… sometimes Mark Steyn seems like the only conservative you can discuss these issues with, because most Republicans think popular culture is beside the point, if not downright dangerous. Steyn, on the other hand, has performed “Kung Fu Fighting” before thousands of people in civic auditoria more accustomed to Mary Kay Cosmetics conventions, so he gets it.
“Social conservatives are always editing pop culture,” says Steyn, “and it’s completely pathetic. Conservatives play to the caricature. Mention a French movie and the crowd turns on you. It’s a reductive view of the world. There are ideological enforcers casting aside works of art because they contain bad words or uncomfortable associations. It’s one of the biggest abdications of the American right. Who gives a crap about who gets elected to the Congressional district in Ohio? — that’s not going to change the culture. It’s movies that move the culture. And if you abdicate that space, you lose. Jeb Bush spent a billion dollars to get 2.8 per cent of the vote in Iowa. Mitt Romney and people like him who have a billion dollars — don’t spend it on politics, buy a TV network! Theatre, movies, music, that’s where the battles are fought. They’ve abdicated that space in the schools. As a result, my kid had to sit through Al Gore’s lousy movie three times. All effective storytelling is inherently conservative — because your choices have consequences. For the Left, nothing has consequences. But the trends are all in the Left’s direction, because the Right got out of the game — they chose to make themselves culturally irrelevant. If you’re not in the same room, having the conversation, there’s not gonna be a solution.”
Mark Steyn, interviewed by John Bloom, “Mark Steyn, Cole Porter and Free Speech”, Quadrant, 2017-05-11.
May 24, 2019
QotD: Politics and culture
April 9, 2019
QotD: It won’t be easy to bring back politicians’ willingness to compromise
I think the donors are a problem for both parties, in terms of driving choices that aren’t necessarily the best strategies for building the base. (Both parties completely missed the populist backlash on trade, for example. Now, as a free trader, I like the resulting policy. But they paid for it at the polls.) But the issue isn’t fundamentally the donors. The issue is that fundamentally, both sides hate each other, and both sides have an increasing “It is not enough that I win. My enemies must lose” mentality about politics. Combine that with various reforms that have empowered extremists — campaign finance reforms that empowered outside groups, yes, but also the shift to primaries from conventions, and the abolition of the earmarks and pork that used to grease legislative passage. Throw in the “Great Sort” into increasingly politically homogenous communities — those are the problems you need to fix if you want to bring back legislative compromise. And damned if I know how we get there, because you can’t tell people where to live, and anyone who suggested getting rid of primary elections and bringing back pork barrel politics would come off as a backroom sleaze.
Megan McArdle, “Ask Me Anything”, Reddit, 2017-04-10.
April 1, 2019
QotD: George H.W. Bush
Way back in the olden thymes, conservatives during the Reagan years had a real fear that the Rockefeller Republicans would not only undermine the conservative agenda, but find a way to corrupt the Reagan administration. It was an unwarranted fear. Those Progressive Republicans were a dying force in politics. Reagan was a man of his age so his conservatism does not always make sense to the modern ear, but he stuck to his guns for the most part. He was a politician, so he compromised when he had to.
Then George H. W. Bush was ready to take the reigns of the movement and the party, despite being a Rockefeller Republican. Bush was a Progressive by any measure, but he supposedly got religion in the 1980’s, and to be fair, a lot of people went through that transformation. There were even old Jewish guys, who used to support communists, that were suddenly changing teams to join the new emerging majority. Bush spent a lot of time convincing the voters he was just like Reagan and they had nothing to fear.
The ’88 election was a landslide for Bush and a lot of sensible people thought that he would be the finishing touches to the new conservative majority. He would smooth out the rough patches and put a shine on other aspects to it. His famous pledge to never raise taxes was the cornerstone of his pitch. Wiser heads, the paleocons, saw what was coming, but most did not. That’s why when Bush broke his promise, a year into his presidency, his voters were crushed. Bush was a liar.
