The Implosion of the American Right

Conservatism, neoconservatism, and how their war resulted in fatalism.

There are certain moments in life where everything seems frozen in time. The freezing, most likely, happens because of a shift in what we thought reality actually was. It’s like the moment in a horror movie before the girl who just fucked the football player (even though she didn’t want to) gets stabbed by the crazed farmer. We all know what’s going on. But, for the uninitiated, we almost can’t believe our eyes. We thought it was going to be one way. But, as it turns out, it’s another. 

On October 7th, the world was flipped upside down. In the biggest organized terror attack on the world stage since 9/11, the Iranian-backed Palestinian terror group Hamas launched a surprise assault into long-time enemy Israel. The Israeli intelligence community and the Mossad were caught completely off guard. No one knew what was happening, like the aforementioned horror scene, before it was right in front of their eyes. Unfortunately for us all, what happened afterwards was far worse than anything that any horror director could have filmed. 

If you’re unfortunate enough to have a social media account (as are all of us) you’ve already seen the footage. You can’t filter it out. Even if you try to avoid it, it always finds you. The algorithms are too good. They know that, for lack of a better argument, human beings are suckers for pain and degenerates for suffering. I like to believe that this is for the best, that it shows the brighter side of human nature. However, it also exposes us to the travesty of human nature, the other side of the line the great Alexander Solzhenitsyn says draws through the heart of every human. 

What we saw from the events on October 7th and thereafter were things that were relics of a time gone by, things that should have been left in the days of the medieval. We saw babies and children be decapitated, murdered, and mutilated. We saw women be furiously raped and set on fire. We saw families ripped apart and dragged across enemy lines. We saw an entire country's soul leave its body, much as America did on September 11th. We saw the collective spirit of not just a nation, but a people that have been oppressed since the writing of the Bible, be brought to its knees. 

Thankfully, across the world, most people mourned the worst day since the Holocaust for the world’s Jews. They condemned the brutality and ruthlessness of Hamas which, to this day, has not ceased. For those on the fence, if evil existed in our society, they were dragged, or at least should have been, to one side or the other. They had their eyes opened. They now knew. They had seen the carnage. It had been imprinted on their brains forever, just as all trauma does to all of us. 

But, as human nature would have predicted, that empathy soon turned from mourning to savagery. 

Not soon enough after, everyone in the world seemed to be at each other’s throats. Everyone had an opinion on who should be punished and how severely. Everyone began to ratchet up the rhetoric, talking to people who opposed them with an enhanced intensity that transcended the normal levels of discussion by large volumes. And, stranger than anything else, almost none of these feelings were leveled at the Israeli people or the terror group that had just ripped the heart out of their culture. 

Before I go deeper, I would like to begin with this. I’m personally very uneducated on the conflict in the Middle East, and on foreign policy in general. It, to me, is the most unbelievably complicated cultural and political subject that I’ve ever encountered. There’s so much that goes into it that makes my head spin. I can’t begin to go below the surface level without feeling tremendously out of my depth. I don’t believe I’m alone in feeling this way (as I’m sure we’ll get into later on). 

But what I do know is this. Whenever a conflict breaks out, as we’ve seen very recently with the War in Ukraine, and have seen with things such as the Vietnam War and the War on Terror, the greatest enemy underneath the people on the battlefield is the enemy of information. Propaganda, as we’ve seen for the last 18+ months with the money laundering scheme that our government has been complicit in peddling to sacrifice Ukraine to get at Russia, is remarkably powerful. It comes in a deluge from almost every possible angle. Like the videos of Hamas brutalizing Israeli children, it’s not a matter of if you’re exposed, but when. 

Anything this outrageous and brutal is meant for one purpose- to cause a reaction out of people. The whole point of terrorism is to evoke people to do something in response to the reaction. It is deliberately meant to radicalize, to cause an uproar, to be so offensive to every sense of what it means to be human that you cannot help yourself but to rise to its calling. Interestingly, with the Hamas attack on Israel, I began to notice a very strange reaction from many people on a front that I’m very familiar with. 

If you’ve read or listened to my work for a while, I’m sure this may not come as a shock. I’ve never been open about my political affiliations before, strictly because I want my writing to be taken seriously. But, for the spirit of this discussion, I believe I need to come out of the closet. I, for most of my adult life, considered myself to be a staunch conservative. *Gasp*

2015, the year I turned 18, was a wild one. I remember watching a Donald Trump debate before I went to a late-night football practice, and was hooked on his humor. My parents, who had been raised by primarily Blue Dog, working-class Midwest Democrats, had gradually become conservatives over time. My dad was more balanced and moderate on most issues, while my mother soon became pretty hardcore Republican. 

I, however, became something else. I knew that Trump was something different, as many did, from the moment I saw him. My parents took a very long time to come around to him, and eventually became more open supporters of him than I ever was comfortable with being. Even so, there was something about the MAGA Movement that was different than what I thought being a “Republican” meant. A Republican, to me, was someone old and unimpressive who talked about taxes. I much preferred Trump, who at least had the gall to call them old and unimpressive. 

There has been much discussion in recent years about the decay of the modern American Left, particularly in the divide between what were deemed traditional Democrats and the more progressive, Woke Left. I believe that much of that argument, at least as of now, has been settled. The traditional Democrats of old no longer exist. The Wokeness epidemic, much like cancer, has completely overwhelmed the dying tissues of the old Democratic Party. 

