Jonah Goldberg: Slouching Toward The Old World

September 30, 2022 Hunter Wallace Conservatism, Culture, Politics, Populists, Progressives 29

I’ve also been reflecting on how much American conservatism has changed.

Just the other day, I pointed out how rapidly American conservatives are forgetting their former ideology and embracing generic nationalism and populism. The applause that was recently showered on the victories of “conservatives” like Giorgia Meloni and the Sweden Democrats was unthinkable in the conservatism of my youth. It is now mainstream to oppose the Great Replacement.

For most of my adult life, I have associated “conservatism” with people like Jonah Goldberg, David Frum, Allahpundit, Kevin Williamson, Bill Kristol and David French. “Conservatism” meant conservative liberalism. It was George W. Bush slaying the evildoers in Iraq. It was John Hagee-style Christian Zionism. It was Goldberg condemning the French as “cheese eating surrender monkeys.” It was the routine purges of anyone who had anything interesting to say like Sam Francis, Peter Brimelow and John Derbyshire. It was sanctimonious lectures and groveling apologies about “racism.” The True Cons were in the saddle and ordinary conservatives got their opinions from these people and it was a huge problem.

The “Alt-Right” defined itself against this faction. We backed Trump mainly to get rid of these people and to steer the Right in a more nationalist and populist direction. While Trump largely failed to enact nationalist policies in office, he succeeded in the long term in dislodging and diminishing these people. Those of us who are middle aged still vividly remember the days when they ruled the roost.

In 2022, Donald Trump is no longer the president. The True Cons are no longer relevant or influential and has passed into obscurity. The average Republican voter remembers these people like a bad haircut from the 1980s. MAGA has become the GOP establishment and has radicalized under Joe Biden. Also, the Alt-Right collapsed years ago, but its various grievances and style has gone mainstream. Nearly everything we once had to say has simply been absorbed and rebranded as “conservatism.”

The Dispatch:

“But since we’re on the subject of Italy, let’s talk about the reaction to the election of Giorgia Meloni, who has roots in some neo-fascist parties. For now, I’m not joining the liberal freakout over her election for a host of reasons we can surely discuss another time. I’ve just heard too many people on MSNBC discuss Mussolini’s fascism—which was very bad—as if it was indistinguishable from Hitler’s Nazism to join that riot of ignorance. Meloni has said things I don’t like and things I agree with. She has troubling associations and reassuring ones. But a Europhilic member of the Aspen Institute who only got 1 in 4 votes in the election and who supports aiding Ukraine, doesn’t exactly scream, “Let’s invade Ethiopia!” to me.

My objection here is simply that the cheering is a sharp break with conservatism as we knew it.  I highly doubt all of the people gushing about Meloni’s victory know very much about her, and I’m sure they have even less of an idea of what she’ll actually do. I suspect nearly all that these Republican politicians and Twitter radicals know can be boiled down to a few flimsy facts. She gave a clever speech, she calls herself a conservative, and liberals are freaking out that someone with ominous-sounding ties to fascism has won an election. In short, like so much in right-wing land these days, she’s a hero because the people who hate her are villains. And in us-vs-them world, that’s enough. …

In 1996, Patrick Buchanan was read out of conservatism by Heritage, the American Conservative Union, and other institutions because he represented European conservatism. As David Keene, the then head of the American Conservative Union (which runs CPAC) said, Buchanan is “articulating policies that are more reminiscent of European than American conservatism, who is challenging many of the economic foundations of the conservative movement and philosophy and who, therefore, is a disquieting figure to many traditional conservatives.” Ed Feulner was more succinct: “What he’s been saying is goofy. Huey Long is not one of us.”At the National Conservative conference, which was in part a Buchananist revival meeting, Kevin Roberts reportedly said, “I come not to invite national conservatives to join our conservative movement, but to acknowledge the plain truth that Heritage is already part of yours.” 

Don’t tell me I’m the one who’s changed.”

Michael Brendan Dougherty correctly points out that everything Jonah Goldberg is complaining about it is American. The 19th century liberalism than Jonah Goldberg associates with American conservatism was a European import that was imposed on the country during Reconstruction.

National Review:

“One of George Washington’s first acts as president was to sign into law a tariff schedule. Was he betraying America’s liberal founding by doing so? Of course not. He wouldn’t have understood the founding as “liberal” at all. He was a republican. By the time “liberal” entered the American political lexicon as a noun, American liberals were — wouldn’t you know it? — thrilling to the speeches of a Hungarian nationalist, Lajos Kossuth. …”

The American Founding was republican and federalist and has frustrated liberals down to the present day who resent the Constitution for all the ways in which it thwarts “liberal democracy.”

