Can the Conservative Movement Be Saved?

[00:00:00] Satural and political losses. What is the point of the modern conservative movement? Should Catholics embrace this failed movement? That's what we're going to talk about today on Cris Point. Hello, I'm Eric Sam is your host and in chief of Crisis magazine. Before we get started, I want to encourage you to smash that like button and to subscribe to our channel. Also, you can follow us on social media at crisis. Mag. Go to our website, Crisismagazine.com, where you can subscribe to our email newsletter. Now, here's something I really want to mention, is we're doing one of our twice a year fundraising campaigns. Every bit of content that Crisis releases is free. All the content is free. However, it's not free to produce. Obviously, it costs money. [00:01:00] So we ask for your donations to support us. Now, we only do this twice a year. I do not like asking for donations. We don't hit you up for it all the time on the website. We do it twice a year. This is one of those two times. So if you could please donate. I have an editor's desk today on Crisismagazine.com. Just go to where it says urgent note, I think it is, and just go, and I'll give you links to where you can donate. Okay? So let's get started here. I'm going to talk about the conservative movement. Now, before I do, I want to make something very clear, and that is liberalism is evil. Modern liberalism. I don't even want to say it. My mouth doesn't want to say it. Is evil. It is the cause of great suffering in our world and our culture. It has led to so many destroyed lives, deaths. I mean, it's terrible. So everything I say in this podcast as critiques of the conservative movement is not done from a liberal vantage point. I'm not a liberal. I never will be a liberal because I have a brain. And so therefore, we have to I just want to be clear about that. That being said, so I want to get that out of the way. [00:02:18] I am not a fan of the conservative movement. I'm talking in America here. I don't know much about it in Europe or even in Canada or somewhere like that, but here in America, the conservative movement, I have not been a fan of in years. It's been a while, probably a decade, and there's a lot of reasons for that. The most recent thing that came up is a conservative commentary. I will admit I did not know who this was because I don't really follow that too much. His name is Guy Benson. I believe he's on Fox News. He posted a picture of his baby that I guess People magazine or something had declared was a cute baby or something like that. And I was like, oh, that's Benson, you know, proud of his baby. That's great. But then all of a sudden, I started seeing some comments about it like, Wait, what? So Guy Benson, I guess, is married to a man. So he's a gay man married to a man, and this baby was brought about by surrogacy. And this reminded me of a year ago, about a year ago, when David Rubin, also conservative commentator, also I think he got twins babies through surrogacy, which is really child trafficking, which is really buying babies along with his partner, married whatever Guy, the man he was quote unquote, married to. And so that's bad enough that these are significant. I found out significant. I had heard of David Rubin, I had not heard of Guy Benson, but I guess he's somewhat significant, too. These are significant conservative commentators with a following among conservatives, and they're both gay married men who basically purchased babies through surrogacy. [00:04:04] And another thing that was crazy is a lot of other conservative commentators, like Jonah Goldberg, were congratulating him, Guy Benson in this case, for having a baby. So they were congratulating him for buying a baby from a woman. [00:04:22] Now, this podcast is not about the evils of surrogacy because honestly, it just seems so obvious that it's evil that I don't think anybody in my audience at least would dispute that. I mean, obviously, two men should not be buying a baby from a woman. [00:04:43] Every child deserves a mother and a father. And by mother and father, I mean a woman and a man who are their parents, they all deserve that. They don't deserve to be bought and sold on the market, and they don't deserve to have to be in a family with two dads or two moms or something like that. [00:05:05] That's not how it's intended. And so, like I said, I'm not going to talk about surrogacy because I think it's so obvious, it's bad. So what I really want to talk about, though, is how the conservative movement has failed miserably. And these are just a couple of examples. If you think about it, over the past 50 years, conservatism has lost on every major societal issue in America, every single one. Conservatives have lost contraception. I mean, the funny thing bringing up contraception is almost no conservative would even think that's one of their issues, that's something crazy. Contraception is widely accepted and practiced in our country today. Abortion is widely accepted. As much as a lot of pro life leaders don't want to believe that it's at least accepted, I would argue that I would bet 70% to 80% of Americans, if not more, believe abortion is okay up to maybe twelve weeks, maybe ten weeks, something like that. That means we've lost. Now, we did have a one victory in the past 50 plus years, and that's when Roe v. Wade was overturned. But that's turned into a defeat in many ways, because here in Ohio, for example, we're actually worse off than we were under Roe