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You Need to Be Purged
Yes, you! You are corrupting and destroying conservatism, and need to go!
It seems the one thing conservatives can agree on is that we need purge the conservative movement of the other side. Trump supporters and opponents want to eliminate the opposing side for betraying conservative principles. Social Cons don’t trust the libertarians / squishy urban fiscal cons, while they see the social cons as backward theocrats. Race issues have one side calling the other either neo-Confederate racists or delusional egalitarians living in denial of reality. There are also conservatives who believe all Muslims are evil – these conservatives believe their opponents are dhimmis taken in by deception and, in turn, people condemn them as bigots willing to toss every Muslim in the same box as ISIS. Pro-police or anti-police? Immigration skeptic or proponent? Neocon or paleocon?
Even worse, you can be a moderate on an issue. Then both sides want to purge you – you must choose a side! Almost as bad as being a moderator, and thus be only worthy of being stuffed into a nuclear reactor.
So, obviously, this means someone wants you to be purged for the good of the conservative movement. And the only way for everyone to get their way is for everyone to be purged. No one is spared. If we eliminate the conservative movement, then we can be sure that all of those useless disgraces to the conservative movement are gone. And isn’t that the important thing?
If we don’t want to eliminate the conservative movement, the only way to survive is to resist the purging impulse. Obviously, there have to be rules (there is no conservative case for a Communist dictatorship or an Islamic theocracy, I don’t care how many think-pieces you write) but we have to keep somewhat of a broad tent in order to get our ideas turned into policy. Parties can be stricter — if you vote straight-ticket Democrat, you are not a Republican — but the movement as a whole is not an exclusive club, and it is not as valuable to try to set the boundaries.
The Left uses this against us — when people tried to kick out the alt-right, lefties and some purge-happy folks started calling everyone they did not like alt-right. We have actually benefited by the Left purging the insufficiently woke. There are numerous people driven out of the Left that have moved rightward, including much of the so-called Intellectual Dark Web. Playing the Left’s game here only helps their cause.
So, the next time you consider making those other supposed conservatives walk the plank, keep in mind that you might have to follow them, and you are feeding them to the Left, not sharks.
Published in Politics
I think the guys could learn from Kelly Anne Conway’s pushback on Wolf Blitzer a few days ago. You do not want to mess with that woman.
For some odd reason, the video starts at 5 minutes, after she went after Blitzer. Just pull back the time marker to the beginning.
Sorry folks. Someone didn’t like seeing Wolf being taken down. . .
Indeed you did. And I can’t even give the excuse that I missed it because I was traveling. I checked my records, and I was not traveling that day.
So it all seems rather hopeless then, doesn’t it? A coalition that is not conservative enough – as you define conservatism – will only lead us into leftism. And a stripped-down party that only has people that pass the Franco litmus test is too small to win enough seats to make a difference. We may as well just go buy some marshmallows so we can toast them as the world burns down around us. Yes, I stole that line from a Jim Butcher book.
I don’t think that it is weird. There are a few possible explanations.
First, conservatism is, and needs to be, a big tent, but a big tent needs a center. The 100% guys are at the very center, and perhaps there is a tendency for 80-90% guys to be annoyed that those 100% guys seem to get everything that they want. (We don’t actually get everything that we want, but the platform tends to be what we want.)
Second, there may be a cognitive dissonance in being an 80-90% conservative. The areas on which you depart from conservatism may be a source of anxiety, and there may be some nagging concern that you’re wrong, but you don’t want to resolve the issues, for a variety of reasons. It may be similar to the annoyance one feels at being around someone who doesn’t seem to have any flaws. This does not mean that the 100% conservatives are definitely correct; just that they match the consensus of the group more than someone who is in the 80-90% range.
Third, there is the flip-side of the second issue. If you’re an 80-90% guy, you may be exasperated with the 100% guys because you think that they get just a few things wrong, and yet the group consensus (such as it is) supports their view. Other 80-90% guys would sympathize with this feeling, even if they agree with the consensus on somewhat different issues.
