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[Order Michael Finch’s new book, A Time to Stand: HERE. Prof. Jason Hill calls it “an aesthetic and political tour de force.”]
There are two ‘rights’ in America. There’s the one we belong to, concerned with fighting the Left, resisting Islam and preserving America. And there’s another right that hates America.
These days that ‘right’ is easier to spot than ever because it has one fatal ‘tell’.
It spends little or no time fighting the Left, instead it spends all or most of its time fighting conservatives. Not only doesn’t it fight the Left, but it often makes common cause with leftists, inviting on not just liberals, but hard core socialists and even Marxists, to its podcasts, and eagerly citing them to attack conservatives and the legitimacy of the United States of America.
Watch for Jeffrey Sachs, Cenk Uygur, Glenn Greenwald and Max Blumenthal being interviewed and quoted to attack conservatives and America and you’ll see the anti-American right.
That’s because, woke left or woke right, they’re all members of the anti-American club. Like the Left, they don’t want to save America, they want to replace it with something totally different.
(That’s why the anti-American right is also very friendly toward Islam.)
The pro-American right fights the Left. The anti-American right unites with leftists because it agrees with the two basic leftist premises: that America is evil and must be destroyed.
Listen to them long enough and you’ll notice that they don’t attack the Left, they do attack conservatives and they attack America at every level, portraying it as completely rotten and corrupt, with nothing about it worth saving and no enemies worth standing against.
That’s why they have little to say about illegal aliens, they appease Islam and invite on leftists as experts, don’t talk about riots, voter fraud, or the Democrats, but would rather chat about UFOs, the supernatural, and secret organizations. They pursue topics that reek of paganism while claiming to be Christians and yet show no signs of actually living lives centered around God.
Members of the anti-American right used to mock conservatives. “What have they conserved?” The attack was also a confession. They don’t want to conserve anything because they don’t believe that there’s anything about America worth conserving. They’re not MAGA because they, for the most part, don’t believe America was ever great though they’ll sometimes wear the hat.
After infiltrating MAGA, they quickly took to claiming that it was a sellout movement, that Trump and everyone in his administration are traitors which should have surprised no one because the ‘entryists’ did the same thing to Republicans and the conservative movement before MAGA.
Copying Leninist tactics, they enter a conservative movement, claim to be its most loyal members, then turn on it, try to discredit it with conspiracy theories and break off as many followers as they can to build a ‘purer’ movement. They exploit the Tea Party, MAGA and any other movement that lets them in, after wearing its skin long enough, they do everything to destroy it because their mission isn’t to save America, but to destroy its last hope of survival.
And the way to do that is by convincing those who could save America that it’s hopeless.
Over time, what was a fringe movement has gathered strength by convincing growing numbers of conservatives that there’s no way to rebuild America. Each time an administration or a politician failed, the anti-American right gathered more recruits, feeding them the poisonous message that America was hopelessly corrupt and the whole thing needed to be burned down.
MAGA was both an opportunity and a threat. The anti-American right was able to advance because of the fall of some of the old conservative establishment, but President Trump’s promise of making America great again flew in the face of their entire worldview, that there was never a great America and that it could not be made great without completely tearing it down.
The anti-American right despises Trump even while some of its more prominent members play up to him for clout, but its influencers tear him down and promise a better movement. It needs to discredit him and replace the hope that he brought with a fresh wave of despair over America.
That is why it peddles Charlie Kirk assassination theories and joins the Left in aiming Epstein smears at Trump, rather than at the Clintons and the Democrats who shielded Epstein. Its goal is convincing enough MAGA people that their hope has failed and America is irredeemable.
Meanwhile they ally with the Left because they share common hates, not common ideologies.
The anti-American right aren’t liberals or RINOs although they’re willing to adopt socialism, cater to Islam, have a totalitarian central government. They’ve gone by various names such as alt-right, groypers or woke right, but the names are meaningless and not everyone who uses them is a member of the anti-American right. Some are Nazis, most aren’t. Many more are sympathetic to fascist movements. They are universally opposed to the Constitution.