v. Wade because now it's in our constitutional amendment for abortion on demand. All nine months, no parental consent or anything like that. [00:06:37] And so there's another loss. So on that, we've lost on the homosexual issue, we've lost in spades. I mean, it's not even a close battle. We've lost. So we, meaning conservative, have lost completely transgenderism. We're going to think I'm not trying to be Debbie Downer here, but let's be honest, we're going to lose in the sense that it's just the same thing that went on with homosexuality in 2030. The conservative candidate will probably be pro, transsexual, whatever. [00:07:13] But we've also lost beyond just these cultural issues, I think we've lost completely on foreign policy. [00:07:22] And what I mean by that is that conservatives have embraced the big government, which is liberal, the big government idea of a robust foreign policy that basically builds the empire, builds the American empire. We go into all these other countries and we try to fiddle with them, fix them with our military might. [00:07:46] And conservatives have allowed that. Now, there was a moment about two months ago where it looked like conservatives, conservative inc was actually getting good on foreign policy. I e. The Ukrainian Russian war that they realized, okay, pumping millions, billions of dollars we don't have to a conflict on the other side of the world that does not impact us is ridiculous. [00:08:20] And so conservatives are kind of like, okay, we should not support that. A lot of conservative inc now, not all of like Mitch McConnell was getting up there saying that it was the most important issue in the world is that we send more billions of dollars in equipment over to Ukraine. [00:08:35] But just when I was starting to feel like, hey, maybe conservative inc, the conservative movement is starting to get a clue when it comes to foreign policy. Then comes October 7, the horrific attack of Hamas on Israel. But of course, now the idea that we shouldn't be sending billions of dollars to a conflict on the other side of the world that doesn't really impact us went out the window for conservatives. And nobody exemplifies this more than Ben Shapiro. Now, I realize Ben Shapiro, being a practicing Jew, has a connection to Israel that's deeper than I would or most people would. Just like, I would have a connection if the Vatican City state were attacked, I would have a personal connection to that. I get that. I respect that. At the same time, though, Ben Shapiro has gone off the deep end, and he's called anybody who questions support for Israel as an anti Semite. He sounds just like the left. And you see this with conservative people using left wing tactics. Nikki Haley is a perfect example. I mean, when she announced her presidential candidacy, she did Identity Politics 101. I mean, she talked about being an Indian American, a woman. And she does that. She has these little phrases where she talk, like at one of the debates, she talked about, like, you need a woman to do the right to do the work or something like that. It's just identity politics. It's leftist talk. [00:10:08] Nikki Haley, remember, is according to some polls, basically in second place in the Republican primary. I mean, way behind Donald Trump, but still she's leading all the rest of them, all the rest of the second place people behind Trump. [00:10:22] So she's not just some obscure person. Same with Ben Shapiro. He's a leader in the conservative movement, yet he's completely unhinged on support for Israel, treating it like it's a 51st state of America, just like Nikki Haley does. [00:10:38] And so there's another failure of the conservative movement because conservatism, at least before Bill Buckley kind of took it over in National Review, would have traditionally would be very hesitant to engage in foreign conflicts, to engage in foreign interventionalism where we go over and we involve ourselves in other countries. [00:11:06] That is anti conservatism. But of course it's been accepted. I'd also argue that conservatism, the conservative movement has long been bought out by big business. [00:11:18] What do I mean by that? What I mean by that is there is an unholy alliance between big business and big government that exists today in which basically the desires of big government happen through big business. Facebook, Google, things like that, PNG, whatever. And in return, big business gets all the benefits of big government to the detriment of small businesses. I mean, just look at COVID. COVID was one of the best things that ever happened to big business because basically all the rules and regulations shut down mom and pop stores and they kept the Walmarts, the Home Depots, even the McDonald's open while shutting down so many small businesses. [00:12:07] And that's another example of big business and big government together. And this is something conservative movement has never spoken out against, never spoken up for. But really, and we'll get to this in a minute, true conservatism is very much pro localism, pro small business and anti big government and big business. [00:12:33] And so I really feel like on everything, the conservative movement has basically been wrong. And the argument always is, well, the liberals are so much worse. Okay, yes, they are worse, but to me it's like the liberals, the progressives, they are always pushing for a new way to destroy our country, more immorality, things like that. And all the conservatives doing say no, let's keep