So, this begs a question- what happened to a lot of old, traditional Democrats, exactly? Well, as evidenced by the key demographics that helped elect Trump in 2016, a good portion of them became reluctant Trump supporters. They saw the writing on the wall, the open disdain for them and their values, and wanted none of it. They saw the way Trump had come up, the way he talked, the way he at least talked about people like construction and factory workers as if they were at least equal to him. That was enough. 

The allergic reaction to Trump among the old, unimpressive Republican class was palpable to anyone with open eyes and ears. They loathed his populism, how dismissive he was of how highly they thought of themselves. Anytime Trump would go on a well-argued tangent about how NATO shouldn’t exist, or that bombing the shit out of the Middle East was a mistake, or that corporations shouldn’t run roughshod over small business, people like Lindsey Graham and Mitt Romney cringed. Whenever he would make an ass out of himself, they laughed. It was a simple calculus. 

Ben Shapiro (who we’ll touch on more later) had a great analogy for the Trump phenomenon. Trump was not the murderer of modern politics, particularly on the Right. Instead, he was the coroner. He was simply sweeping the dead body off of the street and putting it away. He knew he was looking at a husk, as did everyone else who dared enough to be honest about it. He was the one person who, contrary to all else, did so out loud and in front of everyone. That made him a target, and it was what eventually led to his ouster from the mainstream by everyone who had something to lose from his presence. (Hint: A lot of people.)

However, unfortunately for all who opposed him, even when Trump left the mainstream, particularly when he was deplatformed after January 6th, the stench of what he unearthed didn’t go away. It lingered, and was carried on into further debates and discussion. The Republican Party faced a key decision point- who were they going to be? Was Trump the future, or was the old guard going to carry on? This was an important question, one that competent and smart leadership would have figured out straightaway. 

Unfortunately, as most of us know, that competent and smart leadership in the Republican Party does not exist. The reasoning for this is because the Republican Party is run by idiots. They are clowns, imbeciles, buffoons. They have not answered the fundamental question of what a Republican in 2023 looks like. So, therefore, the door has been opened to corruption for any opportunist with even a small semblance of timing. 

Which, therefore, leads us back to the response from the American Right to the Hamas terror attack on Israel. The one lasting legacy of Donald Trump, the thing that no one can take from him, was that he didn’t start any new wars when he was in office. He may have made some bad policy decisions, but at least no open conflict erupted. That has not been the case at all for President Biden. The strongest skill set of Trump is, easily, the worst skill set of Biden, who has started two wars and counting on behalf of his ineptitude since he took office. Therefore, foreign policy among conservatives is the first place people go for their confusion on the American Right. 

The most open example of this was the X war that erupted between Megyn Kelly and Candace Owens. Kelly, one of the most open critics of cancel culture and proponents of free speech, had used that tone to build out one of the biggest empires in new media. Her show constantly ranked as the top, if not the best, daily news show in the world. She was a queen of the media space, all built on a premise that got her fired from her job as a daytime host on NBC- free speech is free, no matter what. 

This notion made it incredibly surprising to all of her fans, including me, when she started to go after students on college campuses for their stances towards Palestine. Kelly, a supposed champion of free speech and debate, chose to use her time as a prestigious host to ruthlessly go after college students who were protesting on behalf of the Palestinian people. Some of these people, to Kelly’s credit, are open supporters of Hamas, who just led a terror attack that led to babies, children, and women being slaughtered. Any support of them should immediately be delegitimized. This isn’t controversial. 

However, Kelly went further than that. She said openly on her show that lists should be gathered of people at these protests and in Palestinian student groups on campus. They should publish those lists of students on the internet, she said. There should be a cohesive effort on behalf of American employers to ban these students from getting jobs, for making use of their education. She supported people like ghoulish hedge fund financier Bill Ackman, who was currently using his massive wealth and resources to do the exact thing. These students should be called out by name, dragged in front of a new type of Cancellation Mob, and punished for their “crime” of supporting Israeli backlash against Palestine, which has also killed children and women, as all wars do. 

Owens, the apparent only one to notice how insane and Orwellian this was, called her out on X, stating that this was, obviously, a violation of First Amendment Rights for students. Kelly doubled down with nonsensical comeback after nonsensical comeback. “You should hire them”, she stated, as if she didn’t spend years railing, rightly, against groups like academia, Black Lives Matter, and Silicon Valley for the same. Employers cannot discriminate in their hiring processes- period, end of discussion. 

There were a few people that backed Candace Owens, most notably Vivek Ramaswamy and Jason Whitlock- ironically, all non-white conservatives. The supporters of Kelly, also supposed “free speech absolutists”, shut down the people who were voicing their concerns about free speech. There was no thought given to the fact that these were young, dumb college students who were participating in a thing that young, dumb college students often do- say things they don’t mean because they don’t have the context to fill in the gaps. That didn’t matter to people like Megyn Kelly. All that mattered was that these students said something she didn’t like. Hate speech is free speech, unless you’re a college student at a pro-Palestinian protest chanting “From the river to the sea”. 

Like dominos, this effect began to multiply across conservative culture. Ron DeSantis, who made his name by campaigning on free speech and the autonomy of individuals and the family, began to ban pro-Palestinian groups on college campuses in Florida. Douglas Murray said that he “didn’t want to live in a country” with people who supported Hamas. Most hilariously of all, commercials began to run on mainstream television in the middle of college and NFL football, the most popular show on television, of posting a Blue Square to social media with the hashtag #StopJewishHate. Anyone remember #StopAsianHate and #BlackoutTuesday? I certainly do. I would be willing to bet all the people that feel this way remember, too. 

