Open Thread

Mark Noonan106 Comments

Been hearing – and not just from Never Trumpers – that people are simply growing tired of Trump and all the drama and will opt for Biden simply because they want someone dull. I don’t buy it – I mean, I can understand that the whole circus around Trump is abnormal and people can get frustrated with it, but I don’t feel like it makes we want to vote for Biden, nor anyone I know. What do you think?

PM Johnson has got the Queen to prorogue Parliament: ie, put it on ice for a period of time; in this case, until such time as the PM finishes extricating Britain from the EU. This is something Americans don’t know much about as it is outside our political experience. But in a Monarchy, sovereignty doesn’t reside with the people, but with the Monarch. That’s why they call it “Her Majesty’s Government”. It has been nearly two centuries since a British Monarch exercised any authority outside the advice of the Prime Minister, but the authority is still there under the British constitution and Boris advised the Queen to exercise it – to forestall Remain efforts to prevent the PM from carrying out the will of the people…and because we live in insane times, the PM is being criticized on grounds of being undemocratic in his insistence that the results of a democratic vote be implemented. I still doubt Johnson will pull it off – too much of the British Ruling Class is dead set against it; they really, really want faceless bureaucrats in Brussels who take their orders from Berlin to run things. But, he’s clearly got the brass to give it a try.

Laurence “Stop the Hammering” O’Donnell tried to revive the Trump-Russia debacle with a “scoop” claiming that Russian oligarch’s close to Putin co-signed some Trump loans. I didn’t pay much attention to it because, well, the Trump-Russia thing is drivel and I just don’t care about it…but this is interesting:

According to Harder’s demand letter, “The Program and Tweet make the false and defamatory statements that ‘Russian oligarchs’ co-signed loans provided to Mr. Trump by Deutsche Bank, and described these ‘co-signers’ as ‘Russian billionaires close to Vladimir Putin.’”

Harder is also warning others against republishing the allegedly false statement. (The Hollywood Reporter is doing so because it believes such republication is necessary to convey what is a matter of utmost public concern and protected by the First Amendment in connection with anticipated litigation.)

In a tweet following Harder’s letter, O’Donnell wrote, “Last night I made an error in judgment by reporting an item about the president’s finances that didn’t go through our rigorous verification and standards process. I shouldn’t have reported it and I was wrong to discuss it on the air. I will address the issue on my show tonight.”

Trump likely wouldn’t win any case – the judges would all rule that he’s the President and the MSM can say pretty much whatever it wants. But, the vigorous pushback shows that Team Trump feels, at least, that the facts are on their side.

More and more Democrats are latching on to the Wealth Tax, under various forms. Now, our Democrats are doing this simply because they want the money to shovel to their cronies…but it will be popular, boys and girls; and even if not particular popular, very hard to fight against. Who wants to stand up and defend a billionaire’s horde? We should be stealing a march on the Democrats…and making sure that any wealth tax hits heavily at constituencies favored by Democrats…tax free foundations; private college endowments (Harvard sits on $37 billion – the college is more of a tax dodge as far as the money goes); Soros-type Progressive moneybags. Like getting out in front of student loan debt, it will allow us to push Conservative policy while taking issues away from the Democrats.

Yeah, I Guess I’m a Revolutionary

Mark Noonan132 Comments

I got into a slight Twitter tiff with a friend – and no hard feelings, at all. Just a short exchange which made me realize something: we need to have a Revolution.

It had to do with a discussion surrounding Prince Andrew’s connections to Jeffrey Epstein – which seem rather extensive and continued long after Epstein’s first conviction. Andrew, of course, being the second son of Queen Elizabeth…which means you can’t get more social or economic elite than he is. As the discussion went on, I blurted out (as it were) a desire to confiscate the wealth of people like Andrew and distribute it (via lottery) among the people. This rather upset my friend – being as we’re both Conservative and thus defenders of Property. And I do defend Property…but I also despise a traitor. And that is, first and foremost, what Prince Andrew is: a traitor. A traitor to civilization.

