December 27, 2017
MY CORNER by Boyd Cathey
The Anti-Trump Alliance: Mainstream Conservatism Contributes to It and
Affirms It – The Example of Ben Shapiro
Friends,
In
yesterday’s MY CORNER I commented on the collapse of the Russian “collusion”
accusation leveled at President Trump and his campaign. Despite its
increasingly visible vacuity and the lack of any actual evidence incriminating
the president, the forces of the Deep State establishment have only stepped up
their efforts to press the charge, characterized by a mounting hysteria and
frenzy. Their hatred for Trump is such that despite the paucity of facts, they
simply want, it seems, to “will” the accusations to be true.
In
the past I have labeled this response, which is both intellectual and
emotional, a kind of lunacy, a madness that appears to have possessed a wide
swathe of Americana, most especially in the media, in our entertainment
industry, and in academia—not to mention amongst various political leaders
(e.g., Congressmen Maxine Waters, Ted Lieu, and others).
This
anti-Trump hatred—which some pundits have, half-seriously, termed “Trump
Derangement Syndrome”—exists not just preponderantly over on the “farther
Left,” but also amongst prominent members of the so-called “conservative
movement,” that is, in its established journals, think tanks, and punditry
centered in and around Washington DC and in Manhattan.
Over
the past few years I have argued that well before the advent of Donald Trump,
the present-day leadership of what is termed contemporary “conservatism” was
actually an historical aberration, partaking in a kind of pseudo-“conservatism”
that owes far more to the theories and inherited nostrums of Marxist Leon
Trotsky than to the wisdom of Edmund Burke or to John C. Calhoun or, more
recently, to Russell Kirk. There are several primary accounts of what has been
essentially the “great brain robbery” of the conservative movement, including
critically significant studies by Paul Gottfried (The Strange Death of Marxism and Multiculturalism and the Politics of Guilt), Claes Ryn (The New Jacobinism and America the Virtuous), Gary Dorrien (The Neoconservative Mind), and others
which document what can only be described as a concerted subversion and
take-over of the “conservative movement.” This take-over by those we call
“Neoconservatives” occurred basically during the 1970s until the late 1980s,
and involved dramatic shifts in what “conservatism” had to say about major
questions confronting the American nation.
In
foreign policy, the Neocons were zealous believers in imposing “liberal
democracy” and a vague “egalitarianism” in every country of the world; while traditional
conservatives reject the idea that the United States must impose its views on
other countries, or that we must intervene in every local conflict or civil war
across the face of the globe.
Neocon
policy is premised on the belief in universal equality as a fundamental and
undeniable principle, and it is an egalitarianism that must be spread and
applied—and even enforced—everywhere.
Thus,
the Neocons, with their debt to Trotskyite theory and their contemporary
emphasis on egalitarianism as fundamental, buy into the Leftist template and
narrative about “civil rights” expansion, not just for blacks and other
minorities, but also for women and other determined social groups. The logical
conclusion of that line of thinking led them inevitably to champion such things
as the civil rights legislation of the 1960s and 1970s, which arguably
destroyed the constitutional protections for private property and further
weakened the already fragile balance between the rights of the states and the
role of the Federal government. This is in stark contrast to the resolute and
constitutionally-based opposition to such actions by earlier, traditional “old
right” conservatives—including an earlier William Buckley and Russell Kirk.
And
more recently Neocon egalitarianism has broadened, again I would suggest
logically, to encompass breaking down and dissolving gender distinctions,
including advocacy for women in previously all-male army units, defending same
sex marriage, support for transgender rights, and even recognition of “gender fluidity”
(e.g., Jonah Goldberg, Charles Krauthammer, James Kirchick, George Will, etc.).
Certainly, they are not usually as bold or as “advanced” in their propagation
of these propositions as the “farther Left,” and oftentimes, in their punditry or
essays, they can sound positively on the right, but their initial and
fundamental acceptance of the Trotskyite template and egalitarianism imprisons
them in an inescapable logic—and its conclusions.
While
the over-the-top frenzy, the lunatic reaction of the Deep State Left and its
various minions in the Mainstream Media and amongst the Democratic Party to the
usurper Donald Trump was to be in some ways anticipated, the derision and anger
of the Neocons at “non-movement,” non-establishment Trump’s successes—and their
fear of being displaced by what they saw as a “nativist” and “isolationist”
conservative Right taking over “their” movement, their private preserve—drew
them into a kind of loose anti-Trump “United Front” with their supposed opponents on
the farther Left. Yet, that common front was both logical and natural, given
their shared, if remote, ideological moorings.
In
effect, both the farther Left and the NeverTrump Neocons are two faces of the
same Progressivism that saw the election of Trump as an intolerable disruption
of the historically inevitable Progressive Revolution, a revolution which
always and ineluctably “moves Left.”
In the multi-front “war against
the president and his agenda,” it is the attitudes and actions of the so-called
“conservative movement,” the established Neocon elites centered along the
Potomac and along the Hudson, that in singular fashion have been the most
deceptive and offensive. While not joining the most extreme, “farther Left”
proponents of revolution, their temporization and acceptance of the Left’s
major, overarching premises on race and gender, and the undergirding principle
of “equality,” have neutralized any effective opposition they might have
summoned.
