for that! Soon, a tv watchin, knuckle-draggin cretin with his name on his shirt saves your milqtoast rear ends while you moisturize.
It's no wonder our collective testosterone has dropped. Leftist pansies arguing that they read more books while 75 percent of draft eligible men cant pass a military physical test. We are screwed! I think I know why we have so many single women, lesbians and through the roof vibrator sales. Don't forget to moisturize you millennial fruits.
I think this perspective comports nicely with Bryan Caplan’s simplified left/right theory (“leftists hate markets; rightists hate the left”), in that his one-liner seems like a specific example that the reading/tv culture theory could predict.
The reading/tv theory perhaps offers the convenient explanation that libertarianism is the reading culture of the right, and so, being a similar cultural language, is more directly recognized by the left as an obvious or dangerous threat.
Yes very good point! I think that this is exactly what it's about... basically the left proposes something, then the right opposes it reflexively... it's their whole schtick...
Conservatism isn't really a single movement the way progressivism is. The right contains people with almost opposite views - libertarians along side people like Sohrab Ahmari, neocon warhawks and paleocon isolationists - in non-negligible number. Though I'm sure many individual Republicans exhibit the kind of schizophrenic oscillation in concern or opinion you discuss, how much of this character of the right as a whole is due to divisions among the right? That conservative media mainly sell 'owning the libs' over substantive ideas seems like good business when your target audience have nothing in common with each other than opposition to progressives. Progressives, in contrast, nearly all swim in the same direction, merely at different paces.
What ideas could motivate the right (or really, non-left) half of the country behind a conservative LBJ the way progressive ideas motivate the left half? Classical liberalism? It would lose too many populists and moderates to win a majority nowadays. A national populist would similarly alienate too many libertarians and moderates. There's probably a positive feedback loop of course. Producers of conservative thought and content avoiding ideas because they're divisive may cause the right's intellect to atrophy, which pushes the market for content further away from 'idea-driven' content. In any case, I think it's fact that's overlooked in your piece: people on the right who do have positive ideologies that drive them are driven by them in fundamentally opposing directions. For conservatism to become what you want it to become, first, one of the right-of-center ideologies may have to decisively win the civil war within the right and convert everyone else in it to its cause.
There is tons of division among the Democrats as well. Median Democratic voters are often closer to Republican politicians on policy, but vote Democrat anyway. Many prominent pundits are like this too, where they have many right-wing views on policies and issues, but strictly endorse Democratic politicians no matter what.
Somehow the Democratic Party can get voters and pundits who disagree with them on everything to vote Democrat and support the Democratic Party and the Republican Party can't do that.
Yes. Just like Caplan wrote, the right is simply opposing the left, and have no other issues driving their passion...of course, the left doesn't agree on everything, but it agrees that society should progress, but they differ just in how much it should progress, and how fast...
Your identification of our political cycle is valuable:
"On hot button issues, there tends to be a cycle that goes something like this:
1) Liberal activists and the media start taking some far-off position on a social issue (defund the police, trans rights, gay marriage).
2) It makes elected Democrats uncomfortable, as Republicans gain some electoral advantage.
3) No matter what happens electorally, bureaucrats, courts, HR staff, and other members of the managerial class make sure that the left-wing position wins.
4) Public opinion moves left and accommodates the new reality. Democrats go all in on the new consensus.
5) Conservatives rhetorically accept all the moral assumptions of the new position, sometimes arguing it was their idea all along, while in practice fighting its more stringent applications.
6) Republicans start talking about opposing the next step liberals are taking, as the cycle starts over again."
The “rachet” at step 3 is why liberals win. And you are correct that HR is the most powerful tooth in the rachet. I recommend that all institutions ban HR from the boardroom and keep them in the boiler room, making sure the payroll is right. Hiring and firing is a manager’s job, not some functionary.
