The problem with Buckley Conservatives

The Buckleyites still run the Reagan Mystery Cult and the adjoining gift shoppe, the latter being the critical piece. Jonah Goldberg lives in a million dollar home in the Washington suburbs. To maintain that lifestyle means keeping the gift shoppe open. Even if he wanted to entertain alternative opinions, he has a mortgage to pay and a college fund to finance. He lacks the talent of a Mark Steyn and the courage of Ann Coulter so he cannot go it alone. He has to remain a clerk in the gift shoppe, writing copy about the wonderfulness of Buckley Conservatism.

The problem for Buckley Conservatives is they have nothing to offer. People see 25 years of failure and naturally begin to look elsewhere for answers. The alt-right has loads of problems and parts of it are a bit like heroin, offering momentary relief at the expense of long term happiness. To the person suffering in the present, however, the momentary high from joining a white identity group, for example, feels like salvation.

The alt-right, in all of its manifestations, is not growing in number and confidence because they made a pact with the devil. There is nothing supernatural at work here. It’s not a coherent intellectual movement, but simply a refuge from the endless assault on ordinary people, who see their traditions, their customs, their ancestors and their progeny being ground up in the meat grinder of technocratic managerialism. The alt-right is not offering anything but shelter from the storm – for now.

Mass movements are always attractive to the disaffected, which is why responsible people must always work to limit the number of disaffected. It’s this failure of Buckley Conservatism, and the failure of the managerial class as a whole, that has grown the number of disaffected. The whole reason to be loyal to the Left or the Right was always patriotic interest. Neither side bothers to make patriotic arguments, thus leaving patriots with nothing.

When people who have been loyal to conservative causes and conservative politicians their whole life find themselves being called racists and bigots by those people they supported, they start to feel like they have been conned. When ruling class organs publicly argue that vast parts of the culture must be destroyed, that traditional America must be wiped out, people hear a declaration of war. The response is not going to be “yes sir, may I have another.” The response, to quote the late Andrew Breitbart, is going to be “Fuck you. War!”