Allow me to be clear on something yet again. The rise of antisemitism in the world, particularly over the last two years, has been alarming. People have seemingly forgotten that Jews are a minority of people, and should be treated as such. The amount of open and blatant antisemitism from the American Left, a group that once stood up for Jews far more than the Right, is a tragedy. There is no place for people like Whoopi Goldberg and Kanye West to use their respective platforms to softball or openly call out hatred for Jews. That is unacceptable behavior, and we should treat it as such. 

But what is alarming is the fact that what modern conservatives are seeing across thought leaders is exactly the same as what their beloved Social Justice Warriors did during the mid-2010s. But, instead of mocking them, as they did then, they’re now creating a new class of them. As put by Glenn Greenwald, if safe spaces were deemed as silly ideas for ethnic minorities and LGBTQ people, why isn’t the same consistency applied to Jews, who fit the exact same category as those folks? 

There is one obvious callout that needs to be addressed here as well. Unlike ethnic minorities and the LGBTQ movement, they did not have a massive terrorist attack levied against them. They were far more Boy Who Cried Wolf than the Jews, particularly recently. They have a reason to be scared and worried. It’s horrible. But, again, standards have to apply for all. I know for a fact that many blacks felt scared after the George Floyd death and many LGBTQ people felt scared after the PULSE nightclub massacre. Their concerns, it seems, were considered less important. 

The point of all of this is that the trend we’re seeing among the American Right is concerning. The best question I’ve heard when it comes to conservative politics came from a very competent and impressive person, Matt Walsh. The essential question that Walsh has long asked about conservatism is simple:

“What is it that you are trying to conserve?”

It is this that the American Right has yet to answer, and it has this that is causing the American Right to constantly lose, underperform, and wither away to nothing. It is a notion that has been lost on the American Right. It is why I do not consider myself anymore to be a part of the American Right (as soon as I get the opportunity, I’m registering as an Independent, and voted for Bobby Kennedy out of him, Biden, and Trump in a recent Twitter poll by Tim Kennedy, if it really matters that much- subject to change, obviously). 

Even though I identify with many of the principles of the Right, my biggest issue is that there is no identity on the Right. The biggest issue for conservatism in America, the biggest reason as to why they’ve lost in both elections and voter retention, is because they have no fucking clue who they are. The Hamas-Israel free speech debate is just another canary in the coal mine to show that. Take a side, but show us who you are. This is what everyone, regardless of political affiliation, wants, and what everyone, regardless of political affiliation, has failed to receive. 

To break this down, we’re going to start with the principles of conservatism and what it really means. Second, we’re going to do the same thing with modern Republicanism, and how it corrupted it. Last, we will expand on why this flawed notion will continue to doom the Right going into the future. 

Time to fully step out of the closet. 

Part I: Conservatism

 

For most of the history of humanity, modern political thought wasn’t a thought at all. It didn’t exist, because it couldn’t exist. Even in conversations that were had by Aristotle and Plato, those weren’t conversations about operations- they were conversations about morality, about the way the natural world was ordered. They formed the foundations for much of modern civilizations, but that was far from how most modern civilizations acted. 

The modern evolution of the way societies were governed truly did not begin to evolve until Niccolo Machiavelli’s publication of The Prince in the 1500s. That book, which many believe to be the first book explicitly on political science, opened up a Pandora’s Box for humanity on how power was balanced in society. In those days, most civilized nations were run by some combination of either aristocracy or royalty, both of which had a divine connotation behind them. 

However, as societies continued to evolve, the stranglehold on some kind of god-king royal class began to loosen. People began to think for themselves because of things like the Reformation of the Church and the Enlightenment. There were new forms of power, as Machiavelli described, that went outside of the previously-held cultural norms of most prior thoughts. There were new ways, and some would argue better ways, of structuring the world at large. 

The biggest evolution of this line of thought manifested in Machiavelli’s idea of political formation. It was not only a call to be moral, but rather to act in a way that helped to create societal buy-in and individual liberty. As the line of philosophy evolved, particularly with the inventions of wild concepts such as democracy and free markets, people were thrown into a new frontier, a Wild West of societal organizations. When this happened, there were a few people that learned from the past and were able to chart a way forward. 

One of the most prominent voices of this new societal injunction was Edmund Burke. Burke, a member of the Irish Parliament in the late 1700s, began to see the old world order rapidly shifting underneath his feet. Instead of clinging to and fighting it, like many of his compatriots in government did, he chose to study it. Burke’s philosophy, which most people believe now to be the foundations of modern conservatism (although he is highly regarded in terms of his thoughts by both modern liberals as well), began to take hold among the populace with several critical insights. 

Burke’s biggest insight was that, no matter how divorced politics was from the system of the old world (which was profound), it cannot be detached permanently from an upper morality. According to Burke, everything, whether it was economics, politics, or everything in between, was defined by an undergirding of a broader human morality. Human beings, he claimed, cannot define morality, because morality is self-evident to all that exist in the world. It is wrong to cheat, kill, and steal. Those things are self-evident, offensive to the human condition. When interacting within that framework, most people can be deterministic with how they choose to live, which is where politics comes into play. 

Burke, curiously for a 18th-Century Brit, was also in favor of religious tolerance. This is an important distinction to make. Unlike others of his time, Burke did not advocate for some kind of newly-imposed theocracy. That, as Burke correctly pointed out, would result in the exact same situation that the world had to contend with before- a falsely-divine upper class with peasants below them. Without the divine order in place, the society would become naturally destabilized. This was not good. Burke knew that, in an evolving world, a certain amount of flexibility was essential. 

