Are we on the cusp of another libertarian moment?
“J.D. Vance was on the warpath. “Using American power to do the dirty work of Europe is a pretty bad idea,” he told a crowd on Thursday, warning against the U.S. getting more involved in Ukraine. “We don’t have that many non-insane people in Washington. I need you to be some of them.”
Vance wasn’t speaking at a campaign stop in Ohio, where he is running for the U.S. Senate, but at the Marriott Marquis hotel in downtown Washington. The audience consisted of over one hundred mostly younger conservatives, and he was sounding the alarm about not just foreign intervention, but about other conservatives — the worrisome resurgence of the Republican establishment.
The event was the “Up From Chaos” conference, a self-described “emergency” meeting organized by the Trumpian wing of the GOP to grapple with the political fallout from Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. The young men, almost all of them soberly dressed in dark suits, and women, almost uniformly wearing dresses, listened attentively as one speaker after another warned about the perils of intervention for their very own lives. A return to the thinking that led to Iraq and Afghanistan could result in nothing less than World War III over Ukraine, they were warned. …”
“On Thursday, in a dim conference room in the bowels of a Washington, D.C., hotel, about 150 conservatives gathered for a day of group therapy. They had all been traumatized by the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which had left them questioning their assumptions about the world. But Vladimir Putin’s war of aggression wasn’t what confounded them most; for these conservatives, a mix of D.C. professionals and college students leavened with a handful of older cranks, the hawkish response to Russian aggression by most elected Republicans was the real problem.
The conference, Up From Chaos, was a summit of all the wings of the right that would prefer a more hands-off American response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The organizers were The American Conservative, the paleoconservative publication founded by Pat Buchanan; and American Moment, a newer organization that tries to sell the next generation of the right on its version of national conservatism. “We were acutely worried that the seven years of foreign-policy gains that we made [since Donald Trump launched his campaign] were going to go away,” Saurabh Sharma, one of the conference’s organizers, told me.
The event wasn’t a Putin apologia like those found in some corners of the right. Instead, the phrase of the day seemed to be “Putin is bad, but …” The attendees, who included paleocons, libertarians, and hard-core MAGA acolytes, offered variations on that tune according to their policy preferences: Putin is bad, but we don’t want a nuclear war. Putin is bad, but why should we trust the American foreign-policy establishment? Putin is bad, but the media is in thrall to the U.S. intelligence apparatus. The broad consensus: Putin is bad, but why is that our problem? …”
What are the top issues right now?
Inflation
High gas prices
The war in Ukraine
The threat of World War III
Civil liberties
Censorship
Defense spending / Military industrial complex
Surveillance state
Illegal immigration
COVID fatigue
Assuming he can navigate populist concerns about illegal immigration and censorship (libertarianism isn’t Jeffersonianism), the moment seems tailor made for Rand Paul.
Using American power to do the dirty work of Europe is a pretty bad idea
More nonsense from a ‘conservative’. The states of the EUSSR are satraps of the Globopedo empire whose present HQ is USSA. It’s the dirty work of Globopedo – Satanic oligarchs like Schwab, Soros, Gates, Bezos, Buffet, etc who issue directives to Nomenklatura like Nuland, Blinken, et al to futher imperial strategic objectives. They’re correct about the perils of interventionism, but they’re wrong about (((who))) is directing it. Satrapies don’t issue orders to their imperial masters.
Trumpchump ZOGsters for peace.
that’s a laugh. And
J.D. Vance has been the Jews’ favorite aboriginal White Man from Appalachia
ever since (((they))) published his first book.
“Using American power to do the dirty work of Europe is a pretty bad idea”
This is the opposite of what is happening. NATO expansion was not a European project. It was an American project. Europe is being used to do the work of the USA, while suffering the blowback from it. Europe will take the economic hit from the sanctions, and they will also take the millions of refugees from Africa that will start arriving as food shortages hit later. Europe had no interest in war and only wanted to trade for gas with Russia, which was intolerable for the USA.
The Usual Suspects exert complete control over U.S. foreign policy, just look at the names of those running the show. Dementia addled Joe Biden is merely a lunatic figurehead repeating what he hears in his earpiece and sometimes dangerously going off script. When Herr Zelensky flees on a Gulfstream jet to either Israel or Miami to spend his days wallowing in luxury with his boyfriends you will know the show is over in Ukraine.
It is The Usual Suspects driving the American Project of war against Russia using Ukraine as their cat’s paw this time. When Russia was the USSR and The Usual Suspects controlled the government there they were falling all over themselves in the U.S. to support the USSR. After the fall of Communism they returned to their pre-Revolution, usual anti-Russian hatred like a dog returns to its vomit. They are full of hatred and bile, see John Leibowitz for an example but hatred is a very bad counselor.
Vance is polling around 10% of the vote in Ohio. For some reason he decided to kiss the Pope & Biden’s ass a few months ago and became a Roman Catholic. Weird. Join a cult with an infallible leader etc. etc.
In Ohio you could end up with Josh “the Jew” Mandel a/k/a Josh “the Marine” Mandel as US Senator. Oy vey, if Josh gets into the general election, the Jews will pull out all of the stops for him. Right now, he is a 3 time loser, and the Jews have not been pumping him up.
Vance is funded by the homosexual papist Peter Thiel. Thiel is behind a lot of the “trad catholic” astroturf over the past few years.
