Trump the Only Way Forward

Conservatives Lost the Culture War and the Trump Agenda is the Only Path Forward

Refreshingly realistic but also deeply troubling. I fear the author is right. Conservatives lost the culture war and so now: 

Conservatives do not have a viable path to political power any other way. The issues of national survival are of primary importance. There is no point in fighting a culture war if we don’t have a country in which this war can take place. [. . .]

Trying to rehash these old battles in the present political moment, when institutional Christianity no longer has any meaningful political or cultural clout, is a waste of time—at least at the national level.

COVID-19 made the weakness of American Christianity painfully clear. Protestant and Catholic churches alike overwhelmingly declared themselves nonessential during the spring of 2020. That was, sadly, merely an acknowledgement of a longstanding reality.

Virtually no one today cares what the pope or any megachurch pastor, for that matter, has to say about political and cultural life. Their endorsements do not move the needle and their influence has had little to no bearing, even on their own flocks, when it comes to preserving the older standards of Christian morality and decency.  

[. . .]

We live in a country where the president says it is antisemitic to ban trans surgery for minors. And yet you will strain yourself trying to hear any priest or pastor say a word in response. Millions of Americans are hurting, desperately confused about their very identity and sexual impulses, and the leaders of the churches have almost nothing to say. Nonessential workers indeed.

[. . .]

One wonders what purpose, at this point, the differentiation between denominations even serves. Pope Francis, just like John MacArthur, agrees with the leftist view of racism. And Tim Keller, just like Pope Francis, lauds mass immigration. On the most prominent liberal issues of our day there is total agreement among the leaders of the West’s supposedly different Christian denominations. 

America has a moral majority, all right. It’s just liberal. The Left controls every institutional power center in America. Wall Street, the media, the universities, Hollywood, the military—you name it—everywhere the liberal consensus reigns supreme. There is not a single Fortune 500 company in America, not one, that would denounce transgender surgery for minors. 

Those institutions shape the public consciousness in a way social conservatives simply cannot. Manufactured consent is real and all around us. A large portion of Americans simply accept whatever their televisions and cellphones tell them to believe no matter how perverted, wrong, or harmful. Even many of those who do not agree with it, at least bow to the moral consensus. Think of all those many millions who got vaccinated, not because they wanted to, but because their “job required it” or because they couldn’t “travel without it.”

The idea that large numbers of Americans are going to “wake up” and “push back” is simply a cope. That’s not how popular opinion works. The idea that Americans are going to see transgenderism as a bridge too far is, I think, much overhyped. I remember the gay marriage “debates,” such as they were. I remember Prop 8 passing in 2008 in California. I also remember how none of these setbacks for the Left ultimately had any bearing in the end. By 2015, gay marriage was the law of the land. Today it is untouchable liberal orthodoxy supported by a majority of Americans, including large numbers of “conservatives.”

Deploying more 10,000-word essays on teleology and the new natural law isn’t going to solve the social issue problem either. Millions of Americans didn’t start shoving dildos in orifices, guzzling sex change hormones, and consuming billions of hours of pornography a year because they read an article or heard an argument. These sexual and social perversions spring from a much deeper source, one that isn’t going to be solved by policy wrangling in D.C. think tanks. 

The spiritual crisis that afflicts the West runs far deeper than most social conservatives want to admit. They don’t understand how bad things really are, which is why they stand around, mouths agape, as they try to figure out what a “furry” is or why U.S. military officers dress up in leather “pup play” fetish gear while they sodomize each other in uniform and then post photos to social media.

In light of our ongoing moral and spiritual crisis, I fully expect that the Bud Light/Dylan Mulvaney controversy is merely a blip that will soon pass. In the 1990s Ikea ran the world’s first commercial featuring a gay couple. In 2022, Ikea was valued at $17 billion. Go woke, go broke? 

Sure. 

The Matt Walsh’s of the world won’t want to hear this, but trying to fight the Left on gender with desiccated Socratic arguments (“What is a woman?”) is a losing battle. Owning liberals with facts and logic is mostly a waste of time.Political power doesn’t flow from scoring debate points in the “free marketplace of ideas.” It comes from the willingness to impose one’s beliefs on others and possessing the resources to do so. 

All morality requires enforcement. 