Therefore, Burke invented a very interesting concept- a non-religious moral compass that upheld a society for them to innovate on top of it. There needed to be something there, but it needed to be something that could be inclusive for all with different beliefs at their core. With Burke, it wasn’t about what you believe, but how you acted within a universally-accepted framework. This drove home the necessity for things such as liberty and sovereignty, two things that would be crucial for the development of democratic governance in the West. 

Finally, Burke’s last point about the evolution of society was that the new version of society in the world could not be held together without a social fabric. Burke was a huge advocate for things such as localized community and religious institutions, which gave people a place to ground themselves in something that was not the government. He viewed institutions as an extension of the freedoms that were given by the moral underpinning of a society. Any collapse of those, and the collapse of the society would certainly follow behind it. 

Burke’s worldview was bolstered by other developments that ran alongside his invention of modern conservatism. Just before Burke began to gain prominence, Adam Smith published The Wealth of Nations, the book that shook up the world of business and formed the basis for Western capitalism. Combined with the Enlightenment, which informed the specifics of new governments being formed in the world, a massive societal upheaval was taking place. 

The biggest upheavals in the world at that time, by far, were two Revolutions- the American and the French. One of the most interesting historical facts that I’ve ever come across is that, even though they’re talked about as largely separate events (which they are), they are more intertwined than we are led to believe. They occurred at the exact same time, for the exact same reasons, but yet had two very different results. One led to the rise of America and the greatest power the world has ever known, while the other led to the complete obliteration of order and the rise of a dictator (who looks remarkably similar to Joaquin Phoenix). 

This is an astonishing fact when you examine the parity between the American and French Revolutions and the outcomes from both of them. Both had a people that wanted to be freed from an oppressive monarchy. Both turned to rising civilian populist leaders to help topple the government. Both created new founding bodies and documents after those dictators were deposed. Yet, the American Revolution led to opportunity and prosperity, while the French Revolution led to anarchy and chaos. But why?

Burke’s, and many others, reasoning for the success of the American Revolution and the implosion of the French Revolution was simple- the basis of their morality. America’s Founding Fathers based their new nation and founding documents on Burke’s wider morality, primarily based on Judeo-Christian values and Enlightenment philosophy. The French, by contrast, did not do this, and fell apart and into darkness because they had nothing greater than the initial founding to unify them as a nation. This led to their downfall, and their willingness to go back into tyranny at the hands of Joaquin Phoenix, remarkably quickly. 

Conservatism, by definition, believes that tradition (and what begets tradition) should be of the highest ideal and virtue within a society. The things that have always worked, as the saying goes, will most likely always work in the future. The things that people have alway found meaning in will most likely always work in the future. The things that people have used to bolster their confidence, ideas, and self-respect will most likely always work in the future. There must always be room for constructive and worthy innovation, as evidenced by Burke in his founding of conservatism, but we cannot let innovation be the founding principle. If that were to take place, like the French did in their Revolution, there is no guardrail as to just how far off course we can go, and how fast. 

Additionally, we must remember, as Burke articulated, that there are very few of the things that we can base our society on. There must be a defined set of values that we must aspire to move upwards towards. If there is not, that leaves the door open for endless interpretation, a jazz festival of sorts, to figure out if things work, to throw shit at the wall and see that they stick. If your founding principles are malleable, there are most likely going to be things that follow suit in regards to how you run your culture. Nothing mattered if nothing was properly coordinated. 

However, this, like many things, did not last. The first seeds of trouble were planted in America very early on. After George Washington’s farewell address warning of political fragmentation in the form of parties, the rest of the Founding Fathers decided to, politely and respectfully, say “Fuck that”, and do the exact opposite- it’s what Americans do, after all. Instead of adhering to Washington’s sound advice, there immediately was a splintering among the Founders as to how best to go forward into this new American experiment. 

Before they became the Democrats and Republicans, the two first American political parties were the Democratic-Republicans, composed of people such as Thomas Jefferson, and the Federalists, most notably composed of three men- John Jay, James Madison, and Alexander Hamilton. After penning The Federalist Papers in the early 1800s, these three men put forth a strong argument that, for America to survive the coming storms of a growing nation, there needed to be more power in the hands of institutions and away from the free will of the people. They saw what had happened in France, and other revolutions like it, and wanted to mitigate that risk as much as possible. 

The reason why Jefferson and the rest of the Democratic-Republicans, who would later become the Democratic Party, did not like this outbreak of Federalism was that they saw, correctly, that it relied too heavily on institutions, which caused the problems of the old world, and didn’t value that of the individual as much as they believed they should. Jefferson and others, who respected the philosophy of Burke, saw this as a betrayal of his philosophy, a pimping out of the initial conservatism that depended on institutions, but was not consumed by them. 

However, nonetheless, the influence of Jay, Madison, and Hamilton, all great men, continued onwards, and the split between the Federalists (later to become the Republican Party) and the Democratic-Republicans continued to widen. Even as several parties were traded in and out, the balance between both sides of Burke’s philosophy, the Federalist/Republican side who favored institutional authority and the Democrat-Republican/Democratic side that favored individual liberty over any institution, stayed on up until the present day, forming the basis for the continuous struggle of liberal and conservative politics. 

However, unfortunately for all of us, Jefferson, as he was with many things, turned out to be more correct than we would ever hope him to be. 

Part II: Neoconservatism

Earlier this year, I decided to watch Vice after years of trepidation. Vice, the biopic done by Adam McKay depicting the life of former Vice President Dick Cheney, had been one of the most polarizing films made in the last decade. Cheney, perhaps the most loathed Republican politician pre-Trump in modern American history who the American Left compared to Darth Vader, was one of the most consequential figures in the recent history of America. However, at that point, I didn’t know much about him other than what people felt. So, knowing that most of my leanings towards the Right were about to be highly tested, I rented and watched the film anyway. 

