The Neocon Cycle ｜ 1⧸12⧸23
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Words per Minute
151.80072
Summary
Every generation, the radical acceleration of the left forces it to shed a certain percentage of liberals who are not willing to adopt the newest progressive dogma. And due to the binary nature of the American political landscape, those individuals inevitably find themselves identified with the conservative movement. The discarded revolutionaries are often bewildered by their sudden ejection from the movement they identified with for most their lives and are slow to embrace their new allies.
Transcript
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We hope you're enjoying your Air Canada flight.
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Fast-free Wi-Fi means I can make dinner reservations before we land.
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Wi-Fi available to Airplane members on Equipped Flight.
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I didn't leave the Democratic Party, the Democratic Party left me.
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Ronald Reagan's famous turn of phrase has been adopted by many who find themselves suddenly
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We like to think that the current explosion of wokeness that has forced many moderate liberals
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out of the Democratic Party is a unique phenomenon, but nothing could be farther from the truth.
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Every generation, the radical acceleration of the left forces it to shed a certain percentage
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of liberals who are not willing to adopt the newest progressive dogma.
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And due to the binary nature of the American political landscape, those individuals inevitably
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find themselves identified with the conservative movement.
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The discarded revolutionaries are often bewildered by their sudden ejection from the movement
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they identified with for most of their lives, and are slow to embrace their new allies.
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Despite their initial hesitance, the newly minted conservatives are often thrust to positions
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of power and notoriety in the movement, which is subsequently altered by the residual left-wing
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This neoconservative cycle is one of the key reasons why the American conservative movement
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finds itself slowly but inevitably moving to the left.
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Republican leadership is consistently out of step with the positions of its voting base.
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Conservative politicians, pundits, and thought leaders now hold social positions that are
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radically to the left of moderate Democrats in the 1990s.
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In 2008, both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton publicly confirmed their belief that marriage
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But in 2022, 12 GOP senators crossed the aisle to pass a bill redefining marriage.
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Utah Governor Spencer Cox, the current Republican leader of one of the most conservative states
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in the nation, regularly announces his pronouns before speeches and vigorously supports the progressive
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I've previously written and made videos about a number of political ratchets that assured the
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consistent leftward drift of American politics, but one of the most powerful is the mechanism
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that places disaffected progressives in key positions of leadership inside the conservative movement.
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Without addressing this failure of gatekeeping, there's very little chance that the right will
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Every revolution eats its own, and this is a very evident fact on the left.
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Because progressivism is about the deconstruction of civilization and the institutions that support
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Feminists loved the revolution as it deconstructed gender roles and emancipated women from traditional
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bonds, but suddenly found themselves labeled bigots if they questioned the redefinition of the
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There's now an entire category hated by the left called TERFs, these trans-exclusionary feminists.
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Even someone like Harry Potter author JK Rowling, who's rich and famous and was previously very
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popular with the progressive movement, willing even to go back and retroactively edit the narrative
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of her own books in order to insert diversity and alternative lifestyles into beloved children's
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She's basically been erased as the author of her own series.
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She isn't invited to any of the celebrations or events based around her own books that inspired
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a massive movie franchise simply because she's not willing to go along with the newest step
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Likewise, many atheists were happy to cheer the left as it stripped God from the public square,
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but were later shocked when universities started firing professors for doing research or holding
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political positions that violated the new religion that had taken place of the old one.
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These former revolutionaries found themselves in the classic neoconservative position, standing
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athwart a movement they once led and begging it to stop now that it had reached something
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But the revolution stops for no one, and these once trendy and virtuous individuals suddenly
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found themselves cast down into the social status abyss of red America.
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When the freshly minted batch of neocons arrive on the right, they're generally surprised to
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The people are nice, welcoming, and genuinely excited to see someone from the left realize how
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The former revolutionaries are still hesitant to identify as conservatives because conservatives
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still have very backward and dangerous ideas, but they do start to believe that if they could
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just reform the right, there could be a home for the now-moderate liberals of this next generation.
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The key thing to remember is that most of these discarded revolutionaries don't think
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The neoconservatives believed that they were correct to support the progressive movement up
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until the point where they were dismissed from it.
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They don't understand that the values they supported would always inevitably lead to the
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There is no repentance because there's nothing to repent of.
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So instead, the neoconservatives seek to reconstruct their older version of the same movement they
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were just ejected from by pulling their new conservative allies to the left.
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The right tends to follow neoconservative leadership for a very simple reason.
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In America, progressive credentials determine social and moral standing.
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Those with the skills for modern technocratic and media-driven leadership tend to acquire
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them from institutions that transmit progressive values.
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Those who have most recently fallen from grace are also closest to the progressive zeitgeist
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Whenever a high-status defector moves right, conservatives rush to appease their new ally
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thinking the left have finally gone too far and sanity will soon be restored.
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Conservatives can be quickly convinced to shift key elements of their worldview in the hope
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that if they capture the disaffected center, the popular majority will swing their direction.
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But that victory never comes and the right commits, issue by issue, to shift further and further
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The progressive opposition is more than happy to play its role in this process.
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Defectors are a threat to the revolution, no matter how moderate their objections might be,
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Every progressive must be shown what happens to those who betray the movement.
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This public persecution only raises the profile of those attacked, making it increasingly likely
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that they will be seen as important and worthy of elevation on the right.
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Anyone treated as this dangerous by the progressives must be saying something very important, right?
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This all-out attack on recent defectors also has the very valuable effect of anchoring the
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Donald Trump is, by all reasonable measures, a blue-dog Democrat.
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He's socially progressive on some issues, but not totally radical, and he has the protectionist
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and immigration positions of moderate leftists from a few decades ago.
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Now, to be clear, this is not an attack on Trump.
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Sadly, a blue-dog Democrat is to the right of most of the GOP today, but it is the truth.
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There's just nothing radical about Trump's positions.
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The media, however, are willing to shriek relentlessly about how Trump is the most radical authoritarian
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They declare him the second coming of mid-century German leader on a daily basis.
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Conservatives, understandably, defend him passionately because they see the fervent vitriol of these
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heinous attacks, but they also onboard the framing.
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Trump has now been successfully redefined as the rightmost edge of political discourse,
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and anything beyond must, by definition, be unacceptable.
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This is how a moderate Democrat from the 2000s becomes the most radical conservative in 2023.
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Unless conservatism can define itself, it will always be, as author Michael Malice has famously
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labeled it, progressivism going the speed limit.
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It will always be the trailing edge of the left-wing revolution that drives American politics.
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The right cannot exist simply in opposition to the left, and frankly, it cannot see itself
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as strictly conserving a culture it failed to defend long ago.
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Conservatives must first understand what they are fighting for and offer a better version
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The future the left offers now is rather ugly, but it means that the time of purely reacting
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The right can't simply accept the cast-off leadership class and ideology of the left
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