Daily Beast Doxxes, attacks, day-laborer in defense of Pelosi

cpwill · Jun 5, 2019

AmNat said:
I'm not a politician or a professional activist. I'm not obliged to know the details of how to do something, to say that it should be done.

That said, I can formulate a basic outline of what Trump should have done:

As soon as Trump got into office, he should have begun a purge of the upper echelons of the federal bureaucracy. Career bureaucrats should have been systematically replaced with loyalists. Once that was done, he should have simply imposed the policies I mentioned (along with the rest of his agenda) by fiat, and taken the Jackson/Lincoln approach to any judges who tried to obstruct him (i.e. ignore them). At that point, he could move on to crushing the media. Prosecute publishers of classified info under the Espionage Act, use antitrust laws against media outlets that lobby online platforms to ban their competitors, charge journos with harassment when they call people's employers trying to get them fired (this one might have to be done on the state level), arrest Andrew Kaczynski for blackmail, I'm sure a clever lawyer could think up more.

:lol: Sure. And then he could have used his magic death ray eyes to wipe out liberal voters as he flew over the United States on his unicorn.

The American Political system is designed to restrain activist Presidents who would act in such a manner as you describe - and with damn good reason.

Because unless, in this fantasy world of yours, the military chooses to chuck their oath of allegiance to the Constitution en masse and put down dissent, including - and, this is important - not holding any more elections, even attempting this nonsense would result in

A) establishing a lot of partial precedents, that
B) then got left with a left-wing sweep, putting a left wing President back in power likely with a supermajority in Congress.

To be clear, I never expected Trump to do all of that. But he could've done some of it.

He's been stymied even in what he's tried to do. We have a federalist system (abused though it is).

They're already tearing down the fence.

Some are, certainly, but it's still standing. That's not an argument to join them in tearing down the fence without understanding it, or the consequences of removing it.

The fence is going to come down whether we want it to or not, and a lot of it is down already. The only question is, are we going to start using the road too, or play make believe that the fence is still there?

Then and pick up your rifle and head to Daily Beast.

Or, don't, and demonstrate that you either lack courage of your convictions, or that you don't actually believe that the rules are all gone, now, and that right-wingers acting in abusive and stupid ways won't invite larger blowback against the conservative movement.

You're fooling yourself if you don't think the Kamala Harris administration is going to come after dissidents.

So you want to enable them by A) making it more likely someone like Harris gets elected, and then B) legitimizing that abuse before handing them the power to do so with popular support. Smart move.

Don't get me wrong, I liked the fence. It kept things nice and peaceful. But it's gone now, and the right has to decide whether it wants to deal with the real world, or stay in a fantasy world while the left becomes totally and irrevocably hegemonic

Indeed, but you have the sides backwards. In the real world, fantasies about "And, once we've purged all the people who believe in ethics.... [something happens].... and then we will win!!!" are not only useless, they are self-destructive. In the real world, the David French's of the world achieve victories, while the people who follow the path you are urging harm the conservative movement by association. In the real world you still have to win a measure of popular support if you want to gain political power at the national level, and in the real world, choosing to abandon Christ to chase political power ends in tragedy for you.

Thankfully, the tide seems to be turning (five years ago, I'd have never believed that First Things would publish Against the Dead Consensus, much less Against David-French-ism). It's likely that people like French will be won over or sidelined in the coming years. God willing, that'll happen in time for us to have a fighting chance.

You are demanding to fight on the field where you are weakest, after throwing away your major advantage, and God doesn't will for you to disobey his commands.

AmNat · Jun 5, 2019

cpwill said:
No - I don't think what I was saying carried over.

1. Attempting to justify abusing members of the other side (as you have done) and actually abusing members of the other side (which, you say, you have not done) is what alienates the general public.

2. You are confusing willingness to countenance abusive tactics with ideological positioning. The people (generally) most open to the former (in recent shifts on the right) are actually politically moderate. Those who are more ideologically oriented in the Conservative movement feature a higher proportion of people actually dedicated to the founding ideals of this country and the Constitution that rules it.

The left today seeks the destruction of Christianity and the historic American nation. They seek to kill children, and sexualize the ones they miss. They attack the traditional family and the very concept of gender itself. Many of them are openly socialist, which means they seek to impose a system destined to bring about the complete enslavement of its host societies

The number one goal for any sort of serious right wing movement, must be to stop them. Deciding how the tax code should work, or whatever it is that TrueCons care about, is secondary. If fighting the imposition of insanity attracts political moderates, all the better.

Cute. But sure - let's discuss how Jesus and Paul both taught us to deal with those who mock or abuse us (you are commanded to love them, to bless them, to treat them with kindness and to patiently endure evil), and what Scripture teach about things like vengeance (that it belongs to the Lord, not Humans). Then let's ask ourselves about the previous success of those who choose to violate the commands of God in search of an imaginary immanentization of the eschaton.

Scripture doesn't say to respond to abuse with love and grace until that tactic fails to achieve worldly political power. It commands you to do it regardless.

