Jonah Goldberg, at the end of a piece about double standards in politics, wants us all to get along, starting maybe with John Rawls' notion of the "original position," proposing that we imagine we are determining laws and customs from behind a "veil of ignorance," not knowing if we are rich or poor, black or white, man or woman.
It's a good idea, based on the civilized and charitable notion of seeing the other guy's point of view. Only we already tried it.
We tried it in the 1950s when President Eisenhower basically acceded to the New Deal. The result was the liberal pedal-to-the-metal Great Society and Affirmative Action.
We had George W. Bush who proposed a "compassionate conservatism." He was followed by President Obama with his pedal-to-the-metal big-government Obamacare and Dodd-Frank and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Not to mention pedal-to-the-metal identity politics and the utter elimination of non-left ideas and culture in education and the media.
So I don't think that compromise is going to work with our liberal friends. In fact, some might call our attempt to compromise by the less pleasant word: appeasement.
The reason that Donald Trump won the Republican nomination and got elected is that he says, in effect, No More Appeasement.
I'd be all in favor of seeing the liberal point of view if there was a hope in hell of liberals seeing my point of view. Right now, all liberals worth their salt are basically trying to drive conservatives and normals out of the public square, because they characterize any conservative notion as racism, sexism, homophobia or white privilege, and run with a shrieking Twitter mob to teacher with a complaint of micro-aggression or worse.
The only way that I have seen where liberals give half a look at conservative ideas is after they lose three presidential elections in a row. Then, and only then do they pretend to be New Democrats and send some guy to the electric chair. That's on the day before they take Hillary Clinton off the leash to nationalize health care.
By my way of thinking we are about 50 years after the moment that liberals should have cried Uncle and agreed that their big-government administrative state was a loser. And it is about a hundred years after the moment that liberals should have admitted their their identity-politics model was a vile reactionary return to tribalism that has no place in the modern world.
It is Conan the Barbarian time (who got it from Genghis Khan). There is no alternative to crushing our liberal friends, and driving them before us. No need to add the lamentation of their women. We already had that in the Fall of 2016.
Hopefully this can all be done in the sham civil war of politics and elections. But it is obviously going to take a vigorous ideological war in which we normals are going to have to challenge every dull and stupid liberal insult and cunning tactic and throw it right back in their faces.
And it helps rather than hinders that President Trump is unafraid to go right up against liberal hypocrisy with his tweets. As in calling out Pocahontas and infuriating every liberal from coast to coast. And that was really pulling punches on Sen. Warren (D-MA). The proper term of art for the inventor of the worst idea in government in half a century, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, would be Fauxahontas. But maybe Trump, a sensitive soul, couldn't bear to hear the lamentation of the liberal women, yet again.
The fact is that the brand of conservatism offered by Jonah Goldberg was a failure, because it didn't redirect the United States towards freedom and responsibility, but just retreated in good order before the liberal advance.
Well, we are now in our own Battle of Verdun, and we want leaders who will say, as the French did in 1916: Ils ne passeront pas.
After we have won, then we can talk about In Victory, Magnanimity.
It's a good idea, based on the civilized and charitable notion of seeing the other guy's point of view. Only we already tried it.
We tried it in the 1950s when President Eisenhower basically acceded to the New Deal. The result was the liberal pedal-to-the-metal Great Society and Affirmative Action.
We had George W. Bush who proposed a "compassionate conservatism." He was followed by President Obama with his pedal-to-the-metal big-government Obamacare and Dodd-Frank and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Not to mention pedal-to-the-metal identity politics and the utter elimination of non-left ideas and culture in education and the media.
So I don't think that compromise is going to work with our liberal friends. In fact, some might call our attempt to compromise by the less pleasant word: appeasement.
The reason that Donald Trump won the Republican nomination and got elected is that he says, in effect, No More Appeasement.
I'd be all in favor of seeing the liberal point of view if there was a hope in hell of liberals seeing my point of view. Right now, all liberals worth their salt are basically trying to drive conservatives and normals out of the public square, because they characterize any conservative notion as racism, sexism, homophobia or white privilege, and run with a shrieking Twitter mob to teacher with a complaint of micro-aggression or worse.
The only way that I have seen where liberals give half a look at conservative ideas is after they lose three presidential elections in a row. Then, and only then do they pretend to be New Democrats and send some guy to the electric chair. That's on the day before they take Hillary Clinton off the leash to nationalize health care.
By my way of thinking we are about 50 years after the moment that liberals should have cried Uncle and agreed that their big-government administrative state was a loser. And it is about a hundred years after the moment that liberals should have admitted their their identity-politics model was a vile reactionary return to tribalism that has no place in the modern world.
It is Conan the Barbarian time (who got it from Genghis Khan). There is no alternative to crushing our liberal friends, and driving them before us. No need to add the lamentation of their women. We already had that in the Fall of 2016.
Hopefully this can all be done in the sham civil war of politics and elections. But it is obviously going to take a vigorous ideological war in which we normals are going to have to challenge every dull and stupid liberal insult and cunning tactic and throw it right back in their faces.
And it helps rather than hinders that President Trump is unafraid to go right up against liberal hypocrisy with his tweets. As in calling out Pocahontas and infuriating every liberal from coast to coast. And that was really pulling punches on Sen. Warren (D-MA). The proper term of art for the inventor of the worst idea in government in half a century, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, would be Fauxahontas. But maybe Trump, a sensitive soul, couldn't bear to hear the lamentation of the liberal women, yet again.
The fact is that the brand of conservatism offered by Jonah Goldberg was a failure, because it didn't redirect the United States towards freedom and responsibility, but just retreated in good order before the liberal advance.
Well, we are now in our own Battle of Verdun, and we want leaders who will say, as the French did in 1916: Ils ne passeront pas.
After we have won, then we can talk about In Victory, Magnanimity.
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