Amerika

As conservatism slowly comes out of the stupor of neoconservatism, its audience breaks into two groups: those who are basically realists, and those who want a fundamentalist ideology or dogmatic theocracy. The latter group, fragmented now into the Christian Nationalists and Christian Libertarians, will not do anything to stop the death of the West.

Those who want to save the West must acknowledge that it is already dead and can only be resurrected by going back to where we made a wrong decision, un-doing it, and then going another direction. We do not want the modern world; we want something before it and after it, and to get out of this stagnant, pointless era.

Conservatism affirms both realism and a goal of transcendental beauty, and opposes all conjectural belief systems like equality and exclusively prefers that which has been tested throughout history and found to produce the best results, not just the utilitarian minimums.

That makes it incompatible with Leftism, which would force government into a conflict, so our paid elected leaders want bipartisan compromise so that government can continue making profits off its peoples:

One might expect the vanquishing of the Soviet Union to have provided some satisfaction to a party that had organized itself around a militant anticommunism for four decades, but the hard right experienced the so-called “Reagan Revolution” as anything but, just a series of modest reforms swamped by the continued dominance of the Democrats in Congress and the cultural hegemony of establishment liberalism. “Reagan gave conservatism a beachhead in Washington, but he didn’t follow through,” National Review senior editor Joe Sobran wrote. “The libs have sold the Administration on the myth which Reagan’s victories should have demolished: that Republicans thrive by adopting ‘moderation.’”

Reagan, like Trump, was basically a libertarian who recognized that heritage America — WASP pioneers of essentially unbroken Cro-Magnid/Nordid stock — did things better than any of the competing groups, and therefore it was worth preserving for the benefit of all. Everyone benefits from having more competent leaders.

However, Reagan (like Trump) was not a far-Rightist per se, or even much of a Rightist. He simply observed that government was a terrible way to get anything done, that it creates a self-serving parasite class, and that Communism is one of those things that “sounds good” to most people but always fails catastrophically.

People liked Reagan for a simple reason: he made things work and drove back the ideological insanity of socialism. Everything that he did was practical but also took the long-term view, something the Left militantly opposes. The Right does well to remember this: ideology is no substitute for realistic benefit.

After Reagan, however, the Right had the option of conflict or compromise. If it held the Reagan line, it would mean opposing all of those entitlements from the 1930s and 1960s, which would precipitate a crisis; if they compromised, the Right could keep going as a corporation and hire lots of people, but also get along with the Left.

In this way, the Right chose the worst of Buckleyism and opted to avoid taking the hard line that egalitarianism is a fantasy, Social Darwinism is real, entitlements are socialism, and we do best with a society that rewards winners, punishes criminals, and provides everyone else with stability at lower cost and higher quality, which is the benefit of a capitalist economy.

Instead, Republicans opted for compromise, and adopted a Benedict Option theory which required turning the Right into an aspiring theocracy:

The three leading theories, often presented as if in competition with one another rather than in harmony, are that abortion rights galvanized voters after the destruction of Roe v. Wade; that the increasingly explicit authoritarian streak within the Republican Party alienated small-d democrats; and that voters were persuaded to give Democrats a chance to ease the challenges posed by inflation when presented with a choice between progressive economic reforms or conservative austerity.

This makes the same mistake the Right always does: it tries to be like the Left and to conjure up something as simple, powerful, and controlling as the ideology of egalitarianism. Religion can become an ideology and, when applied in politics, it invariably does.

This leads us to ask where conservatism can go, since most of what we stand for consists of a rejection of modernity? My answer: do not lie; say what you mean, and point out the realistic case for its superiority to the mess that liberalism creates. Right or wrong, there is no other way.

In addition, keep in mind that classical liberalism occurred as an offshoot of conservatism in an attempt to preserve the type of “freedom” enjoyed by the ancients, which was as Plato wrote it, the freedom to know one’s own mind and to escape tyrannical structures which control you for their own benefit and (necessarily: there are zero sum aspects to power) your misfortune.

Conservatism begins with accepting that the basics of civilization are fully known and will not change. Someone will be in power; they will either rule well or badly, depending mostly on whether they rule for the benefit of the civilization, for the benefit of its citizens, or for the benefit of themselves.

The latter two there are a mess. Democracy rules for the benefit of its citizens, which forces the culture and social order to adapt to the decisions of individuals, most of which are unrealistic and manipulative. We see no shortage of tyrannies, or societies ruled for the benefits of their governments or “elites.”

