Principles in the Crosshairs: Why Consistency Is Heresy in Modern Conservatism

It’s a curious peculiar hallmark of our political moment as conservatives that adhering to principles—steadfastly examining issues through the lens of conservatism and first principles—is now treated as heresy by self proclaimed conservatives, while ideological flexibility and indifference are paraded as virtues. This peculiar attack invariably comes from the populists, those sartorial magicians who don the garments of conservatism when it suits them, only to cast them off the moment they conflict with the “current thing.” These are the ideological chameleons, the political reincarnations of those high school kids who reinvented themselves annually to fit in with whatever clique was trending, only to find themselves forever on the outside.

For those of us who don’t masquerade—who have sacred beliefs we stand by—the mere act of consistency invites ridicule. Not because we’re loudly proclaiming ourselves as “principled conservatives” to bask in self-congratulatory glory, but because the term is flung at us as an epithet. That it’s their insult, not our invention, It’s a weak attempt at slur wielded by those whose ideological elasticity would make Gumby jealous—treating the foundations of conservatism as something to be stretched, bent, or discarded entirely, depending on the day’s applause line. And so, we’ll made it our own, because our arguments are rooted in issues, not personalities.

And so, the charade continues. Consider the latest episode in this tragicomedy: Trump’s endorsement of Elon Musk’s advocacy of expanding the H1-B visa program. This is a program conservatives have long criticized for its self-reported metrics, vulnerability to fraud, high rates of visa overstays, and its primary function as a corporate welfare scheme that prioritizes profit over societal consequences. Even some of the most ardent MAGA supporters are now voicing unease. And yet, in the blink of an eye, you’ll see others pivot from “zero immigration until we get our house in order” to “we must allow more legal immigration to strengthen our technological security.” The turnaround isn’t ideological; it’s reactionary—a desperate scramble to keep pace with their leader’s latest whim.

There are plenty within MAGA who genuinely align with conservative principles, who supported Trump because they saw him as the best available option or because he symbolized something they could identify with—even if he never truly embodied it. The issue lies with those who rush to attack anyone who dares to question Trump’s new positions. These aren’t defenders of conservatism—they’re enforcers of groupthink, parroting whatever talking points validate their existence. Their “beliefs” aren’t beliefs at all; they’re intellectual hand-me-downs borrowed from podcasters, influencers, or Trump himself, and as fragile as a soap bubble.

Their hostility isn’t rooted in ideological defense but in fear—fear of dissent, fear of intellectual confrontation, and, most importantly, fear of being exposed. They don’t want to explain their newfound support for policies they once opposed. They don’t want to wrestle with the contradictions of their positions. Instead, they silence dissent to avoid admitting the truth: “I have no actual beliefs—please like me.”

This isn’t about labels. It’s about the divide between those anchored to enduring truths and those who treat policy like a buffet, heaping their plates with whatever is most popular that day. Immigration, trade, abortion, spending—you name it, they’ve pivoted on it, not from reflection or evolution, but from a desperate desire to stay relevant.

Eric Hoffer described this dynamic with precision in The True Believer. Mass movements, he noted, aren’t driven by ideas but by the desperate need to belong—a phenomenon exemplified in today’s populist grift, where loyalty to the leader replaces any pretense of intellectual substance. Today’s self-styled populist conservatives, consistency isn’t a virtue; it’s a liability. They’ve traded principles for the fleeting comfort of crowd approval, sacrificing coherence on the altar of group loyalty.

And here we are, simply asking inconvenient questions: Shouldn’t trade policy serve the long-term health of the economy? Shouldn’t immigration policy reflect constitutional values and the best interest of the current citizenry? Shouldn’t spending align with fiscal restraint? These aren’t revolutionary queries—they’re the foundations of conservative thought. Yet to ask them is to invite attacks and scorn, not because the questions are invalid but because they highlight the absence of coherent answers from those hurling the insults.

The funniest part? Their attack on “principled conservatives” is pure projection. It’s not that they find principles offensive; it’s that they find them threatening. Principles are a mirror, and when they see people holding fast to them, it reflects their own ideological emptiness and willingness to just go with the tide even as it drags them out to sea. Their anger is less about us and more about what our existence says about them: that they’ve traded conviction for convenience and cannot bear the reminder.

This is why they lash out with such ferocity, cloaking their lack of substance in accusations of arrogance. But we’re not the ones changing our positions on core issues like we’re flipping through channels looking for something worth watching. The real arrogance lies in the belief that convictions are optional, that conservatism can mean whatever you want it to mean so long as it polls well at the next rally. That proper governance can survive such inconsistency without doing maximum damage.

In their desperation to smear, they’ve stumbled into nihilism, where loyalty to “the movement” matters more than the ideas that once defined it, at least on paper anyway. Their strategy seems less about building conservatism and more about tearing down anyone who remembers what conservatism used to be.