History is written by the victors and that means the Left, so we’re always told that Bush lost in ’92 because Clinton was sent by the void where God once existed, to bring joy and bliss to the blessed and smite the wicked. The truth is, Bush lost because the core of his voters rightly saw him as a liar and a fink. Many people I know, including myself, voted third party as a protest. Yeah, it meant a degenerate would win the election, but at least we knew what we were getting. Liars like Bush always find new ways to screw you.
[…]
This brings us back to Bush. He spent the remainder of his presidency trying to rebuild his standing with conservatives. He even scored what was pitched as a stunning victory in the First Gulf War. But, you only get one shot to piss away your integrity and Bush did not miss that opportunity. He entered the general election as a weak incumbent and Clinton used his broken pledge in commercials to remind everyone that Bush was an untrustworthy liar. Imagine that. Clinton beat Bush on the integrity issue.
“The Z Man”, “Donald Herbert Walker Trump”, The Z Blog, 2017-04-07.
January 8, 2019
QotD: RINOs and other soft conservatives
The RINOs you complain about are RINOs now but they weren’t always. I don’t know how many of you remember the seventies. The right here was kind of like the right in Europe. It assumed that in the end communism would not only win, but DESERVED to win, and what the right disagreed with was the way to get there. It is useful to remember this was a time when William Buckley’s dictum that conservatism was “Standing astride History yelling stop” found deep resonance. Unpack that phrase. It assumes history comes with an arrow, that it’s not going our way, and that at best we can get it to pause.
Those RINOs who, by the way, took immense flack back then were as conservative as anyone dared to be. Because everyone knew in the end the reds won.
Then the wall fell down and we knew what true horrors lurked on the other side.
Individuals process these things fast enough. Well, my generation, at any rate, awakened by Reagan and shown that the win of the dark side was not inevitable, was more pro-freedom than people ten years older than us.
But when we saw the wall fall down, it pushed many of us further into the liberty side of the isle. Not only wasn’t a communist win inevitable, but their vaunted “strengths” like superior planning and better minority integration didn’t exist unless you really wanted to plan for three million size thirty boots for the left foot only, and integration meant grinding the minorities very fine and spreading them in the soil.
However cultures aren’t individuals. Cultures re-orient and process startling events very slowly.
Yeah, those older Republicans are still with us, and they were over 45 when the wall fell, which means they couldn’t reorient anymore. (Studies have been done.)
Sarah Hoyt, “The Long March”, According to Hoyt, 2015-12-20.
September 30, 2018
Contempt for the voters (even their own voters)
Steve Kates has been watching the confirmation hearings and associated circus acts in the US senate:
Let me start by explaining the basic framework. This is all politics. No one among the Democrat senators believes a word of Ford’s testimony. Not one of them would say a word were Kavanaugh a Democrat nominee. It is all show for the morons who vote for them. The disdain the Democrats have for their own voters is gigantic. They see them in the same way as I do: as low information, dumb beyond belief fools without a shred of common sense. They can see perfectly well that all of this has no other purpose but to make it harder for a government from the other party to govern. They want to pack the court with judges who will vote to do those things that cannot be done via a democratic legislative process. They understand perfectly well that they are trivialising accusations of rape. They comprehend without a shred of doubt that they are making the United States less governable. They can see without any hesitation that Ford is a stooge that has been put forward because the saps in their electorates across America eat all this up and hunger for more. They therefore do it because they enjoy the power this provides to them. They do it because they believe it will attract more voters than it will repel. They are making it as plain as day that they think their own constituency is ignorant and repulsive. But this is their line of work and if they are to keep their jobs, this is what they must do.
The Republicans think exactly the same – that Democrat voters are fools. And they know just as well as the Democrats that there is a proportion of the voting population that will make their vote depend on this and this alone. They understand rape is a terrible event in anyone’s life and would not nominate anyone if there were any genuine evidence that any of the accusations made against Kavanaugh are true. Aside from those members of their Senate caucus who prevented a majority vote from succeeding, they would have nevertheless taken the risk of the bad press that will follow when and if they confirm Kavanaugh’s nomination. They have a razor-thin majority in the Senate that can only survive a near-unanimous vote from their side of the aisle. They are counting on there being enough common sense and sound judgment left with the voting public to be able to succeed and retain the House and Senate majorities in November. They see the Democrat tactics for what they are.
