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An Open Letter to the Conservative Media Explaining Why I Have Left the Movement
Let me say up front that I am a life-long Republican and conservative. I have never voted for a Democrat in my life and have voted in every presidential and midterm election since 1988. I have never in my life considered myself anything but a conservative. I am pained to admit that the conservative media and many conservatives’ reaction to Donald Trump has caused me to no longer consider myself part of the movement. I would suggest to you that if you have lost people like me, and I am not alone, you might want to reconsider your reaction to Donald Trump. Let me explain why.
First, I spent the last 20 years watching the conservative media in Washington endorse and urge me to vote for one candidate after another who made a mockery of conservative principles and values. Everyone talks about how thankful we are for the Citizens’ United decision but seems to have forgotten how we were urged to vote for the coauthor of the law that the decision overturned. In 2012, we were told to vote for Mitt Romney, a Massachusetts liberal who proudly signed an individual insurance mandate into law and refused to repudiate the decision. Before that, there was George W. Bush, the man who decided it was America’s duty to bring democracy to the Middle East (more about him later). And before that, there was Bob Dole, the man who gave us the Americans with Disabilities Act. I, of course, voted for those candidates and do not regret doing so. I, however, am self-aware enough to realize I voted for them because I will vote for virtually anyone to keep the Left out of power and not because I thought them to be the best or even really a conservative choice. Given this history, the conservative media’s claims that the Republican party must reject Donald Trump because he is not a “conservative” are pathetic and ridiculous to those of us who are old enough to remember the last 25 years.
Second, it doesn’t appear to me that conservatives calling on people to reject Trump have any idea what it actually means to be a “conservative.” The word seems to have become a brand that some people attach to a set of partisan policy preferences, rather than the set of underlying principles about government and society it once was. Conservatism has become a dog’s breakfast of Wilsonian internationalism brought over from the Democratic Party after the New Left took it over, coupled with fanatical libertarian economics and religiously-driven positions on various culture war issues. No one seems to have any idea or concern for how these positions are consistent or reflect anything other than a general hatred for Democrats and the Left.
Lost in all of this is the older strain of conservatism. The one I grew up with and thought was reflective of the movement. This strain of conservatism believed in the free market and capitalism but did not fetishize them the way so many libertarians do. This strain understood that a situation where every country in the world but the US acts in its own interests on matters of international trade and engages in all kinds of skulduggery in support of their interests is not free trade by any rational definition. This strain understood that a government’s first loyalty was to its citizens and the national interest. And also understood that the preservation of our culture and our civil institutions was a necessity.
All of this seems to have been lost. Conservatives have become some sort of schizophrenic sect of libertarians who love freedom (but hate potheads and abortion) and feel the US should be the policeman of the world. The same people who daily fret over the effects of leaving our society to the mercy of Hollywood and the mass culture have somehow decided leaving it to the mercies of the international markets is required.
Third, there is the issue of the war on Islamic extremism. Let me say upfront that, as a veteran of two foreign deployments in this war, I speak with some moral authority on it. So please do not lecture me on the need to sacrifice for one’s country or the nature of the threat that we face. I have gotten on that plane twice and have the medals and t-shirt to prove it. And, as a member of the one percent who have actually put my life on the line in these wars movement conservatives consider so vital, my question for you and every other conservatives is just when the hell did being conservative mean thinking the US has some kind of a duty to save foreign nations from themselves or bring our form of democratic republicanism to them by force? I fully understand the sad necessity to fight wars and I do not believe in “blow back” or any of the other nonsense that says the world will leave us alone if only we will do that same. At the same time, I cannot for the life of me understand how conservatives of all people convinced themselves that the solution to the 9-11 attacks was to forcibly create democracy in the Islamic world. I have even less explanations for how — 15 years and 10,000 plus lives later — conservatives refuse to examine their actions and expect the country to send more of its young to bleed and die over there to save the Iraqis who are clearly too slovenly and corrupt to save themselves.
