Posted on 11/30/2016 11:55:52 AM PST by Academiadotorg
In the Chronicle Review, a Stanford historian interviews George Nash, distinguished chronicler of the political right, with the pretty tacit intent of bashing Trump supporters.
"It might be preposterous in this, the year of Trump, to even think about conservatism as an intellectual movement," Jennifer Burns writes. "Trump's unexpected rise seems to lay bare a simple fact -- that conservatism has not only lost the battle of ideas but ceded the terrain of sophisticated thought altogether."
"But a deeper understanding of the intellectual currents that have coursed beneath modern conservatism is essential to explaining why those currents now appear to have dried up." By the way, unlike the last two Republican presidents, the president-elect has actually moved further to the right since winning election to the Oval Office.
In attempting to explain the history of conservatism, which Nash chronicled meticulously, she portrays a philosophy in action that few conservatives would recognize. "Yet today the most obvious political progeny of the movement Nash defined -- nationally known conservatives like Paul Ryan, Mitt Romney, and Jeb Bush -- struggle to remain relevant," Burns writes.
Few conservatives I know, and I know many, would recognize those three as fellow travelers. Nevertheless, arguably her assessment is partially correct: Like academics, they are struggling to remain relevant.
You can’t see the emperors cloths because you are not educated enough.
Nash is yet another so-called “conservative” who only wants HIS version of conservatism preached.
I’d say those three have already chosen irrelevance, a couple have actually been shown the door after expending a significant sum in search for relevance and failed to find it. Also, in response to your comment on the article, I have a different set of criteria for the “conservative” label and Trump hasn’t met those. He got my vote and I’m glad he’s there yet his approach is more pragmatic than dogmatic. He has a preference for action rather than action that aligns to a philosophy. Trump’s likely the right guy for the moment so I’m content to observe.
it’s redneck, it’s redneck
a common sense head on a neck of red beats the fool with a stack of books
Trump has perforce dipped into the conservative (actually, old fashioned liberal) tureen to serve us his presidential soup, because it has sat there in history as proof it works. He wasn’t intending to dish up failure.
... or sophisticated enough.
I entirely agree that Trump is thoroughly pragmatic.
The reason I no longer trust “dogmatic” or “ideological” (so-called) conservatives is that they have willingly been complicit with the enemy for literally decades.
At least Democrats are true to their vile promises for the most part. Republicans lie to get elected, then join the Diseased Party in destroying America.
I did not - absolutely did not - trust any of the other 16 candidates for the Republican Party to do anything substantially conservative if elected (which none of them would have been).
I assert: Trump may fail us; the other 16 would certainly have failed us.
Look at what the so-called conservatives in the House and Senate have accomplished in the last eight years.
Just about ZILCH!
But they do talk a helluva good game when running for election.
I would bet that Trump will accomplish more on the conservative wish list in his first eight months than they did in eight years.
Yep.
As I have posted elsewhere: Conservatism begins with conserving the national sovereignty of a nation. You can’t get more pervasively conservative than that.
That, I say, makes Trump more - not less - conservative where it really matters than any of the other 16 so-called ideological conservatives.
Thanks.
As thrilled as I am for my country, I am going through very difficult times personally. I needed that.
C.S. Lewis understood this. As a scholar himself, he well knew that a farmer had more real-world common sense than most scholars.
“... nationally known conservatives like Paul Ryan, Mitt Romney, and Jeb Bush...”
She forgot a word:
... nationally known FAUX conservatives like Paul Ryan, Mitt Romney, and Jeb Bush...
or is it:
... nationally known FOE conservatives like Paul Ryan, Mitt Romney, and Jeb Bush...
If Consevatives were actually conservative there’d be no need for President Elect Donald Trump! How many times have we been played for fools! This time we brought a Fighter to the fight and said enough of CONservatives! Here’s Conservatives! #NEVERTrump! Fools!
The left is mad that the right is ditching gloBULLism and scooping up their once very staunch constituency.
This was long over due.
Can’t it be summed up like this:
Republicans were sick of their electors acting like spineless democrats - thus Trump.
Trump, by any realistic assessment, is not only a Conservative, but a verifiable genius at cutting to the chase, as it were. Note, for example "making America great again." The phrase says more than these academic poseurs can say in whole paragraphs. It states that America was once great--when we put America First, as a prime and related example;--but that we have ceased to be in recent years.
For more on Trump's innate Conservatism, and conservative personality, see Metaphor For American Conservatism. The dysfunctional pseudo intellectuals in Academia, cluelessly dismissing a man so clearly brighter than they are, do not demonstrate a flaw in Trump or in us; only their own intellectual inadequacy.
Best wishes, FRiend, and I pray that your situation improves.
I myself went through a divorce this year. Unpleasant but so far \it is working out better, spiritually, emotionally, and financially, than I had feared.
Also, my ex-wife, who was a wishy-washy liberal when I met her, was all-in for Trump this year.
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