It’s seems the conservative litmus test of our principles is based on what the media will use against us. If the media could use X against us, even if it is a legitimate point, they must be purged. That isn’t a winning strategy.
Yes, there are many different ways to effectively use the technique depending on what your audience is and your personal style. My bottom line (and I’ve had media and public speaking experience with this during my career) is don’t waste time defending the indefensible, turn it around as quickly as you can.
OR:
“If there is anyone out there who so completely ignorant of my record that they could believe for a nanosecond that I would endorse that kind of racist nonsense, then I appreciate this opportunity to make it clear that such positions are utterly foreign to my values and my entire public life. Thank you.
“I hope that this also creates an opportunity for you too, [N. insert name of idiot newsperson the speaker is pretending to like and respect and for which he/she should get an Emmy nod for the effort required to carry off this pretense]. My Democratic colleagues are inundated with not just the nonsense that comes from rejecting the wisdom of Martin Luther King’s vision and replacing it with identity politics but a new wave of openly antisemitic language, well like this, N., for example [insert the quotes you brought with you here]…sure we have time, after all, you raised the issue and we both believe it’s important, don’t we?…. Then can I count on you to raise this issue in your questioning of my Democratic colleagues? Clearly they would appreciate the same opportunity you provided to me…
…or to put it another way; I think your observations are bang-on and I don’t wanna talk about it.
I am pretty sure I don’t want to purge anyone. Clearly, people like French want to purge me.
Please join me in sending your donations to The Committee to Elect Old Bathos To Something.
I never said they weren’t “conservative enough” ( whatever that is) I’m saying they are out of touch and bad strategists. They are living in a bygone era. Following their lead is suicidal.
Where’s this stripped-down party you reference? Donald Trump won the electoral college convincingly. Do you really think there are significant numbers of legacy Republican voters who abstained. Certainly many of them have since come around.
The issue here, reflected in almost every comment, is how to deal with the media. The media, not Democrats. Democrats only have power because their big bully sister, the corporate media.
The days of allowing them to make us disassociate from anyone is close to being over because of MR. DJT and his supporters.
But, if he is defeated or overthrown, watch them smear every Republican with him in perpetuity.
(Note: The word smear is very appropriate here, since it means trying to make a negative association deliberately. You don’t combat those tactics by having some pithy (and reasonable) response. )
Ben Shapiro et al can beg the media and Democrats all day long to accept their disavowels, but they will just keep hammering. It works perfectly for them. Imagine if we could arrange for Bernie Liz et al to continually disavow Stalin and Lenin begging everyone to understand they aren’t totalitarian communists! Wouldn’t that be a gift?
Those who are vocally disavowing Trump now, trying to save themselves and their party from being associated with him are revealing, once again, how they don’t understand the enemy or their game. Moreover, with all their bellyaching they’ve lost support from ex-allies. Who is going to defend them from the charge that they were in bed somehow with Trump supporters? The truth and facts don’t matter when dealing with the media.
There is only one way to win, now and for the future. Refuse the media legitimacy. Laugh at them. Mock them. Ignore them. Don’t play!
Not so much as a purge but the written equivalent of eye-rolls and heavy sighs if you don’t agree.
My original comment: “Plus, you’re all zealots.” ;)
Purges are a necessary part of party politics. Its usually a good sign of a movement that just taking on more followers than it should. Anyway, I’d rather have ideological and moral purges over Trump loyalty purges. Weirdly, its both parties fringes that probably need purging, as they stoke incredible amounts of divisiveness, and achieve very little.
Where do you stand on the Inquisition?
White nationalists (though many prefer the label, “race realists”) are those who are the mirror image of modern progressives obsessed with identity and intersectionality. Essentially they want a society based upon groups (who are defined by collective traits) with whites on top. Identity progressives also want a society based upon group characteristics, with non-whites on top.