The lowest moment of the election was when Trump said what everyone in the country knows: that invading Iraq was a mistake. Rather than engaging the question with honest self-reflection, all of the so called “conservatives” responded with the usual “How dare he?” Worse, they let Jeb Bush claim that Bush “kept us safe.” I can assure you that President Bush didn’t keep me safe. Do I and the other people in the military not count? Sure, we signed up to give our lives for our country and I will never regret doing so. But doesn’t our commitment require a corresponding responsibility on the part of the president to only expect us to do so when it is both necessary and in the national interest?
And since when is bringing democracy to Iraq and Afghanistan so much in the national interest that it is worth killing or maiming 50,000 Americans to try and achieve? I don’t see that, but I am not a Wilsonian and used to, at least, be a conservative. I have these strange ideas that my government ought to act in America’s interests instead of the rest of the world’s interests. I wish conservatives could understand how galling it was to have a fat, rich, career politician who has never once risked his life for this country lecture those of us who have about how George Bush kept us safe.
Donald Trump is the only Republican candidate who seems to have any inclination to act strictly in America’s interest. More importantly, he is the only Republican candidate who is willing to even address the problem. Trump was right to say that we need to stop letting more Muslims into the country or, at least, examine the issue. And like when he said the obvious about Iraq, the first people to condemn him and deny the obvious were conservatives. Somehow, being conservative now means denying the obvious and saying idiotic fantasies like “Islam is the religion of peace,” or “Our war is not with Islam.” Uh, sorry but no it is not, and yes it is. And if getting a president who at least understands that means voting for Trump, then I guess I am not a conservative.
Fourth, I really do not care that Donald Trump is vulgar, combative, and uncivil and I would encourage you not to care as well. I would love to have our political discourse be what it was even thirty years ago and something better than what it is today. But the fact is the Democratic Party is never going to return to that and there isn’t anything anyone can do about it. Over the last 15 years, I have watched the then-chairman of the DNC say the idea that President Bush knew about 9-11 and let it happen was a “serious position held by many people,” watched the vice president tell a black audience that Republicans would return them to slavery if they could, watched Harry Reid say Mitt Romney was a tax cheat without any reason to believe it was true, and seen an endless amount of appalling behavior on the part of the Democrats which is too long to list here and which I am sure you are aware. And now you tell me that I should reject Trump because he is uncivil and mean to his opponents? Is that some kind of a joke? This is not the time for civility or to worry about it in our candidates.
Fifth, I do not care that Donald Trump is in favor of big government. That is certainly not a virtue but it is not a meaningful vice since the same can be said of every single Republican in the race. I am sorry but the “we are just one more Republican victory from small government” card is maxed out. We are not getting small government no matter who wins. So Trump being big government is a wash.
Sixth, Trump offers at least the chance that he might act in the American interest instead of the world’s interest or in the blind pursuit of some fantasy ideological goals. There is more to economic policy than cutting taxes, sham free trade agreements, and hollow appeals to “cutting government” and the free market. Trump may not be good, but he at least understands that. In contrast, the rest of the GOP and everyone in Washington or the media who calls themselves a conservative has no understanding of this.
Rubio would be — as Laura Ingram pointed out this week — nothing but a repeat of the Bush 43 administration with more blood and treasure spent on the fantasy that acting in other people’s interests indirectly helps ours. Cruz might be somewhat better, but it is unclear whether he could resist the temptations of nation building and wouldn’t get bullied into trying it again. And as much as I like Cruz on many areas he, like all of them except Trump, seems totally unwilling to admit that the government has a responsibility to act in the nation’s interests on trade policy and do something besides let every country in the world take advantage of us in the name of “free trade.”
Consider the following. Our country is going broke, half its working-age population isn’t even looking for work, faces the real threat of massive Islamic terrorist attack, and has a government incapable of doing even basic functions. Meanwhile, conservatives act like cutting Planned Parenthood off the government or stopping gays from getting marriage licenses are the great issues of the day and then have the gumption to call Donald Trump a clown. It would be downright funny if it wasn’t so sad and the situation so serious.
