Category Archives: Neoconservatism

NEW COLUMN: Still Addicted To That Rush: Revisiting The ‘09 CPAC Speech

Barack Obama, Conservatism, Donald Trump, Economy, Neoconservatism, Republicans, The Establishment, War, Welfare

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NEW COLUMN, “Still Addicted To That Rush: Revisiting The ‘09 CPAC Speech,” is now WND.COM and The Unz Review.

Excerpt:

Rush Limbaugh died on February the 17th. In the encomiums to conservatism’s radio king, mention was made of his 2009 address at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington, D.C.

CPAC for short, or CPUKE before Trump.

At the time, I had surveyed the perennial, Republican Party dynamics surrounding the event. “Addicted to that Rush,” the March 6, 2009 column’s title, came not from Rush’s brief addiction to painkillers, following surgery, but from an eponymous hit by the band Mr. Big. (It, in turn, came from an earlier time when the American music scene produced not pornographers like Cardi B, but musicians like Paul Gilbert and Billy Sheehan.)

Nevertheless, that title alluded to one of Rush’s missed opportunities: Speaking against a war into which he was involuntarily drafted and by which he was almost destroyed: The War on Drugs.

Still, how petty does that war, in all its depredations, seem now?! How unimaginably remote do the issues Rush spoke to, in 2009, seem in light of a country that has come a cropper in the course of one year, due to an unprecedented consolidation of state power around COVID, compounded by an amped up, institutionalized campaign against white America. And, in particular, against white Trump voters.

Other than champion tax cuts and globalization, the Rovian cadre of the GOP had been doing what it has always done: Calling for a more upbeat, inclusive and diverse party. Michael Steele, then chairman of the Republican National Committee, today an “analyst” for MSNBC, had derided Rush as a mere entertainer, describing “The Rush Limbaugh Show” as incendiary and ugly.

Then as now, Steele’s main concerns were not those of main-street Americans. Rather, Steele’s cares were “conciliatory.” The Rovians, like the Never Trumpers and the Lincoln-Project perverts, believed in the urgent need to broaden the Republican Party’s base and “appeal” to traditionally hostile minorities, when in fact the GOP had been courting traditional Democratic constituents with every trick possible, with little success, all the while sticking it to the base.

The Steele-Limbaugh spat fell into Barack Obama’s lap. The former president was losing it—throwing everything and the kitchen sink at the thing he called “the economy,” but which is really no more than the trillions upon trillions of voluntary, capitalistic acts individuals perform in order to make a living.

Introduce government force and coercion into this synchronized spontaneous order, and it starts to splutter. The economy responds poorly to economic planning and planners. BHO had imagined that he could walk on water. America facilitated his fantasy. The former president was realizing that he was not the magic man he imagined he was. Desperate times called for desperate distractions.

In short succession, Democratic henchmen—Paul Begala, Stanley Greenberg, James Carville, and Robert Gibbs—began picking on Limbaugh. Strong-armed too by the Obama administration was CNBC reporter Rick Santelli, who led a revolt from the floor of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange against the bailout billions for mortgage delinquents. Little wonder, then, that the contents of Limbaugh’s speech at CPAC garnered less attention than the characters involved.

Rush spoke stirringly. He railed against the enormous expansion of government in the first few, frightening weeks of the Obama presidency.

But, as I noted at the time, not a word did one hear against the man who began what Barack was just completing. George Bush set the scene for Barack. Stimulus, bailouts, a house for every Hispanic—these were Bush’s babies. The Constitution and the Bill of Rights had been abandoned well before the fist-bumping Obamas moved into the White House. …

…  As rousing as his speech was, not a word did Limbaugh devote to the Warfare State, every bit as corrupt, corrupting, and bankrupting as the Welfare State. As I observed, at the time, over $1 trillion was being spent yearly on imperial expeditions that were awash in American blood, but offered few benefits to the sacrificed, stateside and abroad.

Besides, I asked, “what kind of a nation neglects its own borders while defending to the death borders not its own?” …

… READ ON. NEW COLUMN, “Still Addicted To That Rush: Revisiting The ‘09 CPAC Speech,” is now WND.COM and The Unz Review.

 

UPDATED (5/7/021): Prager University’s Propositional-Nation Creed

America, Conservatism, Culture, Europe, Multiculturalism, Nationhood, Neoconservatism, Political Philosophy, Republicans

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“Race and ethnicity have defined every nation on earth, except one: The United States of America. It is defined by values.”—PragerU

Prager U, here, articulates the propositional-nation perspective, propounded by the neoconservatives and neoliberals. It is a false creed.

So how is the US doing as a nation united by “values” upon which nobody can agree? As well as a Walmart with missiles can do. We shop and we war, with others and among ourselves.

Notice the Schadenfreude tinged with a sense of American superiority with respect to the Europeans.

