Things just get scarier and scarier. The fact that they feel comfortable enough to be saying THIS stuff in one of their major publications should be a red alert: Republicans are flat-out embracing fascism right in the open now. Having CPAC with Viktor Orban is no fluke: they’re planning to change their party into something openly totalitarian. There’s a reason they like Putin, and it’s called “brotherly love.” Forget all the Tea Party libertarian “don’t tread on me” bullshit: what they want is the same kind of authoritarian rule. Their base won’t mind giving up their freedom, as long as they feel like “their side” is wearing the boot that’s on their necks. Republican leaders have realized this and they’re running with it.
What follows is an article from one of their mainstream publications, The Federalist. It basically says that letting people have freedom isn’t working for the conservative agenda… so, they have to stop allowing people to have freedom. If you’re not interested in my interpretations that veer into long-winded rants, that’s fine, but please read the article itself, if nothing else. It should pour you a big shot of icewater.
From “We Need To Stop Calling Ourselves Conservatives” by John Daniel Davidson:
To talk now of “family values” is to assume that there are enough Americans able and willing to marry and raise children together for something like “family values” to matter in the public discourse, much less in the halls of power. To talk of defending “religious freedom” is to misapprehend that the real risk today is widespread irreligion, which will leave so few religious Americans in the coming generations that the government and large corporations will inevitably — and easily — persecute them.
So I’m guessing they’re going to want forced marriages (which this creepy conservative pundit does think is a great idea -- That same guy thinks adult males should be able to date 13-year-old girls because “they’re at their most fertile”), and also put an end to “irreligion” – in other words, force people to join a religion. And, of course, that’d be the religion conservatives decide is the one to follow, because they aren’t very tolerant of competing religions.
Need an example of that? Here ya go:
To get much more “auslander raus” than that would require a Schmeisser. You will be right-wing-version-of-Christian, or you will be nothing, quoth the creepy-lookin’ weirdboy. (Imagine what the sperm who didn’t get there first might’ve made? Ye godz).
It's not enough for them to have their religion. YOU have to have it, too, or they feel like they can't compete in the world. Again, their answer is always force and violence, which they feel justified in using because it’s on behalf of “God.” When you’re working for God, you don’t need no stinkin’ badges. Assimilate or die.
Davidson talks of looking to the Pilgrims for inspiration, because they were “iron-willed and audacious Christians who refused to accept the terms set by the mainstream of their time.” He suggests revolution, referencing what Thomas Jefferson said about it… y’know, basically that “tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants” thing they love to quote so much whenever they want an excuse to murder a bunch of naysayers. Davidson’s not really being subtle.
Basically, he sees that conservatism isn’t working. When you give people freedom to choose, they often choose something other than what conservatives want. Therefore, freedom has to go, our Constitutional government has to go: for Christian-supremacist right-wingers to reach their goals of total power, they have to ditch it for authoritarianism. Small government was a fun idea for a while, but it didn’t get them enough control over the public, so, ditch small government in favor of an all-powerful government. Totalitarianism. Dictatorship can be "justified" if you know what's best for everyone, right? No dictator ever thinks they’re the bad guy.
So, basically, they want to use the Pilgrims – religious fanatics who hung “witches” – as role models. Then embrace the idea of “periodic revolution” – in essence, killing people to enforce your will whenever other thinkers have other ideas… especially if those ideas start proving more popular than yours, because they’re more decent and because they work.
Thomas Jefferson was talking about going to war with another country so we could have our own. This guy is viewing Americans who disagree with him as another country. And, thus, free to kill.
He goes on to talk about adopting a “conservatism that is comfortable with big government and in fact sees it as necessary not only for the common good but to tame… the ‘private tyranny’ of woke corporations empowered by unrestrained market forces.”
Basically, conservatives claimed to be for “small government” (although they never practiced it) supposedly because it gave people more freedom. But that freedom turned out to open up ideas that displease conservatives. So, allowing people freedom was a mistake, and now conservatives should embrace a big, totalitarian government to shut down thinking they don’t like. Which is all “woke” really is. “Woke” just means you’re aware of social inequalities. Conservatives don’t like that, because most of the time, being against social inequality is the same as being against conservatism. Racism is fine... being anti-racist is not. Bigotry's not to be questioned, just enforced. Challenging racism is a threat to the world conservatives want.