You're supposed to bear evils perpetrated against yourself. Not only does that not require timidity in the face of evil perpetrated against others or even the whole society, but St. Paul (to say nothing of the entire Old Testament) taught that is is the duty of those who practice statecraft to use their power to suppress evil.

Scripture does, however, address the temptation to toss aside what is right ("weak" morality) in seeking political power (as you suggest we should do)

Luke 4
5 The devil led him up to a high place and showed him in an instant all the kingdoms of the world. 6 And he said to him, “I will give you all their authority and splendor; it has been given to me, and I can give it to anyone I want to. 7 If you worship me, it will all be yours.”

Mark 8
34 Then he called the crowd to him along with his disciples and said: “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. 35 For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me and for the gospel will save it. 36 What good is it for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul?

What gain indeed. Ironically, if "conservatives" decide to chuck Christianity aside in order to prioritize earthly political power, they probably won't get any of that, either.

Fighting back isn't morally wrong. As I said, Locke wasn't the Christ, and contradicting him won't endanger your soul.

AmNat · Jun 5, 2019

cpwill said:
I did - and feel free to go back and check my posts here.

A single writer that I'm aware of (Nick Frankovitch) who had access to the National Review Corner reacted to the short clip, and immediately retracted and apologized when the longer one became available. So I think your characterization is exaggerated. And (see link) National Review et. al. apologized, and shifted their position to match the evidence.

Frankovitch apologized on Monday. The evidence already supported the Covington boys when he published his original piece (Sunday morning). As for my other supposed exaggerations, here's an archive of the RedState article as it existed the following Monday:

Shameful: High School Boys Who Attended March for Life Taunt Native American and Vietnam Veteran

Here's the March for Life's denunciation (a few tweets down):

March for Life (@March_for_Life) | Twitter

The response from their school is well known and you can find it by Googling.

There are many more examples.

Tribalists? Tribalists can't do that, because evidence is irrelevant to them, except as tools. Dedication to things like a neutral truth and set of facts are a classic liberal argument. Tribalists react like poor Phys in this thread, still desperately trying to cling to a means of arguing that the boys and their chaperones were in the wrong because what's important for Tribalists isn't the ability to ascertain the truth, but the ability to defend the tribe.

Give me the people who have the ability to be right, and just didn't happen to be lucky.

The irony here is that the "tribalists" (meaning those with a sense of loyalty) had possession of the evidence well before the "principled classical liberals". Why? Because we were the ones who instinctively believed in our own side and as a result bothered to look for exonerating evidence. The people who consider themselves principled either denounced the kids to get brownie points from the left, or waited passively for others to produce the full story.

And, again, it's worth noting that your point also remains moot. It was precisely the French'ist argument that turned that episode into a losing one for the Left, just as it was the "French"ist argument that won the day for Kavanaugh.

This is a post hoc rationalization. In addition to being wrong as a matter of who did what (the tribalists were the ones who first publicized the full context, the Frenchists got on board with the facts later), it's also fundamentally wrong as a matter of motive. The reason why the Covington boys eventually became a rallying point for everyone on the right (including, most importantly, normal people on the right), is precisely because of tribalism. Millions of ordinary Americans understood that their kid could have been Nick Sandmann. Even French himself admitted that the main reason he didn't jump on the bandwagon was because of that tribal identification:

"The prime reason that I held off from the initial Covington pile-on was simple. I know the culture of southern high schools, including southern private high schools. I know the culture of teenage boys. I’m raising a teenage son in the South."

Abstract concerns about how evidence should be evaluated were definitely not why the Covington story galvanized the public.

AmNat · Jun 5, 2019

cpwill said:
Because that argument wins, whereas deliberately lowering yourself to the perceived standards of the worst of your opponents does not. We don't live in a culturally conservative Christian country (this is why, for example, you are unable to fill in a plausible pathway to success except to list a dream sheet of completely implausible policy changes). If you want to take away state neutrality and dedication to liberal principles, you will find that the state is going to be wielded in that enterprise in ways that you do not like.

Rob Dreher puts it well in this section of a post on this debate you may find interesting:

...Second, moral and religious conservatives — especially Christians — are a minority in this post-Christian country. Sorry, but it’s true. I hate it, and wish it weren’t so, but that’s where we are. I can’t see any meaningful protection for us and our institutions outside of liberalism’s structures. Arguments for religious liberty are inherently liberal arguments. Religious freedom is a liberal principle, and a liberal achievement. But what does religious liberty mean in a post-Christian culture? It is not an absolute right, as we all agree (nobody would defend Aztec ritual sacrifice), but where do we draw the lines? It has been clear for some time that most secular liberals will not tolerate religion when it conflicts with equality — LGBT equality particularly. Given that most Americans today support LGBT equality (or at least LGB equality), how are we religious conservatives going to defend our liberties in court if not on a liberal basis? The idea that people should tolerate things that they dislike out of respect for pluralism is a liberal idea — and it’s just about the only thing we Christians have left to stand behind in post-Christian America...

The difference between Christians in the Middle East versus America is that Middle Eastern secularists are still committed to protecting Christians. American liberals are not.

AmNat · Jun 5, 2019

cpwill said:
:lol: Sure. And then he could have used his magic death ray eyes to wipe out liberal voters as he flew over the United States on his unicorn.

