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I Don’t Need to Believe
The left clearly doesn’t believe in borders. They enact their refusal to believe. They refuse to enforce any kind of immigration law and let the flood come in. The left has cut more government at the border than the right has cut anywhere. When the left doesn’t believe in government, the left gets no government. They get anarchy, that is how little they believe in government security at the border. All the left does is sit on their hands and does nothing because they simply don’t believe in securing that border.
The right has claimed not to believe in big government and has run Congress the last 20 out of 28 years. Yet the right never sits on their hands and lets government go unfunded and unsupported the way the left lets the border go unsupported. The left wanted police defunded and cut billions in major cities to their budgets. The right hasn’t cut a dime of the federal government and shrunk its expenditures ever! It has never refused to fund an agency. It has never dissolved a single government job resulting in a net reduction of government employees or funds.
The left doesn’t believe in Christianity being in the public square. They have successfully cast it out of schools, public venues, and government agencies of any kind. The right doesn’t believe in Marxism and currently funds and controls universities and institutions in their states where it is actively promoted. Universities in right-wing red states where there are supermajorities in the state legislatures and governors who are Republican are 98 to 99 percent liberal faculty and staff. The right can’t even cast out Marxist poison in the institutions they fund and have government power over to set standards and curricula by law. The right sends Republican majority tax dollars to fund feminist and queer theory studies all the time. You will never find the left sending a single solitary penny to make sure the Judeo-Christian ethic is promoted or taught in any shape or form.
All this goes on despite the right’s deeply held beliefs of “limited government” and “family values.” When the left doesn’t believe in something it gets cut. When the right doesn’t believe in something, it gets funded. The left gets less government where they want it than the less government people have ever gotten in any area of the bureaucracy. What are we to conclude from this? The right isn’t a movement. Why isn’t it a movement? Because there is no movement in the direction they claim to want to go or be. Nothing has ever been cut or shrunk. Nothing has ever been outlawed. Nothing has ever been outcast.
If I told you and preached of my deeply held belief that I think pork is unholy and unclean, and yet you saw me eating pork products every day, you would conclude that I am a hypocrite, liar, fraud, and BS artist. If I lectured on healthy living and was busy weighing 350 pounds eating Wendy’s and Big Macs every day, you would not take me seriously or my health advice. The right should be treated the same way. It isn’t a movement. It is nothing but talk and no action. It is a lot of meaningless theory. It is full of people who will tell you how not to fight back while it funds and promotes that which it claims to abhor.
Half the right now believes in gay marriage. If Christianity and the marriage traditions of the West have been wrong for millennia, then I see no reason why anything of the West or of the Christian religion should be preserved. Take the entire Christian ethos and cast it out, because if Christianity was wrong about this, then it must be wrong about everything else. Why listen to or respect any of it? Why care about its history or its doctrines? Why preserve its art? What good is it if none of it is true?
The Constitution and the US government were not created to be at constant war with millennia of Western tradition, morals, and ethics that far predate them. And if the right can’t preserve the things that are timeless and have stood for thousands of years, then there is no need to believe in the right or to preserve the right as it is. The right is a joke.
I don’t need to believe in the right. I don’t need to believe in the theory of the right. I don’t even need to believe in the Constitution if it is an impediment to things that are higher and more important, like the well-being of children. Of all the invisible rights and powers the left has found, if the right can’t find the right of kids not to be castrated, then there is no need for the right. And I certainly don’t need to believe or participate in the dogmas of the left whether they be racial, gender, Marxian, or anything else. I don’t need to believe in the Civil Rights movement or Martin Luther King. I don’t need to believe in feminism. I don’t need to believe in Reagan. I don’t need to believe in Hayek or Milton Friedman. I don’t need to believe in the market. I don’t need to believe in big government or small government. All of it is corrupt. All of it has either morphed into doing immense harm to our well-being or prevents us from taking corrective action against the things that have mutated into corrupt forms.