Even though McKay has made a living off of satire (watch Don’t Look Up for another great example of this) I found the film highly informative. I thought the acting, particularly Christian Bale’s performance, was outstanding. The film, like most of McKay’s work, was incredibly heavy-handed. They did everything they could to make Sam Rockwell (who is also fantastic) look like an idiot when paying George W. Bush, everything to make Amy Adams’s portrayal of Lynne Cheney look the part of the conniving Karen, and mostly everything to make early 2000s-Republicans look like the second coming of the Galactic Empire. 

And, I had to admit, they convinced me. 

I had heard for a long time from many people, such as Tim Dillon, Glenn Greenwald, and others about the horrors of the Bush-Cheney Administration. I had heard about the black site torture prisons, the drone bombings, the lies about the wars in the Middle East, the complete dicking over the working class in favor of corporate elitism and swampy Washington politics. And, even though the movie was somewhat fictionalized and definitely set out to shit all over the legacy of Dick Cheney, I found the criticisms of McKay and those who sympathized with his worldview to be highly legitimate and warranted. 

Largely, I came away horrified at the actions of my side of the political aisle. Even though the makers of the film made Dick Cheney up to be similar to a comic book villain, while also dumping on people like Roger Ailes, Bill Kristol, and others who would soon become titans in the future of conservative politics, I have to admit that they got pretty close to making it as legitimate as they could. 

For the longest time, particularly in the time I grew up during the ascent of Donald Trump, I had a very hard time at why so many people on the political Left had almost an allergic reaction to anyone who thought differently from them. From my vantage point, I never got it. I saw Donald Trump as something distinctly different from what I thought a politician was, because Trump was not a politician by nature. I was too young, too inexperienced to realize all of the nuances and horrors that led to the aversion to Republican politics on the American Left. I was too green to realize how easy it was for them to hate a side of the political aisle that they viewed as horrifying and oppressive. 

But now, I totally realize it. As the cycle of Trump rose and fell like a phoenix (and could, unbelievably, do so again) I began to see what the American Left, and eventually Donald Trump, saw. A large portion of the American Right, and certainly the most powerful portion, hated Donald Trump. They loathed his populism, how he spoke, the types of people he talked to, the positions that he took that took a different turn then theirs, particularly on foreign policy.

This is, largely, what sabotaged Donald Trump and everything that he wanted to do going into his terms. Trump, a massive narcissist who was seemingly-endless in his desire for flattery, let all the wrong people into his administration and head so that they could disrupt his agenda and corrupt it away from what he truly wanted to do. This was entirely his fault, and something that he has to contend with as he goes into the future of his political career. However, I was still stuck on one thing, a thing that, up until recently, I didn’t grasp:

Why?

Why, exactly, did people like Dick Cheney, who supposedly belong to the same political party and supposedly believe the same things, act so differently than someone like Donald Trump? More importantly and interestingly, why did people like Dick Cheney hate Donald Trump? Weren’t they supposed to have his back? Weren’t they supposed to rally behind the person who eventually carried the torch for their segment of the political sphere? I, for the life of me, couldn’t figure this out. It constantly stumped me for the longest time. 

How I began to figure it out (other than listening for long periods of time to a lot of very smart people, such as those mentioned above) was going back to Thomas Jefferson and his critique of the American Federalists, which eventually became the Republican Party. The transition that Jefferson warned about between Federalists and their overdependence on institutions was what gave him nerves about the future of the country should that ideology take over. When individual liberty becomes trounced by institutional dominance, it is worse for everyone. 

Unfortunately, this is exactly what has happened with American politics, and particularly in the movement that defined the American Right pre-Trump (and also what has defined the American Left, interestingly enough, for more than the past half-century). The institutions have completely overwhelmed the individuals, and now work as their own independent actors regardless of if the individual citizens want them. This is not, according to Burke and anyone who knows the theory, what conservatism is. It is a perversion of conservatism, something that masquerades as something, but is completely opposite of that something. What this ideology has currently manifested in has been used as a buzzword for a very long time, but something that is very real and very malevolent:

Neoconservatism. 

Neoconservatism, up until Donald Trump came to power, was the dominant orthodoxy in conservative and Republican politics. Coming of age in the early 1990s, it was the worst nightmare Jefferson's warning against Federalism realized. It was a weaponization of the institutions that, instead of holding up our culture, began to dominate our culture. This was a seismic shift, and its documentation is critical to understanding why the American Right is currently eating itself alive, why it has no identity, and why it will continue to keep losing in every way that matters going into the future. 

The catalyst for the beginning and dominance of the neoconservative movement was the formation of the Washington think tank Project for the New American Century. The PNAC was founded in 1997 by Robert Kagan and Bill Kristol, two prominent neocons who had started the long march in transforming conservative politics after Bill Clinton’s election in 1992. Making their rounds throughout academia and policy, Kagan and Kristol wanted to transform the American Right into something that people like Edmond Burke never imagined, and what Jefferson feared the most about what it could become. 

The mission of the Project for the New American Century, as stated by the two men, was to “promote American global leadership”, saying that “American leadership is good both for America and the world”. With a primary focus on foreign policy, Kagan and Kristol’s primary focus was to build support in Washington amongst donors and policymakers to build “a Reaganite policy of military strength and moral clarity”. 

