Conservatism Now Means Defeating the Establishment
Article by Kurt Schlichter in Townhall
Conservatism Now Means Defeating the Establishment
Look around you at the smoldering ruins of American society, and it’s clear that you owe our garbage Establishment nothing.
Not loyalty.
Not respect.
Not obedience.
Nothing.
It has failed you. And now it is dead to you.
Tear it all down.
Rip out its rotten foundations.
Burn the poisonous debris.
Rebuild it on a foundation of the Constitution.
There was once a social contract out there that we all thought we all signed on to. You know the outlines of the implicit deal. We agreed to give up certain prerogatives and to provide prestige and prosperity to those people – who became the Establishment – who would run our institutions for us. For example, we outsourced our right to avenge ourselves to the justice system and (except for immediate self-defense) to keep order to the police. We would respect and trust the objective, neutral truthtellers, called “journalists,” who would gather and disseminate the news and information we needed to be active citizens. And, in a formal way under our Constitution, we agreed to give government officials enumerated powers and to be bound by the rules implemented via due process and limited by the Bill of Rights.
It was imperfect, as all human endeavors are, but on the whole it worked.
Until now.
Our institutions are old. Most date from just after World War II, or even further back. How about the example of academia? For the most part, in terms of practice, the only major difference between the typical college class today and one a century ago is that the person lecturing the hungover sophomores knows which bathroom to use. What is different is that it doesn’t work anymore – those mush-minded teens are not learning the info they need to be citizens, both because what they are being fed is rancid propaganda and because there are no standards anymore. Oh, and it costs more than the average American makes in a year to get young Kaden or Ashleigh that Collectivist Pottery bachelor’s degree.
And because the institutions are old, the geniuses and innovators who founded those institutions are long dead. Our institutions are run by people who didn’t build them. They inherited them, and like the vast majority of heirs, they are screw-ups. Take a look at the Kennedys if you’re unclear on how generations devolve over time. JFK captained PT 109, became president, and scored with Marilyn Monroe. This generation of Kennedys mostly scores dope. As Instapundit Glenn Reynolds says, we have the worst ruling class in American history.
Moreover, technology is disrupting the comfy university scam. I like to take long walks and listen to Audible. I like Roman history – which is super relevant right now and which has very much influenced my upcoming novel in the People's Republic series – and for about $14 I can listen to entire graduate-level courses on the subject by very best professors in the world. Who needs Harvard – except insecure people who can’t not let drop that they went to Harvard within 30 seconds of meeting you?
Other institutions have also been disrupted by technology. Newspapers still call themselves “newspapers,” but technology has eliminated the “papers” part, while their gross political partisanship has eliminated the “news” part. Hollywood used to be modeled on a few thousand big rooms showing moving, talking pictures, but technology has changed that to a few million small rooms showing moving, talking pictures. While the ability to make content has increased exponentially as the price of production has dropped, Hollywood still tries to maintain control by centralizing distribution via Netflix, Hulu and so on. This is true across the spectrum of institutions. They are trying to maintain the status quo despite their institutional obsolescence because the status quo means control. The institutions’ focus is no longer on doing the jobs those institutions were supposed to do. It is on preserving the institutions in their current, corrupt and inept form, and thereby the power of the corrupt, inept elite that runs those institutions.
What’s this mean? It means that we cannot count on the institutions to do their job – that is, to do those things we need them to do – because their real job is now perpetuating their operators’ grift.
Take the FBI, please – take it to wherever J. Edgar Hoover is buried, and even he’d be freaked out and spinning in his grave and getting all tangle in his burial gown. The FBI used to be the the gold standard, the crème de la crème of law enforcement. And, instead of being Efrem Zimbalist, Jr., rounding up mobsters, bank robbers, and commies, it’s a bunch of fugly geeks awkwardly boinking each other when they aren’t trying to frame the president. The FBI got the Hunter Biden computer about a year ago, a computer full of emails about the Democrat nominee’s crack-curious son’s adventures in influence peddling with Ukrainian robber barons and the Chi-Coms, and if some computer repair guy in New Jersey hadn’t thought to keep a copy of the contents the FBI would have deep-sixed the hard drive just like it did Weiner’s laptop in service of their Establishment masters. In fact, leakers are leaking that it’s the RUSSIANS at it again in order to actively and willfully cover up the biggest corruption story in American history. But hey, rest easy knowing the Eff Bee Eye is all over any garage door pull knots that freak out losing race car drivers.
Law enforcement is supposed to protect us by enforcing the law. Now it lets off rioters but will go gangbusters on you should you defend your family from leftist savages. We have seen that there are always cops who will choose their pension over their duty and bust your church or synagogue for illegal praying. The elite needs minions to do its dirty work and shamefully some doughnut-gobblers have proven themselves only too eager to obey. And even if you do manage to demonstrate that your prosecution is so corrupt that even our garbage DOJ wants to dismiss it, an Establishment judge won’t let you and an appeals court won’t make him even though the law says they must.
You cannot avail yourself of the law. The Establishment, which is supposed to uphold it, ignores it when it limits them and abuses it to restrict you. That seems problematic in the long term.
And then there's the media – well, we knew it was trash, but the last week has even boggled the minds of the most cynical critics. A few weeks ago, there was a collective spasm over the “losers and suckers” claims by four anonymous sources that were refuted by 25 on-the-record sources. This week, there was hard evidence of Biden business badness and the mainstream media swung into action to actively deny and excuse the evidence. The biggest corruption story of all time – a vice president running an influence peddling ring for foreigners – and the media’s response is to tell us there’s nothing to see. And then, when the tech fascists decided to suppress the news, the media actively supported this censorship.
The Establishment has failed. It failed to meet its most basic obligations. What’s this mean?
That means you’re free.
You owe it nothing, not respect, deference, or obedience.
So don’t give it any of these.
See, the Establishment succeeds in spite of its manifest incompetence and greed because of inertia. It perpetuates because we go along with it as if everything is normal. It counts on us thinking what we are witnessing are merely the occasional blips and problems inherent in any human endeavor instead of the systemic failure that it demonstrates. This rot is real and dramatic and, untreated, will be fatal to our country. Remember the Romans? You start changing the rules and sooner or later instead of a Republic you have an emperor who marries his horse.
Conservatism is no longer about conserving; it’s about ripping apart the whole corrupt system and overthrowing the garbage Establishment.
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