The following soft censorship rant by Steven Greenhut appeared at Reason, once a bastion of free thought and anti=authotitarianisnm. What is especially insidious about the article is that its implicit sanctioning of mainstream media as arbiters of truth. The author asks the reader to follow the lead of William Buckley, Jr. and dismiss all voices not approved by "The New York Time" (or the Associated Press. Or Google. Or Facebook. Or SPLC. It is one hivemind consensus.)
We have accepted the sellout of institutional libertarianism. That is old news. More disturbingly, this article was highlighted at Doug Powers Blog, an aggregate blog that has been included in our blogroll from early on. Et tu, Dougie?
Greenhut's comments are in regular type. BOSurvivor comments are in Bold type.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------One of the modern conservative movement's greatest leaders, the late William F. Buckley Jr., retold a fascinating story from the run-up to the 1964 presidential election. As he explained in The Wall Street Journal in 2008, Buckley and his allies convinced Barry Goldwater to distance himself from the John Birch Society—a conspiracy-minded group that touted his candidacy.
Buckley noted that the society's president, Robert Welch, had at the time a "near-hypnotic" influence on the Right, despite his "wild" ideas: "(Welch) said Dwight D. Eisenhower was a 'dedicated, conscious agent of the communist conspiracy,' and that the government of the United States was 'under operational control of the Communist Party.'"
Buckley realized that Welch's fixations did a disservice to the anti-communist cause. So he convinced Goldwater to reject the core fallacy—"the assumption that you can infer subjective intention from objective consequence: we lost China to the communists, therefore the president of the United States and the secretary of state wished China to go to the communists."
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We can all agree that members of The John Birch Society were turning into laughingstocks by the "respectable" news media, but questions persist: Did the Birchers deserve their ridicule and banishment from credible society? Were they accurate about the threats posed by Communism, threats that were downplayed by Buckley and his Ivy League cocktail buddies? Did Buckley pave the way for the rise of the Rockefeller wing and the mercenarical RINO's?
I say no, yes and yes.
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Goldwater, of course, gained the GOP nomination and lost the general-election vote by 23 percentage points. Thanks to Buckley's efforts, however, the GOP vanquished various fringe groups. The Goldwater candidacy built the foundation for the GOP's future and set the stage for a movement that helped topple the Evil Empire. Sometimes, losing is better than winning.
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Johnson was unbeatable in 1964. To blame Goldwater's loss at the feet of the JBS is silly. Sillier too, is crediting Buckley--or even Goldwater--with the liquidation of the USSR.
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In recent years, conspiracy-mongers and kooks have gained a similar foothold in the GOP. It's a huge problem on the Left, but as a non-leftist that's not my battle. My goal is to support a functioning right-of-center movement that has the credibility to thwart the utopian dreams of the progressive movement. At this time, the Right needs more self-analysis and less whataboutism.
The explanations are complex and subject to debate, but it's impossible to ignore that a portion of the Right has descended, quite frankly, into madness. I partly blame a president who has advocated "birtherism" and given a pass to supporters of QAnon, who embrace some inchoate theory involving Satan, politicians, and pedophiles.
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At this point, we dispense with niceties and call StevenGreenhut a malicious liar.
Trump did not advocate "birtherism". The Birther story is intriguing and well worth telling, but only if one includes the details. This blog has covered the Birther story in its many nuances including the allies of Barry Soetoro rewriting the saga in such a way that the pampered one is victimized by a vast racist conspiracy. The fact of the matter is, Barack Obama is the father of Birtherism.
"Supporters of QAnon" What does that mean? QAnon does not accept donations and is by any measure, self-supporting. The wild theories that follow QAnon are due largely to the law of averages. QAnon had millions, if not tens of millions of readers from all over the world. A diversity of opinion will follow. Some of the opinions might be disagreeable to Greenhut and the respectable members of the respectable news media. Readers of Q posts do not promote a consensus viewpoint, unlike our respectable Tass Media.
By the way, the exposure of Jeffrey Epstein, Ghislaine Maxwell, et al, seems to have some credence, despite the respectable members of the respectable media's reluctance to cover the subject.
Trump will soon exit the White House unless he chains himself to his desk. But the conservative movement will need to chart a path forward—and decide whether it is primarily about airing a list of Festivus-like grievances, or whether it is tethered to important and mostly good ideas centered on promoting markets and limited government. So far, the prognosis isn't good.
My view is that if Trump had actually won the election, he would have been able to prove systemic voter fraud in one of the 58 lawsuits that his supporters have lost. I believe in the rule of law, and the legal system has rendered its verdict. It's crazy to go deeper into this rabbit hole, yet the conservative movement has yet to find bottom.
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I do not know of a single person who looked at the evidence--really looked at the evidence with an objective eye--who has said that there was not massive electoral/voter fraud that significantly benefitted Joe Biden.
If there was nothing to hide, why would Twitter, Facebook and Youtube silence anyone who tries to present evidence of a stolen election? Why would Google searches for "Election fraud" yield radically different results than searches using Qwant or Duckduckgo?
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Nothing has been as loopy as the Jericho March, where religious supporters of the president gathered in Washington, D.C., last week to hold a prayer rally to protest the election results. Prominent conservative activists spoke, along with Alex Jones, the radio broadcaster who, among other things, once claimed that the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shootings were a hoax. Buckley must have turned over in his grave.
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Despite his silliness, Alex Jones probably has a higher accuracy rate than "The Washington Post." Do you remember Jones promoting a knowingly false "Russian Robots Hacked 2016 election?" I don't either.
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As penance, Christian writer Rod Dreher watched the entire march—named after the biblical story of how the Israelites marched around Jericho blowing shofars until the city's walls collapsed. (Unless the media hid it, I'm pretty sure the Capitol is still standing.) As Dreher noted, speakers insisted that the election was stolen—as "an article of faith…If you doubt, you are a traitor, a coward, in league with the Devil. I'm not exaggerating at all."
Such, er, uncritical thinking is no longer confined to the outer reaches but has entered the conservative mainstream. "I am willing to die for this fight," a "Stop the Steal" activist tweeted. Nonsense flows freely on social media, but the Arizona Republican Party actually retweeted it with the words: "He is. Are you?" (Uh, no, but thanks for asking.)
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Unfortunately, information does not flow freely on social media. Big tech is way ahead of Greenhut in silencing unsanctioned viewpoints.
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A Virginia state senator posted that "President Trump should declare martial law as recommended by General Flynn." Former Gen. Michael Flynn, who spoke at the Jericho fiasco, retweeted a post from a group calling for Trump to "temporarily suspend the Constitution" and call for a revote. Conservatives say that ideas have consequences, yet only a few have spoken out against those who peddle flagrantly authoritarian ideas.
The Cato Institute's David Boaz last year wrote about the "no enemies on the Left" approach that liberals had long taken, as they refused to drive out socialists and communists. Pointing to Buckley's legacy, Boaz called for modern conservatives to eschew a similar "no enemies on the Right" stance and stay far from "fever swamps."
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There are no enemies on the Left because the Left is Borg. If a Right Wing exists--and I for one says that it does not--it is not a hive. The Left is opposed by a coalition, not a countercult.
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That's good advice. Conservatives might not agree on policies in a post-Trump world, but they should agree that some Buckley-style limits are critical for the movement's future.
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Buckley-style limits? No thank you. I for one believe in free thought and the free exchange of ideas. Reason sold out.
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