It is not that I think Donald Trump is some savior or an ideal candidate. I don’t. It is that I cannot for the life of me — given the sorry nature of our current political class — understand why conservatives are losing their minds over him and are willing to destroy the Republican Party and put Hillary into office to stop him. All of your objections to him either apply to many other candidates you have backed or are absurd.
I don’t expect you to agree with me or start backing Trump. I would, however, encourage you to at least think about what I and others have said and to understand that the people backing Trump are not nihilists or uneducated hillbillies looking for a job. Some of us are pretty serious people and once considered ourselves conservatives. Even if you still hate Trump, you owe it to conservatism to ask yourself how exactly conservatism managed to alienate so many of its supporters such that they are now willing to vote for someone you loath as much as Trump.
I would also encourage you to stop insulting Trump voters. Multiple conservative journalists — Kevin Williamson to name one — have said, in so many words, that Trump supporters are welfare queens, losers, uneducated, and bums. I am a Trump supporter. My father is a Trump supporter. We both went to war for this country. My father spent 40 years in the private sector maintaining this thing we like to call the phone system. I have spent the last 20 years in the Army and toiling away doing national security and law enforcement issues for the federal government. Just what exactly have any of the people saying these things ever done for the country? Where do they feel entitled to say these things? And more importantly, why on earth do they think it is helping their cause?
I am sorry, even if you can convince me Trump is the next Hitler, I don’t want to be associated with that. I don’t want to be associated with a movement that calls other Americans bums and welfare queens because they support the wrong candidate. If I wanted to do that, I would be a leftist.
Perhaps none of this means anything to you and the movement has left me behind. If it has, I think conservatives should understand that it is leaving a lot of people like me behind. I can’t see how that is a good thing.
Published in Politics
” total and complete shutdown of Muslims coming into the United States until our country’s representatives can figure ou what’s going on.”
I am sorry but that doesn’t sound unreasonable to me.
Hmmm, notwithstanding that it is a pretty wide net, is the interpretation of fascism above (#267) out of order?
Mr. Kluge’s wonderful post is not so much about the qualities and qualifications of Mr. Trump as it is about the voices of the conservative opinion elite who have ranged anywhere from dismissive to insulting regarding the supporters of Mr. Trump.
As far as I can tell, this is a center-right country and Republicans, while doing well selling the platform at the state level where specifics can apply directly to the voter’s life, have been lousy at selling the policy platform at the national level. Bush barely won in 2000 by running on a compassionate conservative platform that didn’t look much like the ideology that people here seem to be desiring from a 2016 candidate. The thing is, Republicans need that big tent to win national elections. That is the reality of our political world. You can wish that American voters wanted that conservative platform that Ted Cruz embodies, but honestly, the tent isn’t large enough to win with his conservatism alone.
As I understand it, open primaries were designed to nominate more electable candidates, by growing the party and appealing to moderates and center left voters. Well, here we are. The tent is bigger. It is uncomfortable, and suddenly the opinion elite aren’t so happy sharing the tent after all. Listening to Mona Charen and Jay Nordlinger and Kevin Williamson has been very illuminating. They despise the very people they need to grow the movement. First, you grow, then you educate.
Simple Definition of fascism
: a way of organizing a society in which a government ruled by a dictator controls the lives of the people and in which people are not allowed to disagree with the government
: very harsh control or authority
Full Definition of fascism
1often capitalized : a political philosophy, movement, or regime (as that of the Fascisti) that exalts nation and often race above the individual and that stands for a centralizedautocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, severe economic and social regimentation, and forcible suppression of opposition
2: a tendency toward or actual exercise of strong autocratic or dictatorial control <early instances of army fascism and brutality — J. W. Aldridge>
I looked at the Webster definition that you linked, and all but one highly subjective clause mentioned dictatorship. Since none of your examples require or even mention dictatorship, aside from your opinion that the possibly democratically and constitutionally enacted measures might be harsh, I don’t see the connection to the admittedly narrow definition.