Putting it another way, many of us oppose the concept of a multicultural society, defined as one where gender, ethnic or racial characteristics are, and should be, the determinants of how society should be perpetually organized and a society that vigorously resists assimilation into a common national ethos. We insist on treating people as individuals, capable of making their own decisions.
White nationalists would tell us our approach focusing on individuals is inherently wrong, just as identity progressives would.
The danger with the smartest of the white nationalists (like the punk Nick Fuentes, whom I had not heard of until a couple of weeks ago) is that they can sound like just a little more strident version of those of us who oppose multiculturalism and identity politics and favor strong immigration reform and restriction. The reality is they are playing an entirely different game with a different goal.
We do not want to fall into the trap of becoming a mirror version of what Democrats have become in the past few years where the identity politics crew has become the dominant voice of the party.
I have little doubt that I will eventually be purged not just from the Republican Party but most likely from the United States and maybe life itself. I am the wrong gender, religion, sexual orientation, political affiliation. My time is limited. The writing is on the wall.
I don’t think so. I certainly don’t want to purge you.
Great post. I note for the record that Trump is not identical with the Republican Party and Conservatism. I am an American, Conservative and Republican. I am not a Trumpist.
Little crude. Using force is never good. Where do you stand on pro abortion and pro LGBT Catholics? How about Never Trump conservatives?
isn’t what is happening with the alt right, the logical response to decades of identity politics on the left? I think this is the pushback to years of the oppression Olympics, to the point that they have backed those with a white male identity to the wall. Which is why I don’t think it is a good idea to marginalize them and why I think Michelle Malkin hasn’t disavowed them. Check out some of the YouTube videos from college campus especially during the Obama years, and how they speak about “white people”, they have forums on white privilege and anyone with European heritage is blamed for all the bad throughout history. this is the result of Howard Zinn’s history being taught in schools. After a while it grates on people and there is a backlash. This, in my humble opinion, is the backlash. I blame the conservative movement for ceding the culture and education to the left. We allowed the inmates to run the asylum and this is the result. We need to go back to teaching the moral law, you know God’s rules. Bring prayer back into school and have kids read the Bible. make the Ten Commandments great again.
Differences of opinion among conservatives exist are enduring features of the coalition. But you’re overstating the differences in my opinion. Which conservatives believe “all Muslims are evil”? How many conservatives are “neo-Confederate racists”? These folks were chased out of the movement a long time ago by WFB. This is so misinformed. There are three main groups in the conservative movement: social conservatives, libertarians, and neo conservatives. Not one of these groups has any hope of advancing its agenda alone or by making an alliance with left wing Democrats. Trump has sought to bring as many conservatives along as possible, but some are beyond reconciliation.
An ornery bunch, that’s for sure.
Agreed. I think French, and others, have come to the wrong conclusion, so much so that it makes me a little nervous, but he’s definitely not the guilty party in this sense. Most people are made angry by French’s wrongness, and some definitely get worked up as though they’d be ready to purge. It’s been pretty shameful, and definitely has not helped any of us convince these conservatives that they should be on the side that they’re already on.
A hodge-podge of labels.
The only oneI actually trust is American, as long as the Constitution is honored. Every other label isn’t really worth arguing over, since there are so many interpretations. And some ideology of scholarship and rhetoric is sufficient to combat the onslaught
The big question is how many ways our republic of US America is allowed to be re-interpreted. And that is the type, the subset of the broadening umbrella of conservatism that can mean a lot of things.
Anyone, at this point, focused on labels is flying blind.
I’m against most of what they do, politically. Any alliances with them will probably be mutually wary, short-lived and of limited usefulness. But limited usefulness is different from no usefulness at all.
And perhaps you recognize that the idea of ideological and moral purges is a little crude.
Maybe, it is just you give support and comfort to those that do.
That’s his point; these are false labels that some conservative factions use in an attempt to purge others from the coalition. One can find examples of this right here on Ricochet.