When you think about the context of the mission of the PNAC at the time, the statement proposed by the 25 initial signees was perplexing. The Berlin Wall had fallen six years earlier in 1991. The effects of communism were dwindling. The Soviet Union was dissolved. The world, for the first time in about 50 years, was largely at peace. There were no major wars going on, no more boogeymen to fight, no more dragons to slay. Foreign policy, for America in particular, was in a good place. So, if peace, which is the goal of any world leader, was already established, then what did the Project for the New American Century want to accomplish?

The PNAC was very clear about it in their statements. Instead of presiding over peace, they wanted to capitalize on an opportunity. After the fall of the Soviet Union, America had officially established ideological dominance over the world. They were the only major power that still had enough might economically and socially to hold themselves up high after the travesty that was the 20th Century. Even after the horrors of Vietnam and hyperinflation, America was in a great position to succeed on the world stage going into the future, particularly since the world’s condition had stabilized. But that wasn’t enough for the newly-emerging neoconservative movement. Instead of honing on national pride and identity, the neocons saw an opportunity to do something else:

Colonize the world. 

The neocons had learned from the British in their days of empire. However, they were smart enough to know that the colonialism of old, which meant occupations of countries via the military, was out of style. Instead, they would be more tactical. They would attempt to colonize the world by spreading its value system throughout the rest of the world. Anything that was anti-Western was the enemy. There would be no more nationalism, no more countries having their own say in their own value systems. Instead, the neocons adopted a mission of presiding not over the United States, but of the world. 

The way they chose to do this was through two methods- foreign policy and national security. However, to use them as a weapon, they had to gain power first. Bill Clinton was ending his second terms as president, which made it a two-horse race between Al Gore and George W. Bush. Bush eked out a small victory, in large part because he had a massive donor class behind him with a charismatic Vice President, a man who had signed the founding documents for the Project for the New American Century and brought people like Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz into his Administration:

Dick Cheney. 

With Cheney in as Bush’s VP, who convinced Bush to give him control over the foreign policy and national security, the neoconservative agenda was finally cooking with gas. When the tragedy of 9/11 happened, Cheney and his mentor Donald Rumsfeld, who was the Secretary of State, used it, along with people like Robert Kagan and Bill Kristol in lobbying and the media, to begin their conquest of the world by starting new wars, toppling world leaders, and executing regime change to change the landscape of the world in favor of the United States. Gone were things such as individual liberty and national sovereignty. In were cultural hegemony and imperial values. 

9/11 became the perfect excuse for neoconservatism to replace conservatism and infect the rest of the world. Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, and their neocon allies outside of the Bush Administration to completely destabilize the Middle East in pointless wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, plunging an already delicate region of the world into further chaos. This policy then continued under the Obama Administration as neoconservatism grew favorable on the liberal side of the aisle, where people like Hillary Clinton and Victoria Nuland arranged coups and regime change wars in Libya, Syria, and Ukraine. 

Throughout the neocon wave that surged through Washington, there was something that was lost on traditional conservatives, something that the neocons totally ignored- there was nothing traditional about this. There was nothing conservative about pillaging the rest of the world. The War on Terror, a complete fabrication of neoconservative politics, has been the reason why so many things in our world have gone wrong. It’s why Europe is being devoured by mass illegal immigration, and why the same is happening here. It’s why Brexit happened. It’s why Israel-Hamas happened. It’s why Russia-Ukraine happened. It’s why inflation has continued to skyrocket and why our military reserves are depleted. All neoconservatism did for America was make the American people poorer, sicker, and weaker than they would have been otherwise. 

However, the pride of the neoconservatives that destabilized the entire world proved to be devastating to their future. There was a slow resentment building among the American people, both on the Left and the Right. They hated the endless wars, the mass immigration, the muddying of American culture. Soon, they had enough. When the 2016 election came due, two of the final four candidates left standing were Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump, two populists who had created a narrative around themselves as the antidote to neocon orthodoxy. When Trump beat Hillary Clinton and shocked the world, that was when shit really hit the fan. 

While in office, Republicans everywhere freaked out. They did everything they could to sabotage him. Everyone tried to water down the anti-neocon populism that Trump ran on, from Mike Pence to Paul Ryan to Mike Pompeo. And, as a callback to earlier, they were largely successful. Trump’s predisposition to flattery and narcissism led him to be gullible, with him not realizing it until it was too late. 

However, Trump’s lasting impact, whether he wins in 2024 or not, is already being felt. Trump’s disruption into the Republican Party has now, much like neoconservatism did on the world stage, destabilized the American Right by pitting two sides against each other- neoconservatism and populism. The American Right has no identity, because the American Right doesn’t know what it believes anymore. And that is why, until they decide, they are doomed. 

Part III: Fatalism

As the race for the Presidency began to gain steam, the American Right was faced with several unique dilemmas. The obvious conundrum was the absence of Donald Trump who, with some polls putting him ahead by 60 points over his nearest competitor, smartly chose to abstain from debating. Therefore, the line of sight had an opportunity to shift onto those who undoubtedly were fighting for second place. 

Many people found, and currently find, this endeavor to be largely fruitless. I can see their reasoning behind it. Why sink donor money, your time, and your reputation into something that you have no chance of winning? There are some that contend that the Republican debates have been merely audition tapes for Trump’s Vice President due to his disdain for his old VP, Mike Pence. However, given what has unfolded so far, I believe there is a different motive for the people who have graced center stage. 

