Decius Responds To The #TruCons

The first essay which created such a stir was great:

“How have the last two decades worked out for you, personally? If you’re a member or fellow-traveler of the Davos class, chances are: pretty well. If you’re among the subspecies conservative intellectual or politician, you’ve accepted—perhaps not consciously, but unmistakably—your status on the roster of the Washington Generals of American politics. Your job is to show up and lose, but you are a necessary part of the show and you do get paid. To the extent that you are ever on the winning side of anything, it’s as sophists who help the Davoisie oligarchy rationalize open borders, lower wages, outsourcing, de-industrialization, trade giveaways, and endless, pointless, winless war.”

Here’s the link to the second essay in which he responds to their objections:

“The fourth objection is that I, or what I advocate, am/is immoderate, dangerous, radical, imprudent, and so on. This is a large claim that will require significant exploration. To those of you who complained about the length of the other one, best to tune out now.

My use (once each) the terms thymos and virtù was taken as evidence that I am advocating a politics of “great daring” or some such. I’d like to be generous here and just presume this is a misunderstanding. I suggest to anyone who holds this interpretation to look at the specific contexts in which those words were used. The former referred to go-along, get-along conservative intellectuals, who could do with a double dose of thymos. Several writers on the Left obligingly made the point. Good conservatism adheres to the parameters we set for you. You may say this, but not this. If you do and say what we tell you to, your reward will be that we will call you racist Nazis a little less. Also, what we allow as “good conservatism” will drift ever leftward, so that something we permitted a year or two ago is subject to revocation without notice and you better get on board immediately or the deal is off. Conservatism has accepted this “bargain”—hence its lack of thymos—yet amazingly thinks of itself as standing firm for eternal principle. But when I write in praise of virtue, morality, religious faith, stability, character, education, social norms and public order, initiative, enterprise, industry and thrift, and prudent statesmanship; when I warn against paternalistic Big Government, the decay of our educational system, and the cannibalization of civil society and religious institutions—time-honored conservative themes all—the Left responds with “insane,” “deranged,” “chilling,” and “poison.” And the same conservatives who cite adherence to conservative principle as their reason for opposing Trump side with…the Left.

As for the reference to virtù, the context was my recommendation of that supremely radical and immoderate act of…voting. Has it come to this? Merely advocating that people vote for a candidate who promises to further their interests—and the nominee of one of the two major parties in a party system that traces back to 1800 at least—this is now immoderate and “daring.”

That is of course exactly the way the Left wants to frame this election. The same way that they define for us what acceptable conservatism can and cannot be, they now assert the right to choose—or at least veto—our candidates. And we supinely go along. …”