You shouldn’t apologize. It’s not immoral, undemocratic, or unconstitutional, and you have no reason to be sorry. I’ve never been a Trump supporter, but I’ve grown very tired of people being asked to apologize for the exercise of their rights under the constitution and the enacting of their constitutional goals through the franchise. Judging by Trump’s support, I guess that I’m not alone.
Well said, Robin. When I came into the Republican Party I was a pro-life American who had volunteered to serve in our military. I learned about fiscal conservatism after becoming a Republican, not before. Now I am a pro-life, fiscally-conservative, pro-military Independent because I finally understood that the Republican Party at the top wasn’t overly conservative, no matter what words they used. I vote Republican. I cannot vote Democrat as they are the party of death, of spending, and of contempt for the military, and using my vote for a third-party candidate is as bad as sitting on my hands when I should be voting.
I will vote Republican this year, again, as I have ever since 1980. Win or lose, I vote Republican. There are only two Republicans who have a chance of winning the nomination, Cruz or Trump, and probably only one who can win the presidency, not Cruz.
I guess that makes me a pragmatist.
I linked the Lincoln Order of Retaliation earlier for a reason. Lincoln recognized that harsh measures are sometimes necessary responses to harsh measures and that in fact, harsh measures might be the only effective response. Lincoln was dealing with a serious problem of morale among black soldiers who came to be a significant percentage of the union army. By ignoring the problem and letting confederates execute captured black soldiers, a purely evil act, he was practically encouraging more similar executions. One execution on his part or the threat of one execution of an innocent person was enough to end confederate abuses.
I’d encourage anyone who thinks that we aren’t dealing with absolute evil to watch the following video. You have my congratulations if you can meditate on the imagery and find any peace of mind afterward.
Joseph, thank you. I have no problem with retaliation but given the way things are thought of by the other side, people seeking martyrdom might climb out of the woodwork to achieve it.
Might I recommend that such people be forced to eat pork? It is against their religion to do so, so force feeding them pork, branding them for having done so, and then sending them back where they came from might be the ticket. Just a thought. dt
Some good points made, and forgive me if I’m repeating someone else’s response, as I don’t have the time to read them all. But my main problem with Trump has nothing to do with anything Kluge said. It has to do with the fact that I am a Californian. I watched closely the rise and fall of Arnold Schwarzenegger, the politician most resembling Trump. The pitch is the same: I’m not an insider, they don’t own me, I listen to the people and I know what they want, etc., etc. The fact is that the two men are much the same. They both have no idea how things get done (or not) in government. They both think their own dynamic personalities will outmatch any limiting entrenched forces. They both have huge egos and those egos need to be tended to. And therein lies the problem; one has, and the other will, follow the path of least resistance. If it’s too much trouble to deal with the daily snubs and insults involved with doing the hard work, they will, of course, fold like a cardboard suitcase and make happy the flatterers and sycophants that currently run the joint. As Rush likes to say, don’t doubt me.
Mr. Trump from last nights debate:
“We should go for waterboarding and we should go tougher than waterboarding. That’s my opinion.
BAIER: But targeting terrorists’ families?
(APPLAUSE)
TRUMP: And — and — and — I’m a leader. I’m a leader. I’ve always been a leader. I’ve never had any problem leading people. If I say do it, they’re going to do it. That’s what leadership is all about.”
Again taking the man at his word, how is this out of bounds for a description that infers fascism? Even if it is in the context of the terrorists behaving like animals.
