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"My failure to embrace either side of the duopoly confuses a lot of people, but at this point in time, I’m a conservative who is anti-Republican. If that statement makes your mental processes short-circuit, you aren’t alone. I can almost see smoke pouring from the ears of a significant portion of my readership."

When the GOP idolizes a serial adulterer, has no problem spending like Democrats (though the Dems are working hard to re-calibrate the "big spenders" term with that $3.5T "infrastructure" bill), cheers us abandoning the Kurds and Afghans that fought alongside us against Islamic terrorism, and elevates a hack like Elise Stefanik over Liz Cheney, I think we're on solid ground arguing that the GOP is anti-conservative as well, or nihilistic at the very least.

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Sep 13, 2021Liked by Chris J. Karr, David Thornton

As I commented on Steve's beautifully written column on Bush 43's speech yesterday, I didn't always agree with Bush 43 on some policy matters, but that I never once regretted having voted for him twice. There was a lot of people who hated 43, but they weren't coming those who now make up the MAGA base. I remember wondering at times when 43 was President, that why wasn't he fighting back harder against the far left, and allowing them to draw an unfair caricature of him. It was hurting his approval numbers, and was part of the reason(though not the entire reason) the GOP had the bloodbath that it did in the 2006 and 2008 elections. He just had that above the fray mindset. Fast forward to today, and I better understand why he did what he did. I don't think any other President could've stopped the trends of tribalism any better than Bush 43 tried to do such. But his efforts are noble and I really applaud him for trying his best. I miss our 43rd President, and will always appreciate his service to our nation as President.

For many years in the past, whenever I hear about violent extremists within our country and the threat to overthrow our Constitutional order, I mostly downplayed it by claiming that these are very small numbers of extremists, and that the fact that they are marginalized from a numerical standpoint. Nowadays, I'm not as confident. While I'm glad that we stopped the 1-6 insurrectionists and prevented them from achieving their goals, the fact that they were dangerously close to putting the lives of members of Congress and our Vice President in imminent danger, is not heartening at all. The fact that an enormous plurality of Americans minimize and rationalize what happened on 1-6 is very concerning to me. The unfortunate fact is that many Americans have a short term political memory, and because of that, I worry that we will go into the 2022 and 2024 elections not having learned our lesson and done enough to prevent another potential insurrection in the future.

While it is still not likely to happen for now, if we lose our government and country to a violent insurrection, we are not getting our Constitutional Republic back. We will be getting something much worse. When you look at history at almost every example of violent revolutions that overthrew an existing government worldwide, one similar pattern emerges. That the successor is almost invariably totalitarian/authoritarian in nature, and much worse than the existent government that was overthrown. Only in very few instances, and I mean VERY few, that the outcome of a revolution leads to a liberal democracy/republic or something headed towards that kind of governance. And only when the prior government was a dictatorship(examples include Romania's Ceaucescu in 1990). In every instance where the prior government was a liberal democracy/republic, violent revolutions have invariably resulted in a government that is a dictatorship. One of the latest examples is Myanmar, as they've now gone back to the military junta that had before. When you have people like Mike Flynn, and others in the MAGA base calling for martial law and citing Myanmar as a positive example, then we have every right to be concerned.

That political quiz you took is interesting. I'll have to take it and see where I fall. But I suspect that I will be close to the upper right corner, and not too much different from where you landed, David. I consider myself strongly conservative with a big libertarian streak. Like you and others here at the Racket, I can't count how many times I've been called a lefty, liberal, a commie Biden apologist, a RINO, and other pejoratives too long to list here. And that because I criticized Trump on the non-conservative things he did.

Regarding your last paragraph about you not finding the Democratic and Libertarian parties acceptable to join, I feel the same way. Obviously I cannot be a Democrat because my views are way too far apart from where the party is. Like Joe Biden, his party has veered significantly to the left over the past few decades(Biden tends to move where his party goes, and perches in the middle among them. He is moderate within his party, but not within the overall spectrum. Still, I'm glad its him and not Bernie Sanders, thank goodness). This is no longer the party of Sam Nunn, John Breaux, Max Cleland, and Joe Lieberman, among others. Even more left leaning Democrats like Tom Daschle, Dick Gephardt, and Bill Clinton would not be welcome in today's Democratic party. As for the Libertarian Party, my views are few ticks more libertarian than many Trump-skeptic and MAGA conservatives. The problem I have with the LP is that they tend to be more libertine then demonstrably libertarian(Especially when they nominated Johnson/Weld. They took a position mandating bakeries "bake the cake!", among other non-libertarian views). Also their views on national security and foreign policy, are the biggest reasons why I cannot join the LP, despite my strongly libertarian views on economic, constitutional, and some cultural matters. Their views on those matters are completely unmoored from reality. Free market principles that Libertarians love are excellent, and I share their enthusiasm for it. But they won't stop Islamic jihadists who have a hardened desire to shed innocent blood. The profit motive will not restrain those who are morally depraved as these Islamic extremists are. And that why I part company with many libertarians in supporting a strong national defense and robust national security.

While I do not consider myself a Republican, I will support Republicans on a case to case basis. We will still have good ones worthy of our support. People like Liz Cheney, Bill Cassidy, Peter Meijer, Ben Sasse, Anthony Gonzalez, and Jaime Hererra-Beutler, deserve our support while they defend themselves against MAGA opposition. I have and will contribute some money to their campaigns.

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This article from the Atlantic may be relevant to folks here:

"What’s happening is that as former Republicans and conservatives break from old groups, they turn newly suspicious eyes on old certainties."

"Once, Republicans and conservatives filled hours of cable-TV time and sold millions of books to argue the supreme importance of truthfulness, sexual fidelity, and financial integrity in a national leader. Then their party nominated and elected a president who gleefully transgressed every one of those human decencies. The minority of Republicans and conservatives who couldn’t execute the pivot were left to wonder how to reconcile what our old friends had said with what they now did."

"Once, Republicans and conservatives advertised themselves as strict upholders of constitutional principle. They brandished pocket copies of the Constitution as props. Then the leader of their party incited a violent attack on Congress in an effort to overturn an election result. The minority of Republicans and conservatives who upheld legality were forced to confront the fact that their old friends had minimized and condoned the attack, and even glorified the attackers as 'political hostages' and 'political prisoners.'"

"Once, Republicans and conservatives defined themselves as the party of life. Human life was so precious that the law should require women unwillingly pregnant to give birth anyway. Then came a deadly pandemic, and suddenly “life” became less important than protecting the spring-break revenues of hotels and restaurants, or indulging the delusions and fantasies of people who got their scientific information from YouTube videos and Reddit threads. And again dissident Republicans and conservatives were left to wonder: What do we have in common with you?"[1]

[1] https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/09/never-trumpers-democrats-now/620055/

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