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For left-wing purists, moderates — not conservatives — are the true enemy
New York Post ^ | July 18, 2020 | Kevin D. Williamson

Posted on 01/05/2021 11:44:38 AM PST by nickcarraway

Opinion writer Bari Weiss got chased out of The New York Times for her political views — not because she’s an uncompromising conservative, but because she is a moderate.

In our team-sports era of politics as tribal warfare, we’re expected to be all-in for one side or the other. Figures such as Weiss or slightly nonconforming public figures such as author J. K. Rowling (a liberal feminist who expresses some reservations about transgender orthodoxy) or Goya CEO Robert Unanue (whose firm is being boycotted because he said something nice about Donald Trump) are a problem for the cheap moralists and fanatics because they complicate the narrative, forcing partisans to face up to the fact that not every critic of transgender ideology is a right-wing evangelical bigot from Oklahoma and that some Trump supporters are Spanish-American businessmen with deep ties to the Latino community.

We say that we cherish moderates and independents and prefer them to mindless partisans, but, in reality, we punish them. Why? When it comes to our own preferences, we prefer vehemence to moderation and loyalty to independence. We are all Barry Goldwater now, insisting that moderation in pursuit of justice is no virtue.

(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...


TOPICS: Editorial; Extended News; News/Current Events; Politics/Elections; US: New York
KEYWORDS: cancelculture; kevindwilliamson; leftwingmoderates; leftwong; moderates; nevertrumpernypost; nevertrumpers; notnews; socalledmoderates; tds; zot
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To: nickcarraway

They are afraid of Trump-supporting moderates, because some moderate Leftists might actually listen to them.


21 posted on 01/05/2021 12:18:45 PM PST by PapaBear3625 ("Those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities." -- Voltaire)
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To: nickcarraway

Keep in mind that as nothing remains of the old Extreme Left that is extreme to the Left anymore so that these people may think George McGovern, LBJ and FDR are right of center.

Right, Center and Left have no meaning when they are discussed apart from any sense of history.

And, as the Woke may attest, history is one of many things that represents White Supremacy ... so it is being erased.


22 posted on 01/05/2021 12:24:29 PM PST by Rurudyne (Standup Philosopher)
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To: Spirochete

Yep. Commies and Socialists who feel the need to hide it. The Bormann of the world.


23 posted on 01/05/2021 12:25:58 PM PST by Rurudyne (Standup Philosopher)
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To: no-to-illegals

As with a talking head shows, a balanced panel is two or three Leftist, a Leftist claiming to be a moderate and a moderate claiming to be conservative.


24 posted on 01/05/2021 12:27:34 PM PST by Rurudyne (Standup Philosopher)
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To: discostu

That might be true if what we call moderates today were anything but yesterday’s progressives who didn’t move farther Left with the rest.


25 posted on 01/05/2021 12:29:58 PM PST by Rurudyne (Standup Philosopher)
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To: srmanuel

Republicans in Congress: people who think compromising and getting along with evil somehow isn’t evil still.


26 posted on 01/05/2021 12:31:09 PM PST by Rurudyne (Standup Philosopher)
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To: nickcarraway

Conservatives have already been marginalized.
Moderates are the next to go.


27 posted on 01/05/2021 12:36:36 PM PST by Little Ray (The Left and Right no longer have anything in common. A House divided against itself cannot stand.)
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To: nickcarraway

The first group the Russian Bolsheviks purged (in this case, killed), were their fellow Bolsheviks. Then they went whole hog against the Mensheviks, the more moderate communists.

After them were what could now be called the Liberal Democrats, or squishy liberals, who had made a hash of the first, democratic Russian government. In their time they had advanced some of the most idealistic, utterly pie-in-the-sky laws, that they were a laughingstock. Stuff that only the current government in California might consider. Like abolishing the rank structure in the military, in the middle of World War I.

If the Bolsheviks had just stopped at that, Russia would have benefited from the extermination of much of the left.


28 posted on 01/05/2021 12:41:28 PM PST by yefragetuwrabrumuy ("All men and women were created by the, you know, you know, the thing." -- Joe Biden 3/3/20)
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To: LateBoomer

Which is why they will hopefully splinter the Left into shards.