There is nothing in the statement to exclude his moral authority instead of force as the basis for his leadership. Labeling someone a fascist for conducting a war in a way with which you disagree is an arbitrary use of the word. The use doesn’t conform to most aspects of the definition and only fits one very vague and highly subjective aspect. In the vague and highly subjective definition, the concept breaks down entirely because as Orwell noted, the label can be applied to anyone over simple disapproval. Bush was a fascist over Guantanamo. Clinton was a fascist over bombing a Sudanese baby food factory and civilian targets like electrical power stations all across Serbia. Certainly, Roosevelt, Johnson, and Nixon were fascists for their use of aerial bombardment against civilian targets. I doubt that anyone rises above suspicion based on your freewheeling definition.
Okay if fascist doesn’t work for you here how about “Evil monster”?
I was sure that Trump was going to win Minnesota due to our previous voting history, one of my revised theories for why Trump came in third here is that the Jesse Ventura governorship inoculated us against voting for Trump this time.
Obviously, since you made no effort to distinguish Bush or any previous president’s conduct of a war from Trump’s proposal, you’re not writing seriously and are instead just trolling, but because the quip give me the opportunity to expose the nature of the opposition to Trump, I’ll answer seriously.
Was Lincoln an “evil monster?” He advocated executing prisoners of war at random, people whose only known offense was being found wearing the uniform of the enemy. Roosevelt? Truman? Through Curtis LeMay, they both approved bombing campaigns designed to terrorize civilian populations and having the predictable, desired result of killing the families of enemies. Johnson? Nixon? I believe that Reagan’s intentional bombing of Gaddafi’s headquarters compound killed one of Gaddafi’s children. Was Reagan an “evil monster?”
Is anyone on this thread going to explain how this isn’t a transparent double-standard?
I wasn’t sure if you were being facetious in the second paragraph, but since a lot of people might share the same belief underlying the point in the first paragraph, that terrorists desire martyrdom and that their beliefs might encourage them to make such sacrifices, I wanted to offer a concrete counterexample that deterrence works even on Muslim fanatics.
The Soviet Union only had one problem in Lebanon in the eighties, and the KGB ended all problems by exactly Trump’s strategy of deterrence. According to a brief account:
The Soviets immediately got their remaining hostages back, and they were never bothered again.
We have on good evidence that deterrence works.
I remember that California has a referendum system which operates outside of the legislative process. I believe that Guvernator tried to achieve a real benefit for California by using the referendum and it failed. That unmasked his ability to achieve good for California and essentially emasculated him.
Trump has watched enough Barry to know that there are things which require legislative support to get it done. No referendum on federal ideas. He has worked with bureaucracies to get things done. I don’t believe this is a problem.
I would say that many of those acts are monstrous yes. As for Reagan – if I remember my history correctly he was trying to avoid unnecessary casualties.
Are you suggesting that we shouldn’t learn from the past?
Are you willing to state here that you support the intentional bombing of women and children?
I have already stated here that I approve of deterrence including intentional bombing of civilian targets including women and children as happened in the Second World War and as anticipated by our entire strategy of deterrence in the Cold War.
I am suggesting that we learn from the past, and I am further suggesting that you haven’t learned anything. The Soviet example by contrast with the American history in Lebanon, Lincoln’s example by contrast with the status quo ante, Roosevelt’s example by contrast with invasions like Iwo Jima, they all teach the same lesson. Deterrence backed by proven resolve saves lives.
I notice that you didn’t even attempt to rebut the analogy to the others and only answered with regard to Reagan. Reagan might be the best hope for drawing a distinction. In any case, if Reagan was trying to avoid civilian casualties, then he wasn’t trying hard enough, and the effort seems like just a fig leaf to cover making Gaddafi pay personally for the bombing in Berlin. That he didn’t need to strike again and inflict more suffering is the exception that proves the rule.
So you’re advocating that the United States commit war crimes and abrogate treaties. Got it.
As an aside, your reply doesn’t answer the point that in every other conflict, the United States has abrogated treaties and committed war crimes, often intentionally, that you are advocating the novel and impractical approach to war, and that the problem is the treaty and your definition of war crime. In rhetorical terms, you’re making an appeal to the authority of some document instead of reasoned argument that the strategy is somehow unethical.