Liberals can afford to lose elections because they don’t need to win all elections or even most elections. But they need to win SOME elections. It has become increasingly difficult for the libs to win ANY elections which is why they use their rachet to rig them. (Sorry Richard, the Dems do rig elections. It’s not just a talking point, though it is that also.)
Another advantage liberals have is that even their scoundrels can gain fame and fortune in their post-government lives (see Andrew McCabe) whereas outspoken conservatives are persecuted and canceled. They can’t lose.
Much of what you said about Republicans is spot-on and mostly a consequence of the unvirtuous cycle. It attracts grifters who can harvest cash from the perpetual discontent of conservatives. Heaven forbid the cycle stop. When I learned that RNC members were happy that Joe “won” so they could raise more money, my replies to the RNC for contributions turned into calls (in big magic marker letters) for their immediate resignations.
Republicans need to purge the grifters from their ranks and focus on this idea: Americans want to have families and see their children grow up to be happy. They want to control their own lives and make their own decisions. All policies must aim to accomplish and maintain this idea. If it means slashing the federal government by 90%, do it. If it needs to be accomplished by calls to personality, do it. If it means forgoing the role of policeman of the world, do it. If it means defunding all the universities and breaking the credential culture, do it.
Forest for the trees. HR used to be a functionary’s job. It rose to boardroom level once the C-suite realized hiring, firing, and personnel presented a huge impact on brand, and brand has a huge impact on profit.
Actually, your post is just a typical display of the current right-wing American mindset it seems..."winning", even if defined in some vague ideological terms, like your post did, is the most important thing... well, at least the American right-wingers haven't given up, unlike the German or Canadian ones...
You find my ideology vague because I am not ideological. The idea that the purpose of government is to promote happiness without tyranny is baked into the founding of the republic. It was last best promoted by a Democrat, FDR, who expanded the power of government to promote the happiness of the American people. In doing so, he transformed his party from a regional (and nasty) party to rule America for 70+ years. This path is open to both parties and I feel no need to "win" at all costs. Republicans need to purge their grifters and Democrats have to go back to respecting the wishes of voters, not activists. We can argue about the degree to which we tame the government power FDR's work initiated and the length of the leash we put on the over-reaching corporations so beloved by Republicans.
ok, that's a reasonable comment...I also agree that utilitarianism should be the driving force behind policies , rather than deontological thought, but I guess people can't agree on what exactly is the utilitarian principle...
Great post, mostly agree with it.
There is something to be said, however, about how our culture's system of social incentives and prestige—in which the left holds a dominant position—impacts even what preoccupies the time and energies of thoughtful and motivated right-leaning activists and intellectuals.
Consider law professors. I don't have a empirical study handy to prove this, but I read many right-leaning legal scholars, and this is my impression.
Generally, these scholars focus on arcana—carefully avoiding hot-button issues like race—whereas leftist have no qualms with making radical, incendiary proposals.
For instance, a conservative prof may write about arcana like restoring the original understanding of some equitable remedy, whereas—in her essay "Whiteness as Property"—leftist professor Cheryl Harris advocated for the U.S. to model its constitution on South Africa's to enable the expropriation of whites in perpetuity.
Even libertarian lawyers, who in theory would support abolishing civil rights laws, tend not to focus on this topic. They instead prefer to write about issues that appeal more to their leftist colleagues, like immigration.
So social incentives move even the educated class on the right—those who actually read— away from tackling the very issue that is determinative of whether they can have a moderately successful political movement.
Beyond just social incentives, there might be something about the disposition of centre-rightist intellectuals that drives them towards pilpul and proceduralism. Though, I am not sure how well this translates outside of law.
This is a great comment, I noticed the same thing when I was in law school. We had a lot of right leaning professors at Chicago, and they stuck to bean counting, “law and economics” showing how some liberal intervention might have some unintended consequence. They rarely challenged the left’s morality directly. Richard Epstein wrote a book against anti-discrimination law and even his argument lacked much passion or moralizing. That’s something you can get away with only if most people already agree with you.