What they believe varies. Some claim to be libertarians while others want a return to feudalism (some want to do both at the same time.) They generally reject individual freedoms and want a totalitarian government that will force everyone to live the way an elite commands them to.
Like the anti-American Left, the anti-American Right collects crackpot theories, lunatic utopian schemes and totalitarian fantasies peddled by keyboard warriors who have no experience of implementing any of these things and have no plan for doing it except cracking up America.
Like the anti-American Left, the anti-American Right knows that the only way anyone will let it test out neo-feudalism, a new monarchy, theocracy, a fourth reich, legalized slavery, polygamy or any of the other lunatic ideas they peddle on their podcasts would be to convince Americans that their country is evil, corrupt and doomed, and that anything else would be better.
We’ve often spoken about the red-green alliance between the Left and Islam. A basic premise of the red-green alliance is that both leftists and Islamists want to topple the West. And then fight it out over who gets to build their new utopia on the ruins. But there is a color missing there. The color hasn’t been a significant factor since the Hitler-Stalin pact and Hitler’s Mufti, but it’s slowly influencing conversations on social media where controversy matters more than numbers.
The red-green-black alliance is driving a lot of the controversy on social media. We see it all around us but we don’t necessarily know what to call it. Members of the ‘black’ side of the alliance disguise themselves as other things, use hundreds of fake names to inflate their numbers, and instead of openly advocating for their views, attack, undermine and troll.
They claim that the splits on the right are over various things. Currently the Jews. But the real split on the right is over one thing and one thing alone. America. The anti-American Right hates this country. It hates anyone who loves it. That’s why it attacks conservatives, not leftists.
The anti-American Right allies with leftists and Islamists to bring down America. That’s why it’s as much of an enemy as they are. The red and green parts of the alliance are open enemies. But the black part of the alliance is trying to tear us apart from within to doom any hope of saving America.
How do you spot the anti-American Right? They don’t fight the Left and Islam. They ally with them against conservatives and America. When you see that, you see the enemy.
Good one. Thanks for keeping an eye on those people.
Daniel Greenfield provides a sober, clear-eyed view of the situation on the part of leftists, of all stripes. Good analysis, Mr. Greenfield!
Both the Far Left and Far Right are a threat to America wheather it be Commies or Nazis their both overly violent and Dangerous
Commies and Nazi’s were not opposites, they were competitors. Close kin.
You are employing a rhetorical method called “third wayism.” It positions itself as the moderate, balanced adult in the room that synthesizes a combination of both left and right to come up with a third way.
Are you implying that Hitler’s National SOCIALISTS were on the far right, S.P. ???
I want to thank Daniel Greenfield for his incisive article, “The Real Split on the Right Is Over America.” He has articulated something I’ve felt for quite a while: a new movement on the right that cloaks itself in Christian rhetoric but carries within it a rejection of America’s moral and civic inheritance. Greenfield’s warning could not be more urgent.
Alasdair MacIntyre warned that when a civilization loses its shared moral framework, the old moral language survives only as fragments. People still say good and evil, but those words no longer point toward a common good. That is exactly what we see now — Christian terms drained of Christian meaning, weaponized for tribal power rather than moral order.
I’ve sensed this for a while: I recently experienced friends who we talk the talk, but all of a sudden sound like something from an invasion of the body snatchers my very traditional friends just are sounding strange with new weird theories.
I hear of a new faction rising that speaks the language of faith but despises the substance of it. They quote Scripture and talk about “Christendom,” but their faith serves power, not the other way around.
These are not traditional conservatives. They are the alternate right — angry, clever, and hollow. They use Christian words as banners of war, not bridges of meaning. Greenfield has done the a service by naming the danger out loud.
Right now I’m still uncomfortable, mentioning the names of some of my favorite conservatives and broadcasters. One being a former Fox News show host having these alt right individuals on and not pushing back on the outlandish theories. They say they’re defending the West. In truth, they’re burning down the very house that sheltered them.
So yes — thank you, Daniel Greenfield. You’ve drawn the line that had to be drawn.
Please continue to write some more on the subject and expose this poisonous threat.