Also, they no longer like “unrestrained market forces.” So much for capitalism, right? Do these people actually believe anything they claim to believe, or is it all just a rallying point to get a mob to back their quest for power?
Let’s talk about “woke corporations” for a sec. What’s the real corporate agenda? Making money. That’s it. Always. At the end of the day, even Ben & Fucking Jerry’s want to sell ice cream, mostly. Corporations don’t typically lead, they follow. They go where the money is. The rather “woke” movie Black Panther made a hell of a lot of money. Why? Because strong black heroes doing heroic things was what people wanted to see. It filled a void and people responded to it favorably. The studios didn’t create that market — it was already there, they just reflected it. That’s why conservative films remain niche products: they aren’t what the mainstream wants. The biggest “conservative” film in years — 2000 Mules — did $1,465,513 at the box office, worldwide. Black Panther did $1,347,597,973. Over 900 times as much… because one movie tried to force a viewpoint, while the other reflected a viewpoint that was already there. That’s not “the private tyranny of woke corporations” — it’s the free market giving the public what the public wants.
Conservatives don’t seem to understand that reflecting is more a factor than steering, once you’re dealing with adults — y’know, the folks with the money. I think it’s because they’re raised with a different mindset. From an early age conservatives are taken to church and told what to believe, and it works on them. They’re set on a path to following authority, to giving up their freedom of action and opinion to preachers, to cops, to parents, to “gods,” and they see that as natural and normal and comforting, and they think it’s best for everybody else, too. Or at least they need you to play along so they aren’t the weirdos. So if a product reflects a view, it’s pushing that view, in their minds. If they see a mixed-race couple or a same-sex couple in a TV commercial, they get mad because they think the commercial’s pushing an agenda, rather than reflecting a public that’s a lot more diverse now, because that’s the kind of society people given freedom wanted to make.
So, their solution is to restrain the market, because the market will cater to the wants of the people — which is somehow “tyrannical” — and the people want more “woke” viewpoints… and those don’t fit conservative plans. Therefore, suddenly, they want government control over businesses.
So much for all that “free market” stuff, eh? Inconvenient.
Indeed, a willingness to embrace government power has been a topic of fruitful debate on the “New Right” in recent years, as it should be. However uncomfortable traditional “small-government” conservatives might be with Ahmari’s argument, it is more or less true.
Put bluntly, if conservatives want to save the country they are going to have to rebuild and in a sense re-found it, and that means getting used to the idea of wielding power, not despising it. Why? Because accommodation or compromise with the left is impossible. One need only consider the speed with which the discourse shifted on gay marriage, from assuring conservatives ahead of the 2015 Obergefell decision that gay Americans were only asking for toleration, to the never-ending persecution of Jack Phillips.
The left will only stop when conservatives stop them, which means conservatives will have to discard outdated and irrelevant notions about “small government.” The government will have to become, in the hands of conservatives, an instrument of renewal in American life — and in some cases, a blunt instrument indeed.
“Save the country,” no less. I hope you can’t sprain an eyeball rolling ‘em, because I don’t know how to build a sling for that. They’re not about “saving” jack shit, they’re about subjugating.
“Blunt instrument.” Basically, a truncheon to enforce their will upon people who disagree with them. Free thought is their enemy.
Like, gay marriage. There’s no logical reason for anybody to really be against it. It’s not hurting anyone, it’s basically “mind your own business about gay folks.” However you want to feel about it, the fact is that Adam and Steve being married ain't takin' one single damn thing away from you. And if you really advocate for freedom, this is certainly a freedom you would embrace, because it’s a very basic thing. But conservatives think that must be stopped, because it disagrees with their religion. And their religion is more important than other people’s freedom to live like they want to. And believe this: that will never stop. Never.