And he’s not alone: he is legion among the Ruling Class. Think of all the people who had connections with Epstein for decades, and continued after his conviction. There is a story in the Daily Mail – British papers still engaging in actual journalism from time to time – about a party at Epstein’s after his conviction which included among the guests Prince Andrew, Woody Allen, Katie Couric, Chelsea Handler and the daughter of a former Australian Prime Minister. This was, as I said, after Epstein’s conviction. From the story, it seems that Epstein has pornographic pictures on the wall and liked to blurt out astonishing sexual crudities during conversation. And this is where the son of the Queen of Great Britain said, “hey, bro, cool place to hang out”.

Prince Andrew lives a life of extreme luxury. He’s worth an estimated 75 million dollars and he’s never had to earn a penny of it – and, remember, he’s the second son of the Queen. As soon as Diana pushed out William in 1982, the chances that Andrew or anyone descended from him would ever sit on the British throne became nil. He’s a biological dead end, as far as royalty goes. But, he’s got 75 million dollars…and all of it, ultimately, because a distant ancestor built a castle in Milan in the 11th century and so became the founder of a dynasty which eventually produced George I. Now, one should never fuss about the good fortune of others – envy is a sin, after all. But you’d think that someone sitting on a vast fortune of unearned wealth who has no particular purpose in life would at least try to sustain the civilization which provided and protects his gigantic privileges. But, no: he’s hanging around with the Pimp to the Stars. And so were lots of other people just as rich and privileged (but most not having the lineage).

And I think that is what has been gnawing at me, unspoken, for many years, now: that those who are in charge of our civilization are traitors to it. Not all of them, of course. There are rich people who do try to live decent lives – even some of the old noble houses (the Hapsburgs, long dethroned, do seem to keep their act together); the Koch family (whom I mostly disagree with, politically) seem to be upstanding as well as generous. But time and again we find that the rich are living lives of gross immorality – and if not directly participating in it, keeping their mouths shut about it. They defend nothing which the common people hold dear – not God; not family; nothing…except their own wealth and position, of course; they are fierce in defense of their money…and their private, secluded, heavily guarded playgrounds where, it would seem, quite a lot of the sons and daughters of the poor are brought in to be abused by the layabout sons and daughters of the rich.

But here’s the thing – if they were just destroying themselves, it wouldn’t be any concern of ours. But people with vast fortunes and social prestige have a gigantic effect on everything and everyone else. If I drop $10 into a collection plate, it is only a ripple…a rich person dropping a million dollars is a tidal wave. And if the money is dropped into the plate of a group out to destroy us (you and me, I mean), then it is horribly destructive. That its dropped to keep the anti-Civilization dogs off the backs of the rich just makes such things an insult on top of an injury. What this tells me is that we can’t just let matters be: we’ve got our billionaire on our side in Donald Trump and he’s one heck of a fighter for us…but he’s one guy, and no later than January of 2025, he’s gone. Meanwhile, these malefactors of great wealth (Teddy Roosevelt’s exquisite phrasing) will still be around…being nauseating and still providing money and prestige for interests which want us destroyed. What do we do? Just let it keep on going?

I can’t say that I agree with that – I can’t say, that is, that my defense of private property extends to the defense of private property being used to destroy what I hold dear (which includes property…it isn’t poor people demanding that zoning laws be changed and property seized by government for transfer to rich developers). It is, in short, time for a Revolution – and kicking over the tables and a chasing of the money-changers out of the Temple. We can no longer endure a Ruling Class which is working directly against our interests…they either have to get on board with us, or be removed. And we won’t get rid of the current Ruling Class if they are able to retain their money…money is power; it is, really, the ultimate power, in any form of government. Whomever commands it has absolute power, unless there’s an equally large sum of money opposed…but we see it that, in general, our entire Ruling Class is on the same side, even if they call themselves variously Liberal or Conservative; all of them are at war with us…with what we want. Which is things like common decency; the Rule of Law; equality under the Law; a defense of faith, family and property.