I used to work with Richard Posner—nothing was off limits with him—certainly not morality; there’d always be an economic model to apply.
But undoubtedly a different crop of law profs at U of C nowadays..
Both share altruism but Rightists compromise until Leftists condemn that. Thus both have increased govt power since the late 19th century. Rightists created the 1890 Sherman Antitrust Act, defending it with Leftist political equality, not economics.
The reason that the right doesn't have the written word culture is that the left has successfully made it impossible. They use their control of institutions to destroy people who seriously oppose them or have any real ideas. A right-wing written world culture would be led by canceled people like Charles Murray and Steve Sailer. The issue is that the left can make you lose your job and whatever else you have by disagreeing with their ideas.
Consider the fact that any real right wing party would run on repealing the Civil Rights Act because it is the skeleton key the left uses to pass every insane social policy. (They're even using it to enforce masks in schools) Who can say that publicly? We live in a totalitarian system where dissent is punished, not a real two party system.
I say that all the time, and I have not been “destroyed.” If a conservative is likely to be destroyed by such views, it’s by other Republicans, who are suspicious of and annoyed by anyone who takes ideas too seriously.
I personally would be fired from my job if I said publicly that the civil rights act should be repealed. The left is able to share ideas on social media, organize publicly, and advocate for their ideas. We are not allowed to do any of those things. We are just trying to stay alive here.
You’d be more likely to be able to say it if it was normalized by Republican politicians and thought leaders, as they can say whatever they want and keep their jobs. But they don’t, and their activist base doesn’t demand they do, because they’re too focused on Let’s Go Brandon.
Anonymous has a point. Powerful established institutions that emphasize the written word put up barriers to conservatives who try to move into that space. There are exceptions, but often it seems like conservative writers fill a fixed number of slots at these institutions (Douthat at NYT, George Will at WaPo) and they aren’t allowed to write about certain topics with any clarity.
At a more fundamental level, I think that many conservative principles are much harder to articulate than libertarian or progressive ones. Everyone understands the appeal of freedom from coercion or protection of the vulnerable, but it takes a masterful communicator like Yuval Levin to make a verbal case for civilizing institutions.
Progressives tend to view institutions as the source of human corruption rather than something inherent to the human condition. They feel justified in correcting corruption that already exists, but ultimately with the aim of freeing them from societal constraint. “Man is born free yet everywhere he is in chains”
Conservatives believe that man’s natural passions need to be constrained to cultivate virtue. Family structure is not just a lifestyle choice, it needs to direct individuals towards the duty of raising children in a stable environment. Religious observance is not just an expression of your preexisting values, it needs to serve the role of helping parishioners cultivate the virtues of humility and charity.
They're focused on Let's Go Brandon because they've been put into a schizophrenic situation where their only access to mainstream right wing thought and analysis are ones that deliberately confound their instincts.
The concept of "conservative" in the current landscape is itself schizophrenic and unselfaware or, if pushed deliberately, dishonest.
I suggest you look into the major antagonists of the successful self deportation laws in Alabama and Arizona a decade ago. Those are the direction Trump voters want. Cut to the chase, that's what we want. Go on and look into the major, moneyed, broadest-platformed groups and individuals who mobilized against this
Well, the reason is that most people consider the civil rights act to be a great achievement, and claiming stuff like it should be repealed will probably lead one to be put into the alt-right corner...and that's not something where most people want to be...advocating for reasonable conservative issues, on the other hand, is very much acceptable...
You're commenting on a blog whose most popular posts explain why the Civil rights act enables all of the unpopular things the democrats do, so I recommend reading it.
For example, "get men out of women's restrooms" is the same thing as "repeal the Civil rights act. 70% support at minimum.
You're commenting on a blog whose most popular posts explain why the Civil rights act enables all of the unpopular things the democrats do, so I recommend reading it.
For example, "get men out of women's restrooms" is the same thing as "repeal the Civil rights act. 70% support at minimum.