The American Political system is designed to restrain activist Presidents who would act in such a manner as you describe - and with damn good reason.

Because unless, in this fantasy world of yours, the military chooses to chuck their oath of allegiance to the Constitution en masse and put down dissent, including - and, this is important - not holding any more elections, even attempting this nonsense would result in

A) establishing a lot of partial precedents, that
B) then got left with a left-wing sweep, putting a left wing President back in power likely with a supermajority in Congress.

Firing and replacing executive branch officials is entirely within the purview of the President.

Democracy is untenable when one side wants to destroy the other, so it's on its way out either way (though sham elections may continue). However, it's not at all clear that the things I proposed would've triggered some sort of mega-backlash. Cutting off immigration would be extremely popular (restrictionism consistently polls well whenever concrete questions are asked), and none of the media behaviors I mentioned are popular. Coming off 2016's all-time low in public trust in the media (around 30%), it's at least plausible that punishing journos for harassing ordinary people would've made Trump more popular.

But even if it cost the GOP the next election, such an aggressive rightward shift would put the left on the cultural and political defensive. It would also have the advantage of sending "moderates" (in the dispositional sense) fleeing into the Democratic Party, thereby stymieing it.

He's been stymied even in what he's tried to do. We have a federalist system (abused though it is).

Right. Which is why he should've purged the executive branch.

Some are, certainly, but it's still standing. That's not an argument to join them in tearing down the fence without understanding it, or the consequences of removing it.

Then and pick up your rifle and head to Daily Beast.

Or, don't, and demonstrate that you either lack courage of your convictions, or that you don't actually believe that the rules are all gone, now, and that right-wingers acting in abusive and stupid ways won't invite larger blowback against the conservative movement.

So you want to enable them by A) making it more likely someone like Harris gets elected, and then B) legitimizing that abuse before handing them the power to do so with popular support. Smart move.

You keep acting as if I've said "anything goes". I haven't said that, or anything really approaching it. What I've said is that we shouldn't adhere to "norms" that the other side has zero intention of continuing to adhere to.

It's possible that doing so might slightly increase the pace of radicalization on the left (though this result isn't guaranteed, moving the Overton Window can have effects which are hard to predict in advance). But a real shot at defeating the left is better than no shot, even if the latter would come with the consolation prize of winning an election or two, or getting in an extra few years before they kill us all.

cpwill · Jun 7, 2019

AmNat said:
The left today seeks the destruction of Christianity and the historic American nation. They seek to kill children, and sexualize the ones they miss. They attack the traditional family and the very concept of gender itself. Many of them are openly socialist, which means they seek to impose a system destined to bring about the complete enslavement of its host societies

The number one goal for any sort of serious right wing movement, must be to stop them.

There are higher goals than temporal political power - I would have expected someone who claimed to be arguing in defense of Catholic values (Sohram Ahmari), or Christian values in general to understand that. It is unfortunate that they do not.

What flows from that is my largest problem with your statement. Simply being Anti-The-Modern-Left's positions is not, in fact, the highest goal. It is a sub-goal, a stepping stone, to furthering actual conservative values. Winning for the sake of winning is useless, nihilist, and self-destructive. Winning for the sake of achieving goals that are independent of winning can be a worthwhile endeavor. You have to have something to oppose the left with, and that something has to be something better and more worthy than their argument.

So, if you abandon conservatism in order to fight the left, then they have won, because they've forced you to abandon the goal, and pushed you off your position. If you abandon Christian commandments in order to fight the anti-Christian left then they (and Satan) have won, because they got you to abandon Christianity, demonstrating to all around you that even you don't actually believe in its tenets; not when push comes to shove.

It's also worth noting, however, that (and, this is important), when you do these things, you lose. You don't win. You fail by your own standard. Giving up anything that would have at least justified you in your failure, ironically, increases the likelihood that you will do so.

If fighting the imposition of insanity attracts political moderates, all the better.

If you fight your way, the insanity will win, because you will make yourself odious to the very people whose support you need.

You're supposed to bear evils perpetrated against yourself. Not only does that not require timidity in the face of evil perpetrated against others or even the whole society, but St. Paul (to say nothing of the entire Old Testament) taught that is is the duty of those who practice statecraft to use their power to suppress evil.

Fighting back isn't morally wrong. As I said, Locke wasn't the Christ, and contradicting him won't endanger your soul.

No one has argued for timidity - again, let me know when you are willing to stack your accomplishments in the fight against evil against those of David French, holder of a Bronze Star and who has the vast majority of his adult life actually fighting the left, with actual victories under his belt - but abandoning Christian teachings and God's commands will, indeed, endanger you.

How you fight matters. How you interact with others, matters. How you interact with those who hate, loathe, and abuse you, matters, and Scripture is painstakingly clear on how you are to do it, and you've (apparently) decided that Scripture is too weak for you (and, again, ironically, this means you do not understand it, and may be too weak for Scripture, but, there we are).

ocean515 · Jun 7, 2019

cpwill said:
100% guarantee that, if someone were to start posting details of this reporter's life into the same threads - where he lived, where his kids went to school, etc. - that the media would immediately go ballistic about how dare people threaten others in this way.