I can’t see how we win the battle if we leave the Ruling Class in possession of their money. If you’ve got a way to leave Soros and his heirs with billions of dollars without their being able to wreck us, then I’m all ears…but unless someone has a way to do just that, then self defense requires us to relieve quite a large number of rich people of their wealth.

The Last Gasp of Never Trump

Mark Noonan10 Comments

So, one-term Congresscritter Joe Walsh has decided to challenge President Trump in the GOP primary. I can figure why Walsh would do it: attention hounds do need attention and grifters do gotta grift…I’ve been watching Walsh implode towards this position since 2017 and it hasn’t been a pretty sight. But, he’s going to get media attention and donations and, for him, that is what is must be about. But what about those who engineered his entry?

We must not discount the mere sins of Pride which are likely driving a good portion of this, but beyond the Never Trumpers risking their immortal souls there is, I think, something else behind this: I can’t remotely prove it, but I’m thinking that the selection of the old GOPe money class – seconded by Democrat money bags sowing division – it making one, last effort to recapture the GOP. They only liked the GOP when it was a party of Progressive Light: the Progressive party which wanted low taxes, especially on corporate earnings and large amounts of stored wealth. As far as it went, such people only tolerated gun owners, pro-lifers and such because these people were, by an large, in favor of low taxes. But, all along, these Never Trump types despised their base…considered them hicks and were never going to do anything to help the base’s cause. Trump came along, read the situation precisely as it was (and is), and proceeded to roll over the GOPe simply by speaking to the desires of the GOP base. The real fear of the GOPe types is not just that Trump will be re-elected (though they’d hate that). No: their real fear is that the GOP base will never come back to the GOPe. That after Trump, the GOP will become an increasingly Populist Conservative party and start doing horrendous things like breaking up large corporations; taxing high end wealth; dismantling the education system…you know, destroying everything that keeps GOPe types rolling in wealth and privilege.

So, they’ve been looking not for a way to win, but for a way to show the GOP base that they can’t have what they want. They want to show that Trump was a one-off which only happened because the GOPe was asleep at the wheel and that the GOPe can just whistle up a situation where Trump gets destroyed. After that, the GOP base – in their thinking – will just have to knuckle under and accept a whole string of Mitt Romney’s and Jeb’s and live with the fact that every last iota of the Progressive agenda will be enacted (except high taxes on corporations, of course). Trouble is, they couldn’t really find anyone to go after Trump. In this, I think that the leadership of McConnell and Graham has been crucial: by understanding what Trump really represents, these two (and there are others) have understood that the GOP can win smashing victories for an indefinite period of time…and all it takes is actually doing something for the base. McConnell is cementing his legacy as the most consequential Senate Majority leader in half a century…and he seems to be enjoying the heck out of himself doing it. Why would he want to give that up so that Democrats can take the White House in 2020 just because Orange Man Bad? Why would any serious political leader want to do that?

But now momentum takes over – the Never Trump contingent has to keep going, or admit defeat. Too filled with Pride to admit defeat or error, they just kept going and going and going…until the found Joe Walsh, who seems to be a bit of a raving lunatic. He’s made racist statements in the past – and I’m not talking Progressive versions of racist statements; actual, genuine racist statements. He once tweeted out that if Trump lost in 2016, he’s grab his gun and start shooting. He peddled stories about Obama that would make a paranoid conspiracy theorist blush. The guy, in short, is all over the place…with the only consistency being that he’ll say whatever garners him attention. Being just another trooper for Trump wouldn’t get him anywhere (likely because he’s so mercurial that only an idiot would trust him); so he decided to become anti-Trump…and the Ahoy Boys of Never Trump have now latched on to him. It is going to be fun to watch.

