Cuckservatives: The Buchanan Boys

Kevin Williamson has lobbed a little missle at us:

“The Trump voters aren’t a new phenomenon. Donald Trump’s performance in this year’s Iowa caucuses was identical to Pat Buchanan’s in 1996: second place, enjoying the support of approximately one in four Republican caucus-goers. Trump’s campaign, like Buchanan’s, is powered by the resentment and anxiety of the white working class. Trump is this year’s celebrity mascot for the Buchanan boys.

The Buchanan boys are economically and socially frustrated white men who wish to be economically supported by the federal government without enduring the stigma of welfare dependency. So they construct for themselves a story in which they have been victimized by elites and a political system based on interest-group politics that serves everyone except them. Trump is supported by so-called white nationalists, as Buchanan was before him, but the swastika set is merely an extreme example of the sort of thinking commonly found among those to whom Trump appeals. …”

All right. Fair enough.

I’m definitely one of the “Buchanan boys.” In 2001, Pat Buchanan published a book called The Death of the West around the time of the 9/11 attacks, and that book became the bedrock of my political worldview. Shortly thereafter, I acquired two of Buchanan’s previous books, A Republic, Not an Empire, and The Great Betrayal, which pretty much fixed my views on foreign policy and trade which I have held to this day.

I’ve continued to follow Buchanan’s columns and books ever since: State of Emergency, Day of Reckoning, and Suicide of a Superpower. I was an avid reader of Sam Francis until his death in 2005. Around that time, I stumbled across Peter Brimelow’s Alien Nation in the Auburn Library, and I have been reading VDARE on a daily basis ever since. Eventually, I joined the Council of Conservative Citizens, where Sam Francis had been the editor of the Citizens Informer. I also found Jared Taylor’s books and became a reader of American Renaissance and later Kevin MacDonald’s books and The Occidental Observer.

I’ve been at this for 15 years now. I remember when Stormfront was relaunched as a small vBulletin forum. I was around when posters on forums migrated to blogs and later to social media. I remember when White Nationalists were having lots of fun trolling Richard Spencer when he was the editor of Takimag. That’s when the Ron Paul presidential campaign was getting off the ground and Jack Hunter still the Southern Avenger. Way back then we weren’t sure if Richard Spencer was a cuckservative.

I had been reading the Derb for years before his defenestration at National Review over The Talk: Non-Black Version in 2012. I’ve watched Ann Coulter become a more interesting columnist. I can remember when no one was really following Breitbart.com. So yeah, Trump voters aren’t a new phenomenon, and this movement has been evolving and growing in influence for over 20 years now.

The “Buchanan boys” were being slammed by National Review as “Unpatriotic Conservatives” in 2003 at the height of the freedom fries mania when George W. Bush was invading Iraq and John J. Miller was publishing Our Oldest Enemy: A History of America’s Disastrous Relationship With France and J-Pod was publishing Bush Country: How George W. Bush Became The First Great Leader of the 21st Century.

“And that is the sticking point: American conservatives are rooted in classical liberalism, and their political philosophy is universalist: free enterprise and the rule of law for everyone. The jackbootier elements among the Buchanan boys demand the explicit servicing of white interests as such. (Never mind, for the moment, the argument from our progressive friends that conservative universalism is the servicing of white interests as such, inexplicitly.) Whether that leap lands you on so-called economic nationalism or explicit racism, it’s the same leap. …

For once, I agree.

A “cuckservative” is basically a classical liberal – “conservative” is a highly misleading term. A “conservative” is someone who wants to return to an older form of liberalism, the one that existed before the New Deal, when the South was plagued by pellagra and children worked for 70 hours a week in textile mills. The knock on “conservatives” is that they have never succeeded in “conserving” anything, but that was never really the point was it?

As for universalism, abandoning free-trade, breaking politically correct taboos, deporting illegal aliens, restricting immigration, tightening the labor market, avoiding disastrous wars like Iraq, and abrogating obligations to defend countries like Estonia and South Korea would benefit everyone, not just aggrieved White Nationalists.

“But it is unlikely that such voters can ever be entirely assimilated into the mainstream of American conservatism, the universalism of which provides them no Them — and they want a Them, badly. Some Republicans might finesse this to an extent, for example through all that risible ritual denunciation of “the establishment,” Ted Cruz and his “Washington cartel,” “Wall Street insiders,” etc. But that is not going to satisfy those who hunger for a fully expressed white identity politics, and we should expect that the occasional lunatic (Ross Perot), true believer (Pat Buchanan) or con artist (Donald Trump) periodically will find ways to tap into that energy. There’s a ceiling on that vote, but the numbers aren’t trivial.”

This much is true.

Unlike the Religious Right, the “alt right” will never be assimilated into mainstream American conservatism. The alt right despises mainstream American conservatism. If Trump loses the nomination, the manner in which he was treated by the “conservative” establishment will only further alienate the alt right. If Marco Rubio is the nominee, there is no chance the alt right will support him.

Mainstream conservatism is nothing but a scam. As nationalists and populists, we are invested in the fate of our natural constituency, which is the declining White majority. Conservatism, Inc. is run by libertarian autists who believe in running the country as 1.) an experiment in Ayn Rand’s ethics, 2.) Milton Friedman’s economics and 3.) Jewish neocons with delusions of grandeur. Therefore, our views are irreconcilable.

This is not to say that the alt right is opposed to all elements of the mainstream conservative coalition: gun owners, the pro-life Christians who are milked for their votes, etc. We’re not going to vote for the Republicans though only to get a new war with Iran or so Kim Kardashian can have lower taxes.