The Left implicitly understands that point. They are more than happy to crush their opponents. Just ask Donald Trump, John Eastman, Douglas Mackey, or any of the January 6 defendants. Strip away civilization and politics boils down to the distinction between friend and enemies. [You need a reference to Carl Schmitt here, son.] That’s why the White House hosted a trans day of visibility just two days after a transgender terrorist murdered six Christians in Tennessee. 

At some point, every political regime must put its foot down. Some people think cannibalism is wrong, others think that it is right. If the former are to prevail politically they must be willing to use force against the latter. In the end, this is what morality requires. This is what morality is. 

BV: The sound point here is that morality is just a lot of impotent prescriptions and proscriptions without an enforcement mechanism. But that is not to say that might makes right.  If the enforcer is to enforce good  and not evil, then the enforcer must either be God or, here below, godly men and governments.

Conservatives and Christians today simply lack the force of will to impose their social morality on the Left. That is why they lose cultural battles and the Left wins. Conservatives aren’t even willing to mock their enemies. If you want to make “respectable” social conservatives and Christians uncomfortable, call a prostitute a “whore” in their presence. Mock OnlyFans as a den of “sluts.” Express deep revulsion at sodomy. Watch them writhe in psychic pain. 

Such firm moral condemnation, I am frequently told, is “judge-y” and “un-Christian.” “We” need to “watch our tone” as “we” seek to “draw others to the faith.” As their flock comes under attack from wolves, the shepherds condemn those who would fight back. There are many such cases. 

The deep-rooted weakness of the American Christian Right is a serious problem. I wish it wasn’t this way. I wish my fellow Christians had more spirit. I wish our leaders would lead. That isn’t the reality we have, though, as much as I may wish otherwise.

Right now, conservatives in deep red areas can still fight cultural battles at the local and state levels. Even some purple states, at the local level, still provide a way to maneuver against the Left’s cultural hegemony. Everywhere else, and at the national level especially, conservatives must sideline the cultural battles in favor of the issues of national survival.  

Trump showed that even in our degraded moral culture, a huge percentage of Americans still want the nation to survive. They don’t hate themselves despite all the propaganda to which they’ve been subjected. The old pre-World War II conservative consensus in favor of protectionism, non-intervention, and immigration restrictions is still enormously popular. 

If we win on those fronts and secure a future for our country then, and only then, will we have a chance to fight once again for the family, for our faith, and for a return of moral decency. 

That day, however, is still a long way off. We have work to do. 

 

Comments

[Joe Odegaard]

I haven't read this book yet. I need to get a copy and read it:

On Resistance to Evil by Force by Ivan Alexandrovich Ilyin
,
(K. Benois Translator)

Link with reviews:

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/43696339-on-resistance-to-evil-by-force#CommunityReviews

[mharko]

Agreed, in spades. We have to leverage the leviathan that we came with, not the one we'd like to have. And if, beyond likelihood, we get Trump back, such as he is, God bless 'im, we'll still have to deal with many unwieldy overreactions and then some. At least it might forestall worse possibilities sooner than later. Later is better than sooner for the things I have in mind.
I have seen my grown children come to some clarification on these things over these past years, hence my optimism.

[Joe Odegaard]

And also, from Josiah Lippincott's article:

"One wonders what purpose, at this point, the differentiation between denominations even serves"

One wonders indeed. If you say the Nicene Creed, you say that you believe in one, holy catholic and apostolic church.

I cannot see any current denomination, east or west, meeting these criteria.

Least of all "one."

The church of the Nicene Creed must be hidden now, and diffuse, but it exists. The mystical body of Christ, if you will.

I remember reading somewhere that during the Middle Ages, people thought that bishops and cardinals actually had a very poor chance of getting to heaven.

Matthew 21:31 — Jesus saith unto them, Verily I say unto you, That the publicans and the harlots go into the kingdom of God before you.

Good night from Mendocino.

