The Right has been losing badly for a long time, and the rate at which it’s losing seems to be picking up. If that’s so, and part of the problem has been that we’ve been paying attention to the wrong things, how can we turn that around?
12 thoughts on “What should the Right be discussing?”
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We cannot turn things around any faster than we’re already doing
I don’t see how we can do anything but keep discussing the truth as we see it, from all angles—exactly as we’ve been doing. The biggest step is not hitting upon “just the right refinement of tactic or strategy that will finally start to bear copious amounts of fruit.” The biggest step is the one taken right at the beginning, the very first step: simply pronouncing a truth—pronouncing something which people, for example, may have been afraid to pronounce for ever so long because they know it’s been prohibited and they face soft or hard social sanctions if they dare to contravene the taboo. To pronounce a hitherto forbidden truth (or, in some cases, one that’s not forbidden but simply never got enunciated because was never yet called into focus in men’s minds by the exigencies of reigning societal conditions)—to pronounce a truth through any medium, whether speech, the press, the broadcast airwaves, the movies, the internet, etc., is to midwife a birth. A birth takes place.
Then a baby grows.
Hit the nail on the head…
Mr. Scrooby is 100% right; just keep the truth alive, and passed along, may be all we can do, for now, but that may be enough, and God willing, one day those who still know the truth can do more…
“We are the dead. Our only true life is in the future. We shall take part in it as handfuls of dust and splinters of bone. But how far away that future may be, there is no knowing. It might be a thousand years. At present nothing is possible except to extend the area of sanity little by little. We cannot act collectively. We can only spread our knowledge outwards from individual to individual…”
– from George Orwell’s “Nineteen Eighty-Four”
“First: we might as well forget about fomenting a cultural and intellectual revolution in our time. It’s too late. Our adversaries are completing their revolution; we are out of time. But whatever happens to American civilization in the near term, people will go on inhabiting this land for centuries, even millennia. We must — in Orwell’s words — “extend the area of sanity little by little,” from individual to individual, in hopes of reaching out to that posterity. Those “post-Americans” — perhaps living under a regime weaker than ours — might derive a timely warning from our legacy, assuming it survives the memory hole of our regime. In any event, leaving such a legacy is an act of loyalty to the human future.
Second: whether anyone hears us or not, heeds us or not, joins us or not, we hold it an honorable mission to stand and witness as darkness falls. It’s an act of loyalty to the good that our civilization once represented.
Finally: although we may think of ourselves as old bones, our rulers regard us as children — wayward, unloved, casually abusable children, at that. But we are adults. We are men and women who ought to be free. We must purge ourselves of illusions, lest we be children, as well as slaves. We must attempt to see and speak of our world as it is, in all its horror.
That is an act of loyalty to ourselves.”
– from http://www.thornwalker.com/ditch/whowe.htm
Will S.
The downward spiral…
As Will.S said,
“We must purge ourselves of illusions, lest we be children, as well as slaves”
Feminism (to me) metaphorically symbolises the child in the store saying “i want!, i want!” – without reason or accountability.
It is up to ‘thinkers’ (rather than the feminist ‘feelers’ ) – to call a ‘spade-a-spade’ where it is self-evident. Stop being afraid of feminism.
I suspect that one of the primary reasons that patriachy has let feminism slowly (but dissasterously) have its way over the last 30-or-so years, is men’s nature to ‘take care’ of women & society. “We want this!” – so the men thought, “well, let them have it & they’ll be happy & hopefully stop bothering us.” but, once the feminist ball started rolling, it was unstoppable. Next it was affirmative action & making any social collective a 50-50 quota of men/women. A selecting based on sex, rather than merit or reason. (A sexist ideal in its own right that feminism was fighting against from the begining.)
Also, most married men (not wanting to displease their wives) – or risk a divorce where the woman is looked on more favourably with child custody, alimony, etc – would cower when presented with these fearful possibilities.
I say we should’nt be afraid of feminism.
