Writer Michael Fumento explains why he is “breaking with the extreme right.”
The right didn’t create this reservoir of fear, anger and hate. But it has both tapped into it and roiled it. Indeed, the right-wing mass hysteria is what sociologists call a “moral panic.” It occurs when a society is undergoing a wrenching transformation. Somebody then comes along and creates a “folk devil” both to provide an explanation for bad conditions, real or imagined, and a target. Kill the devil; eliminate the bad conditions. But the right has no serious incentive to help solve or ameliorate these problems. Indeed, as with the reelection of Obama, it will benefit from their continuation or worsening.
So animosity has now reached levels both hysterical and historical. The last time anything like this occurred was during World War II, when at least it was aimed outward. Before that? Just before the Civil War.
While I can see some of his points, I don’t feel the need to break with anyone. Just as there are some people on the left with whom I agree on some things, there are some people on the extreme right with whom I agree about some things. Especially things like taking the Constitution seriously and reading it literally.
And of course there are others on the right (the WND rabid anti-gay right comes to mind) who make me genuinely squeamish, and I often wish the GOP would stop catering to bigots who drive voters leftward despite their natural distrust of the left. But even so, catering to bigots is not as bad as catering to Communists, and for me, what it’s all about is who at the end of the day would take away my property and/or kill me for trying to keep what’s mine. Who is against self defense? Who wants to put government busybodies in charge of my life? I just want to be left alone. And while the extreme right doesn’t believe that there is any right to be left alone, they are still better than the extreme left, for the latter don’t believe in the Constitution, or legal process, or God, or anything but their own power.
It’s been years since I broke with the extreme left. As a libertarian, I never really embraced the extreme right, so I cannot break with them.
I’m more on the right than on the left, but I don’t like line drawing, and what I especially don’t like about is a recently emerging accusatory tactic that some right wing activists have of looking for heretics. That reminds me of the left, and long ago an Ann Althouse commenter remarked on a key difference between the right and the left:
…the Right is looking for converts and the Left is looking for heretics…
It would be nice to keep things that way. As Ronald Reagan famously said:
“If you agree with me eighty percent of the time then you are an ally, not a 20 percent traitor.”
These days, some might call him a RINO for that, but whatever.
Small l libertarians are used to not caring about such things.
Comments
9 responses to “I can’t break with what I never agreed with”
Fumento is correct. He’s sees what is coming and is disassociating himself now.
So, Frank — what is coming? Enlighten us because I don’t know what you mean.
A reasoned guess, Trimegistus, is civil unrest or worse. You tell me what has been the traditional outcome when a country is borrowing to survive – war, civil war, revolution, collapse?
You know that 50% of young people are unemployed already. What do you think will happen when the hard choices are all that is left?
Fumento isn’t upset about a few loud mouths like Ann Coulter. That’s his excuse. He’s already left the country and is living in South America.
Key quote from Fumento’s break with the right:
Indeed in any violent anti-democratic revolution – Jacobite, Bolshevik, National Socialist – the first goal is to eliminate the real competition, those with ideals. The guys who really believed in liberty, fraternity and equality or rule by the proletariat were identified, isolated and eliminated early on to leave only two extremes to choose from. “It’s us or the Bourbons! It’s us or the Romanovs!” In Germany, the conservatives and liberals were dispatched to the labor camps before the Nazis felt safe to send the Jews to the death camps.
It’s us – the statist social conservative controlled Republican Party or
It’s them – the leftist statist Marxist Democrat Party
To those who believe the Republican Party and the right haven’t embraced hate as their modus operandi, here is an exquisite example of exactly what Fumento is railing against – Wretchard, Richard Fernandez, author of PJM’s The Belmont Club stoops to a new and disgusting low with his latest posting Croatoan, where he uses the horror of a crazed naked man eating another’s face as an excuse to gay bash:
The naked man whose face was being eaten is missing parts of his eyes and face and is therefore unavailable for questioning. So the Miami police are seeking witnesses, hoping to find an explanation for the incident. But what sort of answer do they expect? They may find a reason here and there; they may even find a full blown new sexual preference with a demand for full domestic and civil rights.
http://pjmedia.com/richardfernandez/2012/05/27/croatoan/
You’ve convinced me guys. I WILL vote for Barrack Obama in November. Not because I agree with his leftist agenda, but because I don’t want a party in power that is consumed in hatred and aiming it in my direction. It’s called self-preservation, assholes.