it like it was a few years ago. I made a joke on Twitter that the conservative movement is doing a great job of maintaining 2015 American culture. And I picked 2015 on purpose because that's the year same sex marriage was legalized. And how many conservative candidate politicians, conservative commenteers are really pushing against gay marriage anymore? I mean, not a one really. I mean, I know there might be a couple, but very few are. [00:13:31] And so really the conservative movement is just dead. It's dead because it's not doing anything it was intended to do. [00:13:41] And so I would argue that the conservative movement exists to basically just to stay in power, just to win. It's not to conserve anything, it's just to win. The whole purpose of the conservative movement is just, okay, let's get our politicians with the R after their name or whatever elected, but we're not actually going to do anything to really make a change. I mean, look at all the Republicans who do nothing to try to reduce the deficit, reduce the debt, to balance the budget, all these things that are basic conservative values principles. There's no desire to do that at all. You don't have any Republicans essentially, and people in the conservative movement really pushing for anymore. We're in so much debt, we're printing money like crazy and conservatives aren't doing anything about it. [00:14:43] So where is this traced back to? I would argue that conservative movement was wounded a long time ago. I mentioned Bill Buckley in like National Review. I think when that group took over, I think it was in the 60s or seventy s, I don't remember the exact I wasn't alive that whole time, believe it or not. And so I would say that when it really got to the robust foreign policy, what I mean by that is very much extending the authority and the reach of America beyond our borders. [00:15:18] It made a deal with the devil. I mean, I think there's a quote from Bill Buckley that actually says something to the effect of we have to have big government if we're going to have this foreign policy. And since we need this foreign policy, we have to have big government. [00:15:31] I would say that's a big part of it. If we had just stayed to ourselves more, not saying completely, but more than we have, much more than we have the need to grow the government, the military industrial complex and more would not have existed. Because when you grow the government in one area, it automatically grows in all areas. There's a reason why the richest counties in this country surround Washington DC. I think one or two are also up in New York. But that's also part of big government because that's big business that's embed with big government basically it enriches everybody. And so once it starts enriching people in one area of government, it's going to start enriching people and growing in other areas. So I would say that was kind of the fatal flaw from the beginning, from a long time ago, but I would say it really accelerated this century and really under George W. Bush because remember, George W. Bush ran under a compassionate conservative. You probably don't remember because most of you people aren't old enough, but I'm old enough to remember a compassionate conservative. That's what he ran under in 2000. And that was code language for I'm going to be conservative, I'm still going to spend government money to help people because that's compassionate. It was basically undercutting the idea that, oh, conservatives are mean because they don't want to spend government funds on things. He was saying, I'm a compassionate conservative, so I'm going to be more likely, I mean, say the second part, I'm going to be more likely to spend government funds to help the poor, things like that, which of course, as we know, doesn't actually help the poor. [00:17:05] And then of course, after 911 with the response that to patriarch I've talked about that before, very anti conservative, but the whole conservative movement was behind it. And then the Iraqi war, I think Iraqi war was the final nail in the coffin for the conservative movement because essentially what happened was the Bush administration, all the conservatives, they lied to get into war with Iraq and all the evangelical Christians backed it. And I have to say this because it's just something I have to admit crisis Magazine was one of the biggest backers in the Catholic world. There was probably no bigger backer of the Bush administration and therefore the Iraq War than Crisis Magazine. Now of course I wasn't involved with Cris magazine at the time, but at the same time I have to be honest about that. And the fact is that I believe that because of the evangelical Christians who are our allies in a lot of ways and conservative Catholics at that time backing this horrendous situation of lying to get into the Iraq war, I think it completely destroyed our credibility with the country, with people like, why should I listen to you people? You lied us into this disastrous war. And then also we did nothing leading up to the 2008 recession. Conservatives were just as guilty as liberals. People want to blame it on like conservatives want to blame on liberals. No, we were behind Alan Greenspan and the raising of I'm sorry, the lowering of the interest rates, the housing bubble and all that stuff. Conservatives were dancing to the party just as much as liberals were. [00:18:47] And that led to the Great Recession which destroyed so many people's lives and harmed so many people. [00:18:55] And