1. One of the problems the right has in nurturing its own radicals and crazies is that it has no where to nurture them safely out of the public eye. On the left, radicals like the one below who wants to kill white people have places to hide. A thread 🧵
2. This is another think piece on why republicans are bad at politics. The Republicans have been very slow (we will have to look into reasons another time) coming to the realization they are in a culture war. Many still do not realize the true nature of the fight.
3. While Republicans were focused on communist Russia, tax cuts, military spending and giving big business a blank cheque to ship American manufacturing overseas, the left was busy building networks of activists and patronage.
4. The left was busy taking over the universities. Eventually those university graduates started filtering into news, media and boardrooms, taking their credentialing and technique oriented mindset with them. They were also bringing with them a progressively left wing politics.
5. This is all well known now at this point. The republicans did not respond. There are a number of reasons for this. A naive view that the other party shared the same cultural goals as they did.
6. There was this sense that even though they differed politically, all of the country’s leaders shared the same formation network, that elite universities belonged to the elite as a whole, not just the left. Until it was too late. They saw bias, sure, but not hostility.
7. So they did not fight for the institutions of higher learning in terms of ideologically compatible professors, administrators and governors. They did not see the universities as the fundamental political battleground.
8. While Republicans were gerrymandering districts to produce safe seats the left was busy building networks for long term success. There were two options, really. One was to attack and wrest control of the universities from the left while there was time…
9. The other would have been to build an alternate network of conservative universities to match the left. A network of places dedicated to learning, but also to a cultural project.
10. There is a group that has traditionally done this: Christians. Conservative, evangelical Christians. I went to one such institution and received an advance degree. In my experience having met people from prestigious universities, the education I received was on par or better
11. By attending this university, I knew that I was preparing for leadership, for the elite among a small tight knit Christian community. We know that our handful of institutions will not rival the Harvard, Yale and Princetons of the world in terms of prestige.
12. But they do give a place where you can learn, teach and do scholarship from a Christian perspective. Why does this matter? The republicans, wanting all the same cultural markers and badges as the left kept chasing the same university degrees as did the left.
13. Instead of fighting for control of these institutions or building a separate set of institutions belonging to their political project, they assumed that all these elite learning institutions belonged to America.
14. Ever since Buckley’s “God and Man at Yale” it has been obvious that something needed to be done about the university situation. With the mass importation of European, especially German, academics during WW2, a shift occurred in the universities.
15. But the republicans did nothing. They kept simping after the same status markers as the left and did not see the need to fight over the universities. They certainly did not need to turn to Christian institutions or risk lower status by trying found their own.
16. The republicans do not want to see themselves as part of a different cultural project than that of the left regime.
This is a long introduction, but necessary, to get to the point. The right does not have a network of universities where they can stash their intellectuals
This is a long introduction, but necessary, to get to the point. The right does not have a network of universities where they can stash their intellectuals
17. The republicans and the right in general did not invest the resources need and the time necessary to build a set of rival institutions to the left. So there is no respectable place where smart crazies can go do research and be dismissed as crazies until it’s too late.
18. That is problem number one. No universities. We have had think tanks, and these have value, but they are not enough.
The republicans need community activist groups. Lots of them. To agitate in communities. To build relationships. Do the hard work.
The republicans need community activist groups. Lots of them. To agitate in communities. To build relationships. Do the hard work.
19. The old canard that the right doesn’t do activism because we have jobs is silly. And it has stunted the movement. While republicans were busy trying to court businesses and build the defense industry, democrats were out building relationships with voters.
20. They were working with people in factories, community interest groups, working to get funds allocated to local projects.
Republicans are all tax cuts, deregulation and we will leave you alone.
“Leave you alone” is an excuse not to do then work.
Republicans are all tax cuts, deregulation and we will leave you alone.
“Leave you alone” is an excuse not to do then work.
21. Republicans have thus biased themselves to ideas guys who will have the magic bullet policy that once written into law will solve all our problems, people will be grateful and they will vote for them.
22. What this leads to is increasingly to “shock jock” conservatives who want to shock you with their ideas but they don’t want to toil away in anonymity on the ground. They want notoriety and to build their brand.
23. Look on the left, you see far more of them emerging from having paid their dues at the local level. Obama is a good example of this. It also gives the left a lot of places to funnel their radicals into on the ground work where they can both “make a difference” and…
24. …it keeps them out of sight. And while the left has way more crazies than the right, most of them are toiling away in universities, doing activist work, working in foundations. Yeah they are protected by the MSM but they also have respectable work to do for the cause.
25. Republicans seem to be either establishment wannabes or shit posters looking for audience with not a whole lot in between. With no place to put our radicals they are trying to constantly get noticed. Hence they are a constant image problem.
26. The good news is that it is never too late to start. The bad news is that we are very much behind in the game. We need people out, working with communities, fighting over schools, getting community centers built, focusing on policing issues.
27. There are a whole suite of issues and causes which make a real difference on the ground for Americans at the state and at the local level. Universities can be founded or fought over. But we need places where energetic conservatives can build careers around politics.
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