In America, of course, our elites are produced by government: those who do well in school, say the safe things, and therefore get promoted at their jobs into the magical six-figure range where suddenly all problems can be escaped with an injection of money or the power it conveys.

As students of history may know, this kind of situation erupts in Late Stage Democracy. You either stand for the System, or for Reality. This forces a split between Conservative Realists and Fundamentalist Conservatives.

• Conservative Realists: these care, like all realists, about results in physical reality over the long term. They are less concerned with what people “think,” knowing that most people do not think and if they try, they do so badly. These are a mix between strong Right-wing social order and liberal values of the old school, mostly a defense of personal eccentricity, the freedom to think, and the freedom to choose, with social order created by culture, hierarchy, and a natural tendency to prefer what is realistic.
• Fundamentalist Conservatives: these accept modern society as a given and therefore try to create a competing ideology built on the basis of Leftism, equality, by weaponizing religion and patriotism into a type of ideology based in superiority. That in turn makes it more susceptible to the Leftist principle of moral judgment as a replacement for realism.

We know the Fundamentalist Conservatives because they are the ones discussing Christian Nationalism, the Benedict Option in various forms, and the notion of the Constitution as the single organizing principle of American life. They want to avoid the questions of culture, genetics, and hierarchy because these offend the Left.

Conservative Realists, on the other hand, simply want a functional social order such as we had centuries ago before the great egalitarian takeover began. We want the ancien régime back:

The autocratic rulers of Russia, Prussia and Austria wanted to crush the revolutionary ideas for which Napoleon stood, including meritocracy, equality before the law, anti-feudalism and religious toleration. Essentially, they wanted to turn the clock back to a time when Europe was safe for aristocracy. At this they succeeded—until the outbreak of the Great War a century later.

The “Great War” (spit) was the Leftist response, plunging Europe into self-destructive darkness from which it has never awakened.

Realist Conservatives want these things because they work and not only that, but provide the best option for humanity once we discard conjectural Utopian plans:

• Meritocracy: this means whoever excels at the red tape of school and credentialism rules us. We have seen these unelected bureaucrats bungle everything good about our civilization, including killing off its population through quiet misery, running these societies into bankruptcy and default, enforcing speech codes that prohibit dissident views of the status quo, and systematically taking from the useful to give to the useless.
• Equality before the law: this creates a parallel power structure in the legal system that opposes the leadership of a society, essentially dooming that society to constant infighting. It is better to have aristocrats make the decisions and be challenged by other aristocrats than to create the neurotic and fractious type of public conflict that now eats up most of our time.
• Anti-feudalism: feudalism acknowledges the Bell Curve, namely that most people are terrible at making decisions, so the only way to protect society from the unhinged desires of the herd is to disenfranchise most of them and increase the pressure on those at the top to do the right thing over the long term, and not pander to votes and social media likes and other forms of popularity.
• Religious toleration: unity works; diversity fragments. When you have a nation unified around a single culture, including the religion tied to it, things work out well. As Christianity winds down into rubble among the ruins of a society devastated by Leftism, and for the same reason with its moralizing universalism, it turns out that perhaps religion should not exist outside of culture, and organized religion — especially written — is simply a bad idea.

Aristocracy provides the only form of government with actual accountability to reality. This is not accountability to others, but accountability to results in reality over the long term. The only aristocrat who succeeds is the one who makes a thriving society, not just avoiding controversy and pumping up short term value gains.

Strong power eliminates constant infighting and the neurotic dialogue over who has correctly justified their views according to whichever public fiction is in vogue at the time. Making it hereditary preserves the best leadership traits and provides the ultimate accountability, namely that success or dishonor and death are the only options.

Lack of social mobility avoids turning society into a hamster wheel of commercial options. With social mobility, you are to blame for not earning as much money as someone else, and this makes your life entirely a vehicle for earning money and trying to increase your status.

These things are controversial now, but only because the current Overton Window has moved so far to the Left that anything except egalitarianism is not tolerated.

Unlike the Fundamentalist Conservatives, those on the Conservative Realist side entirely reject modernity and its basis in an ideology of mob rule and equality. This requires accepting and embracing some things that we have been taught all our lives are the worst thing ever.