You're commenting on a blog whose most popular posts explain why the Civil rights act enables all of the unpopular things the democrats do, so I recommend reading it.
For example, "get men out of women's restrooms" is the same thing as "repeal the Civil rights act. 70% support at minimum.
Do you mind if I ask how long ago this was? Isn't this pretty similar to Barry Goldwater's position on the matter?
I realize I should've picked a different username. This is a recipe for confusion.
It's okay, you're orange Mark.
Saying discussion of repealing the CRA is acceptable as long as you don't make moral arguments is a good way to shut down most of your base. People are only celebrated for statements like "Affirmative action should be mandated because it is right for black people to look out for their own kind"
The jews themselves are now calling for the end of the civil rights laws just as soon as white people figured out those laws could be used to protect them from the anti-white attacks of the jewish marxists.
The same way women started fighting against alimony the moment men started winning.
It's a bad example... and one so bad I can only imagine it was chosen deliberately for this hebrew to pick apart. The amount of jewish dishonesty required to say with a straight face that the jew-owned jew-controlled media networks don't allow the left to get away with murder while the jewish-led mobs don't search-and-destroy anyone for the slightest wrongthink that opposes them is... well. Jewish.
Go back to Mom's basement, Nazi
I don't think most folks grasp that the most significant and longterm paradigm shift triggered by of the Civil Rights Act was that of making private spaces public. The idea of the government ordering one to not light up a cigar in one's own privately owned or mortgaged business (in saloons!) .. would have been as equally offensive or more likely laughable to the average pre-Act American as the idea of the government monitoring the ashtrays in one's own home. It took an AMENDMENT to the CONSTITUTION to regulate alchohol consumption and even that did not differentiate between a home or a business space.
Most people don't grasp this, I think, because there is no real way to critique this aspect or even discuss it without prefacing the discussion with an unbelieved and overlong denial that one's true motive is to undermine the goal of the Civil Rights Act, rather than it's substance, that is the means to achieve that goal. (Parallel I think to the aversion of hard core environmentalist conservatives to engage in the climate change debate, so it appears we don't exist).
But I digress .. I remember being in the Sixth Grade and having an epiphany (I was wierd in that I had been reading the editorial pages of every newspaper in the local Army Fort library since I was 9) of the difference the between Republican and Democrat Parties .. it wasn't ideology (especially back then) .. it was that Republicans cared about means and Democrats cared about ends. It was a childish simplification .. but I rarely go wrong even now when I step back and try to make sense of how partisans are able to talk so far past each other. They aren't having the same conversations, they are not in the same conversations, and they both battle straw men. But they both sure get awfully mad.
Failure to acknowledge this when he surely understands it fundamentally dishonest.
I suspect Hanania knows full well not only this reality but who the most aggressive, moneyed, connected, and effective groups and individuals responsible for this and what their motivations are. It's a community he knows well.
Richard reminds me of a Curtis Yarvin on this issue
One piece of evidence in favor of your thesis is that, in my experience, the liberal intellectual class-- the "middle" people you talk about-- is prone to openly disparage television and television-watchers (e.g. referring to the TV as "the idiot box", quoting the Minow "vast wasteland" speech approvingly) and to valorize bookishness as a sign of virtue. This has been the case for my whole lifetime, since before the present iteration of the culture wars. It's actually gotten a bit less intense since the cable- and internet-era fragmentation of the TV channel landscape and the rise of "prestige" TV dramas, but it's still there.
Further evidence for this is that the reader parts of the right have a disdain for TV and TV Watchers that rivals that of the left. We don't call it "the electric Jew" for nothing.
What does "electric Jew" mean? I don't get the reference at all.
Ah, thank you for the explanation, but I must tell you that it is not correct. As a Hebrew myself, I can personally attest that I do not have poor hygiene, in fact, I wash my crotch at least once every 5-6 weeks. I might also caution you to be careful in what you post online, as our ZOG/Rothschild bank bots are everywhere monitoring the internet and doxxing folks who cross the Elders. I would not be surprised if sometime in the middle of the night you get a visit from the FBI, also known as the "Soros Brigade" of the Mossad, so good luck out there.
