In an essay which clarifies the boundaries, David Azzerad points to the Big Failure of "the Right" over the last 75 years.
NeoCon "conservative" Jonah Goldberg wrote an essay decrying the "New Right" which serves as the touchstone for Azzerad's essay, so he starts there:
...Goldberg’s starting point is his opposition to the successive waves of progressivism, liberalism, and leftism that have expanded the size and scope of the federal government beyond anything the Founders could have ever imagined. For what it’s worth, I agree. The New Deal and the Great Society were, for the most part, unconstitutional.
My starting point, however, is the utter and complete failure of the conservative movement he represents to scale back the federal Leviathan. It will soon be 70 years since William F. Buckley famously declared the intention of conservatives to “stand athwart History, yelling stop!”
Since then, History has proceeded to dispense upon America the forever metastasizing civil rights regime (“trans rights are the civil rights issue of our day,” to quote the president); Medicaid and Medicare (the entitlement most likely to bankrupt the country); federal regulation over the environment, our schools, and every last corner of the workplace; and untold trillions of dollars wasted in the name of ending poverty and promoting democracy....
You should know, dear reader, that Rick Esenberg, Charlie Sykes, and Christian Schneider are signatories to a document criticizing the New Right. Given the antics of Speaker Vos and Leader LeMahieu, they could have signed up, too.
Frankly, that underlines Azzerad's point: the NeoCon bunch is just fine with Big Government (no matter their protestations) so long as they are the governors. Why do you think they are also Never-Trumpers?
...The fabled conservative movement defended some of these developments (more immigration and endless wars); sat idly by as others unfolded (the rise of the gynecocracy); or was simply steamrolled in its opposition to the others (the growth of government).
Concerning the size of the federal government, the issue conservatives care about most, not a single department or agency of consequence has ever been abolished. Not even the great Reagan managed to cut government. He merely slowed down its rate of growth. Conservatives, it is true, did succeed in cutting taxes. In other words, they succeeded in getting Americans not to pay for the government services they consume....
But even those failures pale in comparison to the next group:
...Goldberg and his friends confuse certain policies for principles. The most obvious example is absolute free trade. Libertarian open borders may be the right policy, at least for the exchange of goods, in certain cases. But it is not a conservative axiom. There is a long tradition of conservative political economy, stretching back to Alexander Hamilton and Henry Clay, that supports the targeted use of tariffs to promote the development of critical national industries....
A country which cannot produce steel at scale is a country which will NEVER win a war. A country which cannot produce critical pharmaceuticals at scale is a country which will see its able-bodied population diminish rapidly. A country which--by policy--rips jobs from its citizens claiming that 'the cost of labor' is too high, while deliberately forgetting the cost of compliance with thousands of Big Government mandates, will see its working class devolve into drug-using welfare-dependent slugs.
Sound familiar?
Then there are the fundamentals:
... Goldberg and his friends never seem to muster the courage to state certain core conservative principles that America is most in need of hearing today, like the fundamental natural difference between the sexes for example. As Harry Jaffa once observed: “In nature, the distinction between male and female is the most fundamental of all distinctions. It is more fundamental than the distinction between man and beast, more fundamental even than the distinction between man and God.” Conservatives will nod along but when asked to explain where this distinction matters, they will be hard pressed to say anything beyond women’s sports and women in combat. In all other realms, they treat men and women as interchangeable and thus end up affirming the core principle of our feminized regime....
Don't think the regime is feminized? Look at "today's Pentagon" and try to find another MacArthur, Farragut, or Eisenhower. Don't think the regime is feminized? Go to any school board meeting. The estrogen covers the floor. Don't think the regime is feminized? We have nearly criminalized comments which are "offensive," without regard to the truth of said comments. Feminization means Being Hurt Is Me! and you damn well better not have hurt someone's feeeeeeeeeeeelings.
...Goldberg’s statement, for example, defends the family but cannot muster the courage to call out feminism and LGBTQism, two of the ideologies that have done the most damage to it....
We should add that our feminized wannabee 'leaders' will not tolerate the truth of humanity, either. Oppose abortion except for life of the mother? You're anathema. Think homosexuals can be "married"? Straight to Thought-Prison with you!! Believe in a God who punishes sin? You're a serious suspect. Think "duties" accompany "rights"? You're not only wrong, but you will pay reparations.
(Those come in a few forms, by the way, and retail prices are one: you pay reparations for the looting and property destruction, after you pay taxes.)
Think women and men were created as such because they were created with different purposes from the get-go? Shut Up.
...Goldberg defends pro-black racial preferences, nods in the direction of structural racism, and accepts the totalitarian woke doctrine of unconscious bias which in effect grants the state jurisdiction over the minds of citizens. But worry not, he stands for limited government....
In a word: all that glitters "conservatism" is not gold. We love Esenberg and pray for Sykes; but that doesn't mean we worship either of them.
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