As for the notion of sexual assault, to really believe that is the issue makes you so stupid that it is painful to see what nitwits politicians have to deal with routinely.
March 13, 2018
March 10, 2018
Remy: I Like it, I Love it
ReasonTV
Published on 8 Mar 2018After years of complaining about Washington’s fiscal irresponsibility, Remy is finally in office and ready to make a change.
———-Parody written and performed by Remy
Produced and Edited by Austin Bragg
Music tracks and backing vocals by Ben KarlstromLYRICS:
Spent four to eight years complaining about all the cash we spend
Asking for your vote and money, we need limited governmentAbout how these deficits are costing us a trillion a pop
But vote for me, I’ll be as stingy as a GameStopAnd then I got elected and took over DC
Cutting back on all spending is what I would do you’d thinkBut I like it, I love it, I want some more of it
A wall so tall you can’t climb above it
Don’t know what it is about the spending that I covet but
I like it, I love it, I want some more of itThe Founding Father Daddies tried to teach me currency
Now my spending list is longer than a CVS receipt
Now I’m keeping old programs and taking out loans
I’m scrapping spending caps and I’m cranking out dronesI’m adding more spending, I’m throwing a parade
My list is shovel-ready (so is most of what I say)Cuz I like it, I love it, I want some more of it
I talk a lot, it turns out I’m bluffing
Don’t know what it is about the spending that I covet but
I like it, I love it, I want some more of it
December 10, 2017
13 Non-Pedophile Reasons You Can Hate Roy Moore
ReasonTV
Published on 8 Dec 2017Even if you disregard the nine women accusing Roy Moore of sexual assault, there are plenty of reasons to despise him.
—–
Judicial incompetence, constitutional ignorance, and industrial strength bigotry are just some of the issues with the Alabama judge. In the latest Mostly Weekly Andrew Heaton covers some of the many reasons why Roy Moore sucks:• He taught a class discouraging women from running for office.
• He’s referred to people as “reds and yellows”.
• He thinks the accusations of pedophilia are pushed by homosexuals and socialists.
• Accepted money from a Neo-nazi group.
• Said gay marriage was worse than slavery.
• Wouldn’t rule out death penalty for gays.
• Wants to rescind free trade agreements.
• He’s anti-immigrant.
• Believes Barack Obama wasn’t born in America.
• Believes 9/11 is God’s punishment for legalizing sodomy and abortion.Mostly Weekly is hosted by Andrew Heaton, with headwriter Sarah Rose Siskind.
Script by Sarah Rose Siskind with writing assistance from Andrew Heaton and Brian Sack.
Edited by Austin Bragg and Siskind.
Produced by Meredith and Austin Bragg.
Theme Song: Frozen by Surfer Blood.
Political hysteria as a tool of persuasion
David Harsanyi on the way the Democrats are reacting to the apocalyptic news that the Republicans finally managed to pass a tax reform:
Whenever passable Republican legislation materializes — a rarity these days — Democrats quickly warn that thousands, or perhaps even millions, of lives are at stake. Tax reform? Health care? Bogus international treaties? Internet regulations that were only instituted last year? It really doesn’t matter. Longstanding conservative ideas are not only wrong; they portend the end of America as we know it.
Why are liberals so apocalyptic and bellicose about tax reform (a rare cut that is, according to the sometimes-reliable Washington Post fact-checkers, only the eighth largest in history)? Well, everyone in politics tends to dramatize the consequences of policy for effect. A modern Democratic Party drifting toward Bernie-ism, though, is far more likely to legitimately perceive any cuts in taxation as a limiting of state control, and thus, an attack on all decency and morality. Taxation, after all, is the finest tool of redistribution. So it’s understandable.