Most importantly—and this is the real problem—you use my position as an excuse to dodge a direct question about differentiating Trump from previous presidents. I answered you. Can you give a direct answer, or are you just going to be evasive and change the subject? How does this make Trump different? How are you not using a double-standard?
This is exactly my point about rabid Trump opponents: they turn into Democrats or Code Pink activists when talking about Trump. The above exchange has no content other than to try to disqualify my opinion about Trump by trying, unsuccessfully in my opinion, to stigmatize me over an unrelated issue. It’s the rhetorical equivalent of shouting, “Racist!”
Ad hominem fallacies in place of arguments on Ricochet. What a shock!
You answered quickly enough with the ad hominem. I think that you’ve had plenty of time to respond, so I’m going to take the lack of a direct answer to a direct question as a clear indication of hypocritical, self-serving double-standards, and I urge everyone to read the response in the same way.
Joseph, you are the ones making an appeal to authority citing previous presidents you like. This is neither an argument for why the bombing of women and children is a good thing or why it is not a war crime. I have pointed out that I think the intentional targeting of civilians, especially in an age where we have the ability to save them, is abhorrent.
Furthermore it is a fact that this would violate our treaty obligations under the Geneva Conventions and constitute a war crime, no amount of appealing to the authority of previous Presidents would change that.
I didn’t cite previous presidents in an appeal to authority to justify a course of action. I cited previous presidents as evidence of the fact that Trump’s position in no way disqualifies him for the office. I didn’t say that appealing to the example of past presidents changed the definition of war crimes or treaty violations. I said that you are not attacking past presidents with anything like the vigor with which you attack Trump, and the only evidence that I need for the claim is the evidence of your comments. In all of these comments, you have yet to label these past presidents. Are they war criminals? Did they abrogate treaties? I’m not disputing Trumps intentions. I’m disputing your consistency.
Finally, your moral preening is simply irrelevant to the topic under discussion, your consistency. You still haven’t answered me.
By the way, I’m happy to have the argument on deterrence, and I already cited both empirical evidence and alluded to theoretical arguments to support my position.
Listening to Gen. Hayden being interviewed, yesterday, I heard him unequivocally state that the CIA will not be using waterboarding. His reason being that the agent doing so can not rely on the political backup should these techniques come to public light. He also condemned Mr. Trump’s encouragement that techniques above waterboarding be used because the reasoning was unsound. “We don’t interrogate people because ‘They deserve it’ as Mr. Trumps says, we interrogate to get critical information.” said Gen Hayden.
Are they war criminals? Did they abrogate treaties? The questions about past presidents including such venerated figures as Lincoln are important because they allow people to judge your position directly.
I think that you don’t answer because it creates an inescapable problem for you. Denounce everyone, and you look like a naive ideologue or a crank. Denounce only Trump, and you look like a hypocrite.
“We don’t interrogate people because ‘They deserve it’ as Mr. Trumps says, we interrogate to get critical information.”
This is an appeal to Hayden’s authority. This is not an argument. It’s an assertion. Who is Hayden talking about when he says, “we?” He’s not talking about me and like-minded people.
I’m arguing that deterrence recommends the opposite. We torture people because the enemy deserves it for misconduct, and there is ample empirical evidence that retaliation works.
In any case, Hayden is one guy. I’m sure that he can be replaced with someone who will follow a policy of deterrence. Since Trump could in theory, pardon anyone, the agency could hope to be backed up. Because Bush didn’t have either the presence of mind or the courage to take the action doesn’t mean that Trump can be expected to leave people swinging in the wind to appease radicals.
Joseph, it’s possible that other members may not agree with you that the topic under discussion is whether they live up to your expectations of “consistency”. Heckling them that this should be the topic of discussion won’t necessarily persuade them to make it so, either.
We can hope for certain kinds of conversation when we come to Ricochet. We cannot demand them, though. Others are not obligated to give us exactly the kind of conversation we want.