Feminism has labelled dissagreeing with their ideals, as “misogynistic” – so society (especially men) don’t want to be labelled ‘woman haters’.
The more i look at like-minded anti-feminists, the more i see ‘reasoned’ & ‘logical’ points of view to better our way of life. – compared to the feminist’s standpoint of blaming men, patriachy for women’s (supposed) oppression.
Feminsim has not yet (nor will be able to) replace a historical WORKING patriachal model with their (no rules) fuzzy-logic based ideals that can’t bear fruit.
Since about 1970 (or so) since feminism first came into acclaim – we have been spiralling downward. Feminist’s experiment (much to our collective detriment) isn’t working. It’s working less well every day.
BobbyN
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Bobby’s absolutely got it nailed (8/26, 9:50 PM)
“Feminism has not yet (nor will it be able to) replace a historical WORKING patriarchal model with their no-rules fuzzy-logic-based ideals that can’t bear fruit. Since about 1970 or so, when feminism first met with acclaim, we have been spiraling downward. The Feminist experiment (much to our collective detriment) isn’t working. It’s working less well every day. BobbyN”
Good work, BobbyN! You’ve got it, in a nutshell!
the permanence of the narrative.
we don’t have all that hard a time winning the day by persistantly underscoring the truth as we see it. despite the mountain of lies thrown at us over the past few years, we’ve held ground precisely because we’ve been able to answer each lie as it is slung via the blogosphere and radio.
but the effect of our truth telling does not persist beyond the day. this is because of two things: 1)the leftwing stranglehold on the humanities, and 2) the incohesiveness of our movement.
regarding the first part, we need to make agreeable art, liturature and histories visible, emphasizing their agreeable qualities. we need to encourage agreeable artists, philosophers and historians to be open about their perspectives. in encouraging this we need to employ a wide net that embraces modernity while, of course, rejecting modernISM.
on the second point, i see a crippling deficit between left and right. the pedestrian “social justice” devotee is armed with a governing theory that drives their assumptions, wrong or right. the pedestrian rightist, on the other hand, seems to only be able to articulate their rightism as a catologue of positions on discrete issues, the amalgum of which they describe as conservatism. the upshot is that vulgar leftists are more flexible thinkers than vulgar rightists. even when a rightist has theology as underpinning for their conservatism, this is not a political philosophy and intrinsicly proves nothing about conservatism. the difference is that while their leadership has it’s most casually engaged ranks navigating by the stars, we have ours squinting at the ocean looking out for the boueys.
it would seem to me that republicanism can be developed into a world view with great potential to inspire thought and activism. in a world rife with modernism and kleptocracy, and a homefront where republican ideals are reviled by elites even as they are what makes us great (the dissonance there causing much deep, existantial confusion amongst yong people), republicanism perhaps even has that iconclastic quality that warms otherwise indifferent bloodstreams.
—jrobertfleming
Things look bleak, yes — but our side’s just getting suited up!
Isn’t J. Robert Fleming (9/04, 12:17 AM) being a bit pessimistic? He writes,
“On the second point, I see a crippling deficit between left and right. Pedestrian ‘social justice’ devotees are armed with a governing theory that drives their assumptions, wrong or right. Pedestrian rightists, on the other hand, seem able only to articulate their rightism as a catologue of positions on discrete issues, the amalgam of which they describe as conservatism. The upshot is that vulgar leftists are more flexible thinkers than vulgar rightists. Even when rightists have theology as the underpinning for their conservatism this is not a political philosophy, and intrinsically proves nothing about conservatism. The difference is that while the left’s leadership has its most casually engaged ranks navigating by the stars, we have ours squinting at the ocean looking out for the buoys.”
For one thing, the left’s faux-romantic image of “navigating by the stars” is due partly to its having chosen terms for itself with good PR value, like “Progressive” and “Liberal.” What idealistic person between 16 and 35 wants to be a mean, stodgy, crabbed “conservative” when he could belong to the group whose name proclaims it responsible for making all the social progress in the world? (Of course the left makes no social progress but only wreaks social destruction.)