the conservatives had no answer because we had been part of the game that led to what happened. [00:19:03] And so essentially we had this situation where the conservative movement at that point, by 2008, 2010 or so, it just really had lost any credibility. Now that brings me to something, a common thing I hear from conservatives about these arguments. Like, well, it's the libertarians fault. [00:19:25] Libertarians are the perfect scapegoat because since they don't actually have any power, they can't actually do anything. You can just blame them for everything. [00:19:33] And so the argument is, well, the libertarians are the ones who would be for gay marriage and things like that. And it's the conservative movements embrace the libertarianism that's led to these problems. But I think that's completely backwards. I mean, look at Ron Paul in 2008. Here is a true libertarian who is running for president on the Republican ticket. He has a groundswell of support. He challenges the conservative movement directly on the Iraq war, the response to 911 in the infamous exchange he has with Giuliani, the bozo that Rudy Giuliani is when they run for President 2008, where he just eviscerates Giuliani in front of the Republican base and the Republican base. Cheers for Giuliani. But ultimately Ron Paul is vindicated. If the conservative gone behind Ron Paul, then do you really think it'd be in such bad shape now? Because obviously he would have understood the economy, he would understood the disastrous foreign policy and things like that. But you can't blame the libertarians because here's the way it works. [00:20:44] The conservative movement grew the federal government as much as the liberals did, and they grew the federal government in the military, in its involvement in the economy and all these things, and did nothing to stop its growth in so many ways. [00:21:02] And it's the federal government that really has pushed in a lot of ways, a lot of the issues we have today, the cultural issues that are destroying us, because I think it was a distraction, I think, after Iraqi war, but then, especially after the recession, when all of a sudden you had the Tea Party and Operation Wall Street. What was it? Operation Wall Street. Oh, what's the name of the is that what it was called? Whatever the group is that did the I think it was Operation Wall Street, the one that was on the liberal side that was arguing during the recession against Wall Street and things like that. They basically agreed on that. The problem is the bailouts of the big Occupy Wall Street. Thank you, Don Dan. Sorry in the comments, I knew it wasn't Operation Occupy Wall Street. Thank you. But all of a sudden we start seeing two major movements on the left and on the right recognizing, oh, wait a second, I think our enemy isn't each other. Our enemy are the elites. The elites are what led to the 2008 recession. Conservatives as much as liberals. The elites are really the problem here. And notice right after that they grew in 2010 and eleven, that time frame. All of a sudden, soon after that, that's when the woke movement hit. That's when all of a sudden you couldn't say homosexual marriage was evil without being called a bigot. I mean, you call bigot somewhat, but not by the highest levels because Obama was still for it and stuff like that. [00:22:36] All the woke stuff really kicked in gear because I remember being called political correctness when I was in college in the it was a small movement, it did not have any power. All of a sudden in the early 2010s, it gets this great power that it's now all that the media is talking about all the time. And I'm convinced that maybe it isn't a planned conspiracy, but ultimately it worked to the benefit of the elites because now all of a sudden we're back to fighting each other. Occupy Wall Street and the Tea Party could have eventually worked together to go against the elites, but then all of a sudden they were put against each other because now we started pushing gay marriage, pushing transgenderism, pushing this insane stuff that just came out of nowhere in one sense. [00:23:25] And the conservative movement had nothing in response because it was embedded with big government, big business as much as anybody. Because remember, this is also when big business, because they realized Occupy Wall Street NFT Party were bad news for Wall Street, for big business. [00:23:41] And they realized that, and when all of a sudden they had an out where they could say, hey, I'm going to just go start doing the woke stuff, then I'm free and clear. [00:23:51] I don't have to worry about the fact that I've screwed millions of Americans for the past decade. [00:24:00] I really think that this is something that conservatives miss completely. But libertarians didn't. [00:24:07] Everybody who watches this regularly knows I'm essentially libertarian myself. I have some criticisms of it, but in this case, it's not the libertarians fault that the conservative movement died. [00:24:20] Libertarians had nothing to do with it. [00:24:22] It was really conservatives rejecting conservative values. And by conservative values, I mean like subsidiarity localism. The idea that we should be more focused on our communities than we are on this leviathan state that threatens to crush everything that we believe and hold dear. [00:24:46] I mean, I remember when I brought up, back in 2015, I think it was, I brought up on my blog the idea of secession, that maybe it's time that we consider