You don’t need to believe either. Free yourself from all of this failure and stand your ground for what you think is right and what you think should be built and should be funded. Preserve and protect what is of value because it has stood the test of time. Cast out what you think is foul and low. Cultivate your own judgment. I will not be told by one movement that harms children what is right and moral. And I won’t be told by another that hasn’t acted and won’t act that my vision of action shouldn’t be done, and the fear of the action is worse than the things we currently suffer under, so we should suffer in quiet. We should just fund what we find to be abhorrent while we have endless ink spilled and airwaves bombarded with theories about the kind of government and culture they are too cowardly to make real. Not believing in either of these ideologies is real freedom. Being shackled to worthless theory that doesn’t deliver freedom or its own stated goals is a form of self-induced slavery. You don’t need to believe in any of this and neither do I.
Published in General
Glen, this is becoming one Hell of a platform, with good planks, clearly articulated.
I really like where this is going. Powerful logic here.
I have liked and unliked your post half a dozen times. (I know you don’t care a fig, and that’s fine.)
There used to be a bumper sticker which said: “Christians aren’t perfect, just forgiven.” I never liked that sticker because many that call themselves Christians are, at best, deceived. But for Jesus’ disciples it is the truth.
Reality is that even somebody on the left can be correct some of the time – and somebody on the right can be wrong some of the time.
I don’t know that Marx was never correct, never studied the man – but I do know that Reagan made misteaks.
But, but, but, the House Republicans are investigating! You don’t believe anything will come of it???
Neither do I.
Glen is constructing a powerful case based on the evidence. Some may disagree about the conclusio0ns he draws, but they are at least consistent with a wide-ranging assortment of plain facts spread well across a broad timeline.
There are business-as-usual types who will never be convinced that anything other than strategically voting harder for the same party is needed. While I’m ignorant of the provenance of “vote harder!” I like to think that it hails from the “I must work harder” ethic of faithful Boxer, the horse doomed to work himself to death on Animal Farm.
Nobody expects miracle cures and conservative nirvana from the Republican party, which like any large group in the real world, must make real compromises. Without getting into um personalities, some people know better than to open with their last line of defense. Others seem not to know better, and in the worst cases, this seeming ignorance and inability to produce results can serve as a handy camouflage for a desire to achieve nothing of importance.
There’s good money to be made in governing, and arguably more money to be made in governing poorly. it would be foolish to insist that “that sort of thing doesn’t happen” in our country, our government, our party, or even our party leadership. If not, then where would it possibly occur?
We cannot know peoples’ internal motivations. We can but judge by the results they produce with any consistency, and in context. Ron Paul did not liberate the country, but nobody can argue that he didn’t try. Paul Ryan pretty clearly went from a decent Tea Party flavored guy to a swiftly co-opted tool. Glen isn’t unfairly damning the party for mere failure — it’s the comfort with failure that seems most persuasive to me.
I do care. I think Marx identified some serious tensions in society. He made the case that there is this background life and the foreground life. In the background people want to have happy lives. People want to do their hobbies and the things that bring them joy. In the foreground people sacrifice their happiness to survive by doing work they’re not thrilled with. This is the same tension in much of our society today. We have many depressed and unfulfilled people who aren’t doing the things they want. We have many people struggling to make ends meet or live a life of plenty and can’t even get to the things they would like to get to in life. Marx’s prescription was communism. I think it’s clear that prescription failed because in every society it has been tried we have had massive disaster and suffering and death.
Communists hold to the theory that it just hasn’t been tried rightly. I feel conservatives make much the same case about modern conservatism. You have people who have a set of prescriptions that didn’t amount to a cure. But the true believers keep saying that it was never done for real. I see that the corporate tax rate has been cut from the 90s 80s and 70s down to the 20s and it currently sits in the 30s. They got their free trade by sending manufacturing to China. The cheap goods turned out not to be so cheap and the corporate jobs turned out not to be so good or plentiful. It’s a failed prescription. How much more should the corporate tax rate be cut? Down to 0? Then we’ll all be profitable and have good paying work? When does the prescription kick in? Maybe we should have negative tax so the government owes them money. Then they’ll really create the jobs and opportunities. In my opinion it’s time to move on and do something else.
Nope. And if they were a real party they wouldn’t need to investigate. The DoJ would prosecute and people in the bureaucracy wouldn’t do what they’ve done in the first place if they knew when Republicans took power their jobs and agencies were really on the line for what they’ve done.