For another thing, to a large extent what are seen as the left’s dazzling philosophical triumphs since the sixties are an illusion based on the left’s trick of merely bold-facedly denying time-tested truths that have been guiding men and nations surely, unerringly, for eons, since the dawn of civilization. For them to go around doing that looks dazzling all right, at first glance. After all, who but those with an inside track on some of the deepest, most stupendous truths in the universe could dare to go round writing off verities men and societies have always lived by with naught but a sneer and a wave of the hand! But probe a little and you see it’s they, the left, not the conservatives, who have no “governing theory” or “underpinnings.” Nevertheless it’s hard to refute them immediately because to do so requires a whole philosophy of society’s underpinnings, which hasn’t been fully developed yet because we’ve never seen exactly this sort of radical attack before. (Another thing we’ve never seen before which adds to the difficulty of the task before us is this alliance between Marxism and Wall Street which we’re up against, a chimera not just new, but absolutely inconceivable as little as a couple of decades ago.)
But our side’s soldiers, unintimidated, are answering the call to the colors and winning battles, so let’s not be too pessimistic.
Here is a passage from an article in this month’s issue of The American Conservative:
“Who stands to defend Western civilization […]? Certainly not the liberals. […] One would expect conservatives to […] support tradition. But among purported conservatives it is important to make a distinction between traditional conservatives and neoconservatives. […] The only Western tradition neoconservatives want to defend is the Enlightenment. […] The true defenders of the Western traditions will be the traditional conservatives. They are able to recognize that the central and crucial tradition of Western Civilization is the Christian tradition, which has carried on the best elements of the Classical tradition while subordinating them to higher Biblical truth. Christianity, in other words, kept the other Western traditions in balance [the three main Western traditions being, according to this author, the Classical tradition, the Christian tradition, and the Enlightenment]. Perhaps in our time it is the calling of those few traditional conservatives found within the educated élite to reach out to the large numbers of Christians within the wider population, to help deepen their understanding of the major issues before us, and to give voice to their Christian—and Western—convictions.”
(— James Kurth, The Way the West Won, in the current edition of The American Conservative, Sept. 13, 2004, p. 22)
Readers of this web-site don’t need to be told that among the traditional conservative forces that have joined battle in this war is Turnabout.
Truth
Fred said “the truth as we see it” then “a truth.” I thought that there was a “truth” not some relativistic truth easily manipulated. Fred, you have been infected with the disease of liberalism with all its shades of grey.
Liberalism tries to suppress certain truths with its mailed fist
The problem with liberalism isn’t “shades of gray.” (Myst. Str., sarcasm, 9/04, 3:38 PM.) Normalness certainly acknowledges shades of gray. The problem with liberalism is the way it supports degenerateness at every turn over normalness.
I think you are now making up
I think you are now making up words. Does “Liberal” = “Degenerate”?
If you’re liberal, I’m sorry to be the bearer of bad news…
Myst. Str. asks, “Does ‘Liberal’ = ‘Degenerate’?” (today, 3:57 PM).
That’s certainly how liberalism looks from where I stand. Thanks for asking…
________________________
“If a tree falls and an expert doesn’t hear it, is there a sound?” Yes, the sweetest, most melodious sound in all creation: the sound of entropy being brought clanking, screeching, grinding to a halt.
Beware of the equivocal sense
I suspect one contributing factor for the failure of American conservatism to actually conserve much is its blindness to the equivocal sense of the words it claims as ideals. Because of this, and out of desperation to find allies against the Left, conservatives have latched on to anybody who spouts the right words, without really bothering to verify if both sides mean the same things.