These “conservatives” never wanted
that New York billionaire, that usurper, in the White House, and they did their
damnedest to prevent his election. But now that he occupies 1600 Pennsylvania
Avenue, they presume from their perches of power to lecture him on what he
should be doing and saying (and not doing and not saying). Unsuccessful in 2016
with a panoply of other candidates—who were rejected by an immense nationalist
conservative and populist revulsion—they now demand, usually with dripping and
unconcealed condescension in their voices (or in their printed words), to
lecture President
Trump about what he should and should not do. Think here of such media figures
as Mark Thiessen, Steve Hayes (The Weekly
Standard), the various writers for National
Review (David French, Kevin Williamson), The Washington Free Beacon and Ben Shapiro’s Daily Wire, not to mention the various GOP politicos who have done
the same (e.g. Senators Lindsey Graham and others).
A
few days prior to Christmas I happened to catch—not on purpose—a few minutes of
Shapiro substituting for Glenn Beck on his radio program (December 21). Beck,
of course, is an inveterate NeverTrumper and a certifiable nut case, if there
ever was one. Shapiro, one of those one “fair-headed” young Neoconservatives
being groomed for greater things in the incestuous world of Inside-the-Beltway
Establishment conservative politics, first expressed some surprising approval
for a few things that the president had achieved in 2017 (e.g., tax reform,
cutting bureaucracy, naming of Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court), but then—like
the irrepressible condescending know-it-all “kid” that he is, lit into the
president.
And
the first of the president’s “unforgivable” sins was equating the violent
Marxist Antifa and Black Lives Matter counter-demonstrators in Charlottesville
with the—as Shapiro called them—“Nazi, anti-Semitic Klan thugs” who had
announced their prior demonstration in favor of keeping up the monument to
General Lee. That was simply impermissible! Trump was issuing a “dog-whistle”
to the extreme Right, bleated Shapiro, to the NeoConfederates and all those
millions of unwashed Nazis out there in Clinton, North Carolina, or Macon,
Georgia, or Terra Haute, Indiana.
Partaking
of the “racism” narrative dogmatically imposed by the farther Left, that
ideological cudgel used by the Progressivist Revolution, Shapiro zealously
performed his appointed task of attempting to deceive and misdirect those
conservatives who listened to him. But not only did his whiny rhetoric attempt
to shore up the Deep State view from the “conservative flank,” it was wrong,
based on faulty and fake information about what really did occur in Charlottesville—information
that Shapiro could have obtained if he had actually been interested in a
truthful account (which he obviously was not). [http://www.vdare.com/articles/the-system-repudiated-citys-own-report-confirms-charlottesville-police-politicians-conspired-to-suppress-unite-the-right-rally?content=the%20greater%20factor.
]
His
next anti-Trumpian target was this nation’s pull-out from the Trans-Pacific
Partnership, a part of the president’s efforts to re-assert America’s economic
independence and assist beleaguered American business interests internationally.
Shapiro, aspiring globalist that he is, condemned the move. How dare the
president retreat from globalism and our “global obligations”!
Continuing
on, young rapid-fire Ben bitterly criticized Trump for his support for Judge
Roy Moore in Alabama, and also lambasted Steve Bannon (“destructive strategist
who could bring down the GOP”!), and he decried, pro forma, the president’s use
of tweets, his language, and, of course, his “unpresidential” demeanor…but most
of all, marking his screed was the profound undercurrent, an understanding,
that the real and major reasons that those I will call “FecalCons” like Shapiro
don’t like the president is: (1) he is “not one of them” and (2) he simply won’t take orders—although President Trump has indeed made some compromises
(most recently the very unwise acceptance of selling arms to Ukraine, which
will only fuel the civil war in that country).
The
value in forcing myself to listen to Shapiro for thirty minutes was that it vividly illustrated once again, in bold and audible terms, clear manifestations of the core principles of the ersatz “conservative movement” that jealously rules over what is called “conservatism” today. That “conservatism” is
firmly attached to and offers succor and support in its own “conservative
manner” to the Revolution’s twin ideological templates on race and sex (even if
in slightly more palatable, if still fatal, doses).
This
is not the traditional conservatism of a Russell Kirk (the accepted founder of
the modern movement) or of a Mel Bradford (the greatest modern Southern
intellectual); this is not the conservatism of a Senator Robert Taft, or of a
John C. Calhoun, or of a Thomas Jefferson. This is not the conservatism of
American tradition; rather, it is that tradition subverted by pilgrims from the
Trotskyite Left who did not leave their essentially Leftist worldview behind
when they “came in from the cold.”
In
effect, in today’s America we have two major political forces—both in varying
degrees on the Left or owing their foundational principles to Marxist theory.
In
a sense, November 2016 was a repudiation of that—even
if most of those “deplorables” who voted that way did not understand the deeper
implications of their “non placet.” Yet,
both faces of the Left—the “farther Left” and the Neocons—did understand. And
their documented actions since then have fully illustrated their response and
reactions.
No,
Ben, Steve Bannon is not a “destructive strategist,” he understands what is at
stake and what must happen for that initial repudiation to have effect, and that is to send all those Republican Deep State
politicians with whom you sleep every night—to send them home with a one-way
ticket via a Greyhound bus.
It
begins now…and, if we’re successful, yes, we have a great new position for you:
priming tobacco in the hot Carolina sun in eastern Carolina along with
thousands of sweating illegals. Try some of your whiny charm on them, for a
change.
Dr.
Boyd D. Cathey
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