The spectrum of candidates that we’ve been exposed to has been, if nothing else, bizarre. With Trump, the clear frontrunner for the nomination, not doing anything to promote his candidacy in this format, we’ve been exposed to predominantly old faces, people who have hovered around the political elite for most of their life. It’s not the people that we should be paying attention to, however. Like anything influential, especially in politics, the focus should be on what the candidates say and do, not what their reputations claim that they say and do. 

The third Republican debate was a prime example of this. The debate, the first since the atrocity committed by Hamas against the state of Israel, was, rightly, focused on foreign policy. And, if you remember our friends from the Project for the New American Century, foreign policy was the tip of the spear for how the neoconservative movement pivoted Republican politics away from traditional conservatism as posed by Edmund Burke. It was the conflict in the Middle East, as well as the war in Ukraine, that took center stage with the candidates. 

With Mike Pence dropping out of his horrific attempt at running (which had been dead ever since Tucker Carlson torpedoed it months before), only five candidates remained- Nikki Haley, Tim Scott, Chris Christie, Ron DeSantis, and Vivek Ramaswamy. The field was in the midst of a massive shift. Ron DeSantis, who many had viewed as the heir apparent to Donald Trump, was in shambles. Tim Scott, whose milquetoast demeanor and talking point-driven corporate candidacy, was a failure to launch. Chris Christie, perhaps the only Never Trumper left on the face of the planet, was still as unimpressive and unlikeable as ever, getting booed off the stage at several rallies. These candidates were non-factors, a mere sideshow to the only thing that remained truly interesting about this mostly-pointless process. 

That only thing was the rapidly-escalating war between Nikki Haley and Vivek Ramaswamy. Haley, the former Ambassador to the United Nations under Trump, had been rising in the polls and in funding due to many entrenched donors and relationships with corporate media. Ramaswamy, largely a nobody in the political realm before leaping into the fray, had created an unprecedented groundswell of grassroots support, particularly in the MAGA realms and among young people. Neither had a chance of winning, but both had a chance to showcase just why and how much they hated each other.

The two ideologies could not be more opposed. Haley, a lifelong neocon who sat on the board of Boeing and had seen her net worth skyrocket since leaving office, was the perfect apparatus of the neoconservative establishment. She cheered every war she could find. She said nothing about kitchen table issues such as gender ideology and inflation that was eating away at her base. She dunked on Donald Trump, the only reason she was ever relevant, at every chance she could. 

Ramaswamy, an early champion of Donald Trump whose gravest political error was not differentiating himself from Trump hardly at all, was almost the complete opposite. He talked about patriotism, national pride, and the role of religion and the nuclear family. He was outwardly antiwar. He was a completely self-made man and largely self-financed. Instead of commiserating with mainstream media outlets, he created his own podcast to document his journey and the people he wanted to talk to, most of whom were forbidden from appearing in the public eye. 

The debate, largely, was a shitshow. The three candidates not named Haley and Ramaswamy were hopeless, floundering on stage like dying fish in front of the audience, no vision to be found. The two candidates that were named Haley and Ramaswamy were combative, putting forth two completely antithetical visions as to how they wanted America to look.

Haley, a bloodthirsty psychopath who had quite literally screamed “Finish Them” on major news networks and later would openly prop up surveillance of Americans on the internet, was cheered by her mainstream donors the whole night on how Americans could use Israel to create immense profits by killing tens of thousands of people. 

Ramaswamy, to large unpopularity with almost everyone who could help his campaign, dunked all over Haley, Lester Holt, Kristen Welker, and Ronna McDaniel, the Chairman of the Republican National Committee. The Republican Party was a “party of losers”, he claimed, citing their failures in the last four election cycles to move anything about the agenda going forward. It was a legendary moment, and one that nearly everyone in establishment, neoconservative politics rightfully hated. 

But that’s old news. People have talked about that already. The highlight of the debate for me, one thing that was only highlighted by a couple of people who have seen the neocon vision fail out in midair, was something that was even more unpopular to the positions of endless war by the neocons. 

Ramaswamy, who was on an absolute tear, was asked another question about Ukraine, more specifically about the corrupt government that the United States is supporting with arms and dollars. Ramaswamy pointed out that, since the war began, President Zelenskyy had been waging a war internally on Ukraine’s Christians. He had outlawed the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, banned opposition parties, and was waging a censorship war on the remainder of the people that put their faith in something other than the Ukrainian government. No one at a Republican debate before had ever brought this point up. Further, the most shocking part was this:

Vivek Ramaswamy is a Hindu. 

Ramaswamy, an outwardly religious person who celebrated Diwali with his family last week, was the only person on that debate stage, the rest of whom all self-professed “Christians”, to bring up the fact that a corrupt government was using authoritarian powers to persecute Christians. Nikki Haley had nothing to say about that. Neither did Christie, DeSantis, or Scott. Neither did Mike Pence, another man who claims his faith to be the driver of his life. 

It is the point about the outward persecution and subsequent ignoring of Christian persecution in Ukraine that shows you how pathetic and unserious the current conservative movement in America is. When you listen to any of these debates, when you hear any of these people talk, you end up hearing nothing. There is nothing relevant that most of these people say that is relevant to anyone, regardless of political background, in America. There is no attempt to get people to see all the great things that traditional conservatism has to offer. There is no trying to convince people that there is an alternative way forward, a vision for a better future. Instead, what you get is the same neocon garbage- agree with us, or shut up. 

The reason why there is such an allergic reaction to people like Vivek Ramaswamy, his mentor Tucker Carlson, and others who align ideologically to them, is because they have called the Republican Party and faux-conservative movement out on their bullshit. Even more appallingly to them, they have done so louder than they have their opposition liberal Democrat opposition. They’re disgusted by the way the party has sold out, how they’ve forsaken the promise of what conservatism could have been in a place like America, particularly in a place where the Democratic Party is equally abhorrent. 