For evidence of this phenomenon, see Claes G. Ryn’s _America the Virtuous_, which touches on this point in many places without drawing the conclusion I did. Ryn makes the case that for many of the ideals held by traditional Americans, there’s a revolutionary interpretation of that ideal. Consciously or not, the new revolutionaries, whom Ryn calls neo-Jacobins, are using new meanings cloaked in old terms to achieve their goals. The old ideals Ryn mentions are those like virtue, democracy, liberty, and the free market. For example, Virtue for Old America(to use Rumsfeld’s taxonomy) meant things like humilty, self-restraint, and helping one’s neighbor. For “New America,” virtue means things like loving the oppressed of the world(without ever doing too much about the lonely poor guy down the block), believing that the principles of democratic capitalism will save them, and supporting sending the US State Department and DOD all over the world to spread belief in abstract American principles.
Further, Old America thought democracy meant constitutional, decentralized government and loyalty to all the little platoons of life, like family, church, the rotary club, and the town hall—all of which helped cultivate the virtues necessary for living freely. New America thinks of democracy as “plebiscitary,” the expression of atomized and decultured individuals who care about their rights, the Federal government as defender of those rights, and not much else. They also think democracy the best form of government under any circumstances, regardless of the “unwritten constitution” that has to live under that democracy.
Here’s an analysis of how the “free market” can be interpreted in a revolutionary way, from Ryn’s chapter titled “Jacobin Capitalism”:
This reveals a whole new meaning to the slogan of the libertarian magazine Reason, “Free minds and free markets.” And in fact the motivation for a particular implementation of the free market is precisely to unleash “gales of creative destruction,” clearing away the accumulated detrius of culture. This is a rather Marxist understanding of capitalism, and I worry that this is precisely the capitalism that many ex-Trotskyite neocons are working hard to advocate and to implement around the world, having successfully implemented it here at home.
A healthy understanding of the multiple meanings of political rhetoric, its conservative and revolutionary senses, and the clarification thereof, is vital to any conservative movement.
–kjj
How about restoring trad values
If you wonder how come it is very difficult these days to say what “normal” is, and how come society standards are in a shambles, I offer the insights of Charles Krauthammer. In a classic essay written in 2000 (but which I have only just discovered), Krauthammer says we are being subjected to a vast social project of moral leveling, in which the deviant is being normalized, and the normal is being redefined as deviant.
“In 1940, a survey was taken of teachers asking them to list the five most important problems in school. They were: (1) talking out of turn; (2) chewing gum; (3) making noise; (4) running in halls; and (5) cutting in line.
“Fifty years later, the survey was repeated. The 1990 list was substantially revised: (1) drug abuse; (2) alcohol abuse; (3) pregnancy; (4) suicide; (5) rape.
“Moynihan’s powerful point is that with the “moral deregulation” of the 1960s, we have had an explosion of deviancy in family life, criminal behavior, and publicly displayed psychosis. And we have dealt with it in the only way possible: by redefining deviancy down so as to explain away and make “normal” what a more civilized, ordered, and healthy society would long ago have labeled—and once long ago did label—deviant.
“While for the criminals and the crazies deviancy has been defined down (the bar defining normality has been lowered), for the ordinary bourgeois deviancy has been defined up (the bar defining normality has been raised). Large areas of ordinary behavior hitherto considered benign have had their threshold radically redefined up, so that once innocent behavior now stands condemned as deviant. Normal middle class life then stands exposed as the true home of violence, abuse, misogyny, a whole of catalog deviant acting and thinking.
“As part of this project of moral leveling, whole new areas of deviancy—such as date rape and politically incorrect speech—have been discovered. And old areas—such as child abuse—have been amplified by endless reiteration in the public presses and validated by learned reports of their astonishing frequency. The net effect is to show that deviancy is not the province of criminals and crazies but thrives in the heart of the great middle class. The real deviants of society stand unmasked. Who are they? Not Bonnie and Clyde but Ozzie and Harriet.
“The moral deconstruction of middle class normality is a vast project. Fortunately, it has thousands of volunteers working on the case. By defining deviancy up they have scored some notable successes. Three, in particular. And in precisely the same three areas Moynihan identified: family life, crime, and mental illness.”
The full article can be read here.