Thank you. Angry, clever and hollow is a very good description for them. These are bad men entirely apart from any of their stated political views. They are corrupt, they are drawn to corruption and they seek the corrupt us
One of Trump’s skills was he was able to limit the power of the more irrational actors on the right. Trump was always more center right than right. The coalition he built was attractive to independents and disillusioned Democrats because he is a political moderate. The hard core anti-Trump people associate the fact that he is forceful president with being extreme politically. Opposing DEI or taking a strong stance on stopping crime are not really right wing policies. They are common sense. Enforcing the appropriate laws threatens a lot of the entrenched interest groups in the Democratic Party but we are a nation of laws. It is the Democrats who have embraced extremism, even to the point of encouraging violence to stop the enforcement of immigration law and the fourteenth amendment.
I watched some of Tucker Carlson’s interview of Nick Fuentes and I found it frightening. While Tucker claimed that he is only interested in universal treatment regardless of identity, he said nothing in response to Fuentes suggestion that America’s problems are the fault of organized Jewry and that Jews are a problem everywhere because they can’t be assimilated.This is crazy. American Jews are assimilated. The fact that they have been successful in many areas of American life does not make them less American.
What Fuentes is saying is that on the one hand, Jews have no place in America. But on the other hand, we should not support Israel militarily or diplomatically because it is not in America’s interest. Basically he is arguing that the world should get rid of the Jews. That is a frightening view and it is unsettling that it is a view that is gaining adherents on both the left and the right.
I think you misrepresent Fuentes. Here is what he says about Jewish assimilation in the transcript beginning at about 1:18:45 of the interview:
Fuentes: “Yeah. But Israel is unlike every other country in the sense that because the Jewish people are in a diaspora all over the world, there are significant numbers of Jews in Europe, but also in the United States. And because of their unique heritage and story, which is that they’re a stateless people, they’re unassimilable, they’re resist assimilation for thousands of years. And I think that’s a good thing. And now they have this territory in Israel. There’s a deep religious affection for the state. It’s bound up in their identity, the story of the Exodus from Egypt, the promise of the land, all these things. So let’s say in the United States, for example, somebody like Sheldon Adelson, he’s not Israeli. Is he an ideological neo-con?
Does he believe in the promise of democratic globalism? I don’t think necessarily. His heart is in Israel. And it’s because he is a proud Jewish person. And I guess what I’m saying is that if you are a Jewish person in America, you’re sort of… And again, it’s not because they’re born, but it’s sort of a rational self-interest politically to say, ‘I’m a minority. I’m a religious ethnic minority. This is not really my home. My ancestral home is in Israel.'”
What is not true?
Here’s what Fuentes actually says when he’s not playing up to a more conservative audience
https://x.com/ConceptualJames/status/1984277394837131770
Beyond Jews, here are some of his remarks about Charlie Kirk
https://x.com/nosoup4knowles/status/1967666736074985519
https://x.com/TheOfficerTatum/status/1983614846190108771
https://x.com/EYakoby/status/1983156397274738852
That’s the real Fuentes. Not the curated version Tucker gave you, just as he gave you a curated version of Kanye West even as the man was losing his mind
Mr. Greenfield, thank you for taking your time to reply to me. I watched the links.
There is a tendency to “purity spiral” with regard to any topic. Any critical discussion of Israel or Jews frequently devolves into classic purity spiraling, which is why criticism is verboten and I get downvoted for saying I don’t want my son to die for Israel. I think these purity spirals thwart a vigorous search for truth, and truth often reveals a few (but not all) of her facets from the mouths of mortal men.
Curating IS a problem. It is a NECESSARY filter we must use when listening to or studying anyone. Fuentes became a public figure as a freshman in high school. His views are still maturing, but he has obvious talent and intelligence. I do not agree with everything he says, and your linked videos provide ample reason to disagree with both his points and manner of delivery.
Whatever anyone thinks of Fuentes, he should not be misquoted or taken out of context. Balaam’s donkey and Balaam spoke the truth even though both were asses.
