and it ain't racism.
"OK, squirmish of the week: National Review against Donald Trump. The venerable conservative magazine has published a special issue
My former colleagues (memorably described by my heroine Ann Coulter as “girly-boys”) have a point. But at the same time they’re missing a more important point.
The point they have is that Trump has (almost) no track record as a movement conservative. Trump shows no acquaintance with the ideas that have shaped the post-WW2 conservative movement. I’m just flipping through George Nash’s book The Conservative Intellectual Movement in America Since 1945. Eric Voegelin, Whittaker Chambers, Ludwig von Mises, Russell Kirk, Willmoore Kendall, … Do any of these names mean anything to Trump? I doubt it.urging conservatives to not support Trump, on the grounds that he’s not a conservative.
The point they’re missing is that, first—all right, I’m going to make two points out of it—first, there is such a thing as gut conservatism, as distinct from head conservatism. A great many Americans—tens of millions—are conservatives without ever having heard of Willmoore Kendall.
And second, even among the lesser number of us who do know the difference between Straussians and Fusionists, the conviction has settled in that intellectual “conservatism” is a political dead end, with no consequences in the present age.
That wasn’t true in the previous age, the age of the Cold War. Conservative ideas were important and had consequences: most notably, the election of Ronald Reagan. That was terrifically impressive to those of us who grew up during the Cold War, and it made the conservative intellectual enterprise seem worthwhile.
It seems worthwhile no longer. It has no consequences, none that seem good to a conservative temperament, to a conservative gut. The Tea Party election of 2010 has had no good consequences. Nothing happened for us, nothing changed. The George W. Bush Presidency had none, less than none. The 1994 Gingrich Revolution had none. Even the Reagan Presidency had rather few in the domestic sphere, arguably none. I refer you to Chapter 3 of David Frum’s 1994 book Dead Right, chapter title: “The Failure of the Reagan Gambit.”
Gut conservatives are left clutching at straws. They—we—are ready to rally to anyone who shows, in how unsatisfactory-soever a way, some glimmer of understanding about what concerns us.
We don’t want millions of unassimilable foreigners pouring into our country. We don’t want our young people sent off to fight half-hearted wars our leaders have no real desire to win. We don’t much care if Russia or China throw their weight around in their own spheres of influence. We don’t want to see our nation’s leaders apologize to anyone, for anything.
We have no confidence in the Republican Party as a vehicle for our concerns.
Who then are we to vote for? In 2012 a great many of us didn’t bother to vote at all. That’s how Barack Obama got his second term. We didn’t think Romney would have made much difference.
We think Donald Trump will make a difference. That’s the difference.
If you still don’t get it, go read the comment thread on the National Review website. Random sample, quote:
Been lied to too many times. If the nominee isn’t Trump or Cruz I’ll vote for the Democrat. Trump might screw us over but the establishment candidate will for sure. I’ve come to realize that the establishment Republicans are a greater enemy to me than any communist democrat. I’ll cut off my arm before I ever vote for you c***-*****rs again.
If you still don’t get it, I can’t help. I’ve done my best here.
http://www.vdare.com/articles/weird-american-alpha-male-meets-weird-american-fertility-goddess-and-national-reviews-squirmishing-girly-boysIf you do not know who John Derbyshire is: "John Derbyshire [email him] writes an incredible amount on all sorts of subjects for all kinds of outlets. (This no longer includes National Review, whose editors had some kind of tantrum and fired him. ) He is the author of We Are Doomed: Reclaiming Conservative Pessimism and several other books. He’s had two books published by VDARE.com: FROM THE DISSIDENT RIGHT (also available in Kindle) and From the Dissident Right II: Essays 2013. His writings are archived at JohnDerbyshire.com."
He's an excellent writer.
