Sohrab Ahmari vs. David French

Michael Brendan Dougherty:

“What has conservatism conserved?” That question rang out during the primaries. In truth, actually quite a bit if you’re old enough to remember the 1960s and 1970s. And I’m not sure that in a time when there is a renaissance of pro-life legislation across the states we should say that we have only “won discrete victories” while “the overall balance of forces has tilted inexorably away from us” because of Drag Queen Storytime at a library in Sacramento. …”

*coughs*

The tax cuts for wealthy people and multinational corporations, global free-trade, deregulation of Wall Street and the American economy, crushing the labor unions, a generation of wage stagnation, The GDP, open borders for business lobbyists, the US Empire and endless wars in the Middle East, the Pentagon’s absurd military budget, political correctness and multiculturalism, virtually anything Israel wants due to wealthy Jewish donors, the stupidity of the American Right due to the purges, etc.

We’ve conserved quite a lot!

“We must remember that a small cohort of people experienced Trump’s rise during the primaries as a complete loosening of constraints, and threw away a decency this country has always sorely needed; they ventilated their hatred of racial and religious minorities in Trump’s name. Some of them aimed this poison directly into the family life of David French. Trump winked at these extremists, and far from promoting cohesion, he promoted physical assault at his rallies. With the “Highest Good” Trump disclaims all personal relationship, whether mediated by the non-conformist altar call in his own heart, or the grand public liturgy. “I never ask God for forgiveness,” he boasted. …”

There was a brief moment in the 2016 primaries when the gloves came off and the grip of Conservatism, Inc. was relaxed a bit. What exactly happened during the primaries that was so awful?

David French was relentlessly mocked for being the archetype of the cuckservative. He was ridiculed and trolled by the Alt-Right for being a cuckold whose wife writes Op-Eds in The Washington Post about how she carried on a sexual relationship as a teenager with her family pastor. She also adopted a black kid from Ethiopia and took her to CPAC where she showed her off in a “I Only Cry When Democrats Hold Me” shirt. In traditional societies, weak men who are bossed around by the wives and who raise the children of other men like French Fry were laughed at and rightly so by their peers. In our society though, the tables have been turned upside down and people like French Fry are in leadership positions and we wonder why the Left continues to march from victory to victory in the culture war.

Dougherty sounds like a liberal who has no confidence in his values. Social conservatism is about order and hierarchy. Yes, we supported Trump because he was going to build a wall and deport illegal aliens and was going to ban Muslims from the United States. The idea that we should act to preserve our own country and strengthen the social order rather than being a doormat for the world is decried as “they ventilated their hatred of racial and religious minorities in Trump’s name.”

“I agree with Ahmari about the necessity of building a conservatism focused on the common good and in moving beyond liberal conservatism. My intention is to bring good men such as David French into that fight even if I have to drag him there. …”

I disagree.

In 2016, we tried to reform conservatism and make it more masculine and less effeminate by electing Blompf and skewering French Fry. Unfortunately, the Trump administration was staffed by all those people and he sold out to the Republican donors and we returned to the status quo ante. In hindsight, we should have just let Jeb! have the nomination because what we have gotten from Blompf isn’t any different.