A lot of that discussion and links aren’t even about Jews. There’s more on Fuentes saying he’d like China to take us over. And that we should be more like China.
Should China take us over? Should we be more like China?
China has stronger law and order, but is not Christian, so the population suffers many violations of their natural, human rights. Organ harvesting comes to mind. The U.S. now openly violates the rights of its citizens and favors foreigners, so how many steps between that and organ harvesting? Death is the common denominator of both. Trump has slowed, but not eliminated the damage.
Our election process no longer serves us because we no longer are the moral and religious people we once were. Monarchy or oligarchy would be better — or perhaps we devolve into separate nation states with independent rule? Ethnarchs?
I will grant that Fuentes may have said China should conquer us. He was probably using hyperbole to entertain his audience while claiming Chinese citizens enjoy greater social trust, peace and order than we.
Fuentes’ large and growing audience should be understood. Not everyone who listens is evil or unpatriotic. There is virtue in listening to those who disagree with us. Not being able to do so would be very Chinese — and Fuentes would be banned, but the purity spirallers would be happy.
Rod Dreher latest Substack is having the very same conversation some of the comments are going deep .again DANIEL YOU ARE ALWAY AHEAD OF the message. https://open.substack.com/pub/roddreher/p/americas-crazy-train?r=6o1xew&utm_medium=ios
Disagreement they’re having is to put an end and stop or keep the conversation going at this moment. The more knowledge we have the better is to deal with the troubling situation that could split the conservative movement wide open.
Thank you, Frank
The hate Tucker Carlson spews in the name of Christianity says it all.
The annoying thing about Tucker Carlson is he talks over his guests and don’t let them get their voice.
Tucker Carlson is about Tucker Carlson. Tucker Carlson is a windsock that points in whatever direction the wind is blowing.
I don’t know why FOX fired Tucker Carlson, but maybe he made them feel icky and needed to take a shower with a few drinks and pipefuls of mary jane after dealing with Tucker Carlson.
I don’t have cable and only stream or antenna. I got bored and frustrated with Tucker Carlson with his annoying habits and then enough people who apparently are more on top of the media than I care to be, dissing Tucker Carlson there must be something to it.
might have been Tucker’s relationship with Hunter Biden, which he didn’t disclose
He has been feasting on the lie of replacement theology, which drawn to its natural conclusion is Israel is not part of God’s redemptive plan during the Great Tribulation, and by default nullifies God’s initial promise to Abraham in Genesis 12:1-3, a promise repeated numerous times throughout Scripture, and NEVER rescinded.
I can’t claim expertise on Christianity but the display I saw the other day seemed the opposite of what. Christians usually claim to be, That is loving and inspired by their faith to do good deeds and love all.
I saw instead smug slights, anger at “outsiders,’ rewriting history to omit Jews and Judaism – even from a visit to Israel itself – and disrespect of other faiths too.
Cloaked in Christianity, and received by a thumping crowd. A crowd that seemed primed to maybe soon take those smug slights to the streets and use their disdain for outsiders to do real harm.
I don’t know what to call it, MAGA or not MAGA right or left but it is focused on negativity and it will not be good for this country. I suspect Islamic involvement but I didn’t see it overtly displayed or stated.
Where Jews have had to flee such angry crowds, has any country then thrived?
Christianity can be understood by reading both the Old and New Testaments harmoniously. The New Testament is much shorter than the Old. Scripture is the best means by which to explain scripture (not commentaries). Christianity is held together by its essentials contained in the Gospel message. There are many denominations of Christianity, but the place of heresy is defined by rejecting the Gospel and / or the Person of Jesus Christ. The Gospel is essentially this:
1) Humanity has a universal problem with sin. No exemptions.
2) Sin removes you from the presence and favor of the LORD and brings the death penalty.
3) No man can make a sufficient offering, even of his own body and soul, to satisfy the perfection and holiness of the LORD (Micah 6:6 – 8). Without the shedding of blood, there is no forgiveness of sins (Leviticus 17:11). The blood of bulls and goats is insufficient and the wrong “currency” (Isaiah 1:11).