But that’s not all of it. With failure comes frustration, and with frustration there is a need to ratchet up the panic-stricken rhetoric. It’s no longer enough to hang nefarious personal motivations on your political opponents — although it certainly can’t hurt! Good political activists must now corrupt language and ideas to imbue their ham-fisted arguments with some kind of basic plausibility. Many liberal columnists, for example, will earnestly argue that Republicans — who at this moment control the Senate, the House of Representatives and the White House, thanks to our free and fair elections — are acting undemocratically when passing bills. As you know, democracy means raising taxes on the minority. What else could it mean?
December 8, 2017
But what about “whataboutism”?
Megan McArdle on the folks who automatically resort to “what about x”:
Last week, as you may have noticed, Republicans passed a tax bill. As you may also have noticed, Democrats were aghast. Passing a bill like that on straight party lines! Using a parliamentary maneuver to push through something that could never have survived a filibuster! How could Republicans be so brazen, so immoral, so fiscally irresponsible?
Those of us who remembered saying many of the same things during the passage of Obamacare had to beg them to stop. I mean, we could have been seriously hurt, laughing that hard.
But when I pointed this out, the good citizens of Twitter informed me over and over that this was mere “whataboutism.”
Whataboutism is defending some indefensible action by pointing to some equally indefensible action that was supported, or at least not condemned, by your opponents. (Whataboutism is usually defined as a version of the tu quoque fallacy, attacking the questioner rather than answering the question. It’s also a red herring.) After lobbing a few “What about you?” grenades, you use the resulting chaos to duck uncomfortable questions.
It is a favorite tactic of our president, whose campaign platform was “What about her emails?” Every time someone brings up the FBI investigation that is creeping closer to the highest echelons of his staff, he is fond of asking, apropos of nothing, why Hillary Clinton’s not in jail.
December 2, 2017
Reaching the limits of the “Burleigh effect”
ESR on the recent wave of news about sexual misdeeds of powerful politicians and prominent members of the media:
So, John Conyers now hints that members of Congress have been covering up widespread sexual assaults and workplace harassment from within their ranks for years, and that if he goes down lots of others will go down with him.
This is credible. We already know Congress has been paying out hush money to the tune of $17M to keep a lid on such allegations. That figure suggests that if there’s full disclosure, the carnage is going to be terrible.
But…Democrats will get hurt a lot worse than Republicans.
Why do I say this? Because Republicans have already been through a media hostility filter. The same J. Random Reporter (and Reporterette) that will manufacture chin-tugging excuses for the likes of Bill Clinton or Al Franken positively slavers at the thought of catching some old white conservative dude with his pants down. It is therefore likely that the really egregious Republican cases are already over.
Democrats, on the other hand, have been protected by what I’ll call the Burleigh effect. You remember Nina Burleigh, who said in public she’d give Bill Clinton a blowjob if it would protect abortion rights? Yeah, that.
The sewage the press has been not covering (Cokie Roberts said every female reporter in DC knew not to get on an elevator with Conyers) is likely to bust loose now. Especially because the hard-left faction of the Democrats obviously sees this as a way to purge the Clintonites.
I predict it’s going to be a grim time to be a Democrat in the next three months. Republicans will doubtless try to prolong the agony into the 2018 election season, and might succeed. In any case their campaign to stop the odious Ray Moore is looking pretty doomed,
December 1, 2017
“Maybe Trump’s voters aren’t angry enough yet”
One of the most disturbing phenomena of modern American political discourse is just how badly Trump’s critics are doing their jobs. It’s almost as though they’re collectively trying to get him another term in office. ESR has a bit of a rant:
I have more and more sympathy these days for the Trump voters who said, in effect, “Burn it all down.” Smash the media. Destroy Hollywood. Drain the DC swamp. We’ve all long suspected these institutions are corrupt. What better proof do we need than their systematic enabling of rape monsters?