29 posted on 01/05/2021 1:00:00 PM PST by Borges
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To: nickcarraway

RINO Republicanism is the frequent enemy of Conservative Republicanism.


30 posted on 01/05/2021 1:03:30 PM PST by johnthebaptistmoore (The world continues to be stuck in a "all leftist, all of the time" funk. BUNK THE FUNK!)
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To: nickcarraway

I don’t even think Free Republic is filled with pure Conservatives. I doubt many can define it. I personally don’t come with a label other than American. I am actually sick of a-hole opinions from all sides. It’s exhausting as the last air comes out of the lungs of America.


31 posted on 01/05/2021 1:53:09 PM PST by shanover (...To disarm the people is the best and most effectual way to enslave them.-S.Adams)
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To: ClearCase_guy

“The proper model was first rolled out in the French Revolution and then perfected by Stalin ...”

And how did that work out for them?


32 posted on 01/05/2021 1:58:29 PM PST by riverdawg (Wells Fargo is my bank and I have no complaints.)
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To: nickcarraway

https://freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/3920426/posts


33 posted on 01/05/2021 2:31:58 PM PST by dsc (Do not pray for easy lives; pray to be stronger men.)
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To: nickcarraway; no-to-illegals; Olog-hai

Kevin Williamson is an odd choice to post at FR. He is one of the Trump haters from the Jonah Goldberg era National Review.

And the scumbag hates Trump even more now, as this piece from last October’s NR illustrates:

https://www.nationalreview.com/the-tuesday/hell-no/


34 posted on 01/05/2021 4:58:21 PM PST by Pelham (Liberate the Democrats from their Communist occupation)
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To: Pelham

IOW, it’s a troll post.


35 posted on 01/05/2021 5:00:24 PM PST by Olog-hai ("No Republican, no matter how liberal, is going to woo a Democratic vote." -- Ronald Reagan, 1960)
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To: Pelham
I wonder if Williamson was part of the merry band posting this steaming pile under the “Post Editorial Board” moniker? The Post has been never-Trump for a number of years as it is.
36 posted on 01/05/2021 5:05:38 PM PST by Olog-hai ("No Republican, no matter how liberal, is going to woo a Democratic vote." -- Ronald Reagan, 1960)
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To: Olog-hai

You might also remember Williamson for his utter contempt for the unemployed blue collars of the Rust Belt.

His NR piece about them was a recommendation that they just go die because they are unworthy losers. Compare that with Trump working to bring manufacturing jobs back so that the people of the Rust Belt have purpose and dignity again.

The old Catholic haunted NR which published the economist Wilhelm Roepke would have had nothing to do with a crass fool like Williamson.


37 posted on 01/05/2021 5:59:44 PM PST by Pelham (Liberate the Democrats from their Communist occupation)
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To: Pelham
The title is Big White Ghetto: Dead Broke, Stone-Cold Stupid, and High on Rage in the Dank Woolly Wilds of the “Real America”, I presume? He had to racialize it too, I see. The excerpt on NR is full of left-wing buzzwords and stereotypes.
38 posted on 01/05/2021 6:07:02 PM PST by Olog-hai ("No Republican, no matter how liberal, is going to woo a Democratic vote." -- Ronald Reagan, 1960)
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To: Olog-hai

I’m not sure, I looked for it but found several pieces by Williamson that could have been the article but I didn’t see a title that I remembered.

It may be a theme he’s used multiple times. So cool and woke to treat rural blue collar whites as expendable, you know. NR is such a pile of excrement now it’s hard to remember how great it once was.


39 posted on 01/05/2021 6:58:26 PM PST by Pelham (Liberate the Democrats from their Communist occupation)
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To: nickcarraway

And yet this Bari Weiss and the lunatics who fired her all voted for Biden.

Rowlings and the tranny lovers who cancelled her all voted for Corybn.


40 posted on 01/05/2021 9:18:52 PM PST by Impy (George Washington did not concede to King George.)
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