But, mostly, it is going to be fun to see the last of these types. We’ve been sold out by them too many times and for too long. They’ll ride Walsh right out of the GOP and Conservatism, and I believe for good.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan180 Comments

The RNC continues to set fundraising records and has buckets more money than the DNC. Now, don’t get too cocky about this – the Democrats have a vast network of non-party funding sources (the “dark money” they complain about when it isn’t them doing it), so it doesn’t mean the Democrats will be low on cash for 2020. But the fact that the RNC – under Trump – is breaking fundraising records does show that the new GOP is appealing to a large number of people. Keep in mind that every last thing the MSM does vis a vis politics from now until election day is to help Democrats and/or hinder Republicans. And they won’t shy away from just making things up, is that is required. From the MSM you simply will not get the true state of affairs…you’ll have to dig around a bit; because the truth is freely available. It just won’t be headlined or lead the nightly broadcasts. But if you look around you’ll find things like fundraising totals, crowd size, voter registration stats and such which will give you an idea of how things are going. Almost nothing is ever an actual surprise in politics – remember that Hillary cancelled her fireworks display a few days before the election. She knew – she knew – that she already lost the election about a week out from the vote. So did everyone else who was juiced in – they just didn’t tell us. Team Trump because they didn’t want anyone overconfident (and they’ll be like that again in 2020), Team Hillary because they were still hoping for a miracle…and the MSM because they were ordered by the Democrats to keep their traps shut about it.

Moonbats prepare to descend on Area 51. It is a bit of a joke, but from what I’ve heard about 50,000 people are going to a county with 5,000 residents, and that is going to put a huge burden on that county (as well as providing a bonanza of business: so, a bit of plus to the minus). Things like this are silly, but they can also get out of hand. I hope everyone just behaves themselves and has a good time. As for Area 51 – my Dad was out there frequently in the 80’s and early 90’s and assured me there are no Aliens there…but, that’s what They would want him to say, isn’t it?

China’s one child policy lead to a gigantic disparity in the number of boys and girls being born…and that, in turn, has lead to the price of a bride skyrocketing in China. A bride can set a family back 200,000 Yuan, that’s about $28,000 – and I don’t think that includes the cost of the wedding, etc. The more Progressives try to “fix” things, the worse they make them – and I find it enormously funny (mixed in with the overall tragedy) that this attempt at social engineering has simply allowed women to charge even more than they used to for the whole marriage and family thing. Hate to break it to ya, guys, but a woman – well, a wise woman – always looks for the guy who she believes can best take care of her. She might want the good looking, studly guy but she wants more the kind, strong man who looks like he can hold down a job and won’t go wandering off at the next pretty face. And in China, she’s getting that…because she’s so rare, now, that she’s commanding the whole country to bow before her.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan24 Comments

This is certainly interesting:

In Washington state, where his approval rating is 28 points underwater, Trump has still racked up far more donations, big and small, than any of the Democratic candidates — in fact more than the top six Democrats combined.

I’m not talking about total dollars raised — though on that front Trump is a juggernaut, too. But the total number of donations reflects how many people are inspired enough by a candidate to send any amount of money, sometimes repeatedly.

This is Blue Washington. Where you often have to think twice about the risk to your job and social standing if you support the wrong candidate or party. Does this mean Trump will win Washington. No. It’d take a miracle. But, it does show that Trump is not just gaining support, but gaining support which is willing to take a public stand. I’ve been thinking that public opinion polling for this cycle is off because the pollsters simply don’t know about the country they’re living in – that we’re actually very much a populist, center/right nation and that a large part of the populist, center/right people are (now former) Democrats. We’ll find out next year if my theory is correct…but unless the vote comes out that way, I refuse to believe that even a large minority of my fellow Americans are Antifa-loving, open borders trans rights activists.

The Ninth Circuit (yes, that Ninth Circuit) seems to have a struck a blow against the Left’s tactic of finding a judge in Hawaii to issue nationwide injunctions against Trump Administration policies. We’ll see how it plays out – but the higher Courts do have to gain a measure of control here if they don’t want to get crushed under politics. It is ridiculous that some obscure federal judge out there can stop the policy of the duly elected President on a whim. To me, it should be only the Supreme Court able to issue nationwide injunctions.