In the Europe, we have also alarm bells going off. Russia just quit pumping gas into Yamal pipeline. Looks like reality start checking in.
ZeroHedge: Whatever happens militarily in its clumsy Ukraine invasion, Russia will have huge success in the financial war with the West
The yen but especially the euro, will be heavily de-stabilised, even before the US dollar
Russia and China were prepared for this ‘sanctions’ game, China having stockpiled food and commodities for some time now.
Russia is like pre-WW1 USA – low taxes, little government debt. It had $550bn of exports, €297bn imports. But Russia’s trade surplus will now be HIGHER thanks to sanctions.
With rising fuel prices, Russian exports may go higher, as even ‘discount’ sales to India etc involve higher prices than previously to Europe. Imports are now reduced, with China and India providing Russia’s product needs more cheaply.
Blocking Russia from commerce in euros, dollars etc, serve as ‘force majeure’ in energy supply contracts, enabling Russia to demand payments in roubles from the ‘unfriendly’ Anglo-EU group and its allies, only 16% of global population baiting the bear. The rouble is now trading back to essentially pre-war levels, as traders wake up to reality.
Price inflation is highly dangerous above all to the oddly-constructed eurozone, with no true sovereign to address severe bond stresses, arriving shortly.
Russia and China have an estimated 2x the gold reserves of the West, putting them in prime position for when the global financial system moves toward comprehensive reset, somewhat further down the road.
“The Russian economy is inherently stronger in a currency shoot-out than even the dollar”
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/edging-towards-gold-standard
Visa and Mastercard cancelled Russia … and right away Russian-Chinese MIR-UnionPay bank cards are replacing them. McDonalds cancelled, and overnight Russians took over, turned the golden arches symbol sideways, and it is now ‘Uncle Vanya’s’ with similar products, local ingredients, profits kept in Russia. They were ready.
Winter is over – nobody needs natural gas until November. In that 8 months time the US will top the European NatGas storage facilities off with LNG.
It’s used for many more things than keeping your Gay Disco nice and steamy, genius.
Making everything more expensive for consumers there and here. Pat yourself on the back, ZOG-sucker.
indeed. Nat Gas is the basic feedstock for manufacturing ammonia based fertilizers such as ammonium nitrate. Russia is a huge producer and exporter of ammonium nitrate because of their abundant supply of natural gas. Interference with Russian exports of natural gas has caused large fertilizer plants in France and the UK to scale back production drastically and raise prices.
U.S. LNG is not a good substitute either because it’s much more expensive. It has to be liquefied to below -260 deg. F. then transported 3,000 miles then returned to a gaseous state. All of that is a very expensive proposition. That is why Europe bought Russian gas until they shot themselves in the head to show solidarity with GloboHomo Shopping Mall Democracy. It takes years to build new LNG plants so import capacity will be limited for a while anyway.
All of this translates into higher food bills everywhere except perhaps Russia. Food riots will be common by the end of Summer at the latest possibly tipping over governments in Third World shitholes and creating more flows of wogs into Europe and the U.S. That is the intent of the scumbag criminals in charge however, they put that in the win category.
Conservatives are one step above liberals.
Not above or below the other, they march side by side, bi-partisanly, agreeing on all essential matters. Liberals ARE conservative. Capitalism is what is conserved by both right and fake “left.”
Actually, one step behind them, doing nothing more than “conserving” the mess that leftists made.
The worst are the ones in the media. Radio talk show hosts. I don’t know who’s views they represent, but not mine.
Most of them sound like they never got beyond third grade.
“. . . in the bowels of Washington, DC . . .” Said only as The Atlantic can say it.
Conservatives/reactionaries/capitalists oppose war when they think the costs will outweigh the benefits to them, but they are not opposed to war as such. Being capitalists they are ipso facto imperialists. Imperialism is absolutely essential, integral, to capitalism. Conservatism is a dead end.
“What are the top issues right now?”
I don’t see maximizing the elites’ wealth on the list. It should be at the top of the list always.
“Are we on the cusp of another libertarian moment? (…) The moment seems tailor made for Rand Paul”:
Libertarianism (in this case Rand Paulism) wins because most people can be fooled and some can be fooled all the time. Ditto for populism. Socialist revolution, on the other hand, requires superior intelligence, knowledge and courage, on the part of the few who cannot be fooled at all. Libertarianism and populism are mere temporary reforms. We need revolution instead.
Edmund Burke, the vaunted father of conservatism: one of the most boring, wrong and worthless writers in the history of political philosophy.
He was sort of a “Never Trumper” back in 2016 based on his appearance on The Charlie Rose Show. Vance didn’t want to upset the glitterati that opposed Trump.
Libertarians don’t even have a minimal answer to solve the problems of ‘Civil liberties’, ‘Censorship’, ‘Surveillance state’, nor ‘Illegal immigration’, because the biggest problem causing all four of these is corporations that must be crushed.
“The moment seems tailor made for Rand Paul”
Come on, HW. Try again.
We need someone like “Bloody Bill” Anderson.
As ever, only kikes filtering peoples’ perception of a political event; just a-skewin’ & a-jewin’ with their smirky leading language: “The young men, almost all of them soberly dressed in dark suits, and women, almost uniformly wearing dresses.” Translation from Yiddish: What a bunch of boring young fogeys with sticks up their asses! Where’s the hipster queefs? The women in pantsuits with dangly earrings?