And it’s the endless talk with no ability or will to get what they claim to want done. If the GOP tomorrow were to shrink Washington by 15% or even 50% would the lives of Americans drastically improve materially or spiritually? I don’t think they would. And I think deep down conservatives know it too. They don’t do it because it’ll finally end conservatism. Problems will arise and some existing problems would get worse. Some might disappear but be replaced by new ones or more pronounced ones. But then conservatism would be left claiming that another 10 or 15 percent cut is the magic sauce with no one buying it anymore. As if there is some magic percentage barrier between size of government and human happiness/lack of societal problems like measuring cholesterol in a blood test. And they don’t do it because that’ll be the end of the never ending battle, which is a con game.
It never was about the size of government. It’s about what the government promotes. It’s about how competent it is. It is about who is in it. It’s about what it is actually doing or not doing and is it doing it well? It’s about the culture. It’s about incentives. It’s about a bunch of things other than the monetary or physical size of government. We need a cultural, spiritual, and governmental rejuvenation in this country. And we need good willed people with talent and ideas to make it happen. This never ending battle of big vs small was always dumb and myopic. Especially when they let the people who corrupted the government have free reign because they told their constituents that being a bureaucrat or government leader was shameful and leech like. The real honor was in corporate America LOL.
This tweet ended up in my timeline and it’s all about jersey color with this guy. He doesn’t care about what policies were promoted while his team was in charge, just that they had won. During my whole politically aware life, the Republican Party has been calling for abolishing the Department of Education. When they have control, nothing changes. Not even a cut in its budget.
Take, for example, transgender ideology. Even the “free state” of Florida under the Hope of Conservatives, Ron DeSantis, passed a (slanderously labeled “Don’t Say Gay”) bill protecting kids from being taught sexual deviancy, confusion, and lefty ideology in public schools until 3rd grade (?!?!), and it was considered a BIG WIN for conservatives?
I’m with Michael Knowles. Florida didn’t go nearly far enough. If we want to “save America” we can start by desisting from stealing the innocence of (and then castrating and mutilating) our kids.
https://www.dailywire.com/news/knowles-at-cpac-there-is-no-meeting-halfway-between-truth-and-falsehood
I watched him give the relevant segment of this speech yesterday (on YouTube?) and it’s now been deep-sixed. Naturally.
The most disingenuous thing is Republicans who claim to agree with Trump on policy, but reject him because of a flawed personality. If they really agreed with Trump on policy, they would have passed his policies when they had the chance.
Rereading the tweet, the author says he wants the policies of Reagan and the Bushes. However, those weren’t the same policies.
I thought, with Trump, I’d see Milton Friedman’s quote put into action. It’s better to set the conditions so bad men do good things. Instead the chattering class kept hammering at Trump’s flaws and left opportunities on the table. There should have a conveyor belt of bills headed to the White House those first months.
The Republican House should be writing and sending bills up the chain now, instead of holding pointless hearings.
Glen wants a big active authoritarian government … just like Progressives do. The difference is that Glen wants that big, active authoritarian government to support positions he likes, while Progressives want the big active authoritarian government to support positions they like.
Western culture is founded on individual responsibility and liberty. Government is supposed to protect that liberty. That government governs best that governs least.
Glen, on the other hand, wants liberty and responsibility by government mandate. Frankly, he’s just as scary as the Progressives he decries.
The only way to take back ground from the left is the the way they took ground from us .
Years ago I read an article saying that the Constitution is designed for incremental changes. If a group comes along and takes a huge leap outside the boundaries to implement something, it makes it tough to undo it unless a similar leap outside the boundaries is taken.
Based on what? You spout this nonsense like it is a law of physics. Governs least where? Sorry I want a government that will stop transgenderism in its tracks. I don’t want one that will turn a blind eye to destroying the lives of children and others because you have some fake platitude about what good government is. The problem with our government is it governs least where it matters like the border. And it governs too much where it doesn’t like corporate tax rates and race and gender.
The world you’ve created is scary. We have a dissolving and collapsing country with no institutions that function or serve the good of the people anymore because of this kind of ideology. You’ve delivered no limited government. You’ve voted for people who funded everything 100%. The culture is degenerate. Our economy serves corrupt major players at the top and not the average American. And you’re scared of people standing up and using the tools and outlets they have to correct it? You should be scared of more of your own nonsense because you’ve only been able to deliver what you claim is so scary. Big government.
And declared it a “conservative victory.”