29 Comments

  2. Conservatism needs to distance itself from liberalism, both social, and fiscal.
    Fiscal liberalism is (crony) capitalism.
    Viktor Orban is a nationalist and social conservative, but not a strict capitalist.
    He’s a protectionist.
    Also, postsecondary education and healthcare are free in Hungary, yet Hungary has purged its universities of woke and NeoMarxism.
    He gives benefits and tax breaks to families to encourage them to have more children.

    The liberal era is over.
    History doesn’t repeat exactly, but rhymes.
    We go through relatively liberal (as in fiscally, and socially laissez faire) eras followed by progressive/populist followed by rightwing and leftwing totalitarian eras, or something to that effect.
    The gilded age (a relatively liberal age) was proceeded by the progressive/populist age proceeded by the rise of Marxism, fascism and Nazism.
    The 60s was socially laissez faire and the 80s fiscally laissez faire.
    2016 was the commencement of the progressive/populist age, the paradigm is no longer progressive liberalism vs neoconservatism/neoliberalism, it’s progressivism vs populism now, the right needs to ditch neocons/neolibs and fully embrace populism.

  3. Founding stock conservatism/ Southern Nationalism, one and the same, it worked great before, it will work great again, as our people strive for it’s reimplementation….

  4. “In 1996, Patrick Buchanan was read out of conservatism by Heritage, the American Conservative Union, and other institutions because he represented European conservatism…”

    No, this statement made by David Keene, the erstwhile head of the Heritage Foundation, is painfully INaccurate.

    What would be accurate?

    That Buchanan was attempting to forward the traditional Southern conception of the United States of America, and was thrown out of Heritage by those who had come to believe that the only idea of America that had ever existed was the New England idea of America.

    History was with Pat Buchanan on that day, though it was so covered up by disingenuous muck no one heard it’s cries on behalf of Pat; he, ironically, an ole-timey Dixie Democrat then attempting to posture himself as a leader in the Party of Lincoln.

    That said, history is being anxious being disinterred by an increasing throng of those who realize that they’ve been disinherited by New England, it’s concepts, and those to whom all that turned over America to – Organized International Jewry and it’s vast coalitional layers

    If it can be said that the concept of The United States of America, historically held by Southerners, is too selfish, insular, proud, and egocentric, then it can just as well said that the concept of the United States of America, ever held by New England, is too theoretical, too ascetic, and, in the end, entirely impractical.

    Though there can be little doubt that the South, and everything Southern, is, and, indeed, has been long, at low ebb, it won’t stay that way.

    There is evidence of a change all around us, but, just as long as it took The South to get interred, it will probably take as long to disinter it.

    History usually moves at a glacial pace, or so it is that most humans experience it.

  5. The Jews like Goldberg go nowhere without their Catholic political allies. Because the Catholics have the numbers!!! Maybe the Catholics think they can double cross the Jews at some point, after they both have destroyed the WASPs and White Protestantism in the US.

    • I can tell you that those of us who are actual Catholics, Latin Mass attending, actually living as Catholics want nothing to do with these accursed people. They are our enemies. They need to have the Faith preached to them. They are not our friends.

    • The reality is that all the major tax exempt American mainline Protestant and Catholic churches even the Mormon Latter Day Saints have been corrupted to become multi cultural, race denying or anti White institutions at least at the top.

      There is no reason to point fingers at “The Catholics” or any other church denomination – at the top they are all compromised if not dominated by enemies, traitors or just cowards.

      Boy do I have cowards and traitors in my extended family – they go with the flow.

      • You are indeed accurate on that point. It’s not limited to RCs and mainline prots either. SBC is corrupted as well, along with countless other denominations formed from splitting off with so-called ‘mainline’ churches. I wonder which, if any, organized church in Murika would be willing to post a simple statement like “It’s OK to be white”? Many are controlled by Jewish donations and government funds for resettling rapefugees.

        Sursumcorda is in the same boat as the remnant of believers in numerous churches, ruled over by a gang of sodomites and pedophiles hell-bent of destroying what’s left of the faith – powerless to change it as the bad actors are in charge. Lyndon Johnson’s 501c(3) tax exemption is part of the root problem here. If any church dared to put the above innocuous statement on their marquee, the (((owners))) of the IRS would order their minions to impose taxes and seize property. Serve Uncle Schmuel and that’s what you get.