secession. The conservatives, all my conservative friends thought I was crazy, thought I was unpatriotic, thought I was just insane because they believed that America is the nation from God and it can't be touched the way it is, and that therefore we have a right to go all over the world and expand our empire. [00:25:20] We're this huge state that must be supported. [00:25:25] And so that in and of itself then supports all aspects of the state. If you want to say I support all the stuff the military does, the huge military and all it does, you have to then support everything else, basically, because it's all part of the same state. [00:25:41] I also think another place that the Concern movement failed, and I will be getting here in a moment of what I think we should do going forward. This is the one. I know at least half the people listening to this are probably going to get ticked off. [00:25:53] And that's Donald Trump in 2016 when he ran, it is clear. I mean, his lifestyle, I think everybody knows, is a terrible lifestyle. [00:26:06] He was a limousine liberal and all of a sudden he's running for the Republican Party. He backs gay rights, he backs trans rights. Back then, he didn't talk about it then. Because it wasn't a big deal. But now he does. [00:26:18] And yes, I am the first to admit and I've admitted many times he is the person most directly responsible for Roe v. Wade being overturned. I thank him for that. But ultimately, the conservative movement got in bed with the gay rights movement and a lot of social liberalism when they backed Trump, and that's just the reality. Because of Trump's lifestyle, being married and divorced multiple times, having obviously having affairs, supporting the gay rights movement, things like that, all those things, they have an impact. [00:26:54] And remember, the argument was always, he can beat Hillary, he can beat Hillary. That's what I'm saying. Is the conservative movement, all it cares about, the only thing it wants to conserve is itself. It wants to conserve the conservative movement. It just wants to win. It's not actually about conserving any values, any virtues, anything like that, any cultural beliefs. It's just about we want to be in power and not them. Now, some of that is good intention in the sense that we know if they're in power, they'll be much worse and we don't want that. I get that. I get that argument. But at the same time, basically, what is the point of conservatism if all we're doing is conserving five years before the liberals? [00:27:39] Is that really something we want to hand on to our children? [00:27:41] So in 30 years, if conservatives are in control, it would only be like if 25 years as bad as if liberals were in control because that's essentially what it is. If you put conservatives in control for the next 30 years, it would be like if liberals were in control for 25 instead because that's essentially what is going on. [00:28:05] And so I really think that the idea that conservatives, they need to understand what it is they're conserving. And so this is what I want to bring up is, okay, so what is it? This is for Catholics and any good willed, intentioned people as well. What is it we're actually conserving? What's the point of conservatism? [00:28:33] Because if you live like, for example, if you live in Communist Soviet Union and you're a conservative, you're on the bad side because you're trying to conserve communism, if all it is. We're just trying to conserve what we've had recently. So if it's 1980 and you're living a Soviet Union and you're a conservative, you're on the wrong side. [00:28:58] So when we say conservative, what do we mean? What we should mean is we conserve the true, the beautiful, and the good. We conserve the things that make us truly live out our lives as children of God that truly engage us and make us who we are supposed to be, who we are made to be. That's what we do. We conserve that first in the church and then we conserve it in culture in general. Politics is a side part of culture. There's a whole debate on politics downstream from culture. Culture downstream from politics. I think they're interrelated. Like I was talking about before, big government did impact the culture greatly in the believe. But I also think the culture impacts government. It makes government bigger, can make it bigger. And so in the church, we've talked about a lot. I mean, the reason I consider myself a traditional catholic is simply because I want to conserve the beauty, the goodness, and the truth of catholicism. I don't think it needs to be updated. I don't think it needs to be changed like progressive Catholics do. [00:30:05] And so I really believe that's our first priority. But then in the culture, we're preserving things like we're conserving things like marriage between a man and a woman, the importance of the family. That's probably the most important cultural thing catholics should conserve, is the importance of the family. And by family, we only mean a husband and a wife and their children. I mean, I'm not saying extended family. What I'm talking about, though, is, like, I've seen this on television shows forever, like, well, a group of friends. We're really family. No, you're not. You're a group of friends. It might be a very good relationship you have with your friends. It might be something that very helps you out in life. I'm not claiming it's not. I think it's important to have friends, but that's not the same as a family. A family is a unit of