4) Jesus, as God incarnated in human flesh, the true Son of God, One with God in substance and yet also human, took the sins of the world upon Himself as an atonement sufficient for the sins of the entire world (Isaiah 53:6). Salvation is not through works, but through believing on the LORD Christ Jesus (Genesis 15:6; Habakkuk 2:4; Psalm 106:31; Isaiah 53:11).
Understanding Judaism is more difficult because reading the Tanakh is insufficient. I have to read Talmud and it often contradicts itself, being in the form of an elaborate debate between rabbis.
The perfect as the enemy of the good. The “yes, but….’.” Crowd. Finding flaws with Trump successful policies no matter how ridiculous. The people I see as questionable allies don’t seem capable of three things. Admit they are wrong, give examples of what they are talking about and what their idea of the alternative looks like. Much like the left but more subtle.
Well said and right to the point.
Jeffrey Sachs, Cenk Uygur, Glenn Greenwald and Max Blumenthal are all on the Left. All are very liberal/Leftist.
Who on the right is anti-American? What conservative is anti-American?
Who on the ‘right’ constantly brings them on?
E.g. Tucker Carlson and others. In that circle etc… who no longer fight the left but ally with them
Does that fit whatever identity you’re using this week?
Can I ask you a sincere question? Does anyone here reveal their true identity? I truly enjoy your columns. I mean that with the utmost sincerity. However, if I make a comment that might be in the minority, or doesn’t fit the correct narrative my comments, and other posters’ comments, get removed. I’ve never once used profanity or any vulgarities on your website.
Yet, many posters here use disgusting language, threaten others, and have even hoped for the assassination of certain politicians. However, there comments are never removed.
I’ve given fact based commentary. Do you want healthy and respectful debate, or just a bunch of zombies where everyone mindlessly agree’s with each other?
I’m not trying to be argumentative. Again, I sincerely enjoy your commentary. Do we have to agree on every topic? Doesn’t honest debate provoke thought and helps inform decision making?
Thank you, Daniel
Sincerely, there’s nothing sincere about you. This question is a typical example.
You’re a serial troll who operates under different names, puts forward views you don’t really believe in order to manipulate people, talk to yourself under your different names (and yes, we can spot it, no matter how many times you switch IPs) rather than honestly stating what you believe.
And yes you’ve used profanity and vulgarity under some of your identities.
Your comments are slick and likely the products of AI. Your agenda is fundamentally dishonest and insincere. X is a safe playground for you to play this game. People come here because they want to talk to other conservatives, not malicious bots.
I’m sorry you feel this way, but you are totally off base. I’ve never used vulgarity or threatened anyone with violence. That’s simply not true, but even if I did that’s apparently welcomed here.
I am not a bot nor do I use AI.
Again, I’m sorry you feel this way. I’m far from a troll.
Not much more I can say.
If you’re telling me you’d rather not have me post here then I’ll respect your request . I don’t think I could have responded to you with anymore respect than I did so I’m a little taken aback. Trust me I don’t have time to run around using different IP addresses and names to post on a website. I don’t know what I just posted that set you off but I’m not going to argue here. I wish you nothing but the best
Sorry ‘Sebastian’. I rather suspect you’ll be back here under another name within hours or days
Oh yeah – says who? (1940’s film noir lingo that implied all the basest of disgusting human language and threats others).
Happy Halloween….
Bill Crystal just endorsed Mamdani and Democrats Sherrill and Spanberger.
Kristol. Crystal is the actor. Though I think they’re related.
Thanks Daniel for the correction.
BTW…last week it came to me what Curly in City Slickers meant with his one thing.
I can tell you mine. It is no doubt different for everything
That was a great movie
Wow! Are they related? Thats wild but I not surprising. Well, I guess we are all cousins. A disturbing thought in some cases.
Nick Fuentes, Pat Buchanan, Tucker Carlson, Dan Bilzerian, Andrew Tate, Amrou Fudl, and Ian Carroll.
Tucker prefers Moscow and Dubai over any American city and had good things to say about Shariah law.