Yet they'll do it to someone because he's in the other political tribe.

Welcome to Mob Rule, everyone.

Welcome to the political objectives and offensives of the New Democratic Party and it's propaganda ministries.

cpwill · Jun 7, 2019

AmNat said:
cpwill said:

AmNat said:

As soon as Trump got into office, he should have begun a purge of the upper echelons of the federal bureaucracy. Career bureaucrats should have been systematically replaced with loyalists. Once that was done, he should have simply imposed the policies I mentioned

AmNat said:

mmigration, birthright citizenship, and online censorship could be stopped,

Click to expand...

(along with the rest of his agenda) by fiat, and taken the Jackson/Lincoln approach to any judges who tried to obstruct him (i.e. ignore them). At that point, he could move on to crushing the media. Prosecute publishers of classified info under the Espionage Act, use antitrust laws against media outlets that lobby online platforms to ban their competitors, charge journos with harassment when they call people's employers trying to get them fired ….

Click to expand...

Sure. And then he could have used his magic death ray eyes to wipe out liberal voters as he flew over the United States on his unicorn.

The American Political system is designed to restrain activist Presidents who would act in such a manner as you describe - and with damn good reason.

Because unless, in this fantasy world of yours, the military chooses to chuck their oath of allegiance to the Constitution en masse and put down dissent, including - and, this is important - not holding any more elections, even attempting this nonsense would result in

A) establishing a lot of partial precedents, that
B) then got left with a left-wing sweep, putting a left wing President back in power likely with a supermajority in Congress.

Click to expand...

Firing and replacing executive branch officials is entirely within the purview of the President.

Click to expand...

To a degree. Weaponizing the Federal Government's powers in order to punish one's political enemies, of course, is how Republics commit suicide, and we end back up with Caligula in charge, but yes, Trump has purview over Executive Branch Officials.

Mind you, his undertaking this project you've laid out will mean that the left will A) sweep into power and B) have a precedent for ratcheting up the attacks on Christians even higher with (and, this is important) C) popular support, as (again) your strategy is a losing one, but yes, Trump has authority over the Executive Branch of the Federal Government, with noted limitations.

For example, when Wilson ordered the Marines who guard the White House to go smash up the offices and intimidate members of the Media who angered him, they told him no, and were right to do so. Both Congress and the Constitution have placed limits on the President's authority, and, again, with good reason, to keep them from being able to act precisely as you describe.

cpwill · Jun 7, 2019

AmNat said:
Democracy is untenable when one side wants to destroy the other, so it's on its way out either way (though sham elections may continue)

No, sham elections are elections where the victor is predetermined by the State, which is acting similarly to how you propose Trump act. In the U.S., elections are real, and people can win who were not expected to do so (see: Current Occupant of the White House). And, again, if the Right were foolish enough to act as you propose, attempting to impose by fiat from one branch of government that which should require things like Constitutional Amendments, they will lose. Massively. You will end up back in 2009, when Democrats held the Presidency and a supermajority in Congress, except now the Radicals will be in charge and you will have legitimized whatever they want to do you by trying to do it to them first.

However, it's not at all clear that the things I proposed would've triggered some sort of mega-backlash.

Oh yeah - Trump acting like a dictator, as you suggest, would absolutely trigger a massive backlash.

See, unlike the David French approaches - which win - in American politics, when you come off as a vicious bully, people abandon you.

Cutting off immigration would be extremely popular (restrictionism consistently polls well whenever concrete questions are asked),

Getting rid of birthright citizenship, which you threw out there and then blithely argued that "I'm not a politician and I can't be expected to understand how things can happen" to justify having no realistic path towards would require a Constitutional Amendment, not Executive Fiat (and, really, giving the President the power to do things like rearrange whose citizenship counts is a very - very - poor choice when you are about to make a Radical Democrat President).

Cutting off immigration would not be immensely popular. There is public support for holding it at current levels, possibly reducing and shifting it to focus on skill sets, having immigrants learn english, etc., but there is no massive support out there for cutting it off.

and none of the media behaviors I mentioned are popular

Which, of course, is irrelevant to the question of whether or not the party in power will face a massive backlash if they attempt to use the power of government to (as you say) "crush) them. That will leave the GOP even less popular than the media.

But even if it cost the GOP the next election, such an aggressive rightward shift would put the left on the cultural and political defensive.

Again, no, it wouldn't. They would become more offensive, as it A) it would inspire them to seek a cycle of revenge, and B) you would have just handed them an incredible set of tools that they could then use to exact that revenge.

Amnat said:
It would also have the advantage of sending "moderates" (in the dispositional sense) fleeing into the Democratic Party, thereby stymieing it.

No, it would have the effect of pushing "moderates" to back radical democrats as "awful, but better than Trump", just as Hillary had the effect of pushing "moderates" to back Trump as "awful, but better than Hillary".

Also, note, this argument presupposes that a wide majority of the country is now arrayed against you, which means that you have lost. So much for "we have to stop the left and win at all costs.". :roll:

Right. Which is why he should've purged the executive branch.