Hanania started with "Liberals Care More", then he switched to "Liberals have baked political leverage into the law" and built bureaucracies inside and outside government that shift everything to the left, now the left has more ideas?
I'd suggest an alternative argued by Angelo Codevilla: patronage.
The left hold power by rewarding their members and supporters with tangible benefits of desirable jobs, money, and status. They grow government to build the machine and give more benefits to a larger group of supporters. The universities have broadly built a culture of driving out people with right-wing views and reserving admission and promotion for political allies.
The Trump Campaign's philosophy was to marry libertarian ideas with a populist, "Donnie from Queens", mass media savvy frontman. Trump frequently praised and quoted Adam Smith in his early speeches and his MAGA book. Trump chose reputable libertarians Moore and Laffer and Kudlow as top visible advisers on his economic team. He choose prominent libertarian Scott Gottlieb to run the FDA and school choice advocate Betsy DeVos to run education. The book Trumponomics was entirely libertarian.
In Hanania's circle, libertarianism is predominantly or even exclusively about increased immigration and an activist alliance with the Democratic Party, run by so-scalled "libertarians" that have spent their entire adult lives in political patronage careers as government university professors. Many libertarians, or people who identify as libertarians, support immigration restriction, but that position, has been forbidden from academia, and arguably even forbidden by the law of the US and Europe. A charitable view would say open borders is this principled idea, but a large part of it, is clearly might makes right, and a ruling class built on patronage.
Not a huge part of the piece, but I disagree that Russiagate is in the same boat as Qanon and birtherism. Russiagate was not an IQ test and was constantly pushed hard via TV and the written word. Sure, there was plenty of low hanging fruit pushed by MSNBC like Vladimir Putin shutting the heat off in North Dakota. However, there were so many complicated plot lines, lengthy documents, actors and so-called bombshells that translated into 10,000 word editorials every other day. There was no threshold of IQ, respectability, or socio-economic status where Russiagate fever wore off. In my experience, the most educated, highly professional and wealthy people believed the most insane Russiagate nonsense. This morphed into them believing its dangerous offshoots (i.e. Bountygate, Assad gassing kids) and ultimately, siding with the worst elements of our intelligence and military apparatus.
I think it has more to do with psychological warfare which apparently a high IQ doesn't necessarily inoculate one against. I find that the smarter someone is, the greater the ability to deceive oneself.
You write "You might be a conservative and go to Vox to learn something, as I sometimes do. No liberal is going to Breitbart to learn anything unless they want to specifically study the conservative movement." Well, I am a liberal who goes to Breitbart to seek information that cannot be found in most liberal media.
Liberal media seldom publish information critical of Islam. When in 2011 a Brazilian Muslim shot about 30 schoolchildren, everyone in Brazil knew that it was a Muslim who did it. Outside of Brazil few people found out because the news agencies negelcted to report his religion. Even the Russian wire service omitted the fact that Wellington Menezes de Oliveira was an observing Muslim. Read about it at:
https://islamophiliawatch.blogspot.com/2019/02/media-fail-to-report-mass-murderers.html
Breitbart doesn’t have those blinkers. But it’s not only crime. The Syrian-German sociologist Bassam Tibi, who attended lectures at Frankfurt University by Critical Theory celebrities like Horkheimer and Adorno and through them overcame the anti-Semitism he had learned as a child in Syria, is critical of Islam, so liberal media never publish hum, but Breitbart does. And Bassam Tibi is no Donald Trump. He’s an enlightened intellectual who taught at Göttingen university for many years.
An exception to the left not watching TV was the huge influence of Jon Stewart and the Daily Show, and to a lesser Colbert and John Oliver today. In the 2000’s it was Stewart and not the New York Times who determined the liberal perspective and pretty much the opposition to the government of George Bush.
