A Call to Glory
A Call to Glory
The question of the hour is “what is to be done?”
Most conservatives, or “the base”, are now far ahead of their clueless leaders. They already know what is at stake, and they are exhausted by “crisis talk.” They are checking out of national politics and are more interested in the realm of the possible: state and local politics, how to build alternative or parallel institutions and communities, and how to navigate their lives. Likewise, elites who dissent from the system are looking internationally or at how to break out of blue cities and join businesses and organizations in red states that are not part of the woke cultural revolution.
Answering “what is to be done” is much harder than determining and revealing what is happening, and to a great extent it also depends on circumstances—one can try to dictate what rallying cries for specific action will “take” with the base or aligned elites, but no one entity or person can determine them, exactly.
What is key now is pushing various proposals that are the kind of thing that should and could take. We all ought to do this to some extent like lawyers do: our overarching themes should be coherent, but there is plenty of room now to push for specific solutions in tension or even outright contradiction with each other.
If one truly understands the circumstances, much more bold and upstream solutions are needed than what is currently on offer. Most importantly, those who can must now point people towards how to reclaim agency and “build their own regime” in an American context, using what resources both intellectually and practically that America yet possesses, and pointing them towards all manner of new movements attempting to build anew.
Any real talk about what is to be done will entail selecting (and deselecting) the right Right-leaning leaders and what conservatives in the halls of power specifically fight for (policy) and protest. Also, half the country needs to begin acing as a market and should be encouraged to move to red counties in blue states and red states themselves while throwing major wrenches in blue state machines.
The upshot is that we need a stream of memos pushing specific potential new responses to varied problems, from how to keep red states red to what really needs to be done to have a prayer of solving the corruption of our educational institutions. From specific ideas for mass protest and boycott to what new organizations need to be created. And we need to keep a running list we can match authors to for this purpose. Let the forward looking debates runneth over.
We also need to experiment with new language that points to new and more practical solutions. We need a movement that rejects apolitical fantasies while pointing towards promising, non-dystopian futures that do yet exist. We need a rhetoric that is pro-tech while being pro-people and pro-civilization. Etc., etc. Words need to match reality again, and we need to work hard to make them do so. But we also need words that open up new possibilities for a better way of life rather than triggering the same old doomer cascade of irony and bitterness again and again. We must call people to heroism and glory as well as concrete small actions and habits instead.
This is the direction in which The American Mind—and we hope many others—is now headed. We welcome your thoughts as we lead forward.
“The Rally Cry of Freedom”
Red states/legislatures should immediately secure the voting vulnerabilities to protect citizen votes. In person, ID, no connection to internet, no absentee unless military, no same day registration, no harvesting, no counting for days and days, etc...Any dissenters should be persuaded and any in sheep’s clothing need to be run out. This should be like today...all of them at once.
Red states should start ignoring certain dictates or making counter policies. The sociopath fascists showed how it works with so called “Sanctuary Cities”.
Everyone is kind of pro-tech...The privacy/invasiveness issues and the people who run the big ones are what they don’t like.
This is for all Americans including normal Dems that might not understand their freedom is also at stake.
A system/mechanism to protect ideas should be put in place...
VoD
Maybe we should start by letting go of the word "conservative". Let's unite behind the word Republican again. It's a good word. Decades ago I went to school with one of Kirk's daughters, met her Dad, read all those Movement books. I ate it up and enjoyed it. But did it correspond to reality in America? Or was it one more romantic ideology? European no less. James Buchanan said we need unromantic economics. I propose unromantic politics, to deal with practical problems rather than set impossible goals. The Movement created by Kirk and Buckley existed as a development separate from daily politics. One consequence may have been the creation of intellectuals separate from daily life—like politicians. That's great if you are simultaneously looking for work and a clever way to stay of the rat race. But that means, like politicians, you are distant from how most people experience life: getting up early to do a job you dislike, immobilized in traffic, sitting all day in a cubicle among people you dislike or don't know or both but who you are expected to treat cordially and even give gifts to every Christmas. Every day you are supposed to put in long, tedious hours, show up well dressed, well groomed, and conceal your thoughts and feelings, no matter what is said or done to you, all while realizing you could be let go at any time for any reason by bosses who aren't all that bright or humane. And if you are a man, you are not allowed to complain about any of this. Remember that song "Common People"? "Are you sure you want to be one of the common people?"