Conservatives think, due to their approach to religion, that they have a right, in fact an imperative, to tell everyone else what to do. Once you think you're speaking for "God," you can justify any atrocity you feel like committing. Because, after all, you're God by proxy.
And, on behalf of “God,” it’s okay to use force, because it’s for the “public good,” right? Conservatives know what’s best for you, so you should be made to accept it. That’s what they’re thinking.
You name a freedom, it’s pretty much all going on the chopping block, right down to the right to learn and the right to think and to manage your own relationships.
To stop Big Tech, for example, will require using antitrust powers to break up the largest Silicon Valley firms. To stop universities from spreading poisonous ideologies will require state legislatures to starve them of public funds. To stop the disintegration of the family might require reversing the travesty of no-fault divorce, combined with generous subsidies for families with small children. Conservatives need not shy away from making these arguments because they betray some cherished libertarian fantasy about free markets and small government. It is time to clear our minds of cant.
So, government should rule over capitalism and take over businesses. That’s fascism. Not allowing people to divorce… that’s government rule over your life, far more than anybody on “the left” has ever done. “Free markets” and “small government” have proven not to work in favor of conservative Christians’ quest for power, so… those things must be disposed of. Liberty must be disposed of. Otherwise you’ve got people thinking for themselves – and thus disagreeing with conservatives a lot of the time – and that just can’t be.
In other contexts, wielding government power will mean a dramatic expansion of the criminal code. It will not be enough, for example, to reach an accommodation with the abortion regime, to agree on “reasonable limits” on when unborn human life can be snuffed out with impunity. As Abraham Lincoln once said of slavery, we must become all one thing or all the other. The Dobbs decision was in a sense the end of the beginning of the pro-life cause. Now comes the real fight, in state houses across the country, to outlaw completely the barbaric practice of killing the unborn.
“Dramatic expansion of the criminal code,” i.e. freedom to imprison or kill anyone who doesn’t agree with the Christian version of Sharia Law. Gestapo tactics -- rule through force and fear and terrorism. Again, freedom doesn’t work for Republican goals, so… freedom’s gotta go. It's the only way to spread their version of Christianity, and that trumps any piddly rights that you or I might want.
He goes on to discuss “the transgender question.” Yep. "The transgender question." Sounds uncomfortably like "the Jewish question," doesn't it? To this they have a final solution, no doubt.
conservatives will have to repudiate utterly the cowardly position of people like David French, in whose malformed worldview Drag Queen Story Hour at a taxpayer-funded library is a “blessing of liberty.” Conservatives need to get comfortable saying in reply to people like French that Drag Queen Story Hour should be outlawed; that parents who take their kids to drag shows should be arrested and charged with child abuse; that doctors who perform so-called “gender-affirming” interventions should be thrown in prison and have their medical licenses revoked; and that teachers who expose their students to sexually explicit material should not just be fired but be criminally prosecuted.
Keep in mind, whatever one may think of the fearsome “drag queen story hour” that has conservatives in such a tizzy, it’s not mandatory. Nobody’s forced to go. Conservatives just don’t even want it to be an option.
So, if parents choose to take their kids to a show where somebody in drag reads a storybook, they should go to prison and have their kids taken away, because exposing a kid to something outside of what conservatives want you to think is “child abuse.” I could, very easily and with far more evidence to back it up, claim that taking your kids to church is child abuse, because a lot more people have been hurt and had their lives wrecked by religion than by seeing a fella wearing a dress reading Cat In The Hat. But I wouldn’t want to outlaw people taking their kids to church because that would infringe on individual freedom, and it’s not always harmful. And it’s optional… the same as “drag queen story hour.” Don’t like it, then don’t attend — that’s how a free country would do it.
But that’s not the country right-wingers want. Basically, it’s “WE’LL decide what parents should and should not teach their kids. If what you want to teach your kids doesn’t agree with our political-religion, then we’ll arrest you.” Mind-control at its fashy-est.
