Choosing Collaboration–“True Conservatism” After Trump

By James Kirkpatrick

09/08/2016

Schlafly said a few months ago Donald Trump wasn’t just her choice for president but the “last hope for America” — specifically identifying immigration as a critical issue. [Phyllis Schlafly: Trump is ‘Last Hope for America’, WND, December 20, 2015] Unlike many of Founding Generation, Schlafly realized, and had been pointing out for years, that mass immigration means the end for conservatism, a national Republican party, and the existence of the American nation itself.

This is the great question. It means Conservatism Inc. can’t just pretend it’s business as usual if Trump loses. Even if they somehow “purge” the Alt Right, why should anyone continue to pay attention to Conservatism Inc. now that it has been shown to be electorally irrelevant?

In a recent much-discussed piece outlining the stakes in 2016, which he called the “Flight 93 election,” the author “Decius,” star of the late, much-missed Journal of American Greatness, ripped the long record of failure of the Beltway Right and accused it of not understanding, or simply not caring, about the existential threat that mass, non-traditional immigration poses to conservatism.

And grassroots fury with Conservatism Inc. is clearly building, even among those we think of as “mainstream” conservatives with a mass audience. For example, Rush Limbaugh read and discussed the piece at length on his radio program on Wednesday. He also blasted the lack of ready reaction from conservative intellectuals and suggested this was implicit proof “Decius” was right — “that it hit home so that people don’t want to react to it, just ignore it when somebody hits you with legitimate criticism, ignore it, don’t amplify it, don’t respond to it” [The Silence of the Never Trumpers, RushLimbaugh, September 8, 2016].

Yet what even Limbaugh downplayed was the existential threat a Clinton presidency poses to Conservatism Inc. — even the Never Trump faction. Even if we accept that the Beltway Right doesn’t care about the survival of the historic American nation, its racket can only go on as long as Conservatism Inc. still has some proximity to official power. If we get a second President Clinton, and her promised nation-breaking mass amnesty, Republicans will no chance of winning a national election again. So why would donors even bother wasting their money on people who have proven not just to be parasites, but irrelevant?

As “Decius” put it:

So what do we have to lose by fighting back? Only our Washington Generals jerseys — and paychecks. But those are going away anyway. Among the many things the “Right” still doesn’t understand is that the Left has concluded that this particular show need no longer go on. They don’t think they need a foil anymore and would rather dispense with the whole bother of staging these phony contests in which side ostensibly has a shot.

But others seem committed to remaking “conservatism” into something less resembling a coherent political movement than a gnostic sect, “with an ever-dwindling circle of believers convincing themselves of their own purity and bemoaning the corruption of the fallen world which surrounds them” [The True Con[s], by Gregory Hood, Radix, May 18, 2016].

And the way they accomplish this is by simply avoiding the threat that changing demographics present to the conservative project.

For example, Conor Friedersdorf, who has made a career of wrist-flapping about uncucked conservatives, endorses the Never Trump stance of VDARE.com’s long time butt Jonah Goldberg because he believes a Trump defeat will hurt the Alt Right and that result is “both morally defensible and likely to benefit the conservative cause in the long run” . [The Alt-Right Will Rise or Fall With Donald Trump, The Atlantic, September 6, 2016]

How?

Ben Howe at RedState simply dismissed the “Decius” article and condemned the “hyperbole” of those who claim Clinton will be irreparably harmful to the country. Instead, he urged Republicans to stop “dog whistling” to “scum we now find controlling the destiny of the party.” He asks: “Have the last 20 years made it easier to harder to sell conservatism to the public?” citing various big government spending programs as the reason why it has gotten harder. [No This Is NOT The ‘Flight 93 Election,’ Rush, September 8, 2016].

Of course, the real problem is not anything Republicans have done that makes conservatism harder to “sell,” but that the “public” itself is being deliberately changed by the Left’s importing a new people. Howe simply refuses to recognize this reality.

At the top of the list: the eccentric Glenn Beck, who is now writing flowery tributes to Black Lives Matter in the pages of the New York Times, claiming that the only way American can move forward is to “move away from a pursuit of ‘winning’ and toward reclaiming our shared humanity” . [Glenn Beck: Empathy for Black Lives Matter, September 7, 2016]

What this really means: support for black identity politics and redistribution of wealth, while continuing to oppose any attempts by whites to organize on an equal footing. It’s an open secret within the conservative movement that Beck’s Blaze is on the verge of total financial collapse [Here’s the real reason Glenn Beck just called me a 13-year-old, by Milo Yiannopoulos, Breitbart, September 6, 2016]. Beck may be looking to simply switch sides in order to maintain some kind of a career.

None of these men nor any of the others making these kinds of arguments address the main problem: Non-whites do not want limited government. They have nothing to gain from it. Their professional classes rely heavily on Affirmative Action, the lower classes EBT and welfare. The current power structure caters to their ethnic identity.

Why would nonwhites dismiss these powerful appeals and concrete benefits to make the likes of Friedersdorf, Howe, and Beck feel better about themselves? Do these cuckservatives expect non-whites to share their self-loathing?

Insofar as conservatives could ever win the minority vote, it would come through the kind of civic nationalist or “citizenist” approach actually exemplified by someone like Trump (whose alleged racial appeals are at least deeply implicit where they are not actually imaginary.).

But many Conservatism Inc. types reject this in favor of the donorist agenda: continued expansion of free trade deals, mass immigration and foreign interventions, the costs of which fall disproportionately on the marginalized white communities Republicans need to win, and, indeed, on the minorities Conservatism Inc. professes to care about.

“True conservatism” isn’t just embarrassing: it’s self-defeating.

None of this had to happen. Lost in the debate over the rise of the Alt Right, and the united efforts of the Leftist power structure and Conservatism Inc. to suppress it by any means necessary is the brutal reality that this was all prophesied decades ago. More than twenty years ago, VDARE.com Editor Peter Brimelow and other voices predicted the electoral extinction of conservatives if mass immigration continued. Some courageous conservative luminaries such as Phyllis Schlafly also warned of the consequences. But they were ignored — and in fact “purged.”

Far from celebrating the “purges” of the past, it would behoove Conservatism Inc.-ers to fall on their knees and beg forgiveness for setting their movement and their country on the path to destruction. Yet they don’t even seem to recognize they have made a mistake.

And this blindness suggests they are not arguing in good faith — but are instead disingenuously trying to squeeze out a continued living as the willing collaborators of the Minority Occupation Government.

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