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| When Will Conservatives Understand That It's Not a Contest of Ideas? |
| 2020-01-24 |
| American Greatness via Instapundit Even as Donald Trump continues to frustrate #TheResistance after three years of ceaseless fabrication and hysteria, conservatives must not forget just how close they are to the edge. We have a defender in the White House, but the social ideas of the Left prevail in nearly every other elite and cultural space in the United States. The election of November 2016, the elevation of Judge Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court, the Mueller report debacle, the Iran turnaround, and other wins for conservatives may be satisfying, but they have not shaken the leftist lock on our institutions one bit. The simmering stew of LGBT rights, toxic masculinity, white privilege, disparate impact calculations, and Millennial social justice campaigns has become dogma in corporate America, media, higher education, K-12 public schools (and many private schools, too), Silicon Valley, Hollywood, Broadway, the art world, museums, libraries . . .Even as Donald Trump continues to frustrate #TheResistance after three years of ceaseless fabrication and hysteria, conservatives must not forget just how close they are to the edge. We have a defender in the White House, but the social ideas of the Left prevail in nearly every other elite and cultural space in the United States. |
| Posted by:g(r)omgoru |
| #3 The left wants to win and rule, the (professional) right want to score debating points and show how smart they are. This is due to the fact that many professional "conservatives" have internalized the left's assessment of them as being stupid, and have a desperate need to prove otherwise. So they publish loads of white papers and cram for debates, while the leftist takeover chugs merrily along, and shuts down anyone on the right who actually proves effective and/or popular -- often with help of "conservatives". Just look at the attacks on the Covington kids by creeps like Rod Dreher and Ben Shapiro. I have a feeling that if the right eventually attains the power and status that the left currently holds, it won't be due to the efforts of "conservatives", but to the work of more proactive, not to say much nastier rightists. And the "conservatives" can thank themselves for that outcome. Conservatives had better learn how to "do power", before someone more sinister does it for them |
| Posted by: charger 2020-01-24 16:37 |
| #2 Bauerlein nails it. The model here is not Lenin but Stalin, who saw early on that the HR position was by far the most important in the Bolshevik hierarchy. This is exactly right: One thing I saw in more than 30 years in academia was that while leftists on the faculty were not always the brightest bulbs in the room, they often managed to populate university and department committees where policies were created and passed. While we were teaching and researching, they were reshaping the institution. We were getting on with our work, pushing our individual careers, getting our names in print, and believing we were advancing the field and the school. They were taking over |
| Posted by: Lex 2020-01-24 07:35 |
| #1 Successful conservatives find the idea of gummint service appalling, and rightly so. Unfortunately, that leaves the field open for people who attend the "John Kennedy School of Government" at Harvard and we wind up with a professional governing class. Only hard term limits and anti-dynasty laws can moderate this problem. |
| Posted by: M. Murcek 2020-01-24 06:28 |