The New York Times is framing slavery as being central to our existence as a nation. And Beto was out there saying that our nation was founded on racism. Don’t look for any logic behind this view: there isn’t any. It is entirely stupid – but I’ve been pondering this and I recalled the first time I heard this theory. I had watched Farrakhan’s speech at his so-called “million man march” and that is exactly what he was on about: that white people are inherently racist and America is, thus, inherently racist. To call America a racist nation is to assert that everything which has happened in this nation up until just now was evil. I’m not quite sure what the Left’s thinking here is – it could be that hatred has just made them stupid. I don’t know how many people are going to rush out and vote a party which considers your nation evil.

Epstien’s attorneys are not entirely on board with the suicide ruling. I don’t think anyone – left or right – is. But, I also don’t think there’s any way to resolve this: the institutions of government have poisoned the well. Too often caught in flat out lies to be trusted: there’s no way to investigate something like Epstein’s death and remove all doubts.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan7 Comments

I did a little checking with Expert Opinion and its still pretty set: Trump is doomed. And I mean in the “he hasn’t got a chance” sense. But then you see the crowd at Trump’s rally in New Hampshire last night. Honestly, I can’t see how the man loses – his opponents can’t draw flies. But, the polls say he’s done. I guess we’ll find out next year.

As if you didn’t already know this, there’s leaked audio of the New York Times deciding to switch from “Russia” to “Racism” against Trump. Long time readers might remember my very long series of “What Media Bias?” posts. I stopped doing it because it was so obvious that it really didn’t need further explanation. But, still, nice to get some absolute confirmation.

China is cracking down on Hong Kong – some people are officially upset with Trump as he’s not being forceful about it. But, what’s he really supposed to do? He’s already engaged in a trade war with China. He’s already trying to detach North Korea from China’s orbit. He’s already buddying up to India and Vietnam against China. He’s rebuilding our Navy. He’s sending our ships into waters claimed by China. Short of war, there’s nothing we can do for Hong Kong: and I don’t think anyone wants to fight China over Hong Kong. It is sad, but it was inevitable: a tyranny simply will not tolerate the slightest bit of freedom. China only kept hands off until disruption wouldn’t roil markets too badly…and rely on it that Hong Kong’s rich will cut whatever deals are necessary with Beijing.

SpaceX is talking up its mission to Mars. I think we should go visit Mars, but I’m doubtful about our ability to live off Earth for any length of time. The more we learn about the planets, the more incredible it is that Earth has life…things just have to be so incredibly perfect for life to exist that the chances of it existing elsewhere are getting vanishingly small…and we’re also learning that what Earth has is not at all easy to replicate, even on a small scale. Among the massive problems, I see radiation as the largest. Living things don’t like it: our atmosphere and magnetic field keep out lots of it…but once away from Earth, you lose that protection and have to make the means of keeping it off you.

The Trump Administration has been facilitating talks between Israel and various Arab States…this is because Trump is just smarter than anyone we’ve had in the White House since Reagan.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan31 Comments

With Epstein’s death, a gigantic sigh of relief was heard throughout Manhattan, DC and Hollywood…but there are still a lot of lose ends, and the Ruling Class is diligently trying to tie things up:

On Friday, unsealed court documents named former Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell and former Clinton cabinet official and ex-New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson as among those who allegedly had sex with an underage victim of Jeffrey Epstein. But while all three evening news broadcasts covered the case, one thing was missing: any hint that those two men are Democrats.

If you check anything about Epstein in the MSM or Wikipedia, you’ll see that Trump is mentioned all over the place – that is also a bit of lose-end-tying. Trump really never had much to do with the guy, and certainly not in the last dozen years or so. But, the MSM must protect their masters! And that means downplaying all the prominent Dems in Epstein’s orbit and overemphasizing any Republican involvement. And they wonder why we hold them in contempt? Aside from that, I don’t know where this goes – but you can rely on it, the full truth won’t come out for a long, long time unless Trump and Barr really press the matter. Side note: I’m pretty sure he offed himself, but there were so many “mistakes” the prison had to make to allow him time to do it that I can only assume his death was greatly desired…and I’m wondering if anyone got word to him that his timely exit would result in something he cared about being protected?

