It is maddening to listen to people who attempt “conservative thought” with but a shallow mentality for the concept. True conservative thought comes from the seeds of agrarians and various cultivations in spirit and in heart; the heart of family conservation and the kneeling before God. It is not fractious political parties and preening T.V. personalities lost to history and scholarship. It is no more Ayn Rand than Alexandria Ocasio Cortez!
The foolishness of most who disparage conservative thought is apparent. MSNBC, CNN, ABC, NBC, CBS, and most large city “news” papers are not worth intelligent criticism. Past generations view them as past generations viewed the old and popular Funny Papers: something to entertain but not worthy of any intelligent brushing. It is quite true for most people whom I know that these people (MSNBC ETAL) are slaphappy silly buffoons, performing on camera as overpaid entertainers.
But It is the so-called conservative (fair and balanced) stalwarts of the airwaves or cable outlets that are the real “dolts of democracy.” Why? Because they have fooled the people into believing they know better because they say they are conservative—and they say they are the real “media.” Media, maybe. Conservative, hardly.
Most media love the word (democracy) without a clue as to its structure in life, in nature. Such a pitiful group, who pretend to worship the conservative republican thought of such men like Thomas Jefferson or Patrick Henry. Pretense, without a clue to major concepts such as democracy, republic, and especially, civil war. And of course, no understanding of the history of slavery, whether its birth in Genesis nor futility in the colonial Western Hemisphere, do they have a clue. A Clue? Hardly a notion.
The ends of these “dolts” have no more magic in their moments on T.V. than the silly little group called “The Squad,” has in its juvenile noises.
Apparently without an analysis of history from the works of men like M.E. Bradford or Russel Kirk, Laura Ingraham, who claims all the badges of what the political worldview would call conservative attacked CRT on her July 5th special. No problem with that. CRT is a lie and those who preach it know this. However, they don’t care. They preach it for the same reasons Al Sharpton or Jesse Jackson (or a host of others) babble on about racism, reparations, slavery (as if it were a special inventive decree of white men—especially Southern white men), and whatever is the excitable news blather of the day. Certainly, Ingraham’s critique of CRT is a point in her favor—for now.
The blather of their meaningless nonsense is Sharpton and Jackson’s currency to a bank account. Period.
But back to the Ingraham gal. She wears her badges like so many conservative wannabees (no, not neocons—neocons are just old tepid Democrats who love wars) in the cable spotlight. She seems a conservative cut above the pitiful Sean Hannity babbler-types (Prager, O’Reilly, Kilmeade, et al) and she asks enough questions to not be cloistered with the historian counterfeiters such as Levin, Hanson, Gingrich, Guelzo, and of course the Hillsdale College crowd, all of whom mentally and academically chisel the monuments of history in order that all sculptured equivocations become either absolute yes or absolute no.
But Ingraham makes her coin via Fox and she apparently cannot belie that culture.
But the darkest end of the spectrum culture is the likes of Jesse Waters, the Jesus of Fox (“How I Saved the World”). The new trinity: Fox, Jesse, and the holy Republicans. Waters said on the Tucker Carlson show (July 6, 2021) that the Democrats fought to the death to protect slavery. This is always the conservative wannabees’ filter of history. That is that somehow the Republicans (now the conservatives) fashioned their lives and purpose around freeing the slaves. This is cockamamie history, as much as the cringe-worthy idea that Lincoln freed the slaves or even desired to do so; or that any party fought for or against slavery. None did.
Lincoln: “If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that.”
A greater problem to conservative thought is when these lackluster hambones engage as timid “presentism” linguists, as trite in their verbiage as all the Democrats in their moronic mischief combined. And as a reminder that that moronic mischief-making includes such nonsense as “greening the world” or “masking-the-world-to-health,” or burning the cities and firing the police.
Presentism: “Uncritical adherence to present-day attitudes, especially the tendency to interpret past events in terms of modern values and concepts.”
Okay fair and balanced guys and gals, check out Lincoln above in the light of your fair and balanced “presentism.”
However, the battle for the conservative mind that Russel Kirk has alluded to in the past probably will be lost in its own (and true) civil war and make a “walk-in” to governmental power by the: Democrats, Liberals, Progressives, Marxists, or whatever nomenclature contemporary totalitarians are marked within the 21st Century.
Laura Ingraham asks “who would argue that the South did not start the ‘Civil War’”? Jesse (Jesus) blames the South (as the Democratic party) for fighting to the death to defend slavery. It is this kind of bitter, foolish, untutored nonsense that comes from the “conservative side” of the battle for the hearts and minds. This is, I suppose what they refer to as “American Exceptionalism.”
It certainly is “exceptional.” But so is all the bilge from people like “The Squad.” Exceptional lack of historical understanding it is. If these conservative wannabees ever had any Socratic reasoning, any method, any historical reasoning, they have closeted it in the microphones, cameras, and bright lights of sanctimonious Republican producers and directors. Silly play-acting on television or radio is no substitute for critical thinking or primary sources.
The South is and always has been, the womb of conservative (and republican) thought. And it never engaged in any “civil war.” And it certainly never fought to the death to keep “its” slaves.
These troopers at Fox and the various conservative (wannabee) blogs dive headlong into attacks against such things used by the liberal-progressive-Marxist political side: CRT, or LGBTQ or mask-mandates or any number of weak-thinking shallow thoughts. But these same troopers always lose because they have the weakest generals. They swear by “the republic” but have not a clue—not a clue, as to what happened to the original republic. No, not the mendacious so-called 1776 nation-founding, but the republic of 1787. The, mostly (though tainted by Hamiltonian poison), Jeffersonian model. The same one that Jefferson Davis and Robert E. Lee supported.
They lose because they first follow the hollow (as if God hadn’t already told us) pretentious statement that “we are not perfect.” But we became perfect because the great agnostic, father Abraham freed the slaves. And then we ended “Jim Crow” (that the North brought South) and made our Southern brethren pure like those of us who occupy some panty-waist “Shining City on a Hill.” Now we can all be exceptional losers. Praise Jesse!
This sort of inaccurate historical misfire is tried time after time by these superficial conservative wannabees.
And they wonder why we have barbed wire around the capitol; a silly superficial supreme court that is only concerned about itself as an institution; a president who is demented, and a one-time courtesan as an inept vice president.
And no Jesse– one, your so-called civil war (the War for Southern Independence) was not fought to the death by some political party, nor by the South to “keep” its slaves. And two, you really ain’t Jesus.
And no, Ms. Ingraham, the South didn’t start the war. Ask your football friends in Alabama.
It flies its flag within its heart.
And hears that Rebel cry’s brave shout,
In spite of those who hate
This valiant land of love and hope.
Oh, Dixie land
From the poem: “I Love Old Dixie”
This piece by Paul Yarborough “Conservatism’s Dixie Roots,” was great. Are you from Shreveport?
No Sir. Originally from Jackson, Mississippi. Many years now in Houston, Texas
Another great one.