The right of center elites are unusually public about their pessimism all of a sudden

 

If Civilization Dies, Put It Down as a Suicide

Gerard Baker, Wall Street Journal

 

Can We Do Anything About America’s Decline?

Victor Davis Hanson, Am Greatness

 

Good news for Baltimore, maybe

 Woke social justice prosecutor Marilyn Mosby roundly defeated July 19th, leaves abject destruction in her wake:

In her first year in office, homicides surged 62 percent, jumping from 211 to 348. Murders have remained above 300 for each of her seven years in office—now surpassing 2,500 victims, of which at least 92 percent have been black. The sustained increase in murders is directly connected with Mosby’s pro-criminal policies.

Last year was the deadliest in Baltimore’s history, with a per capita homicide rate of more than 58 per 100,000 residents. And 2022 has been even worse, with the homicide rate increasing faster than anywhere other than New Orleans and with 215 murders already on the books. ...

Not one Democrat, elected or appointed, ever criticized or opposed Mosby’s policies, no matter how many black bodies piled up. 

More.

"Insurrectionists" were on the FBI payroll

The so-called “Proud Boys,” often cited as a “far-Right” organization and said to be somehow responsible for January 6, was led by one Enrique Tarrio, an FBI informant. The so-called Oath Keepers, the group most cited and said by government sources to be most involved in that day’s events, is led by one Stewart Rhodes, another FBI asset.

In fact, the Justice Department lists some 15 participants in the event against whom it brings no charges, either for “insurrection” or even for trespassing, because these individuals are paid infiltrators. They work for the FBI or other U.S. intelligence agencies. The U.S. government refuses to expose what these persons did because they did it on the government’s behalf. 

More.

The FBI never changes. Its sting operations are legion, without which it would have no successes. It should be abolished. 

NSC staffer Alexander Vindman isn't just a Ukrainian-American, he's a partisan Democrat who ridiculed America, according to two fellow soldiers

Hickman’s Oct. 31 tweets continue below in paragraph form for easier reading:

He was apologetic of American culture, laughed about Americans not being educated or worldly, & really talked up Obama & globalism to the point of (sic) uncomfortable.
He would speak w/the Russian Soldiers & laugh as if at the expense of the US personnel. It was so uncomfortable & unprofessional, one of the GS [civil service]employees came & told me everything above. I walked over & sat w/in earshot of Vindman, & sure enough, all was confirmed.
One comment truly struck me as odd, & it was w/respect to American’s falsely thinking they’re exceptional, when he said, “He [Obama] is working on that now.” And he said it w/a snide ‘I know a secret’ look on his face. I honestly don’t know what it meant, it just sounded like an odd thing to say.
Regardless, after hearing him bash America a few times in front of subordinates, Russians, & GS Employees, as well as, hearing an earful about globalization, Obama’s plan, etc., I’d had enough. I tapped him on the shoulder & asked him to step outside. At that point I verbally reprimanded him for his actions, & I’ll leave it at that, so as not to be unprofessional myself.
The bottom-line is LTC Vindman was a partisan Democrat at least as far back as [2013]. So much so, junior officers & soldiers felt uncomfortable around him. This is not your professional, field-grade officer, who has the character & integrity to do the right thing. Do not let the uniform fool you…he is a political activist in uniform. I pray our nation will drop this hate, vitriol & division, & unite as our founding fathers intended!

Thomas Lasch, Hickman’s boss at the time, corroborated his story on Twitter. 

More here.

"Wayne Isaac" provides a sage estimation of Richard Spencer, and much else besides

Here at American Greatness:

Spencer’s aims are rooted instead in a romantic vision of defending the volksgeist. ... Spencer is, at heart, a contrarian social critic. ... Instead of bourgeois and proletariat, we now have whites versus the marginalized. Spencer is the poster-boy archvillain of that construct. The entirety of Spencer’s argument is simply to posit the opposite of the Left: whites aren’t bad. In fact, they’re wonderful. ... [I]n the end, he is a provocateur and critic of liberalism, nothing more. Spencer’s politics are reactionary not “Progressive.” His erudition and urbanity allowed him to become the perfect representation of all the Left’s nightmares: a defender of whiteness sensible enough to be a threat but fringe enough to be safely skewered by the elite everywhere and anywhere. Spencer is a convenient Leftist boogeyman. But in the end, there is no “there” there. Spencer is wide, not deep.

Publius Decius Mus eviscerates libertarian James Pethokoukis as a mere leftist materialist, calls him a traitor

I love the smell of napalm in the morning.

Here are some excerpts, but read the whole thing:

'In the leftist-Hegelian hive mind of which Pethokoukis is but one drone, the benefits of mass immigration and open trade are true simply; therefore popular objections are illegitimate. ... Pethokoukis ... has absorbed the core premises of the Left. “That’s racist!” This points to one of the deepest problems with “conservative intellectualism.” It accepts, out of conviction or fear or both, every restriction the Left places on it. The left rules out-of-bounds any discussion of the cultural or political effects of immigration as “racist,” and the conservatives go along. Hence they can only talk about immigration in economic terms, as if human beings were widgets.