Germany provides free college – and you’ll find our domestic leftists all happy about that. But, free college leads to pretty much what you’d expect:

The problem is that every pupil who has passed the school-leaving exam, the Abitur, has the constitutional right to a place at university, even if he or she has to wait some semesters and has no real academic inclinations or talents. The result is a proliferation of abstruse and socially irrelevant courses, a drop-out rate of about 30% (a shocking waste of human and financial resources) and the lack of skilled workers you mentioned.

Free college isn’t to provide educated people – free college is to provide make-work jobs for people in education who will then have a vested interest in preserving the Ruling Class which provides their sinecures. A follow-on benefit is the ability to propagandize to youth for four additional years so they are really solidly in line with Ruling Class desires. The end result is an uneducated population of drones who do as they are told.

Looks like China is about to crush all resistance in Hong Kong. Lots of people are huffing and puffing with righteous indignation over it. It is times like these where I like to remind people that righteous indignation hurts nobody. There is a case to be made for intervening in Hong Kong…but the only meaningful intervention would mean war with China. By all means: China poses a gigantic threat to the United States and the sooner we have it out with them, the less costly it will be. But that is not what these people demanding we “do something” mean…what they mean is “I want to demand we ‘do something’ so I can say I stood with the people of Hong Kong, but if you think I’d risk my life – or, even worse, my investment portfolio – to defend the people of Hong Kong, you’re nuts.” Hong Kong only gets out of its jam if the revolt spreads to the rest of China; so far, there’s no indication of that happening. Side note: this is the long term result of our refusal to unleash the Nationalist Chinese during the Korean War. We were stupid and cowardly then, and now we get to watch while a free people is destroyed.

The new and increasingly non-racist South is becoming ever more Republican. It is a Democrat lie that the old, racist Democrats of yore switched to the GOP. The Civil Rights Act was passed in 1965. As late as 2002, Democrats had complete control of the Alabama government. It was only after the 2010 elections that the GOP gained control of the Alabama legislature for the first time since Reconstruction. That was 45 years after the Civil Rights Act which infuriated, particularly, racist Alabama Democrats…who were then supposed to go GOP because the GOP is racist, and yet somehow all these racists forgot to vote GOP until 2010. The reality: the racist Democrats remained Democrats and only with the rise of a new, non-racist white electorate in Alabama did the GOP gain control.

Where the Shooters Come From

Mark Noonan53 Comments

RSM delved into the El Paso shooter’s background. Its pretty much exactly what you would expect. Parents are divorced. They taught him love and tolerance, but apparently neglected such basics as “right and wrong” and “how to use a GPS” (he got lost on his way to his massacre). His mom is a nurse and dad is a therapist…so, likely not poor people, but their son was on food stamps (how in heck a single man with no kids gets food stamps we’ll leave for another time).

Not too long ago I was in conversation with a 20 year old. A very bright person attending college. The product of a broken home, but still fairly well adjusted. Over the course of the conversation (several people were there) this youngster asserted to racist views. I was very surprised at this, at first. After the encounter, it stuck in my mind and I pondered it. How does a person brought up long after slavery and Jim Crow and put through an education system which relentlessly preaches against racism become a racist? It was simple once I hit on it: because this youngster was born after Jim Crow and was relentlessly taught not just that racism is bad, but that white people are inherently racist, and thus bad.

People, you see, don’t like to be taught they are bad. I’m sure it infuriated black people back in the day to have whole swaths of the system essentially preach their inferiority to whites. On balance, the petty racism a black person would encounter was probably less of an affront than his very government and society telling him that he was second rate. For a couple decades now, white kids in public schools have been taught precisely that: they are inferior. They are born racists; they have unearned privilege; on and on like that. None of it being remotely true; and some white kid gets an earful of that and becomes resentful. Couple that with being a failure (as all these shooters are), being entirely ignorant of actual history (and thus having no way to be proud of anything outside their miserable selves) and from backgrounds likely to remove all real moral instruction, and that’s where you get the mass murderers.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan42 Comments

Lots of things are being proposed in the wake of the mass shootings, the most pernicious being the red flag laws. Imagine an America where liberals get to turn you in to the police with the accusation that you’re insane, and then you have to prove you’re not in order to keep your right to bear arms.