[Vito B. Caiati]

Let us assume that Lippincott is right and that his strategy leads to success in the national election 2024. Certainly, some good would probably result from such a victory: The border would most likely be more secure, although to what extent is not clear, given (1) the administrative and legal obstacles to closing it completely and (2) the massive civil unrest that would ensure would much needed mass expulsions be put into effect. Some downward pressure would most likely be exerted on rising crime rates with national pro-enforcement and pro-conviction policies, but here again, the constitutional right of states, who are sovereign in most criminal cases, would ensure that the civil disorder that results from leniency remain the rule where the Left is in control, which would include the major population centers of the nation (the sanctuary city phenomenon writ large). As for trade, as in the Trump years, some adjustments in tariffs and some protections of valuable industrial and intellectual property would be enacted, but the essential tendency of American global capital to do what it wants, where it wants, when it wants, regardless of the interests of the nation, would be unaffected. Probably, the termination of the current Ukraine policy, which its risks of a new world war, in favor or one seeking a negotiated settlement based on territorial adjustments and the abandonment of NATO expansion, would be possible, and this alone may make the strategy that he recommends laudatory. However, here again, the victorious administration would face the combined opposition of the Left, with all its resources, and the core of the Republican establishment, both inside and outside of Congress, making for heavy going.

More crucially, this article rests on the supposition that the emerging Woke nation, which has largely embraced a nihilistic culture of death, immorality, untruth, and cancellation is as worthy of salvation as the enlightened and moral nation that once existed. Is this true? Strong arguments could be presented in its favor, especially those that compare the alternatives, a world dominated by Communist China and its tyrannical Russian minion. Granted that no sane person would want to live in such a world, which is founded on brutal totalitarian oppression (imprisonment, torture, brainwashing, murder, ethnic cleansing), the question arises as to how much better he would fare in the Woke World that is taking form within our own borders and elsewhere in the West. I guess the answer would be that although his basic freedoms would be radically curtailed, in that he could not freely speak or act as he once did under the Old Republic, at least he would be able to believe privately what he wished (very private); practice his religion within certain restraints (no public declarations of faith in contradictions to Woke values); read what he wished, if he has managed to retain a private, uncensored library of old books; work in his chosen field, if he adheres to the proper training courses; and so on. Now, this picture of the relative livability of the Woke World is based on three assumptions: First, that such a repressive cultural system, which by its very nature relentlessly seeks to extend its reach in every area of public and private life, is, in fact, tolerable; second, that this Woke culture, instilled into the thoughts and practice of more and more citizens, does not render any political victory of the Right anything more than provisional and unstable; and third, that what some have called soft totalitarianism does not inevitably evolve into its harder variant, since features of the latter, including arrests and imprisonments of the political opponents of the Left, are already evident. It follows that the cultural battles of the present, as those of the past, are integral to the political battles that we are required to fight. They have to be fought, even if the prospects of victory are illusory. For if the culture continues its present course, we will end up living in a nation, however secure its borders and however robust its economy, that is totalitarian. And there are no guarantees that such a nation, once fully established, would not endure for many decades, with what national and global consequences, given its massive military and repressive apparatuses, no one can foresee.

[Connor Creegan]

Howdy, Bill. Been reading for a while, first-time commenting.

"Conservatism" is already a losing proposition and always has been. A conservative consistently acts within a framework designed by revolutionary and progressive forces, and one's historical and cultural naivete sets the upper bounds for what one ultimately seeks to "conserve". That naivete is very easy to manufacture in a person in a world where compulsory education is ubiquitous, and it takes years - even decades - for people to people to overcome the intellectual traumas they incurred in state school environments and to re-conceive of themselves as orphaned by centuries of revolution. Opposition to what is going on in the culture (and what is yet to be seen) is going to come most consistently from people who are principled in their thought, belief and action, not comfortable, suburbanite march-for-lifers whose political goals are set for them by their enemies.

[BV]

Thank you for your comments, gentlemen. Welcome mharko and Connor Creegan.

[BV]

Vito,

Your comments are excellent, but your detailed and flawlessly written commentary demands close attention on the part of the reader (not that that is a bad thing). Let me see if I have understood you.

You are questioning Lippincott's assertion that, since we have lost the culture war, we should give up the fight on that front and shift our attention to national survival, which requires securing the nation's borders, pulling back from foreign adventures (Ukraine), and clamping down on the destruction of our cities by the organized and unorganized criminal element.