Sorry, but I think you are reading in what is not there. I don’t see gay bashing in the post and I read it all. Gays are nowhere mentioned. He may be wrong in his claim that cannibals may seek “full domestic and civil rights” but that is nowhere close to maintaining that gays do not deserve them. Homosexuality is not pedophilia and not cannibalism. But I am repeating myself.
How that post would cause anyone to vote for Obama is a bit beyond my grasp.
Not because I agree with his leftist agenda, but because I don’t want a party in power that is consumed in hatred and aiming it in my direction.
Don’t worry. The other Party will be sending hatred in your direction for different reasons.
We live in an ugly time.
Better to bring a little light than curse the darkness.
How that post would cause anyone to vote for Obama…
As libertarians say when they vote for the Republican who is only a shade better, usually in the economic area, than the Democrat, I am voting for what I see as the lesser of two evils. It’s a protest vote against a political party that has embraced fully the social conservative agenda, and one that is very likely to give lip service only to economic freedom.
Does anyone believe that Romney, the original architect of Obamacare, will follow through and repeal it? It won’t happen without a filibuster proof and conservative Senate, which will not be there. He’s covered, just like Reagan was covered when he was “forced” to raise taxes both as governor of California and as president.
Will a Romney administration open up domestic oil drilling full force, repeal the Clean Air Act veto of coal, stop subsidizing ethanol production & remove the tariffs on its import, end the ever increasing federal deficit, reign in the Fed, stop subsidizing the banking industry, stop the expansion of federal police powers and the proliferation of domestic spying and armed drones, unfund the spy-hub now being built in Utah (yeah right, cut out fed subsidies to Mormons), stop fed interference in states like California which has a medical marijuana law and legal dispensaries being raided and shut down?
Or will a Republican administration expand drug enforcement, (more than likely with a full force attack on drug cartels in Mexico and farther south), push for a federal law banning abortion, vote for a national save-marriage amendment, while continuing as before the me-too economic policies of every other Republican administration in my lifetime?
The idea of an economic only focused Tea Party somehow taking over the Republican Party was a nice dream. It didn’t happen, and it won’t happen. The base of the party is ruled by evangelical Christians and Dixiecrats like Stacy McCain. The piece by Richard Fernandez is one with their belief that our troubles are caused by the moral decline of the West. That belief reaches across almost all segments of the Republican Party, from right wing nuts like Ann Coulter to otherwise thoughtful academics such as Victor Hanson. Gays in particular have been singled out as emblematic of that moral decline. While Reagan or Bush could sneak a closet case
or two into their administrations, even the hint of one out in the open like Richard Grinnell is too much now. We are persona non grata in the Republican Party.
Eric: I don’t see gay bashing in the post…
Really?
Wretchard: they may even find a full blown new sexual preference with a demand for full domestic and civil rights.
Let’s see. What other minority group other than gays has recently been demanding “full domestic and civil rights” through access to civil marriage?
I could if I wanted to waste the time, analyze the piece, go to Fernandez most recent prior essay, and point out his subtle but clear implications. The one above is pretty clear, but here is one just a little less overt:
If cities of a few hundred thousand persons have historically been able to create orchards of evil…
Like Sodom and Gomorrah?
Take off the blinders. Or just cruise through a few sites on the right. You don’t have to limit yourself to FreeRepublic or Lucianne or Buchannan. The homophobia is pervasive. And I’ve finally had enough of it.
Sorry for the italics in the wrong place.