Democrats, sick people that they are, are fundraising off the shootings. Beto has been the most vile in this, directly accusing the President of racism.

The Dayton shooter seems to have been a far-left kook, while the El Paso shooter supposedly had some rightwing leanings. This works out to the MSM covering El Paso while downplaying Dayton.

The people of Hong Kong are rising up against their Communist overlords – but they will not be successful. The Chinese government would like to defuse the situation with little or no bloodshed, if possible, but make no mistake about it: Hong Kong will be brought fully under the heel of Beijing. The people of Hong Kong have no way to resist: they don’t have guns.

Meanwhile, China is developing a plan for a Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere…and like the last one attempted by Japan, they aren’t asking Great East Asia if they want to be part of it.

Leftists forced the New York Times to memory hole a headline about Trump the left didn’t agree with. Paper of record, ya’ll…its just a record of how to surrender to Communist apparatchiks.

Conservatism Recovered

Mark Noonan38 Comments

Excellent article by Julie Kelly about understanding what has really happened to Conservatism:

The realignment of the political Right has prompted a public confessional of sorts, a raw acknowledgement that millions of us were led astray by Republiican leaders we trusted, we voted for, and we defended during times of war. We only have ourselves to blame, of course, because we did it with our eyes wide open. But the Trump era is forcing many Republicans to reexamine what we once believed and reassess what actually is true.

In a fiery speech earlier this month at the National Conservatism conference in Washington, D.C., Fox News host Tucker Carlson talked about purging his “mental attic” to dust off the ideas that he had accepted as legitimate over past few decades.

“The Trump election was so shocking . . . that it did cause some significant percentage of people to say ‘wait a second, if that can happen, what else is true?’” Carlson said. “Just look around . . . who are the good guys and who are the bad guys? A lot of the people we’ve been told are good guys are not. Some of them are the worst guys. I’ll let you figure out who.”

One of the crucial things to understand about politics is that it draws layabouts like s*** draws flies. That is, it draws rent-seeking nincompoops who are determined to live well without having to actually produce anything. No political ideology is free from this. Heck, even the most productive companies in the world aren’t entirely free of it. There are always – always – people trying to get a free ride.

Modern Conservatism got its start in reaction to the changes in American governance introduced during the Roosevelt Administration in the 1930s. It was correctly understood that the ultimate result of Roosevelt policies would be the end of the America founded in 1776. It was a movement to roll back the government; stand firm for American defense and defend the family and our social institutions from the remorseless attack of the Left. This movement reached its peak in the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980…and I think we all thought that we really had won. That is, we thought that our ideas had proven correct and that going forward it would just be the increasing implementation of the ideas of Conservatism. We now know that it didn’t work out that way…and it didn’t work out that way because in the wake of Reagan, we got a host of political barnacles who spoke the words of Conservatism, but didn’t really have an interest in carrying out Conservatism. We were consumed by rent-seekers when we needed committed fighters.

But for the longest time, most of us went along with them – they were our leaders, after all. They wrote for prestige magazines. They had best-selling books. TV shows. And they did, indeed, speak the words of Conservatism…but always with a caveat which we ignored or didn’t understand. Now was always not the exact, perfect time to really press for Conservatism. We always had to do something else first, and getting that done invariably meant not fighting a particular battle for a Conservative principle. We were kept on the hook by endless promises that the New Dawn would come, and we’d finally be in the right moment where we could fight the left tooth and nail. But, it never came. Of course, it was never meant to come. The grifters running the Conservative show didn’t want that – because they weren’t really Conservative. They liked their swank gigs and they knew that to keep them they needed to keep talking right, but they weren’t about to go to their liberal friends and explain that they had to actually fight to defend the family, or even to defend the concepts of “male” and “female”.