Your thought, I take it, is that taking L's advice might lead to the preservation of the nation as a 'Woke' nation, when a 'woke' nation is not worth preserving. >>More crucially, this article rests on the supposition that the emerging Woke nation, which has largely embraced a nihilistic culture of death, immorality, untruth, and cancellation is as worthy of salvation as the enlightened and moral nation that once existed.<<

You then list and question three assumptions at the back of L's supposition. >>the relative livability of the Woke World is based on three assumptions: First, that such a repressive cultural system, which by its very nature relentlessly seeks to extend its reach in every area of public and private life, is, in fact, tolerable; second, that this Woke culture, instilled into the thoughts and practice of more and more citizens, does not render any political victory of the Right anything more than provisional and unstable; and third, that what some have called soft totalitarianism does not inevitably evolve into its harder variant, since features of the latter, including arrests and imprisonments of the political opponents of the Left, are already evident.<<

You conclude contra Lippincott that: >>the cultural battles of the present, as those of the past, are integral to the political battles that we are required to fight. They have to be fought, even if the prospects of victory are illusory. For if the culture continues its present course, we will end up living in a nation, however secure its borders and however robust its economy, that is totalitarian.<<

You make a strong case! And strategically you are probably right. But TACTICALLY in the run-up to the 2024 election the wisest course may be to downplay or even ignore the cultural issues (abortion in particular, despite its being a moral outrage as I have been arguing online for the last 20 years) so as to secure the preservation of the nation given the very ominous external geopolitical threats we face, threats that you as a down-to-earth historian understand much better than I do as a Luftmensch.

And then, after beating back the external threats, we turn our attention to the vicious progs and take up again the cultural fight.

[Vito B. Caiati]

Thanks for your kind words and thoughtful response.

Fundamentally, I am suspicious of a political approach that divorces strategy from tactics, in confronting a relentless enemy as the Left, which has long grasped the fact that the conquest of culture is the bedrock of political domination. Through infiltration, subversion, intimidation, and manipulation it has conquered the leading civic and cultural intuitions of the nation, and in the process, one that has taken many decades, has worked at and succeeded in gaining the consent of large swarths of the American people, including probably a majority of the younger generations, to Woke thought and practice, which has translated itself into immense political and bureaucratic power, national, state, and local. Now, as the election 2024 approaches, Lippincott advises us to put aside the struggle for the nation’s culture and values, so that we can concentrate on “issue of national survival.” It sounds cogent, until we realize that he essentially asking for a repeat of the 2016 election, when Trump ran and won on “immigration, trade, war, and crime.” So we are to turn the clock back, achieve momentary political “victories,” all easily undone once we lose power, and allow the domination of civil society by the Woke, which progressed never so rapidly as in the years of Trump’s administration, to go unchecked. This is a recipe for disaster, for a victory in 2024 will be worth no more in the long term, and it is the long term that matters, than that of 2016. We have no choice but to make the battle for the founding principles of the Republic, the moral values of Athens and Jerusalem, and the traditions and customs of our American past central to our struggle.

[BV]

Vito,

Another impressive response, thanks. But note that the divorce would not be permanent, but pro tempore. And it needen't even be a divorce: we put the culture war on the proverbial backburner for a spell until we regain the presidency with Trump, and then we wage war on both fronts, the cultural and the national-international.

So the issue is not tactics versus strategy, but which factor gets accentuated at a given time.

We are obviously screwed if we can't get either Trump or DeSantis into the WH. So it might be best to shut up about abortion -- the main hot-button cultural issue -- for the next year and a half.

Of course, sub specie aeternitatis none of this sublunary crapola matters much although it matters some: if God and the Soul are real, this transient shitstorm is next-to-nothing. THAT, as you well know, is the trad RCC view, though hardly any RCC priest these days would or could preach what I just preached -- not even in terms both polite and comprehensible to Joe Sixpack and Jane Lipstick.

And so I stopped going to mass with my wife, even though going to mass with one's beloved wife is a beautiful thing, assuming that Bergoglio the Termite and the rest of them -- Jesuits mainly it appears -- hadn't corrupted the RCC.

[Vito B. Caiati]

I understand your decision about Mass. I am very lucky to have just ten minutes from my home an orthodox priest who offers the sort of sermons that heard in the 1950s and who with the blessing of our bishop, unfortunately soon to retire, offers the traditional Latin Mass each Sunday. After (barely) tolerating the inferior and Protestant friendly Novus Ordo, for almost fifty years, both in France and here, this has made all the difference for me. As you must have realized, I no longer write to you about Bergoglio or the crisis in the Church, which is so far gone now, that I have nothing of value to say, other than to complain about the obvious heresy and scandal. So I just keep quiet, and try to devote my life to prayer, study, and attendance at the Latin Mass each week. When it is taken from me, which is almost certain, I am not sure where I will turn.