Also… who decides what’s “sexually explicit material”? Is an anatomy textbook “sexually explicit”? Is Catcher In The Rye “sexually explicit” because it has bad words in it? Is this diary sexually explicit because I think John Daniel Davidson is a dick? If you can criminally prosecute people based on some arbitrary version of what’s “sexually explicit” then you can arrest just about anyone for just about anything. That never ends. That’s an open-ended power.
Which is, of course, the kind they want. That’s why they outlaw “Critical Race Theory” when none of them know what it means — it’s nice to have it so hard to define, because then it can be used as a catch-all to put anything they don’t like into, so they can ban it. Same reason “antifa” is their boogeyman — it’s not an organization, nobody “belongs” to it, but if they label it a terrorist group, anybody they don’t like can be called “antifa” and their base will cheer if you jail them or even kill them. How will you prove you don’t belong to an organization… when it isn’t an organization? You won’t. Republicans like ill-defined catch-alls that can be outlawed. See again, “woke.” Anything you think that they don’t like? That’s “woke.” And they aren’t having it. Ron DeSantis has made it “illegal.” That’s why they want him to be president.
If all that sounds radical, fine. It need not, at this late hour, dissuade conservatives in the least. Radicalism is precisely the approach needed now because the necessary task is nothing less than radical and revolutionary.
To those who worry that power corrupts, and that once the right seizes power it too will be corrupted, they certainly have a point. If conservatives manage to save the country and rebuild our institutions, will they ever relinquish power and go the way of Cincinnatus? It is a fair question, and we should attend to it with care after we have won the war.
Surrrrreeeee… fascists are always willing to just drop their fascist ways once they’ve subjugated their “foes.” They never just… y’know… find more foes. Make more foes, if need be, all to justify grabbing more power.
What this guy’s espousing has no end to it. Once they get what they want they’ll say they need to maintain that level of power to keep enforcing it… and then they’ll only encroach a little more, and a little more, and a little more, because they know they can get away with it. What this guy’s talking about is INCREDIBLY dangerous, but he’s comfortable with it because otherwise maybe a drag queen’ll read a storybook somewhere that you don't have to go. Jesus frickin’ Christ.
He claims there are only two paths open to conservatives — become overbearing fascists, or “watch our civilization die.” Because any society without conservatives controlling every aspect of it is “dead.” Co-existence with ideas they don’t like — which we’ve all had to do for the totality of our existence, and always will, because that’s life, buddy — is no longer an option for them. They must rule you. Your free thought cannot exist. Never is heard a discouraging word in the new right-wing Utopia, and the skies are not cloudy all day. Unless you count the smog; they don’t like regulations against that, either.
In essence, “Either we control everyone’s thinking or we should just go ahead and destroy the world, because there’s no sense in having a world in which other people get to disagree with us.” They've lost the war of ideas and so they're just going to knock over the board and try to FORCE their shit on everyone. That's honestly about the size of what this guy's saying. And he seems to think he has a right to do that.
Anybody who’s still in denial that conservative Christianity hasn’t become a sick and evil thing needs to wake up and see what their own side is saying. What they’re after is anything but “freedom.” They get mad if you call them “the Christian Taliban,” but that’s EXACTLY what they want to be. They cry about “Sharia law,” but what is the difference between it and what they’re doing? Nothing.
They’re making their plans right out in the open now, because they know their base will accept it, like good trusting Germans did a little shy of a century ago.
If these bastards take power -- and they probably will, because too much of the public is still too trusting and complacent about what they’re really facing here -- it's likely not going to be more than a few years before they start building camps.
I wish that was alarmist. I really don't think it is at this point. They’re talking themselves into it, and they feel they have a mandate from “God” to stamp out arbitrary ideas. And when they find out that people still want more freedom and equality and reject theocracy and white supremacy, even when their “rulers” control Hollywood and universities and businesses, etc., then of course they’re going to look for other means to stamp out those ideas that are in their way. And that solution?
For further reference on what’s going on now, find a copy of this.
Also, 12 Early Warning Signs of Fascism
14 Tenets of Fascism.
Y’all better fucking VOTE. That’s a LOT easier than what you’ll have to do to get your freedom back once it’s gone.