Maga folks can add Tucker Carlson and Candace Owns to the list of anti-American anti-Semite Right
Typo alert: Owens, not Owns
I am avoiding controversy here by not adding names of certain “big shots” and some popular personalities from my list of such people. But there are others.
Maybe some circle on the fringes to benefit from it somehow. Others jump in at the deep end.
And especially Qatar, hence Qatarlson.
“Like the Left, they don’t want to save America, they want to replace it with something totally different.”
They have no interest in conserving modern America – a very different and inferior place than what their parents and grandparents experienced.
They elect the right on consistently broken promises. Each conservative regime is virtually identical with the left. More debt, more foreign wars, more replacement by hostile populations, higher costs of living, laws disfavoring them or construed against them, etc.
They wish to change that and have not yet found an intelligible way to do it, having no “strong man” to lead them.
They don’t want to conserve the America of their parents or grandparents either.
When they attack the Founding and praise Hitler and third world dictatorships, they’re making it pretty clear what they want and it isn’t America.
There have been practically no “conservative” administration. Trump Term 2 is the closest we’ve gotten to one. And these people are trying to undermine it all the time.
Yes, many of them are like that – and it is a fantasy position. We can never go back, but neither must we go gentle into that good night of a de-Christianized America.
The “moral and religious people” was never intended to be hostile to Christianity. The Founders could have been more explicit, anticipating their success would create the most attractive and prosperous nation in which the world would wish to live.
I am beginning to see the virtue of authoritarian but Christian government. The left has successfully built a democratic coalition that is inimical to the moral and religious people envisioned by our Founders.
I had high hopes for Trump, and he is still the best we have had in my lifetime. But we are becoming more involved in foreign wars, our debt is still surging, H1B’s are still brining all the world here legally, deportations are not happening with any urgency or alacrity, etc. ad nauseam. America First has not arrived with Trump.
A de-Christianized America is the problem, but specifically the Christianity of America as it was meant to be, not fantasies of a European or Latin American dictatorshop that will use Christianity as a fig leaf for corrupt dictators.
The Founding Fathers were deeply Christian at a time when the Western world was Christian and they knew exactly the kind of country they wanted and the kind they didn’t
Agreed. The abuse of power always tempts us and arrives sporting a fig leaf. Christian rule should, by definition, be lex rex (or lex deus rex). Without a restraining mechanism, it could easily become a rex lex dictatorship. The vox populi rex must be avoided at all cost. As awful as it sounds to our liberal ears, the universal franchise is a mistake.
The founders were Anglo Protestant and Reformed. Ironically, that Christianity proved more “catholic” than the church presuming that name.
This is how bad education is in USA when the horrors of hitler and the vile satanic pekkerhead nazziz are thrown about to Patriotic Americans!
Closer than Reagan and even Coolidge?
Reagan was great, but he was crippled by a Dem Congress, and, like Trump, by bad staffers who in some cases did everything they could to hold him back
I wish we had gotten Reagain up against LBJ instead of Goldwater
and this Reagan
would have fundamentally changed history just when it needed to be changed
Also Reagan was never the same after he got shot.
Reagans most famous quats MR GORBECHEV TEAR DOWN THIS WALL and the line about IM FROM THE GOVERMENT AND IM HERE TO HELP
Conservatism is an umbrella term which encompasses many contradictory ideas. Conservatism is hazy, foggy, imprecise, and unclear.
There are conservatives that are fundamentalist Christians and fundamentalist Jews but also, somehow, want freedom, liberty, and the fruits of Free Market Capitalism. But you can’t have both, fundamentalist religion of any kind leads to a brutal theocracy and stagnation, poverty, and misery.
The Founding Fathers were not conservatives, they were extreme radicals for freedom and liberty. They initiated a historical and radical revolution and experiment in freedom and liberty, they understood that their historical achievement was only a beginning and expected future generations to develop the experiment even further, to perfect it. They knew there were fatal contradictions and defects in their Constitution, like allowing slavery, and that future generations would bear the perilous burden of fixing those contradictions and defects. The contradiction of slavery was resolved with the Civil War but there still exist defects in the Constitution that need to be resolved.