This brings us to a parallel I often make from H.G. Wells’ The Time Machine. Here, the Eloi surface dwelling, childlike beings descended from modern humans after an apocalyptic event live in blissful ignorance, frolicking in their surface paradise, unaware—or willfully ignoring—that their existence is sustained for nefarious purposes by the lurking Morlocks below. Much like the modern populists, they dismiss any call to dig deeper or preserve the foundations, labeling such efforts as needless worry or intellectual snobbery. After all, why think about tomorrow when today’s fruit is so sweet?

But here’s the twist: the Morlocks, those cunning subterranean predators, don’t just maintain the machinery of the Eloi’s world—they consume them. And isn’t that the perfect analogy for the cynical populist grifters? They fatten their audience on empty rhetoric, feeding them slogans and cheap applause, all the while preparing to devour them. These Morlocks profit from the Eloi’s ignorance, exploiting their comfort until it’s time to cash in, leaving nothing behind but the hollow echo of what was once a movement.

The principled conservative, our weary time traveler, tries to warn them. He points out the danger of abandoning history, literacy, first principles, the peril of ignoring what lies beneath them. But his warnings are dismissed in the modern case as elitism or doomsaying. “Stop digging,” the Eloi cry, “you’re ruining the party!”—just before they’re led, with cheerful oblivion, to the Morlocks’ dinner table.

The moral of this little excursion through time? When you refuse to remember and respect the past, you don’t avoid its consequences—you merely descend into the darkness of your own making, where only the Morlocks win and you become lunch. And if you’re wondering who the Eloi are in this analogy, just check the comment section of your favorite influencer’s latest political pivot.

If H.G. Wells feels too much like homework, let me offer something more cinematic: Mad Max: Fury Road, a dystopian fever dream where loyalty to Immortan Joe blinds the war boys to their enslavement. They spray chrome on their mouths, cry “Witness me!” and rush headlong into destruction, all for the fleeting approval of their overlord.

Now consider this in today’s context of political influencers and their followers. The chrome spray? That’s the hot take of the day, blindly repeated to show loyalty. The cries of “Witness me!”? That’s the endless quest for validation—likes, retweets, and shares—confirming their place in the crowd. And Immortan Joe? That’s the influencer, the politician, or the grifter at the top, whose survival depends on the unquestioning devotion of their audience.

Like the war boys, these followers aren’t just participants; they’re sacrificial lambs, rushing into the fray for the fleeting approval of someone who sees them only as a means to an end. And much like the Eloi, they mistake the system they serve for salvation, not realizing it’s leading them straight to ruin.

Which brings us to the immortal words of Saul Bellow, famously popularized by Boyd Crowder in Justified: “The hope is that they will die off, as the deer flies do, toward the end of August.” And when they do, the enduring principles of conservatism will remain—a reminder that history rewards substance over spectacle.

The allure of opportunism is its immediacy—it thrives in the short term, feeding off the fickle winds of popularity and the desperate need for relevance. But it carries within it the seeds of its own destruction. Ideas, by contrast, are stubborn things. They don’t waver with the crowd or evaporate under scrutiny. They endure because they are anchored in something deeper than the next applause line or social media trend.

So, let them chant, let them spray their chrome, let them cheer for the system that consumes them. History will remember not the war boys or their fleeting cries of “Witness me!” but the principles that withstood the frenzy as it always does. As the deer flies die off with the season, so too will the opportunists and their shallow pretenses, leaving behind a landscape where enduring ideas will once again take root. The task for those of us holding firm is not just to outlast them, but to ensure that what survives is worthy of the next generation.

n a political era where ideological elasticity is celebrated and steadfast principles are derided as heresy, modern conservatism faces an existential crisis. Why has consistency become a liability? How have populist grifters turned groupthink into virtue while abandoning the very foundations of conservatism?

Through sharp analysis and allegory—from The Time Machine to Mad Max: Fury Road—this piece exposes the opportunism threatening conservatism’s soul and calls for a return to enduring truths.

💡 Ideas endure. Opportunism doesn’t.

The author completely misreads the current political landscape — or, perhaps, understands it well but misrepresents it for his own reasons.

The MAGA populist movement only exists because tens of millions of voters came to realize that most of “those anchored to enduring truths” (i.e., “principled conservatives”) in government were feckless, duplicitous frauds.

The period from 2000 to 2018 will be remembered as the time when anybody with half a brain and an ounce of integrity recognized that the Republican Party was built on a foundation of bullsh!t.

Mass movements, he noted, aren’t driven by ideas but by the desperate need to belong—a phenomenon exemplified in today’s populist grift, where loyalty to the leader replaces any pretense of intellectual substance.