[Joe Odegaard]

I just ordered a copy of "On Resistance to Evil by Force" by Ivan Alexandrovich Ilyin.

I will let you know about it as soon as I start reading it.

[BV]

Joe,

I look forward to your report.

[Joe Odegaard]

"We'll raise up our glasses against evil forces"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=arXuLdzVfQQ

This is a popular song because the real America gets it.

[BV]

That's a great tune and quite apropos. Never heard it before. Can you believe that? I never heard it before. Thanks, Joe

Now, listen to this garbage from a Dementocrat: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0dqNpXmQZjc

These lying scum have no idea, apparently, of how many guns they are selling. If they'd just shut up and insist that existing laws be enforced, guns sales would taper off. I know a lot of old ladies who are now packin' heat. Not good. But to be expected when the authorities promote crime either deliberately or by abdication of their legitimate authority.

[Joe Odegaard]

Gee. I dedicate this song to Ms. Jayapal. But better, to Pat Garrett, who stopped further murders.

Turn it way up and enjoy.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vSEMk3uhtIE

[Malcolm Pollack]

"Now, listen to this garbage from a Dementocrat..."

Ah, the Nineteenth Amendment! - the gift that keeps on taking. I've soured on democracy generally, but the universal (and ever-expanding) franchise has been an unmitigated disaster, a fatal catastrophe.

Bill and Vito -

Again, as when we discussed accelerationism, we are trying to sort out the right position on strategy vs. tactics.

In a 1941 interview with T.H. White, Chiang Kai-shek, who was fighting Mao and the Communists at the same time that the Japanese were attacking China, considered the the Reds an even greater threat.

"The Japanese", he said, "are a disease of the skin; the Communists are a disease of the heart."

My objections to pinning hopes on winning the 2024 elections are that a) I don't trust the election to be fair enough for us to win; and b) that even if we do win, I don't think we prevail against the combined power of the gigantic bureaucratic state, the top-bottom coalition that has already swamped us (everybody here should read, if you haven't already, Spandrell's magisterial three-part essay "Bioleninism" to really get the picture). After all, we've already had four years of a Trump presidency, the first two of which included complete control of Congress, and where are we now?

But my question to Vito is: just how, exactly, do we "make the battle"? To paraphrase Stalin, "how many divisions do you have?" How will you organize them, and command them? Most importantly, how will you arouse them? Things are already very, very bad, but all we ever see is some grumbling and red caps.

Meanwhile, when we do get hold of little bits of power, we expend it in provocative gestures that tend more to consolidate the enemy's moral indignation than to achieve anything important or lasting, rather than using what power we can seize for the most productive aim: to get more power, as smoothly and efficiently as possible.

As I've said before, I think it may take things getting rather worse before enough decent Americans are really ready to take genuine personal risks. (We need to remember that, in the real world of actual history, "making a battle" means you might die. Blustering indignation from a position of material comfort -- which is what I mostly see so far in America -- isn't going to rouse the necessary fury.

So how do we get there from here?

[BV]

Malcolm,

We should have a separate discussion of the 19th Amendment and the extent to which its passage has lead to the current problem with women in politics.

[Malcolm Pollack]

It's a radioactive topic, and leads directly into more difficult general questions of government-by-consent, popular sovereignty, democracy, etc.

But sure, I'd be glad to.

[Joe Odegaard]

I didn't write this; I got it iff the "Web," but it certainly applies to the question of women in politics (and it is about as politically incorrect as you can now get).

Ahem:

"People who can't defend themselves physically (women and low T men) parse information through a consensus filter as a safety mechanism. They literally do not ask "is this true", they ask "Will others be OK with me thinking this is true." This makes them very malleable to brute force manufactured consensus; if every screen they look at says the same thing they will adopt that position because their brain interprets it as everyone in the tribe believing it. Only high T alpha males and aneurotypical people (hey autists!) are actually free to parse new information with an objective "Is this true?" filter. This is why a Republic of high status males is best for decision making. Democratic, but a democracy only for those who are free to think."