mother, father, children, aunts, uncles, grandparents, things like that, and preserving that is very important. [00:31:04] And so that is the number one thing we have to do. And so I believe that is done through, I think through the local community more than anything, that that is why conservatives have to really embrace subsidiarity. There is no way on earth there is no way on earth that the United States federal government in Washington, DC. [00:31:34] Can work to help your family, to make your family better. It just is not possible. They are diametrically at ODS with each other. The purpose of the federal government is to maintain power and extend power. It is not to support your family. Now, it is possible that your local government, your town, your village, your city, it can work potentially to help support your family, but not because they answer directly to you much more closely than the federal government. So I really think we have to, as conservatives, we need to push subsidiarity. We need to push localism. We need to push the idea that the way to conserve, to be true conservatives is to conserve what is true, beautiful, and good in your family, in your parish, in your diocese, in your local community. [00:32:30] That's primary thing. Donald Trump, if he wins in 2024, is not going to help you. I'm sorry. It's just true. I'm not saying you shouldn't vote for him. I'm not saying he wouldn't be better than the alternative. I don't know. I don't even know. If he'll be running like actually be on the ballot or not. My point though is that is not what conservatives should be first and foremost looking towards and that's what we spend almost all our energy on. [00:32:55] And so what we need to do is we need to really focus on that. But I also would say I almost think the term conservative shouldn't even be used anymore for people like us. I mean, like me at least, and probably like you. And what I mean by that is because our culture has gone downhill so much over the past few decades, I don't want to conserve anything from the past 50 years. [00:33:24] I want to reject it wholesale and restore what was lost. That's not the same thing as conservatism. I think that's kind of the difference between progressives conservatives and more traditionalist. [00:33:38] The progressives, they want to just keep pushing forward and changing things in this evolution. They think of man towards something better. The conservatives want to conserve kind of the status quo. Well, the status quo, I was going to say something by try to keep this a family podcast. It stinks. We'll say the status quo today stinks. We don't want to conserve it. The traditionalist, he's trying to restore from the tradition and the tradition isn't the last 50 years. The tradition is maybe 100 years ago, 200 years ago, 500 years ago. [00:34:17] I'm not saying we're trying to be exactly like those in the past, but I do think what we need to do is we need to recognize that the conservative movement in America today is a failed project and frankly we should abandon ship and we should create our own movement. Now I identify to use the language of the left here as a libertarian simply because I think it's the most effective thing we can do because big government is the biggest barrier to restoring what is important in life, the true, the beautiful and the good. And so that's why I make common cause with anybody who says I want to really reduce size of government. Now, I don't think conservatives want to do that. And by that I mean like the politicians, the Mitch McConnells, the people like at National Review and places like that. I don't think they want to Fox News, they don't want to reduce the size of government. They just want to argue on these little issues to get ratings and things like that, but actually slashing the government or seceding from the union. They don't want to do that. [00:35:24] And so I would say as Catholics, we should abandon, frankly, the conservative movement. We should make it so that I'm not calling for a new party or anything like that. I'm not somebody to do that. I mean more of a movement of Catholics that say, okay, we're not going to go along with gay marriage. We're not going to go with in vitro fertilization and surrogacy and all this evil to transgenderism. And like, for example, we're not going to go along with abortion ever. [00:35:54] You saw a lot of people in the conservative movement who were upset at us pro lifers this past November because supposedly we're the cause for election losses because we were so adamant about abortion. Well, I'd rather lose defending the unborn than win abandoning them. And likewise for the Family for True Marriage, I'd rather lose defending them than abandon them to win. [00:36:22] And that's what so many conservatives are doing today. They're abandoning the actual values that we're supposed to be defending. [00:36:29] Okay, I think I've made my point here. Obviously, I'm not a fan of the conservative movement. I don't think Catholics should be conservative. Catholics should not be fans of the conservative movement at Conservative Inc. We should really work towards a different way of approaching this. Work more locally, work towards restoring the family, the importance of the family in your community and where you live. And don't get caught up in the lies of the conservative movement that it's okay to be gay and things like that. [00:36:59] Okay, I think I'll stop it there. I appreciate you being here. Until next time, everybody. God love you. It's.