Conservatism

Announcement: Jim Bennett and I are working on a book together.

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It will be about the American way of life, where it came from, where it’s going and what we should be doing. So far it looks like we will have everything in there: The Magna Carta, the Singularity, Resilient Communities, the Haymarket Riot, the Anglosphere, the Constitution, Libertarians and Conservatives having a group hug, the inevitable doom of our would-be overlords, pretty much everything including the kitchen sink. We are still working on the book proposal. But we are moving along.

So far the awesomeness is only nascent, but the grandeur of the vision is beginning to grip me.

I will be posting on the blog, shamelessly seeking assistance from our staggeringly brilliant readers, as we get into the research and writing. The CBz hive-mind is a juggernaut which nothing can withstand for long.

I plan to pick your brains, dear friends.

You have been warned!

I Think I See What Glenn Beck is Doing (Updated)

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The Glenn Beck rally is confusing people.

Why?

He is aiming far beyond what most people consider to be the goalposts.

Using Boyd’s continuum for war: Material, Intellectual, Moral.

Analogously for political change: Elections, Institutions, Culture.

Beck sees correctly that the Conservative movement had only limited success because it was good at level 1, for a while, weak on level 2, and barely touched level 3. Talk Radio and the Tea Party are level 3 phenomena, popular outbreaks, which are blowing back into politics.

Someone who asks what the rally has to do with the 2010 election is missing the point.

Beck is building solidarity and cultural confidence in America, its Constitution, its military heritage, its freedom. This is a vision that is despised by the people who have long held the commanding heights of the culture. But is obviously alive and kicking.

Beck is creating positive themes of unity and patriotism and freedom and independence which are above mere political or policy choices, but not irrelevant to them. Political and policy choices rest on a foundation of philosophy, culture, self-image, ideals, religion. Change the foundation, and the rest will flow from that. Defeat the enemy on that plane, and any merely tactical defeat will always be reversible.

Beck is unabashed that God can be invoked in public places by citizens, who vote and assemble and speak and freely exercise their religion. They are supposed to be too browbeaten to do this. Gathering hundreds of thousands of them to peaceably assemble shows they are not. But showing that the people who believe in God and practice their religion are fellow-citizens who share political and economic values with majorities of Americans is a critical step. The idea that these people are an American Taliban is laughable, but showing that fact to the world — and to potential political allies who are not religious — is critical.

Beck is attacking the enemy at the foundations of their power, their claim to race as a permanent trump card, their claim to the Civil Rights movement as a permanent model to constantly be transforming a perpetually unjust society.

He is nuking out the foundations of the opposition’s moral preeminence, the very thing I proposed in this post.

Ronald Reagan said we would not defeat Communism, we would transcend it.

Beck is aiming to have America do the same thing to its decaying class of Overlords, transcend them.

Beck is prepping the battlefield for a generation-long battle.

He is that very American thing: A practical visionary.

See, simple.

Restore pride and confidence to your own side, and win the long game.

As Ronald Reagan also said, there are simple solutions, just no easy solutions.

God bless America.

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Obama + Reid + Pelosi = A Scared, United Right

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“I happen to be opposed to gay marriage, but our peril is so great
that goes on the back burner,” Debbie Johnson of Georgia told me on
Saturday. Bruce Majors, a gay real-estate agent from Washington D.C.,
had a different take. He told me earlier this year that he felt
perfectly comfortable working with the Tea Party on bringing the size
of government under control. “We’re both about freedom and we have a
common short-term goal,” he said. Indeed, in Washington this past
weekend the more libertarian and the more socially conservative
elements of the Tea Party seemed to get along just fine.

From this, via Instapundit.

The Cold War was the glue that held the American Right together up to 1989.

Obama and the Democrats have become a domestic Soviet Union, politically.

They and all their evil works and their trillion-dollars-at-a-time cash bonfires are a menace so great that everything else has to be put off to the side.

These fools have scared the herd of cats on the Right into a tactical alliance that may (fingers crossed …) turn into a longer lasting realignment.

That is a perverse achievement.

Mark Levin on Mocking the Ruling Class

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I recently posted my broodings about the American “Ruling Class”, in response to the much-discussed article by Angelo Codevilla on this theme. This post struck a nerve. It generated a huge number of comments, of exceptionally high quality.

I was very pleased to find out that Mark Levin discussed this post on his radio show. He begins that discussion at about 39:45. Mark says, “Lexington Green, though he may not know it, is writing about this show, and me.” He focuses on the idea that our would-be rulers should be mocked, that they should be disrespected, and that is precisely what he does. This is a strategy that he, and I, and many others, all agree about. I recall one sterling example: the roars of laughter when Gov. Palin mocked candidate Obama at the Republican convention, simply by telling the truth about him in a confident and humorous way. It was pure relief to have someone speak honestly about the man, it was like oxygen coming into a room full of toxic gas. The more of this the better, and the more it is done with humor and a sense of confidence in ourselves, the better for us personally (too much anger begins to degrade you, as I know myself) and the more effective we will be in convincing others.

I will have more on Codevilla’s theme, and the response to it, in one venue or another, going forward.

I rarely listen to talk radio, just because of the nature of my work and other commitments, so I am not a regular listener to Mark’s show. As a result, I only found out about this recently. I have his book sitting around here somewhere, but haven’t read it.

Many thanks to Mark Levin.

Liberals See Corporate Donors To Obama As Saintliness, Donations To Republicans As Evil

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Read all about it here.

The US retail chain of Target made a donation to a business friendly group that endorses Tom Emmer, the Republican candidate for Governor of Minnesota. This has gotten Liberal groups in a tizzy, particularly groups that supposedly support equal rights for people who lead alternative lifestyles.

Why would LGBT advocates get upset about this? Mainly because they claim that Mr. Emmer has made some disparaging remarks about gays in the past. (Since I have not heard of Mr. Emmer before today, I cannot say if their claims are accurate or not.)

So a group which supports pro-business candidates receives a donation from Target, and then Target is pilloried by the Left because one of the people endorsed by that group doesn’t support their agenda?

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