* * * * *
Also, I would add, this might mean that a lady who can use a firearm is a better voter.

Good night from Mendocino.

[Vito B. Caiati]

“But my question to Vito is: just how, exactly, do we "make the battle"? To paraphrase Stalin, "how many divisions do you have?" How will you organize them, and command them? Most importantly, how will you arouse them? Things are already very, very bad, but all we ever see is some grumbling and red caps.”

Malcolm,

You and I are in agreement on the bleakness of our prospects. As I indicated in one of my comments on your excellent post on accelerationism, “Like Malcolm Pollack, I do not see a way forward.” The forces arrayed against us and the myriad nefarious and illegal means that they employ with impunity to corral and defeat us are virtually unassailable. So, when I speak of “strategy” I am not referring to some approach that could in the foreseeable future reverse or overturn this miserable state of affairs. Rather, I use the term in the sense of bearing witness to what we know to be true. I take this position because my ultimate allegiance, whatever fealty and obligation I might have toward the worldly power that is our nation, is to the other Kingdom, that Bill, quoting William James, refers to as “The Unsee Order.” This is why I oppose Lippincott’s tactical argument that we, even momentarily, put aside our fundamental “cultural,” that is, metaphysical, ontological, and ethical divergence from the dominant “ersatz religion.” Unfortunately, we must carry the burden of standing for the Good, seeing that it is not entirely banished from this realm, knowing that the prospects of attaining any semblance of it is bleak, if not nil, in the here and now.

[BV]

Hey Joe, you must link to what you quote! This here's a high-class site. We at MavPhil have standards!

[BV]

Readers should realize, however, that linkage does not constitute endorsement. I may or may not agree, whether wholly or in part, with that to which I link.

Free speech! Open inquiry! Hats off to Elon Musk!

[Joe Odegaard]

Bro Bill: The quote about consensus is in a graphic that I took as a screen shot off the web, so I will e-mail the graphic to you. & the graphic was by "anonymous." I will do some google-fu and see if I can find a name associated with it.

[BV]

Joe,

E-mail received. Thanks. No need to waste any more time on this bagatelle.

[Malcolm Pollack]

Vito, yours is a principled position, and I respect it. We agree that we are confronted by evil -- "powers and principalities" of great strength and malevolence, who seem to have brought our hopes for the future very low. What are we to do?

As I see it, there are four possibilities here:

1) Refuse to abandon the Good, even tactically. Resist the Devil, no matter what. Even if it seems all is lost here below, we have stood for the Good, done the Lord's work to the best of our abilities, and our consciences are clear. And - lo and behold - we win! Civilization is saved.

2) Same as 1 - but we fail. The curtain falls on the high civilization we were supposed to cherish and preserve for our children.

3) We adopt "accelerationism". The powers of Darkness, swollen with pride, reveal themselves with such triumphant bravado that everyone, even those who have been narcotized and ensorcelled by the lies and temptations of the Left, awaken to the terrifying reality. They rise in anger, but it's too late. We lose. Darkness falls.

4) Same as 3) - but, roused to righteous fury at last, we win! By drawing evil into a fatal overreach, we awaken at last God's slumbering army, in what turns out to have been a brilliant tactical stroke.

On that grid we have two scenarios - 1) and 4) - in which Good triumphs over evil. I have no way to know which of the four scenarios is likeliest, but as you and I seem to agree, 1) seems a bleak prospect. My only point here is that, if we adopt what I suppose could be called a "consequentialist" stance (I appeal to Bill's generosity if that is a technical error of terminology), then both of the approaches we've been debating might reasonably be adopted with a clear conscience.

[Malcolm Pollack]

PS: The accelerationist would argue that we lose in 2) above because we advance on the enemy, and provoke his destructive response, before we have rallied forces sufficient to give us any serious chance of winning.

[BV]

Malcolm,

It might help if you summarize your accelerationism (which is nowhere defined in this thread) and then explain what you take to be Lippincott's proposal. The two are not the same. Some comparing and contrasting will help focus the discussion.

It also occurs to me that the Left is accelerating (or as I have argued jerking) on its own and may need no help from us.

[Ian]

Lippincott's strategy of a temporary cessation on social issues at the national level will turn into a permanent one: so we're supposed to shut up about social issues at the national level until we secure power, at which point we can start talking about them again? And in the meantime, conservatives will have continued secretly to care deeply about these social issues when all our national leaders have agreed to stop making them issues? How is that supposed to work exactly?