This more properly defines the character of the left.

Why has consistency become a liability?

Because a badly misconstructed (in my opinion) recount of Genesis lies at root of many of said conservative principles. When gelology, biology, and archaeology argue otherwise, many young people end up rootless and looking elsewhere, grasping at ideological straws. Yet the root understanding (literally) of Genesis is much more interesting and applicable, suffering from a tragic misunderstanding that has stood since the time of Ezra.

I'm writing that book now < /shameless tease> because it so pains me to see people turned away from the Word and Messiah upon technical bases that are equally shakey. It's really too bad we don't raise our children to be aware of how little we really know and therefore how much there is to learn and how badly we need them to get to work at it.

According to Romans 11:8 “(According as it is written, God hath given them the spirit of slumber, eyes that they should not see, and ears that they should not hear;) unto this day.”

NOT all are intended to understand the Garden Party ... It is for their own protection... Just try and tell them the action took place in a fig grove not an apple orchard ...

And the man Adam told the Creator, that woman you gave me made me do it ...

The phrase “Preaching to the Choir” leaps to mind

During the early states of Christianity theologians use to have ferocious debates about such absurdities as the nature of God. People were killed in riots over such minutia

Conservative Inc is the prime example of that mindset in the modern world. Rather then do anything to achieve progress towards their political goals on anything, they immediately want to impose their emotion based opinions about politics on everyone. As soon as anyone questions a single article of that dogma, they go into they same sort of emotion based bombastic ranting mode pouncing anathema on anyone that does not conform to their options.

They cannot win an election on those dogmas but they immediately demand the leadership chair anytime someone to the right of center wins an election

They have no more relevance to modern US politics then any drunk sitting at a bar whining about the current state of US politics.

Another Zero-Sum “conservative “ heard from.

In politics, there are no absolutes. An in America, a constitional Republic, with a somewhat evenly divided electorate the idea that you are going to hold on to your principals no matter what instead of try to get as much as you can is political suicide.

The zro-sum “conservatives” are usually blow-hard cheat beaters that really only care about themselves and how they look.

Another Zero-Sum “conservative “ heard from.

In politics, there are no absolutes. And in America, a constitional Republic, with a somewhat evenly divided electorate the idea that you are going to hold on to your principals no matter what instead of try to get as much as you can is political suicide.

The zero-sum “conservatives” are usually blow-hard chest beaters that really only care about themselves and how they look.

aren’t driven by ideas but by the desperate need to belong—a phenomenon exemplified in today’s populist grift

Well, P finally see where this clown is coming from, the elastic conservative are what we refer to as RINOs, and we have seen that their ideas are devoid of conservatism, but are based solely upon what propels them to riches, while the American citizens are left to scramble to survive.

If this clown is someone you support, it makes it clear that you are part of the problem that this nation faces, not a solution.

American First - Americans First.
If we need TOP tech workers from foreign countries - fine. TOP - the AI folks we can't produce here.

But it this is more crap with 'migrants' being used to cut wages and keep Americans out of jobs then the program has to end or be adjusted. Employers can prove the neccessity by paying a tax on H1-B employees equal to the pay difference between an American and a foreigner.

. Could be a great way to add money to lower the national debt. AND Bill Gates can stop whining about how people should pay more in taxes. BIG>If companies pay $20,000 to $100,000 a year extra in taxes for EACH H1-B employee it'll prove they're necessary and not just 'cheap labor'...

I long ago concluded that liberals were consistent on one thing only: “We are right and you guys are either stupid or Nazis.”

I agree with conservative principles. Practice in the real world may be more difficult.

Here are some essentials. Trump’s patriotism is always evident. Since Obama at least, Democrats have not favored Americans over other nationalities.

We have had a one-party press for decades. The press and other Democrats are control freaks who sweep individual and business freedom aside on the flimsiest of excuses.

Democrats make up their own reality and insist that everyone believe it: extremely cold weather proves global warming, boys can become girls and vice versa, the sins of the Democrats are the sins of America, the German National Socialist Party under Hitler was “right-wing,” and so on.

The left lies to us and to themselves. I think neo-Malthusianism is one such falsehood. I think there is an underlying fear of over-population and starvation. This helps to explain LBGTQ+. Each discourages procreation. Add to that abortion and perhaps wars and pandemics.

What does history show us? From century to century, millennia to millennia, as population grows so does the per capital standard of living. Every child born has a stomach that must be fed and a brain that can solve problems. Solutions often travel around the globe benefitting everyone.

In a debate, principles matter. In a war, victory matters.

The left has declared a war upon America. The only way America survives is if they lose, by as ethical a means as possible, but in any case by whatever means is necessary. We are winning as of this moment, but there is no substitute for total and complete victory, and the unconditional surrender of the enemy.

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