As a tribune of the people Trump is deeply flawed. Some of his policy ideas are toxic. His personal style is tacky, ugly, and awful. But increasingly I am wondering if any of that matters. Because if he is good for nothing else, he is good for exposing the corruption, incompetence, and fecklessness of the elites – or, rather in their desperation to take him down before he breaks their rice bowls they expose themselves
Yeah. Is there anyone who thinks all these rocks would be turning over if Hillary the serial rape enabler were in the White House? Nope. With her, or any establishment Republican, it’d be cronyism all they way down, because they’d feel a need to keep the corrupt elites on side. Not Trump – his great virtue, perhaps overriding every flaw, is that he doesn’t give a fuck for elite approval.
Maybe Trump’s voters aren’t angry enough yet. It’s not just a large number of women our elites have raped and victimized, it’s our entire country. Our infrastructure is crumbling, our debt is astronomical, our universities increasingly resemble insane asylums, our largest inner cities are free-fire zones terrorized by a permanent criminal underclass. And what’s the elite response? Oh, look, a squirrel – where the squirrel of the week is carbon emissions, or transgender rights, or railing at “white privilege”, or whatever other form of virtue signaling might serve to hide the fact that, oh, look they put remote-controlled locks on their rape dungeons.
It’s long past time for a cleansing fire.
October 27, 2017
QotD: Russian meddling in US politics
In last week’s decidedly un-jocular “news”letter, I wrote about how the hypocrisy of the Left’s newfound outrage at Russia’s meddling in our politics can’t be summarized by saying “Romney was right!” when he said Russia was our biggest geopolitical foe in a debate with Barack Obama. Starting with George Kennan’s Long Telegram [link], conservatives spent the entirety of the Cold War pointing out that the Russians were undermining American life, and we got mocked and ridiculed for it by self-styled sophisticates who thought such concerns were little more than paranoia.
The ridicule didn’t end with the Cold War (when, by the way, the extent and danger of Russian meddling were much greater than they are now). Liberals were so invested in the idea that the political Right made too big a deal about Soviet Communism and that we used our hawkishness as an unfair wedge issue against Democrats that when Mitt Romney said an incandescently true thing about Putin’s Russia, liberals rolled their eyes and then laughed uproariously at Obama’s “the 1980s called” quip. In other words, they were so married to the myth of their moral and intellectual superiority, liberals preferred to stick with the punch-line than even imagine that reality wasn’t on their side.
Jonah Goldberg, “Binders Full of Asininity”, National Review, 2017-10-13.
September 29, 2017
Judge Roy Moore as a sign that worse is coming
ESR posted this to G+ yesterday:
Judge Roy Moore, a truly repellent creature who reifies every liberal’s fantasy of what fundamentalist conservatives are like (well, except for the racism – even Moore is not actually a racist), has won in Alabama against a candidate backed by the GOP establishment and Trump.
And I wonder if Democrats are too far gone to heed the warning.
You demonized the Tea Party, and you got Trump. If you neutralize or expel Trump as you dream of doing, worse is coming. Roy Moore is worse. Roy Moore is a sign. The conservative/populist revolt can no longer be contained even by Trump. The beast is loose.
Time to question your assumptions, Democrats (and establishment Republicans). The more painful and disruptive that self-questioning is, the more likely it is that your party might escape the destruction that is coming.
As the Instapundit often says, “Do you want more Trump? Because this is how you get more Trump.”
September 23, 2017
QotD: Political ideology
Ideological principle is the lifesblood of a political party. The more a party focuses on “electability” and “pragmatism”, the more it cuts its own wrists and drains its own blood. Eventually, the point is reached that the party exists for no reason but to profit the party elite, which is understandably not of interest to anyone outside that elite.
What do the Republicans stand for today?
Pragmatism in politics is like cocaine. A little bit goes a long ways. You not only win, but you feel like an all-conquering tiger. But gradually, you start needing more and more to achieve the same affect, until finally, you overdose and your heart stops.
Vox Day, “The impracticality of pragmatism”, Vox Popoli, 2015-10-24.