Click to expand...

And set the precedent for unrestrained use of Executive Power as a means of attacking one’s domestic political enemies. Sure. No way at all the left would ever use that when they got into power.

You keep acting as if I've said "anything goes". I haven't said that, or anything really approaching it. What I've said is that we shouldn't adhere to "norms" that the other side has zero intention of continuing to adhere to.

Click to expand...

If there are no more norms, if norms are “weak” and “timid” in the face of a battle for survival, If Indeed, what is ultimately at stake is:

Amnat said:

they kill us all

Click to expand...

Then indeed, anything goes. If this is a fight to stop the left from murdering millions of Americans for being conservatives, then the deaths of millions of leftists is justified. As I’ve said, your strategy can win, if you are willing to kill off about 10-30% of the U.S. population.

So, either:

A) Pick up your gun and start shooting, or
B) Admit you are a coward who lacks courage of your convictions, or
C) Stop saying hyperbolic and stupid things that you don’t actually mean.

a real shot at defeating the left is better than no shot

Click to expand...

Yeah, except, again, your approach doesn’t win. In addition to giving up more important ground, it’s a loser.

cpwill · Jun 7, 2019

AmNat said:
Frankovitch apologized on Monday.

I am glad to see you admit that, in fact, it was, one author, with access to the Corner, implying that you were, indeed, incorrect to suggest that it was the position of National Review.
on to the Strat question:

The irony here is that the "tribalists" (meaning those with a sense of loyalty) had possession of the evidence well before the "principled classical liberals". Why? Because we were the ones who instinctively believed in our own side and as a result bothered to look for exonerating evidence. The people who consider themselves principled either denounced the kids to get brownie points from the left, or waited passively for others to produce the full story.

You're going to argue in favor of the broken clock?

No thanks

I'll take people who have the ability to be consistently correct.

This is a post hoc rationalization.

Not at all - it is an accurate characterization of the fact that one set of approaches (which you have followed Sohrab Ahmari in describing as "David Frenchism", but what the U.S. has generally known as "Conservatism" and "Christianity") achieves successes, whereas others do not.

Consider for a second - what if the initial impression had been accurate, and longer cuts and edits of the videos had shown that the boys swooped in to surround an elderly native American man who had done nothing to him in order to dance in his face and taunt him? Your argument above (that we should adopt the moral codes of the left) would say that that kind of behavior was completely acceptable, if not laudable, because it confuses that sort of behavior with "winning".

Do you honestly think that, had the longer cuts of videos shown that, that the Left would have lost that exchange, as they did? Or do you think they would have been vindicated in their description of Trump fans as abusive bullies?

No. They would not have. But the Left went insane, acted like vicious unethical bullies, and that is what caused them to lose. Aping that style will produce similar results.

AmNat · Jun 8, 2019

cpwill said:
There are higher goals than temporal political power - I would have expected someone who claimed to be arguing in defense of Catholic values (Sohram Ahmari), or Christian values in general to understand that. It is unfortunate that they do not.

There are higher things than sports. That doesn’t mean sports teams shouldn’t try to win. Likewise, there are more important things than politics, but the goal of a political movement is to impose or uphold a certain conception of the common good for a society. In the concrete circumstances of the modern American right, that requires defeating the left.

What flows from that is my largest problem with your statement. Simply being Anti-The-Modern-Left's positions is not, in fact, the highest goal. It is a sub-goal, a stepping stone, to furthering actual conservative values. Winning for the sake of winning is useless, nihilist, and self-destructive. Winning for the sake of achieving goals that are independent of winning can be a worthwhile endeavor. You have to have something to oppose the left with, and that something has to be something better and more worthy than their argument.

Defeating the left is the proximate goal. Implementing conservative policies is the remote goal. The latter can’t happen without the former.

If you fight your way, the insanity will win, because you will make yourself odious to the very people whose support you need.

It’s not clear which demographic you’re referring to, but Trump carried both ideological conservatives and the pissed off “moderate” demographic. If he loses in 2020 (which is likely), it’ll be because the latter stays home.

No one has argued for timidity - again, let me know when you are willing to stack your accomplishments in the fight against evil against those of David French, holder of a Bronze Star and who has the vast majority of his adult life actually fighting the left, with actual victories under his belt - but abandoning Christian teachings and God's commands will, indeed, endanger you.

How you fight matters. How you interact with others, matters. How you interact with those who hate, loathe, and abuse you, matters, and Scripture is painstakingly clear on how you are to do it, and you've (apparently) decided that Scripture is too weak for you (and, again, ironically, this means you do not understand it, and may be too weak for Scripture, but, there we are).

I don’t agree with the “Christian rulers should roll over before their enemies” interpretation. No Christian political regime in history agreed with that view either.

AmNat · Jun 8, 2019

cpwill said:
Getting rid of birthright citizenship, which you threw out there and then blithely argued that "I'm not a politician and I can't be expected to understand how things can happen" to justify having no realistic path towards would require a Constitutional Amendment, not Executive Fiat (and, really, giving the President the power to do things like rearrange whose citizenship counts is a very - very - poor choice when you are about to make a Radical Democrat President).