  6. “Mussolini’s fascism—which was very bad”

    This is the structure of every major media article, false assertion after false assertion being inserted as irrefutable fact.
    It’s like a sewage spill, everything is polluted and stinks. Everything in major media !

  7. NYT:
    “Ukraine is formally applying for NATO membership under an accelerated procedure, President Volodymyr Zelensky said.”( With the fervent encouragement of the USZOG.)

    Great way to start a major war.

    First ((Fauci)) starts a global plague and now the jcrew will give us a major war.

  8. Hunter I have a blog in draft mode about the FBI and the Italian Mafia. Please look it over. Unless you have any objections, I’ll publish this tomorrow. Thanks

  9. I know you probably don’t want me using the comment section as some time of venting place but have you ever had the haunting feeling that the South is heading toward some type of moral/social collapse?

  10. Today’s conservatives have taken on the liberals point of view such as open border (Legally) we are all one race the human race, anything right of their ideology are “Nazis”

  11. > The 19th century liberalism than Jonah Goldberg associates with American conservatism was a European import that was imposed on the country during Reconstruction.

    19th century liberalism is more descriptive of Buchanan (sans his views on free trade) than Goldberg. Goldberg’s idea of conservatism is a ZIONIST import. Buchanan is a paleocon and his views were in line with that of the Old (pre-war) Right that was self consciously liberal in ideology. But, putting aside Zionist perversions, what major political ideas in American History weren’t European imports?

  12. This reminds me of what Bob Whitaker used to say: Diversity and freedom do not go together.

    If they wanted to keep their open liberal society, all they had to do was keep it White. They wouldn’t listen to warnings from men like Bob, because they are dumb and childish people who think they are smart. So now we will have authoritarianism going forward.

    Why does diversity cause authoritarianism? Because different races when forced to live together will fight over the same territory, just like creatures of the animal kingdom do. What our governments have been doing by forcing diversity everywhere is alien and unnatural. They fought against nature instead of working with it, and now we are seeing the result.

    • But the ultimate goal is not diversity, or freedom. Only the unthinking sheep on the bottom rungs believe that. The ultimate goal is the blending of the races and dissolution of Whites, creating a dumbed down mongrel race, ripe for authoritarianism..

    • He uses “Nazi” as a pejorative too often, when Bolshevik is the term he should be using. Maybe he is changing.

      • Agreed!

        I attribute this to his Gunservative Reaganite priors and yes i hope this will change overtime as it should in the Russian discourse aswell

        and i think it will as the jews become more and more exposed

    • Kiev, Ukraine used to be part of Russia. In fact, at one time Kiev, not Moscow, was the capital of Russia. Then the Khazars, an aggressive Turkic tribe successfully invaded and took over, driving the Rus north, forcing them to make Moscow their new capital.

      The Khazars then occupied that territory for several years during which their King Bulan and the rest of the country converted to Judaism rather than Christianity or Islam. Then, several years later, the Russians invaded, driving them out.

      Khrushkev was from Ukraine and for some weird reason, instead of arranging Ukraine to be absorbed peacefully back into Russia, kept the Ukraine as its own autonomous region. He was not only allowed to by the politboro but his successor never reversed that policy.

      There is a theory going around that, it’s not a matter of if, but when Israel collapses. The problem with convincing the goyim that diversity is just peachy for them is that the goyim expect those pushing it to practice it themselves, so there is no convincing them that Israel is not an apartheid state just like Rhodesia and South Africa.

      The Israelis reluctantly allowed Ethiopian Jews in, thinking that would stifle the apartheid accusations and end BDS against Israel (even as they segregated and sterilized them) but the matter hasn’t been dropped, so they want a new homeland. And for some reason, the Jewish Autonomous Republic of Birozhiban isn’t good enough for them, even though it is the size of Switzerland.

      So, the interest in the Ukraine and the willingness to fight the Russians for the territory down to the last male citizen of Ukraine. Too bad the people of the Ukraine don’t get it.
      But yeah, I think the Ukraine is supposed to be where the Israelis plan to emigrate if they can’t hold onto the territory. Especially if Iran gets its own nuclear arsenal. That will end the Greater Israel Project.

  15. The Old World Order is Christianity. The New World Order is the world the Jews desire and want to come. They, the Jews, do not like Christ and Christianity, they do not like God. Because he is above them and rules over them. Keep punching at the sky Jonah.

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