“The political philosophy of America’s Founding Fathers is so thoroughly buried under decades of statist misrepresentations on one side and empty lip-service on the other, that it has to be re-discovered, not ritualistically repeated. It has to be rescued from the shameful barnacles of platitudes now hiding it. It has to be expanded—because it was only a magnificent beginning, not a completed job, it was only a political philosophy without a full philosophical and moral foundation, which the “conservatives” cannot provide.
The clause giving Congress the power to regulate interstate commerce is one of the major errors in the Constitution. That clause, more than any other, was the crack in the Constitution’s foundation, the entering wedge of statism, which permitted the gradual establishment of the welfare state. But I would venture to say that the framers of the Constitution could not have conceived of what that clause has now become. If, in writing it, one of their goals was to facilitate the flow of trade and prevent the establishment of trade barriers among the states, that clause has reached the opposite destination.” – Ayn Rand
Conservative is a relative term.
The last potentates of the USSR were conservatives.
The question is, obviously, what do you want to conserve?
I hope for most of us it is the Constitution and the ideas that bought it to life.
Of course, I live in a dream world thinking this is the case for the majority of the residents of the United States. Citizen is hardly deserved by most of them.
First off, fundamentalist religion can be consistent with liberalism. Modern Christian, Hindu, Buddhist, and Jewish fundamentalism do not equate to theocracy, Second, many of the Founding Fathers were Christian, although John Adams, Franklin and Jefferson weren’t. Deeply Christian founding fathers included Washington, Jay, Henry, and Samuel Adams. Abolitionism was largely a Christian movement, and the Christian element in the Whig and Republican Parties were the reason those parties tended to dislike slavery (although they were not mostly abolitionist). Charles Finney John Jay Shipherd and Philo Penfield Stewart were devout Christian abolitionists who founded Oberlin College. Charles Finney joined Oberlin in 1835 and became its second president. Under his leadership Oberlin was a center of both evangelical revival and abolitionism. It was one of the first colleges to admit Black Students and women precisely because it was Christian. Three Oberlin students, steeped in Christianity, participated in John Brown’s raid on Harper’s Ferry in 1859. All three were African American.
Fundamentalist Christianity absolutely leads to theocracy. The Puritans did not come to America to establish freedom of conscience they came here to establish their own theocracy because they believed the theocracy of the Church of England was corrupt. Martin Luther was not intent on establishing freedom of conscience either. He wanted to repair the corrupt theocracy of the Catholic Church.
The Founders and America were the product of the Age of Enlightenment when reason and logic were in the ascendancy and dominant over faith. America as the Founders envisioned it could never have been founded by the American Puritans of the 17th century.
“The development from Aquinas through Locke and Newton represents more than four hundred years of stumbling, tortuous, prodigious effort to secularize the Western mind, i.e., to liberate man from the medieval shackles. It was the buildup toward a climax: the eighteenth century, the Age of Enlightenment. For the first time in modern history, an authentic respect for reason became the mark of an entire culture; the trend that had been implicit in the centuries-long crusade of a handful of innovators now swept the West explicitly, reaching and inspiring educated men in every field. Reason, for so long the wave of the future, had become the animating force of the present….
Confidence in the power of man replaced dependence on the grace of God—and that rare intellectual orientation emerged, the key to the Enlightenment approach in every branch of philosophy: secularism without skepticism….
In metaphysics, this meant a fundamental change in emphasis: from God to this world, the world of particulars in which men live, the realm of nature . . . . Men’s operative conviction was that nature is an autonomous realm—solid, eternal, real in its own right. For centuries, nature had been regarded as a realm of miracles manipulated by a personal deity, a realm whose significance lay in the clues it offered to the purposes of its author. Now the operative conviction was that nature is a realm governed by scientific laws, which permit no miracles and which are intelligible without reference to the supernatural.” – Leonard Peikoff, “The Ominous Parallels: The end of Freedom In America”
Aw Teach, it’s way to early for a lecture. Do I really hafta read this Lenny Piehole screed. And why do you hate so many great men of the West.