In my experience, the typical woke leftist watches a ton of internet-streamed entertainment which is often brought up in conversation. Their awareness of the socio-political landscape seems informed by a few minutes here and there of consuming mainstream news media. They all have college degrees, but that doesn't prevent them from being mostly uninformed or disinformed.
Agree on much of your take, and have long thought that the right needs it’s own elite to drive thought and provide an intellectual foundation.
I am somewhat hopeful that such an intellectual elite on the right is forming, and oddly it is getting pushed a TV personality: Tucker Carlson. Tucker is very well read, and in many way the anti- Hannity. Tucker even embraces the non-practical written world of fiction, poetry and music. But most importantly he showcases many thinkers. Hannity isn’t driving viewers to substack, but Tucker does. And the Tucker Carlson Today part of his platform is even more friendly to the exploration of ideas. I can’t imagine Hannity or anyone else on Fox showcasing Curtis Yarvin.
Tucker may himself be an intellectual, a 'reader' if you will, but his show is every bit as dishonest as Hannity and no less geared towards entertaining 'TV watchers' with outrage. Tucker will continue to make a ton of money off the TV watchers while the conservative movement will be stuck in the exact same situation Richard describes here.
" his show is every bit as dishonest as Hannity and no less geared towards entertaining 'TV watchers' with outrage"
This is just palpably false. Tucker's show definitely still has the flourishes of Fox news "infotainment," but it is definitely more substantive
No, this is wrong. Tucker watchers all think they're watching something more substantive. But that's just his schtick compared to Hannity. He's got an intellectual background and used to work for CNN, which makes him perfect for infotainment that feels like intellectualism, something Hannity can't pull off. Carlson and Fox have even claimed in court that reasonable viewers don't take what he says as fact. If you think Tucker is substantive than you're simply a TV Watcher that Richard talks about. You don't want more than that, you just want to own the libs.
It's true because you say so?
Tucker is controlled opposition and a CIA asset. His job is to say the most overwhelming truths about the world, about the jewish attacks against our nation, then reframe them in a way that the jews have already devised a counter for.
All media is jew media. No one is allowed to exist on the jew networks without working for the jew.
Pretend tough guy thinking calling me a jew means anything. You're the shit on society's shoe that the rest of us just can't scrape off our collective shoes. You're a nobody who makes lame shock posts like this. I don't believe in God at all, religion is our society's worst vice. But what we really need to do is get rid of excess baggage like you and people like you that only take and contribute nothing. We own you bud, keep getting mad champ. You're fucked.
At word 5,000,404,375,293 Hanania will realise that Curtis Yarvin figured out all of this in 2012.
There are even small similarities like mention of “atrocious design” of conservative websites in “open letter” and same problem described here
“Those who want their children to actually live in a more conservative country, however, cannot feel good about the way things are going, and should probably be doing more to make the right more of a “written word” culture, where politicians are actually held accountable for what they do.”
This is one of the moonshot goals of my blog.
The thing is that most people probably don't find living in a "conservative" society like this appealing... I mean, if they did, you'd expect more people moving to "red states", or in Europe, to Hungary or Poland...🤔
We could say the same thing about progressives—why don’t they move to Sweden?
And lots of people have been moving to red states:
“According to Florida's Office of Economic and Demographic Research, our state grew by an estimated 329,717 new residents between April 2020 and April 2021. Move.org reports Florida was the No. 1 destination for relocating Americans in 2020.”
https://florida-edc.org/blog/september-2021/florida,-here-they-come
It's true, but I doubt most people move to "red states" because of their politics...after all, don't Republicans in the US complain about people from "blue states" moving into their "red states"...
As for moving to Sweden, IDK, I guess language issues play a role...though, yeah, I would expect more movement inside the EU based on one's political views (e.g. conservative Swedes moving to Hungary, and left-wing Hungarians moving to Sweden, though only the latter seems to be happening much...).