Those of you reading me here have known that I had my doubts for many years – even stretching back to the Bush the Younger years…and, truth be told, some doubts even in the Clinton years. A gnawing feeling that we were being sold down the river and that not everything we were taught to revere was worthy. But I did keep to being a loyal foot soldier. Partly, of course, because no matter how bad the GOPe squish being foisted upon me, he or she was still miles better than the Democrat. But that was still folly on my part, and I see that now with blinding clarity. It has always been better to suffer even crushing defeat while fighting for what we believe in than to “win” with someone who will merely slow down our defeat. Douglas MacArthur was once asked his formula for defensive war and he gave a one word answer: “defeat”. You can’t win unless you attack – and attacking requires a ruthless willingness to take and inflict pain.

Trump isn’t a Conservative; not remotely. Except in one, crucial aspect: Conservatism is really just common sense, and Trump has bags of that. He’s not someone, I think, who has delved deeply into Adam Smith, Edmund Burke and F.A. Hayek. He’s not, that is, an intellectual of the Right. But, then again, who is? Bill Kristol? Max Boot? David French? If these are our intellectuals, then we’re doomed. Trump isn’t advancing Conservatism in a conscious sense – but by doing what makes sense, he’s advancing it all the same. It is common sense that the judges merely enforce the laws; to do otherwise means there is no law, and thus no chance for justice or mercy or even sanity. The only judges out there who will simply enforce the laws are Conservative judges…and, so, common sense dictates the appointment only of Conservative judges. It’d be stupid to waste even a single life time appointment on a non-Conservative judge because that means you’re just giving the anti-law, insane Left side of the aisle an unearned win and making life harder for yourself going forward.

So it is with act after act. True, it’d be nice if Trump would take on the national debt, but that is something that only concerns a small number of people. Yes, the debt is a looming national catastrophe and if we don’t get a handle on it, we’re going to pay a high price for our profligacy. But Trump isn’t particularly concerned about it and never has been. Can’t ask a man to be what he isn’t. And at the end of the day, the pretend-Conservatives who ran our movement since Reagan also didn’t do a damn thing about the debt. Perhaps Trump’s successor can be made to do what is necessary (it won’t really be hard: at it takes is a good economy and a really very small reduction in overall government spending over a period of 10 years to get to balance and debt reduction). But the bottom line is that outside of the debt, Trump is moving the Conservative ball forward even more effectively than Reagan (who also didn’t tackle the debt). And by doing this – by actually implementing Conservatism – Trump is doing the best thing anyone has ever done for us: exposing the traitors in our ranks.

Remember, these are grifters who merely want to live well without doing anything. They are best friends with their Leftist counterparts, who are also grifting (but who also do advance Leftism…so while the liberal foot soldiers are getting robbed just as blind as we were, at least Leftism is being advanced; this makes the Leftwing grifters the moral superior of the Conservative grifters). It was all fine as long as nothing actually happened in a Conservative sense. Along comes Trump and he starts doing Conservative things and they all had a choice to make: some choose to actually join the side they said they were on…others have decided to join the Left, which they always in fact were part of. For us, it means we have been able to recover Conservatism. We’ve taken it out of the hands of the thieves who stole it in the aftermath of Ronald Reagan…and no longer bound to anything that happened in the past, we are able to jettison even the mistakes that Reagan made, most notably the 1986 Amnesty. But we’ve also given up on nation building and endless war. We no longer desire to defend large corporations. We no longer defend “free trade” which merely meant middle class jobs being sent to Chinese sweated labor. We are able to start counterattacking the advances of the Left.

In my view, it is time to forget 1989 to 2009. It was a wasted 20 years, as far as Conservatism was concerned. Anyone – even the most dyed in the wool Never Trump – is free to join or reject us; we don’t care what anyone chooses and no hard feelings against anyone who repents and gets on board. But we’re now going to fight. We still may lose, but we’re not going to roll over for the Left.