Nothing in the Constitution or federal law declares the children of illegals to be “subject to the jurisdiction of the United States”. It’s entirely within the purview of the President to amend the Code of Federal Regulations to clarify that they are excluded (in the same way that the children of foreign diplomats are already excluded).

Cutting off immigration would not be immensely popular. There is public support for holding it at current levels, possibly reducing and shifting it to focus on skill sets, having immigrants learn english, etc., but there is no massive support out there for cutting it off.

When asked if they support the current levels of immigration, the median American says yes. But, when asked about specifics, the public consistently supports measures which would have a restrictionist effect.

Which, of course, is irrelevant to the question of whether or not the party in power will face a massive backlash if they attempt to use the power of government to (as you say) "crush) them. That will leave the GOP even less popular than the media.

Again, most Americans distrust the media. There’s no reason to think that subjecting them to the same laws that apply to everyone else would be unpopular. Especially given that Trump won calling the media the enemy of the people and promising to use the law against them.

No, it would have the effect of pushing "moderates" to back radical democrats as "awful, but better than Trump", just as Hillary had the effect of pushing "moderates" to back Trump as "awful, but better than Hillary".

Hillary repelled people because she's a repulsive person. She did not represent radicalism.

And set the precedent for unrestrained use of Executive Power as a means of attacking one’s domestic political enemies. Sure. No way at all the left would ever use that when they got into power.

They've already done it and will continue to do it regardless of what the right does or does not do. This is what Frenchists fundamentally fail to understand, the left is going to seek power by any means necessary, the only question is what kind of resistance will they be met with.

If there are no more norms, if norms are “weak” and “timid” in the face of a battle for survival

Norms are good when they aren't dumb.

AmNat · Jun 8, 2019

cpwill said:
You're going to argue in favor of the broken clock?

If you tell people that you're on the right side, but assume that the overwhelming majority (41,399 in 43,200) of your side are incorrigibly wicked, they're not going to believe you.

The left has complete confidence in the moral uprightness of their own side. Maybe, just maybe, the side that opposes infanticide, child drag queens, and the rich and powerful lording it over everyone else, should have at least a moderate level of collective self-confidence.

I know what you're going to say. "Humility". Because apparently humility means holding everyone else in contempt and setting yourself up as their judge.

No thanks I'll take people who have the ability to be consistently correct.

The statement would make more sense if Frenchists had a track record of being correct.

Not at all - it is an accurate characterization of the fact that one set of approaches (which you have followed Sohrab Ahmari in describing as "David Frenchism", but what the U.S. has generally known as "Conservatism" and "Christianity") achieves successes, whereas others do not.

This is a nice story. Back in reality, there were a long line of Frenchists ready to immediately sell out. French himself was (by his own admission) restrained primarily by tribal loyalty, IOW the reason he didn't sell out was because he's not consistently Frenchist.

Consider for a second - what if the initial impression had been accurate, and longer cuts and edits of the videos had shown that the boys swooped in to surround an elderly native American man who had done nothing to him in order to dance in his face and taunt him?

What if the sky were purple? Again, people on the right would sound more credible if they had a little bit of confidence in the rightness of their own side.

Your argument above (that we should adopt the moral codes of the left) would say that that kind of behavior was completely acceptable, if not laudable, because it confuses that sort of behavior with "winning".

Your skill at interpretive reading knows no bounds.

I suppose you can quote where I said that mocking random people is an advisable course of action?

Do you honestly think that, had the longer cuts of videos shown that, that the Left would have lost that exchange, as they did? Or do you think they would have been vindicated in their description of Trump fans as abusive bullies?

If the left had hit the proverbial gold mine, a group of white Christians caught on video mocking an innocent Indian, they would have won the PR battle no matter what anyone did or said in response. In the counterfactual scenario you describe, the correct course of action for the right would've been to stop talking about the matter once the boys' guilt was proven with overwhelming evidence (i.e. what the left does on the rare occasion that they choose to entertain evidence at all). Vicarious apologies and disavowals would serve only to further entrench the association between the (in this scenario guilty) kids and the right in general.

nekrodev · Jun 8, 2019

Yeah, this isn't cool, at all - and aside from Nancy Pelosi herself, I don't see anyone getting any satisfaction out of it.

cpwill · Jun 9, 2019

AmNat said:
There are higher things than sports. That doesn’t mean sports teams shouldn’t try to win. Likewise, there are more important things than politics, but the goal of a political movement is to impose or uphold a certain conception of the common good for a society. In the concrete circumstances of the modern American right, that requires defeating the left.

I'm glad you brought up this example, because I think it highlights what I'm pointing out well.

In sports, the goal is to win, but not by violating higher things. So, let us say, for example, that you have a son currently playing baseball, and is on a team with a star pitcher. If a parent from the other team were to become so dedicated to the idea that their son's team needed to win, and, to achieve this goal, ran over your team's pitcher in the parking lot, is the appropriate answer:

A) Have them arrested, have all team members pray for the pitcher and his family, and then go play
B) Pick the best member of the opposing team, and (as a parent) crush their knees with a baseball bat, in order to win, because you have to play by their rules.