One thing that occurs to me is that this is precisely the opposite view to that advanced by Curtis Yarvain, who in one of his big all-encompassing recent posts about politics and power hammered again and again his theory that the left seeks power for the sake of power, while the right seeks it in order to do things with it.
I’ll have to think more about this, because his arguments were also compelling, and I think half the issue is that when he talks about the right he’s talking about the small subset of it he is in and interacts with, which is most certainly a ‘reading’ culture and which you’ve explicitly excluded from your main dichotomy here as a sort of ‘right within the left’. I think you more substantively disagree about leftist motivations.
I tentatively think you might have taken the mainstream left at its word about its motivations a little too much. Freddie deBoer has a lot of content from his experience in left circles that convincingly make a case that not as many are ideological believers as you seem to think here.
If this piece doesn't magnificently capture the intellectual hubris, and practical uselessness of today's Liberal then nothing does! 9000 words to brag about the rich aroma of your mahogany libraries and rows of leather-bound books!
Meanwhile, if your pipes clog, car stalls, microwave stops, basically anything that requires a real man from times past, you puffs have an app for that! Soon, a tv watchin, knuckle-draggin cretin with his name on his shirt saves your milqtoast rear ends while you moisturize.
It's no wonder our collective testosterone has dropped. Leftist pansies arguing that they read more books while 75 percent of draft eligible men cant pass a military physical test. We are screwed! I think I know why we have so many single women, lesbians and through the roof vibrator sales. Don't forget to moisturize you millennial fruits.
Hahaha. Bullshit. Great charts btw. Meaningless. Both parties are equally stupid and unlearned.
Excellent piece.
I think this perspective comports nicely with Bryan Caplan’s simplified left/right theory (“leftists hate markets; rightists hate the left”), in that his one-liner seems like a specific example that the reading/tv culture theory could predict.
It also brings to mind a discussion at Marginal Revolution about why libertarians are disproportionately targeted by the left for criticism: https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2015/05/why-is-libertarianism-such-a-target.html
The reading/tv theory perhaps offers the convenient explanation that libertarianism is the reading culture of the right, and so, being a similar cultural language, is more directly recognized by the left as an obvious or dangerous threat.
Yes very good point! I think that this is exactly what it's about... basically the left proposes something, then the right opposes it reflexively... it's their whole schtick...
Conservatism isn't really a single movement the way progressivism is. The right contains people with almost opposite views - libertarians along side people like Sohrab Ahmari, neocon warhawks and paleocon isolationists - in non-negligible number. Though I'm sure many individual Republicans exhibit the kind of schizophrenic oscillation in concern or opinion you discuss, how much of this character of the right as a whole is due to divisions among the right? That conservative media mainly sell 'owning the libs' over substantive ideas seems like good business when your target audience have nothing in common with each other than opposition to progressives. Progressives, in contrast, nearly all swim in the same direction, merely at different paces.
What ideas could motivate the right (or really, non-left) half of the country behind a conservative LBJ the way progressive ideas motivate the left half? Classical liberalism? It would lose too many populists and moderates to win a majority nowadays. A national populist would similarly alienate too many libertarians and moderates. There's probably a positive feedback loop of course. Producers of conservative thought and content avoiding ideas because they're divisive may cause the right's intellect to atrophy, which pushes the market for content further away from 'idea-driven' content. In any case, I think it's fact that's overlooked in your piece: people on the right who do have positive ideologies that drive them are driven by them in fundamentally opposing directions. For conservatism to become what you want it to become, first, one of the right-of-center ideologies may have to decisively win the civil war within the right and convert everyone else in it to its cause.
There is tons of division among the Democrats as well. Median Democratic voters are often closer to Republican politicians on policy, but vote Democrat anyway. Many prominent pundits are like this too, where they have many right-wing views on policies and issues, but strictly endorse Democratic politicians no matter what.
Somehow the Democratic Party can get voters and pundits who disagree with them on everything to vote Democrat and support the Democratic Party and the Republican Party can't do that.