On the other hand, the Conservative Realist goal is the one ideology not interested in forcing a way of life on you. Anarchist, libertarianism, and Leftism force you to accept the bad decisions of the majority; Conservative Realism limits its use of power only to necessary areas.

In a Conservative Realist society, you would have more personal freedom and less judgment of others because society does not have to enforce a conjectural ideology. Eccentricity, including opinions as wild as Erich von Danniken and Kanye West, would not just be tolerated, but accepted.

The grand tradition of conservatism holds that society should identify goods and bads, but leave everything in the middle alone. Modernity on the other hand wants to force everyone to think alike so that we can have a veneer of unity even though at our core, lacking culture and race, we have nothing in common.

The Conservative Realists does not care if you are gay or transsexual. He does not care if you grow weed or opium in the back yard. He is not going to force you to go to church, although he does not want foreign religions, cultures, or genetics around him.

People of this type value life as a goal in itself. The point of life is to live… and this tautology reveals the beauty of life, which is that it requires no real explanation. Live and live well! Where modernity limits the methods you can use, Conservative Realism asks only that you share the goals of civilization and life.

Conservative Realists are not interested in forcing everyone to go to church. They realize that even within the same sect, interpretations vary, and so there is no point making religion a dogma. They want to show you the beauties of culture, including religion, but after that, nature will sort us all appropriately.

Your Conservative Realists does not want a Leftist-style superstate like the EU, USSR, or NSDAP. He does not want constant spying on you, language policing, and ostracizing people for being different. He does not want loyalty oaths; his belief system is self-evident and reality-based, therefore can handle critique.

When he looks at the past, he may opine that middle class revolts generally bring societies into their dying ages, so this proves that the middle classes (and lower classes) are unfit to make management decisions. He does not want to force them to believe as he does; he simply wants those who are fit to rule to be making the decisions.

He fails as a racist. Where “racism” requires enmity and scapegoating, the Conservative Realist has only indifference. He does not want a diverse society for a simple functional reason: diversity fails and destroys societies. But what happens in foreign lands does not concern him.

He does not want school to teach propaganda, even of the “right” attitudes. He wants school to teach skills and history in as neutral a way as it can, so that those who can learn — a tiny sliver of the population — get the tools and knowledge that they need.

He does not want rules about who can use what bathroom. He leaves this up to the individual establishment and event. If a dude looks like a lady enough that no one really notices, who cares if he uses the Ladies Room? If people there care, he/she has to go somewhere else. This is the “responsibility” and “accountability” in “freedom.”

No Conservative Realist is going to make you bake a gay cake. Nor will he force you to bake a het cake, or a Christian cake. There are going to be different bakers for different people. He would consider it bad form to deny someone necessary aid when you are the only possible provider, of course.

In a Conservative Realist society, culture rules and government and commerce are less important. Ironically, attempts to lessen the influence of commerce simply make money and distributing it more of a focus, so he avoids those. The poor are always with us; the best we can do is lower costs and raise quality.

A Conservative Realist would seem to many of us to be an extreme form of the Crunchy Conservative, that is a granola-eating homebody who distrusts Big Corporate influence and anything widely popular or currently trending. He likes a normal, sane, and healthy life and that is good enough.

They call us “extremists” because we actually care about results in reality, and therefore once we decide something is good, we act toward it by any means necessary. This is the farthest thing possible from “fiscal conservatism” or Christian National Socialism; it does not fetishize method like the bureaucracies do.

Ultimately a Conservative Realist recognizes that much of humanity is not capable of making complex decisions and will turn nearly unerringly toward the destructive, therefore this human impulse toward groupthink must be contained.

In the Conservative Realist view, most people come up with superstitions about what would solve all of their problems, and by projecting themselves onto these, form a mob and eat up whatever is good in that society. This happens time after time to human groups, including civilizations.

Restraining our mob mentality becomes one of the primary jobs of any civilization that wishes to survive at above the third-world subsistence level. Fundamentalist Conservatives, like Leftists, on the other hand want to force everyone to conform to the same methods in order to make mob mentality good, but this never works.

Our struggle now consists of being brave enough to deny “conventional wisdom” and to look beyond the modern era for our solutions. Conservative Realists can do this; Fundamentalist Conservatives are, in different but similar ways, resisting it, and will plunge us back into darkness.

Tags: conservatism, conservative realism, extremism, fundamentalism, fundamentalist conservatism