Obviously the answer is A. Because you shouldn't sacrifice more important things (Christianity, Conservatism, not committing assault) for less important things (temporary, temporal, political power, winning a baseball game). Even if the opposing parent adopts the norm of "I will now commit violence against children in order for my preferred sports team to win", that doesn't justify you attacking children.

Meanwhile, acting like the worst members of the opposition while pretending to be upholding a concept of "what is good" is hypocritical and self-defeating. Not only do you make it clear that Christians do not, actually, believe in what they preach, not only do you alienate people who might have otherwise been fellow-travelers in supporting your conception of "what is good", you make the Church odious to people who might otherwise have been reached.

The Apostles rejoiced in the privilege of suffering on account of Him, and persecution spread the Gospel like quickfire across the ancient world. Acting like the world by seeking revenge? Not so much.

Defeating the left is the proximate goal. Implementing conservative policies is the remote goal. The latter can’t happen without the former.

I think this is the incorrect approach for at least two reasons:

1. The left will not ever be "defeated", for the same reason that the right will not be, though both can lose particular fights and battles. There is and will be no end to political conflict, until all politics is ended.

2. The goals are not proximate and remote, but (see above) higher and lower. Sacrificing higher goals (Christianity, Conservatism) in order to fight the left means abandoning your more important goals in seeking the less important ones.

2.a. However, if you wish to think in terms of "remote" goals that are controlling, particular policy changes are not the ultimate, remote goal for Christians. The ultimate remote goal is where we stand at the end of time. What our circumstances were will not matter there, nor the forces that were arrayed against us, but rather how we responded to them - did we act with grace even when it was difficult, did we follow Christ even when it was hard, did we respond to hatred with love, to abuse with caring? Were you strong enough to do these difficult things, or ruled instead by sinful emotions that caused you to sin against your fellow man?

That is the perspective you should have if you want to think in terms of "remote" goals. The U.S.? What is the U.S.? A temporary political entity, full of sin and destined to fall away. Set your eyes on the eternal instead.

If you lose political power and are thrown into prison for your beliefs and killed as a martyr, and all you can show for it is that you held true to Christ, then you have still won.

All that being said, it is still worth noting that in the context of those particular political battles in which there are winners and losers (elections, policy changes, etc), your proposed strategy makes it more likely that the left will win.

Trump carried both ideological conservatives and the pissed off “moderate” demographic. If he loses in 2020 (which is likely), it’ll be because the latter stays home.

Or switches sides. Trump didn't win in 2016 so much as Hillary lost - in a contest between two deeply unpopular candidates, Hillary was more unpopular with some key segments in key states.

The next candidate won't have Hillary's baggage, and, because the modern habit is to shrink all politics to the context of the Presidency, Trump's abuses will color people's view of the entire GOP. If you want to convince voters that they are correct to do that, then there is no better way to go about that than to begin emulating the worst actors on the left.

cpwill · Jun 9, 2019

AmNat said:
I don’t agree with the “Christian rulers should roll over before their enemies” interpretation. No Christian political regime in history agreed with that view either.

:shrug: no one has argued that they should. As a Christian, I've gone to war and killed people - killed them in front of their families - and it was justified and the right thing to do. Sometimes violence is indeed justifiable (we have Just War Doctrine for precisely that reason). Christians simply shouldn't abandon Christian teachings in order to conform to the norms of the uglier parts of the world, as you would have us do. The Bible clearly commands us on how we are to treat others, including people who curse at or abuse you. Don't tell me you are trying to bring Christianity back into control of the public square, when step one involves chucking it to the side.

AmNat said:
Nothing in the Constitution or federal law declares the children of illegals to be “subject to the jurisdiction of the United States”. It’s entirely within the purview of the President to amend the Code of Federal Regulations to clarify that they are excluded (in the same way that the children of foreign diplomats are already excluded).

The children of both legal and illegal immigrants have been considered to be citizens for (as near as I can tell) more than a century, since the Wong case. So, yeah, you’re probably gonna need an Amendment. And you are definitely going to need overwhelming public support which, oops, you sacrificed in order to punish a stupid Daily Beast reporter :roll:

When asked if they support the current levels of immigration, the median American says yes. But, when asked about specifics, the public consistently supports measures which would have a restrictionist effect.

Sure, which is in no way the same as significant majority support for ending immigration, as you proposed in post 88.

Again, most Americans distrust the media.

Sure. Except that “the media” that half of them distrust is the conservative media, and there is no reason to suspect that they would take Trump’s side if he decided to violate the Constitution in order to punish media outlets he disliked.

Hillary repelled people because she's a repulsive person. She did not represent radicalism.

Fascinating. Tell me more about how being a repulsive person and acting in repulsive ways causes one to repel voters and, as a result, lose political contests.

They've already done it and will continue to do it regardless of what the right does or does not do.

That is incorrect – for all its abuses, the Obama executive was not unrestrained. Otherwise, we would already be at what you claim was coming - the wholesale use of violence against the non-Woke. Tossing off the checks and balances of the Constitution in order to create an unrestrained executive, while acting in such a way as to repel people by being a repulsive person, only ensures that you hand an unrestrained Executive to your opponent, who will be maximally both incentivized and enabled to use it against you.