'In fact, this particular intellectual rot defines almost all of “conservatism.” It’s allowed the Left to bully the Right out of talking or thinking about so many subjects that all conservatives can rouse themselves to address any more is the economy. They rationalize such a narrow focus by insisting economics trumps all. But the root is fear. Or was. Fear may have caused the initial retreat, but younger “conservatives” raised in the faith actually believe every line of the Leftist creed. Except the parts about redistribution, because Hayek. Also, the donors don’t like it. ,,,

'Like all self-castrated “conservatives,” Pethokoukis goes right along. Whether out of fear or conviction doesn’t even matter anymore.

'Either way, he—and all the others like him—are obstacles to the near- and long-term project of saving what’s left of American and Western civilization. To climb out of the hole we’re in, we don’t need liberals, we don’t need cowards, and we don’t need traitors.'

Publius Decius Mus rightly mocks Mark Levin's convention of the states

Not in so many words, but he does nevertheless, here:

"[I]n the federally consolidated super-state, what good do state legislatures do anyway? Does Voegeli or doesn’t he agree with me that federal and administrative state control will become more consolidated rather than less in Clinton II? We could have every statehouse in the nation, and everything we try to do (which, once again, is: not much) would just be overridden by judges and bureaucrats."

It was amusing to hear Mark Levin play an Antonin Scalia audio this evening, in which Scalia ridiculed the parchment barrier of The Bill of Rights, which Levin's grand scheme is to increase the length of with his manifold "liberty amendments". Does Levin even listen to Scalia, or just grovel at his feet?

Scalia clearly expressed in the audio that the separation of powers was key to our liberties, not the Bill of Rights.

Yet, yet, neither Scalia, nor Levin, nor Publius Decius Mus for that matter recognize that it was Abraham Lincoln, their hero!, who destroyed the separation of powers and arrogated all the power to the executive, the very heart and soul of the once and future "federal and administrative state".

That Lincoln did so over slavery was simply the pretext.

Hello Barack Obama. Hello Black Lives Matter. Hello . . . communism.

Publius Decius Mus imagines there is a transcendence which is outside of religion

Yes, there is. They used to call it "idolatry".

In any event, this excerpt shows that Decius simply fails to take the Protestantism of the American Founding seriously. One could blame the Founders for being too particular in this regard, but that's a different topic altogether.

Here:

The Old Right was, in my view, too particular in that it tried to base everything on tradition, on kith and kin, blood and soil and so on. It rejected any transcendence (beyond the religious) as “universalist” and liberal. This is my ultimate problem with Kirk, Bradford and the like.  They want to say that certain things are good while rejecting any fundamental, permanent ground for the good.  The New Right swung way to the other direction and insists on universals and sees all particulars—at least when asserted by Americans and Europeans—as insular and racist. The truth is that both are true in their sphere and both are necessary. Restoring a proper relationship between the universal and the particular is in my view the paramount theoretical challenge for whatever it is that follows conservatism.

William Voegeli doesn't know that Oliver Goldsmith's perhaps most famous axiom was written by Samuel Johnson

Are we therefore wrong to look to an Oliver Goldsmith, and then to a Donald Trump, "to lead and inspire"?

Here:

Stipulating all that for the sake of the argument does nothing to clarify how a Trump presidency remedies the afflictions catalogued in this sprawling diagnosis. Indeed, since many items on the list are social trends or crackpot ideas, it’s not clear how any president can reverse the damage being done. “How small, of all that human hearts endure,” wrote Oliver Goldsmith, “that part which laws or kings can cause or cure.” Conservatives invoke this axiom to rebuke liberal social planners, but it also calls into question whether political activity can effect moral and social regeneration. And to whatever extent Americans still look to presidents to lead and inspire through word and deed, Trump’s capacity to advance such causes as virtue, morality, religious faith, and stability is exceptionally doubtful.

Publius Decius Mus responds effectively to some of his critics, but his own words still condemn him

Namely, these (here):

[Trump] is not playing his assigned role of gentlemanly loser the way McCain and Romney did, and may well have tapped into some previously untapped sentiment that he can ride to victory. This is a problem for both the Right and the Left. The professional Right (correctly) fears that a Trump victory will finally make their irrelevance undeniable. The Left knows that so long as Republicans kept playing by the same rules and appealing to the same dwindling base of voters, there was no danger. Even if one of the old breed had won, nothing much would have changed, since their positions on the most decisive issues were effectively the same as the Democrats and because they posed no serious challenge to the administrative state.

Well, so long as you accept the income tax, Decius, as you clearly do in your Flight 93 Election essay, YOU pose no serious challenge to the administrative state, either.

And secondly, you don't even recognize the fact that, or the reasons why, our "representative institutions" stopped being representative a long time ago. Conservatism today, including yours, does not recognize that the income tax is essential to funding the administrative state, and it does not recognize that our representatives are remote from the people by design from the 1920s. 

Trump is adequate for the moment, and necessary if there is to yet be a chance to fix these problems, but there is no one, no one, who is really working politically to restore the Republic either by cutting it down to size or by expanding the input of the sovereign people to a level imagined by the constitution. The people may yet have their day on immigration and trade because of Trump, but after Trump, what?

What an Obama has done by fiat can be undone by a Trump. But that buys you four, maybe eight, years. And then? The next president can undo it, and probably will.

That means we already live under a tyranny.

Conservatism Inc. doesn't have a clue, and neither do you.