To her credit, France has no institutionalized multiculturalism. Integrating individuals, not communities, is how the French have approached their émigré population. They say their republican values proscribe affirmative action. But since America’s republican values haven’t hindered racist quotas here, says our neoconservative troika, the French should get with The Program.

MORE.

Oh, by the way, which “nation” has held onto its historic monuments, America or the “cheese-eating surrender monkeys”?

President Emmanuel Macron evinced the resolve the Anglo-American surrender monkeys are too feeble to feel, much less display:
Said Macron, “The [French] republic will not erase any trace, or any name, from its history … it will not take down any statue.”
Bravo, Monsieur Macron.

MORE.

UPDATES (5/7/021):

Charlie Kirk swear allegiance to propositionalism.

 

Adam Kinzinger Can’t Comprehend That A ‘Country’ Is Made Up Of Constituents

Iraq, Military, Morality, Neoconservatism, Republicans

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Political pygmy Adam Kinzinger has joined other “original thinkers” of the D.C. uniparty in forging a “new” Republican Party.

The outward aim: Reclaim the “precious” GOP from the “deforming” clutches of Trump, whom Kinzinger also voted to impeach. But there is also the benefit of joining other young GOPers, Nancy Mace comes to mind, on the guest list at MSNBC, CNN, to bigger and better things.

With his Creepy First initiative, Kinzinger’s evinces his inability to comprehending that, for him, the “Country” ought to comprise of constituents. It is the lead of his constituents that Kinzinger is obliged to follow.

“The Republican Party has lost its way. If we are to lead again, we need to muster the courage to remember who we are.”
“We need to remember what we believe and why we believe it,” he continued. “Looking in the mirror can be hard, but the time has come to choose what kind of party we will be, and what kind of future we’ll fight to bring about.” (CNN)

And, while we’re at it, can we please quit rabbiting on about the fabric of the great military (in Kinzinger’s case the reserve)? Isn’t it obvious the military is a cesspool of leftism, statism, interventionism, propositionalism, and other, subordinate, poisonous doctrines?

Adam Kinzinger is a “five-term Illinois congressman, who “has served as a pilot with the Wisconsin Air National Guard for years and will be deployed to Arizona for two weeks. He has served three previous tours along the southwest border and has also deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan.” (Wikipedia)

UPDATED (10/23): NEW COLUMN: Actually, COVID Comes Courtesy Of The Chinese PEOPLE

China, Conservatism, Conspiracy, COVID-19, Culture, Environmentalism & Animal Rights, Ethics, Multiculturalism, Neoconservatism

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NEW COLUMN IS “Actually, COVID Comes Courtesy Of The Chinese PEOPLE.” It appeared on WND.COM, The Unz Review, Quarterly Review, and NAEBC.

An excerpt:

China’s plague-delivery pedigree is solid.

Courtesy of China, the West got the H2N2 virus in 1957 and the H3N2 virus in 1968. Granted, the Chinese viral supply chain was broken with H1N1 flu; it came from Mexico. But, with the bird flu, SARS and SARS-Cov-2, China has fully reestablished its disease-delivery credentials.

Alas, going by the COVID culpability theories advanced by conservatives, the steady stream of “China plagues,” in Trump’s words, has had nothing to do with the noble Chinese people.

Blame the ignoble Chinese Communist Party for all these lethal, little RNA strands unleashed on the world. Some even have taken to calling SARS-CoV-2 “the CCP virus.”

As this Disneyfied neoconservative narrative goes, the Chinese were just hanging, being the freedom-loving, civilized sorts they are; going about the business of making the world a better place, when, lo-and-behold, their scheming, communistic government sprung the COVID on them—and the world.

Without fail, American pundits and pols, conservatives, in particular, apply to China the same theories of culpability that have undergirded America’s invasions of the illiberal people of the Middle East.

The bifurcation globalists love to effect is of the noble Chinese people up against the ignoble Chinese government.

It’s the Chinese government, not the people. Liberate the Chinese and they’ll show their Jeffersonian propensity for enlightened self-interest, not to mention a palate for cuisine less craven and cruel.

What I wrote in 2006 about Iraqis applies in spades to the Chinese and their responsibility for COVID. I’ve substituted Iraq with China here:

“The government of [China] doesn’t stand apart from the governed; it reflects them.” (November 6, 2006) …

… READ THE REST. NEW COLUMN IS “COVID Comes Courtesy Of The Chinese PEOPLE.” It appeared on WND.COM, The Unz Review, Quarterly Review, and NAEBC.

  • Wet Markets, Courtesy of Jo-Anne McArthur

Bat soup, courtesy NAEBC, where the column is now posted.

Courtesy NAEBC.

UPDATE I (10/23):

Sickest think, @rosenberger_ken, on LinkedIn, where we both hangout, is how animal rescues keep fetching (and filming) these half-starved dogs from dog-eating farms–yet animal activists say not a words about THAT cultural EVIL. About BLM, The same activists, on the same forum,  don’t shut up.