Not sure about that... after all, the republicans get almost 50% of the vote in the US, and right-wing third parties don't get much support...
Yes. Just like Caplan wrote, the right is simply opposing the left, and have no other issues driving their passion...of course, the left doesn't agree on everything, but it agrees that society should progress, but they differ just in how much it should progress, and how fast...
Your identification of our political cycle is valuable:
"On hot button issues, there tends to be a cycle that goes something like this:
1) Liberal activists and the media start taking some far-off position on a social issue (defund the police, trans rights, gay marriage).
2) It makes elected Democrats uncomfortable, as Republicans gain some electoral advantage.
3) No matter what happens electorally, bureaucrats, courts, HR staff, and other members of the managerial class make sure that the left-wing position wins.
4) Public opinion moves left and accommodates the new reality. Democrats go all in on the new consensus.
5) Conservatives rhetorically accept all the moral assumptions of the new position, sometimes arguing it was their idea all along, while in practice fighting its more stringent applications.
6) Republicans start talking about opposing the next step liberals are taking, as the cycle starts over again."
The “rachet” at step 3 is why liberals win. And you are correct that HR is the most powerful tooth in the rachet. I recommend that all institutions ban HR from the boardroom and keep them in the boiler room, making sure the payroll is right. Hiring and firing is a manager’s job, not some functionary.
Liberals can afford to lose elections because they don’t need to win all elections or even most elections. But they need to win SOME elections. It has become increasingly difficult for the libs to win ANY elections which is why they use their rachet to rig them. (Sorry Richard, the Dems do rig elections. It’s not just a talking point, though it is that also.)
Another advantage liberals have is that even their scoundrels can gain fame and fortune in their post-government lives (see Andrew McCabe) whereas outspoken conservatives are persecuted and canceled. They can’t lose.
Much of what you said about Republicans is spot-on and mostly a consequence of the unvirtuous cycle. It attracts grifters who can harvest cash from the perpetual discontent of conservatives. Heaven forbid the cycle stop. When I learned that RNC members were happy that Joe “won” so they could raise more money, my replies to the RNC for contributions turned into calls (in big magic marker letters) for their immediate resignations.
Republicans need to purge the grifters from their ranks and focus on this idea: Americans want to have families and see their children grow up to be happy. They want to control their own lives and make their own decisions. All policies must aim to accomplish and maintain this idea. If it means slashing the federal government by 90%, do it. If it needs to be accomplished by calls to personality, do it. If it means forgoing the role of policeman of the world, do it. If it means defunding all the universities and breaking the credential culture, do it.
Forest for the trees. HR used to be a functionary’s job. It rose to boardroom level once the C-suite realized hiring, firing, and personnel presented a huge impact on brand, and brand has a huge impact on profit.
All forest. That's why hiring is the C-suite's most important duty, not someone from an appropriately functionary role.
Actually, your post is just a typical display of the current right-wing American mindset it seems..."winning", even if defined in some vague ideological terms, like your post did, is the most important thing... well, at least the American right-wingers haven't given up, unlike the German or Canadian ones...
You find my ideology vague because I am not ideological. The idea that the purpose of government is to promote happiness without tyranny is baked into the founding of the republic. It was last best promoted by a Democrat, FDR, who expanded the power of government to promote the happiness of the American people. In doing so, he transformed his party from a regional (and nasty) party to rule America for 70+ years. This path is open to both parties and I feel no need to "win" at all costs. Republicans need to purge their grifters and Democrats have to go back to respecting the wishes of voters, not activists. We can argue about the degree to which we tame the government power FDR's work initiated and the length of the leash we put on the over-reaching corporations so beloved by Republicans.
ok, that's a reasonable comment...I also agree that utilitarianism should be the driving force behind policies , rather than deontological thought, but I guess people can't agree on what exactly is the utilitarian principle...
And I cut off: "If it means breaking up some big firms, do it."