Your friend Jim George thinks you'd be a great addition to Ricochet, so we'd like to offer you a special deal: You can become a member for no initial charge for one month!
Ricochet is a community of like-minded people who enjoy writing about and discussing politics (usually of the center-right nature), culture, sports, history, and just about every other topic under the sun in a fully moderated environment. We’re so sure you’ll like Ricochet, we’ll let you join and get your first month for free. Kick the tires: read the always eclectic member feed, write some posts, join discussions, participate in a live chat or two, and listen to a few of our over 50 (free) podcasts on every conceivable topic, hosted by some of the biggest names on the right, for 30 days on us. We’re confident you’re gonna love it.
Sadly I fear 2018 is likely to go as Dave Barry predicts:
Doubtful. Who in popular conservatism cares about reason and grace anymore? Not when those things can be easily ditched in favor of an expedient and reflexive defense of Trumpism. Once one has bought into the Existential Cultural Civil War Flight 93 scenario anything short of irrational barbarity is caving into the forces of progressivism. So there we have it. It’s the low road or no road at all, because what has been accomplished could only have been accomplished by these means. Orgasmicly fantastic!
Keep hoping, that’s fine. Just don’t think that means you can expect what you hope for to come about. I’d prefer both but don’t expect to get what I prefer. Also, I concur that between substance and form I’ll take substance. For sure. When I can’t have both. Which seems to be all the time.
Screw this, Henry, I’m burning crops and salting earth!
Except you’re right of course.
So now you’re excusing those who want to despoil our country, outlaw happiness, take pacifiers away from toddlers, and kick every puppy and kitten.
You disgust me, sir.
That does it. I made an honest effort, and I gave it my all — for almost sixteen hours. But enough is enough.
So, tough guy, I’ll see you out back of Harrigan’s at closing time, and we’ll see just who disgusts whom. That is, if you’re man enough to show up.
Say I’m an impulsive and violent person again and I’ll pound your ugly–
Seriously, Henry, it’s an excellent post. There are genuinely malevolent people out there, but they’re (thankfully) few and far between. Most of the harm in the world is caused through selfishness, short-sightedness, and a lack of understanding. That’s plenty to deal with, but it generally involves people within a standard deviation of decent.
Or the number of times fellow conservatives have declared war against the left with the only alternative the destruction of the republic.
Sadly, I fear that this noble sentiment will only reach those of us who already subscribe to it; to those who prefer the combative approach, we are part of the catastrophe.
This is all well and good, but it does not offer a solution to creeping incrementalism, in terms of the scope of gov’t in our lives, and spending.
But I don’t think Henry meant it that way, either. I have good friends on the other side of the aisle, very rational and in many ways conservative (married, save money, take care of their kids – just basic stuff that probably doesn’t appear to be very conservative to them). They will always vote for Democrats and/or Progressivism (as long as it’s not off-the-rails Progressivism, like Antifa or the like).
So in the end they’re supporting the eventual squeezing out of liberty in their lives by granting more power and space for the gov’t to tell them what to do. This doesn’t mean that I think my friends are idiots, just what they think is likely not a good idea in the longer run. Which is becoming a shorter run, with the spending, debt, and debt service. Not to mention the loss of human capital, human potential, when we teach generations of human beings that it’s OK to be provided for by someone else for your entire life, even if you’re perfectly capable of doing that yourself.
That’s possibly the worst message in the world to send to anyone. But that’s the net result of policies that the Left supports. I just don’t think they can possibly see it that way. I still think that they think of taxes as a bit of a tithe on their success, and they’re OK with that, as long as they’re not the ones cleaning out bed pans for invalids on Medicaid and pulling abused children out of crack houses.
Chris, on the one hand, that’s a pretty tall order, offering a solution to the problem of Leviathan — particularly in a short friendly third-glass-of-wine New Year’s post.
But, on the other hand, I have come to believe that a big part of the solution really is to reach the relatively apolitical — that is, normal and healthy — middle of the country, the people who tire of the vitriol and acrimony, and who just want a good outcome without a lot of drama.
And how you reach those people involves, among other things, acknowledging that the people who call for a high mandated minimum wage or increased gun control, for example, really want the same things most of us want: a decent life for workers, and safety for our citizens. (And if we don’t necessarily believe they want those things, it’s still good to give them the benefit of the doubt.) But good intentions and good outcomes are two different things, and we can politely make a good and thoughtful case that both a high minimum wage and increased gun control actually hurt the people we all want to help. There don’t have to be any socialists or gun-grabbing villains mentioned in those explanations: bad ideas needn’t have bad motives behind them, and we can assume the best about our opponents (or certainly speak as if we do).
Whatever squabbles we have here on Ricochet about public personalities or the occasional arcane detail of conservatism, we’re mostly all basically on the same page: we’re free-market constitutional rule-of-law conservatives. It’s great to talk among ourselves, and probably even productive to do so, but swaying the middle remains, I think, the critical challenge. And I think the middle might appreciate a lighter touch.
(Having said all that, I’ll add that I don’t necessarily believe that there is a solution to the problems you mention, Chris. But it seems wrong to go down without a fight, and this seems to me a good way for many of us to do the fighting.)
I have heard constantly that those people have the least amount of political knowledge.
I suppose it’s generally true that people who are less interested in political things have less knowledge of political things. I think that’s how it works with most topics.
I’m listening to a biography of John Quincy Adams. The election of 1828 makes 2016 look like an English garden party (well, almost):
https://blogs.weta.org/boundarystones/2017/01/13/election-1828-its-always-been-ugly
Trump hasn’t been accused of cannibalism. Yet ;)