The reasoning for the backlash and disgust against the neocons who have polluted conservatism is because they’ve made a complete mess and mockery out of their voters. On almost every metric, the average person in their base, a working class person just trying to make it, is getting worse and worse. The only job of a politician is to represent their base well and advocate for them in policy. Neoconservatism does not do this at all. Instead, it forsakes that responsibility, betrays that trust, in favor of pursuing some bizarre notion of American superiority that clearly doesn’t exist on the home front. It shows in the lives of their voters, more and more of whom are continuing to suffer greater consequences at the hands of foolish and selfish leadership. 

The largest portion of the American Right in power do not care about the things that matter. They don’t care that young people can’t attain wealth or buy a home, which means that they have no investment in their local community and future of the country. They don’t care why more and more people seem to feel aimless and hopeless because of mental health. They don’t care because they have subverted their principles by selling them up the river for a self-inflated and short-sighted ego boost, one that has engaged in the greatest transfer of power that has yet to be turned a keen eye on to what is currently going on in America. 

Sadder still, there are very few people in the culture who actually recognize this, and have the balls to say anything about it, to truly do the work of holding the leadership of the American Right to account. People like Tucker Carlson and Vivek Ramaswamy, as mentioned earlier, are two of the bright spots. There are also people like the aforementioned Candace Owens and people like Allie Beth Stuckey, Matt Walsh, Mike Cernovich, Delano Squires, Glenn Beck, Jack Posobiec, and others who have gotten sick of the leadership of the neocon movement and have attempted to make it known. They are the people who are in the trenches, and the people who should be commended. Unfortunately, they are getting drowned out in the noise, their astute observations falling on deaf ears. 

It’s also worth mentioning that, ever since the American Right has fallen into Israel Derangement Syndrome much as the American Left fell into Trump Derangement Syndrome, we are seeing increasingly-troubling things from the Left as well as the Israel-Hamas conflict. Ever since October 7th, we’ve seen an appalling amount of supposedly liberal and woke Democrats expressing actual and vile antisemitism. The hatred for the world’s Jews, as we have now seen, is still very much alive, just as it unfortunately is for many other minority groups. However, in the West, it is the Jews that unfortunately do not get the same treatment as the rest. 

It is not that people on the American Right want to sacrifice Israel- quite the contrary. They think, like the overwhelming amount of people do, that Israel has a right to defend itself and remove Hamas from influence and power. However, it is the inability to define a goal, stick to it, and make it applicable that will forever continue to doom the Right and, to Ramaswamy’s point, continue to get its ass kicked by the American Left going into perpetuity. He is correct in his assertions, particularly if this nonsensical fighting continues. 

So, you may be asking- what exactly could solve this? What could be a possible solution to this fatalistic approach taken by the American Right? They would be served well to listen to Vivek Ramaswamy’s overall point about his campaign- identity. The biggest reason that the American Right is in, and will continue to be in, a tailspin is they have no fucking clue who they are, who they serve, and what they stand for. They are a party in simultaneous build and collapse, who wants to preserve everything while also blowing everything up. They don’t know what they want, which provides a message to voters that is confusing, muddled, and perplexing. 

Ramaswamy was 100% correct in his critique of people like Ronna McDaniel. Because of the abject failure of the Republican Party to get people to take an interest in their vision (because of a lack of one) their base is dying and unattractive. They do nothing to spread their wings to incorporate people of other classes and races, and an even worse job with marketing to young people. They’re not in touch with the culture, what’s going on in the world, what people actually want. When someone like Carlson, Ramaswamy, or Trump attempts to, the establishment of the American Right immediately condescends upon them. This shortsightedness and stupidity is the reason the Right is in a tailspin, and why it’s so unlikely they’ll ever pull themselves out of it. 

If you do not have people to vote you into office to get a chance to advance your agenda, you have no chance of survival in politics- period. There is clearly something wrong with the American Right, something that desperately needs to be fixed. Unfortunately for us all who could benefit from true conservatism, there is no one with the guts or leadership that is willing to step up and fix it, nor are there people that will help support that person to get there. 

The most likely outcome of all of this will be an ultimate victory by one of two sides of Republican politics. It’s going to come down to the conservatives or the neoconservatives as to who comes out on top. It is the fight ahead with this divide that will determine the future of the American Right. It is the tension between the two sides of the argument that provides the confusion, and potentially the way forward. It is not a matter of whether or not Republicans communicate something to the American people. It is about which side they will choose, and why. 

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Politics is a game of who can put forward the best vision of the future. As the Israel-Hamas conflict shows, the American Right is in the process of dissolving any vision for the future that could possibly make their policies desirable. Their ineptitude, particularly in the domain of their party elites, cut people off from experiencing any benefit that could be brought forth by what and who they want to represent. And, as usual, it is always their constituents, the ones whose promises they always break, that lose.

And that’s all for my one political article every six months, folks. Thank God it’s over. Happy Thanksgiving. 

OPEN YOUR MiND,

Sam

Quote of the Week:

“War is the continuation of policy with other means.”

• Carl von Clausewitz

Lyric of the Week:

“The world goin’ mad over one drug

I’m fillin’ up a bag at the gun club

In a shadow of a nation that it once was

All this false information, imma unplug”

Black Thought, as featured along with Chuck D, No I.D., and Big Lenbo on “America” by Logic (Everybody, 2017)