If you stop making something an issue, it sends the message that it is not important. And guess what: people will start believing that.

It profits a man nothing to give his soul for the whole world. But for an election!

The great accomplishment of the pro-life movement during the Roe v. Wade era was keeping abortion controversial rather than surrendering it as a settled issue. This meant millions of people thought that abortion was murder, who thereby kept their souls from being corrupted. This all by itself justified the existence of the pro-life movement, even had Roe v. Wade never been overturned.

[Malcolm Pollack]

Bill, you're right - I was mixing up my threads.

There are three distinct positions here. I think I can sum them up briefly (corrections are welcome if I'm getting any of this wrong):

a) "Accelerationism" is a laissez-faire approach that says that we should let the Left have its way until, in its lust for evil, it makes things so undeniably awful that the millions of decent citizens who are currently just "going along to get along" have finally had enough, and rise up as one to strike it down. Only by letting things quickly become truly intolerable will all those good people be awakened to their peril; otherwise, the Left will slowly keep "boiling the frog" until civilization is cooked.

b) Others maintain that even if we are doomed to lose, we must always resist the encroachment of evil, because it is the duty of a good Christian -- or any righteous person -- to do so. Any strategic cleverness Accelerationists might propose should be resisted on this principle.

c) Lippincott recommends what seems to be a hybrid "middle way": laissez-faire on cultural/moral issues, while using an emphasis on immigration, war, trade, and crime to build a broadly Rightist electoral coalition that can actually seize effective political power. (I think Ian's objection supra is a fair one, and only delays the final reckoning.)

[Joe Odegaard]

Ian's post above nails it. Kudos Ian.

[BV]

Thanks, Joe, for responding to an other commenter.

[BV]

Thanks, Malcolm, you have done a fine job of articulating three main positions. The first is yours, and the second is Vito's. Your approach is a sort of tactical wager: we give the bastards plenty of rope and then hope they hang themselves with it. I can't say you are wrong: that would be like saying a man is wrong to make a bet that has maybe a 50-50 chance of winning.

As for Ian's comment, he has Lippincott in his sights, but his points also apply to you, no?

A lot depends on whether one thinks this life is the only life. If this life is the only life, then standing on principle -- iustitia fiat et pereat mundus! -- would be foolish if your resolute stand against abortion, pornography, the corruption of children, the destruction of the family, the assault on merit, the attack on religion and traditional morality, the elevation of scumbags to hero status, the promotion of drug dependency, and all the rest of the outrages of wokery gets you sent to the gulag.

My life is dedicated to the bios theoretikos,, the vita contemplativa but I have enough practical sense to realize that this wonderful life of mine can only be lived in certain circumstances. Understanding as I do that politics is a practical game, or better, a war, I understand the need for tactical maneuvers, sub rosa, and perhaps even of the 'dirty hands' sort to defeat our enemies. Pro tempore, of course.

I don't deny the danger of such a course. I don't have The Answer. A typical philosopher, I am better with questions than with answers.

So at the moment I incline in the Lippincott direction. For the time being we put the cultural issues 'on the back burner.' Which is not to say that we neglect them; we downplay them until we get control of the gov't.
A lot can be accomplished with executive orders. It is a policy of first things first.

To say it again: politics is a practical game. It is never about perfect vs. imperfect. it is about better or worse. It is utterly stupid and u-topian -- I mean, like, Nowheresville, man -- to await a political savior, a perfect candidate. I say we go with Trump, and balls to the wall. (A marathoner's expression).

[Malcolm Pollack]

Thanks, Bill. I should make clear, though, that my examination of the accelerationist position, and my granting that it is one that a reasonable person could adopt, doesn't constitute a personal endorsement. (Note that the title of my post was a question, not an assertion.)

I was only trying to put forward a "steelman" picture of it for us to consider. It's a risky game - and I'm not at all sure that I could actually get behind a strategy that would require me to pull the lever for Joe Biden (and by proxy, for the bastards pulling his strings).

That being said -- as Nick Land has pointed out, acceleration is here, whether we like it or not. The political struggles of our near future may be just as likely to involve pulling triggers as levers; we should be prepared for both.