Yup. This is why I flatly describe Paul Ryan’s anti-Trump tenure as a defection. WE GAVE THEM EVERYTHING! And they still refused to do what had been promised. The Tea Party tsunami “wasn’t enough,” so we gave them the Trump tsunami, and it’s just hard not to draw the straight-line conclusion that they never wanted to. It was all lies and running out the clock. GOP grift.
Man, I get mad when I start thinking and talking about this again.
Yet we are getting the big fascist proggie government while we wait, as it were.
There is a deep core of useless rot in our party, and I agree with Glen as he calls it out. Where are our results? Where are the left’s? I believe that this country is still majority conservative in the wy people live their lives, and that a good many who do not now vote right could be induced to doing so. This will only work if the right actually defends them from the left. Until then, a somewhat lefty family who likes the government largesse but does not want bizarro world schools, will continue to vote their wallets instead of their kids. Big Righty shames the little folk for standing up for our kids.
Say what you will about
TrumpDeSantis, but the man fights!But to many on the right, fighting – even for good things – is just uncouth.
Dennis Prager used to say – and probably still does – that Western Europe learned the wrong lesson from WWII: instead of learning to fight evil, they learned that fighting IS evil.
“Lead, follow, or get out of the way.” We all have to make choices, and those are our only options.
Glen, do you vote? If so, for whom have you most recently voted? If not, what do you DO? I’m hard put to see you just standing on the sidelines.
I suppose it was 65 years ago my grandfather told me if it raised taxes or raised spending, he was opposed it. 40 years ago someone else said to me, “I’m the aginner: I’m against everything.” Neither of them saw any success, at least that I know of.
What about you? Any successes to speak of?
Arguably, constant government spending is unrealistic just because the population keeps increasing. The exact same per capita spending level would increase total spending, over time.
Conservatives need to stop compromising. It’s killing people. Literally.
That was the point of Knowles’s speech. We can’t meet the Left halfway on transgender ideology. It’s a BIG FAT LIE. Just like SSM.
And also because the Left “compromises” by taking half now, and then half of the rest, and then half of what’s left after that…
Just a couple thoughts. First, I remember Bill Whittle saying in a video that somewhere between three million and five million voters who say they support conservatives don’t vote and aren’t registered to vote because they “don’t want to be called for jury duty”. They are useless to the conservative cause. Second, IIRC, that Omnibus monstrosity was unpopular with some conservatives, and they demanded to know why McConnell & Co. didn’t put up a fight and allow the slim House majority a say in the issue. The Turtle said that “we got pretty much everything we wanted”. I wondered who “we” are and why what little they got was so important to them. I admit that I am becoming more indifferent daily, so I don’t even know what they got.
There are more Republicans actually registered in California than Texas. Millions more. If one million of them left and populated Oregon, new Hampshire, Connecticut, New York they could actually turn those states red and give the right a majority for 30 to 40 years. They don’t and won’t. They suffer under a declining standard of living and high taxes and no say when they could have a say and a better life. This is why I roll my eyes at right wing talk of civil war or secession. They won’t even move to a better place with less crime, less taxes, and a higher standard of living.
The ones I know who intend to stay do so because of family connections, jobs, other ties to their community. The latter applies especially to those of Asian ancestry. I don’t blame them. It’s interesting that many have a history of voting Democrat but are reconsidering in light of Obama and especially Biden.
Many have left, but for a red state: For example Texas.
I do vote. I vote for the candidates I think will actually fight. If I have no choice I vote for the next best thing. I will not vote for a RINO. I voted for Abbott here in Texas because he is good enough but not good. At least he is pressured by Desantis and the current climate to do things he otherwise would not have done. If George P Bush had won the nomination for governor I would have sat home.
As far as sitting on the sidelines, I plan on actually entering the government space. I currently work for a government conractor which is a private company. There is not much to do here other than get a view from the inside of how the money is spent, contracts are awarded, and how our system works. It is all bad. The incompetence runs rife and much money is wasted. I have an MBA with a finance concentration. I am not a monetary expert on the level of some of these CFOs in the fortune 500s or wall street, but the amont of waste and abuse is non-stop.
I recently took the foreign officer exam to see if I could get a job in the state department. The exam was rife with woke crap. The rot is deep. Regardless of getting any influence in or government or not, I do plan on eventually running for office.
But if they stay in the People’s Republic of California, changing their votes won’t do much, if anything.