You would seek to craft the weapon your opponent would be used to destroy you, and then act in such a way as to guarantee it gets into his hands.

This is what Frenchists fundamentally fail to understand, the left is going to seek power by any means necessary, the only question is what kind of resistance will they be met with.

Given that French is the one who has actually been involved in combating the growth of the left (and – again – winning) while you (your own words) have not, I’m just gonna laugh hysterically at this foolishness.

Sure. No one else is aware of what’s going on but you. No one else reads the news, or participates in public debate, but you. You are the only one who follows twitter, who watches CNN or FOX, or who reads politically-oriented magazines.

If the left wants to shoot themselves in the foot by acting like abusive idiots, well, that’s their problem. It lost them the debate over Kavanaugh, it lost them the public argument over the Covington boys, it helped lose them the 2016 Presidential election, and it may even help them lose the 2020 election.

If your enemy starts doing something self-destructive and stupid. Let them. Don’t decide to be equally self-destructive and stupid.

Norms are good when they aren't dumb.

Norms are good when they protect good modes of behavior and reduce the incidence of wrong and abusive modes of behavior.

cpwill · Jun 9, 2019

AmNat said:
If you tell people that you're on the right side, but assume that the overwhelming majority (41,399 in 43,200) of your side are incorrigibly wicked, they're not going to believe you.

Strawman much?

OTC, there are good and bad actors on both sides of this political divide, and generally good actors who occasionally do bad things, and generally bad actors who occasionally do good things. Refusing to acknowledge that causes people not to believe you, because it demonstrates that you are either intellectually dishonest, or so controlled by your biases as to be unreliable.

The left has complete confidence in the moral uprightness of their own side. Maybe, just maybe, the side that opposes infanticide, child drag queens, and the rich and powerful lording it over everyone else, should have at least a moderate level of collective self-confidence.

Oh, I have all the self-confidence in the world. That’s why I don’t fall prey to arguments designed to appeal to petty emotions such as “the left did this mean thing so now we must act like them”.

I know what you're going to say. "Humility". Because apparently humility means holding everyone else in contempt and setting yourself up as their judge.

One of my favorite things is when leftists project their own, quiet, suspicion that they are acting wrongly onto those who disagree with their actions by accusing them of being “Judgemental”.

The only thing I hold in contempt in this discussion is the foolish notion that the way you win political contests in a representative society in which you are dependent on the votes of the public is by alienating that public and convincing them that you are an abusive and repulsive actor.

The statement would make more sense if Frenchists had a track record of being correct.

Which they do

Because, unlike tribalists, they are able to go where the evidence points.

What if the sky were purple? Again, people on the right would sound more credible if they had a little bit of confidence in the rightness of their own side.

Confidence in the rightness of one’s cause does not mean that one lacks so much faith in it that one has to defend all the actions of everyone else who may adhere to it.

Your skill at interpretive reading knows no bounds.

I suppose you can quote where I said that mocking random people is an advisable course of action?

You argued we need to adopt the moral position of the left, and mimic their abuses. You seem (tragically, bizarrely) to think that this will cause us to “win”.

If the left had hit the proverbial gold mine, a group of white Christians caught on video mocking an innocent Indian, they would have won the PR battle no matter what anyone did or said in response.

Yeah. Because – in that instance - they would have been right. Responding by giving them more opportunities to do so is neither good Christianity, nor good Conservatism, nor good politics.

In the counterfactual scenario you describe, the correct course of action for the right would've been to stop talking about the matter once the boys' guilt was proven with overwhelming evidence (i.e. what the left does on the rare occasion that they choose to entertain evidence at all). Vicarious apologies and disavowals would serve only to further entrench the association between the (in this scenario guilty) kids and the right in general.

On the contrary, it is the instinctive defense of the kids by tribalists on the right who cement that connection, just as the instinctive defense of abusers by tribalists on the left cement connections that the left then has trouble disavowing.

AmNat · Jun 10, 2019

cpwill said:
The left will not ever be "defeated", for the same reason that the right will not be, though both can lose particular fights and battles. There is and will be no end to political conflict, until all politics is ended.

Lenin defeated the right in Russia, Salazar defeated the left in Portugal. Neither victory was permanent, but both resulted in one side being able to shape the character of a country for generations. Once you realize that the collapse of bipartisan democracy is inevitable, it should be clear which outcome any sane person should support.

Sacrificing higher goals (Christianity, Conservatism) in order to fight the left means abandoning your more important goals in seeking the less important ones.

I'm not sacrificing Christianity or conservatism. I'm sacrificing liberalism.

Suppose for the sake of argument that it were known with certainty that, for example, regulating major social media sites as public utilities, would be politically beneficial to the right (say that extensive opinion polling has shown that most of the voting public supports such a measure). In that case, what possible reason would there be for not doing it? Because Locke wouldn't approve?

Daily Beast Doxxes, attacks, day-laborer in defense of Pelosi

pleb