Weird question, but are you “Jay Tea”, formerly of Wizbang?
Blah Blah Blah. Sis boom blah.
Blah Blah Blah. Sis boom blah.
“They knew there were fatal contradictions and defects in their Constitution,” How do you know? Did they tell you?
Gee T, I haven’t have seen your “extreme radical for freedom and liberty” meme in a long time. Did you forget where you left your index card with that phrase? I guess as you get older and more desiccated you forget stuff. Try an episode of Lawrence Welk. It will remind you of the “good times” And do you really think anyone is going to read that tired worn out Randian gibberish……….again?
I call it the red, green and brown alliance.
I like that
Who knows what a conservative is? Where/what is the Right? When I hear so-called “conservative” commentators oh so terribly concerned about SNAP benefits being delayed I realize the Left has won.
Compassion for the sake of moral superiority status is a bad joke. Hilarious how both sides are using the same garbage to try to gain another vote.
Right or wrong has no meaning. Winning is all that matters. Should I blame Trump for that? Maybe, as much as I would like not to.
Integrity is something to talk about – whatever you do, do not attempt to display this quality. Won’t get you anywhere in this world.
All politics is a brothel. At least you know what the profession is.
There are many sleazy opportunists, including Steve Bannon. They wouldn’t be joining the antisemitic fringe if it lacked an audience.
I use the term “Vichy Republicans”
This kind of infiltration of the right is the sort of thing Joseph McCarthy feared would happen. Especially since he witnessed Eisenhower, a supposed “conservative” Republican, stab him in the back after taking office, defame him, and even cover for Communists in the government even more overtly than FDR or Truman ever did.
Eisenhower was the first true “anti-American Rightist”. Like Tucker Carlson, he spent little or no time fighting the Left, instead he spent all or most of his time fighting conservatives, and he most especially spent a lot of time fighting Israel and Jews.
And the new Woke Right, as James Lindsay calls it, is following in Eisenhower’s footsteps.
“Extremism in defense of liberty is no vice, and temperance in defense of justice is no virtue.”
– Barry Goldwater
I notice what Daniel Greenfield is talking about in this article
whenever I read through the comments on the big conservative
websites, like Breitbart or The Gateway Pundit. Those “keyboard
warriors” are there in droves trying to influence the thinking of
other commenters.
I see a lot of Islamic trolls too who, like the others, talk out of both
sides of their mouths. If conservatives are in a snit about something,
for example, the troll will agree wholeheartedly then add how Islam
would not allow such a thing.
All these double-talk comments that praise something American
while tearing it down always jump out at me.
A little off track – under Biden, Disqus on these websites unmercifully
censored my comments, always throwing me off the site or banning
me outright at times. It is much easier for me to comment now that
Trump’s in office. Many commenters also remark on how they have
been often censored. Hooray for FPM which moderates but has never
censored me.
I think one of the reasons that Epstein was brought up by people in Trump’s admin awhile back and it seemed odd and counterproductive, but maybe it was in part specifically to draw the Woke Right into the open so that he could knock them away from him.
May Trump and his team purge real MAGA of these Woke Right lowlifes quickly and thoroughly.
AMERICA FIRST is what counts.
And we’re not getting that.
By Mr. Greenfield’s analysis………….Patrick J, Buchanan would be “anti-American”.
PJB fought the Left as much as any journalist of the last 60 years.
And by the way…….almost all of Buchanan’s predictions came true going back decades.
This is not one of Mr. Greenfield’s better efforts.
PS………and I’m personally ready to fight the Left……….WITH GUNS……….when the day comes(and it will).
I wasn’t Buchanan’s biggest fan, but I couldn’t begin to imagine him going to Moscow and claiming how much better Russia was than America or imagine him coming to the defense, as Tucker recently did, of drug cartels in Venezuela.
I don’t recall him celebrating Islamic law, praising Muslim dictators as Tucker does, let alone the UFO/demon stuff.
And Buchanan would never have brought on a UN/Soros operative like Jeffrey Sachs again and again to denounce America.
Can’t imagine Buchanan palling around with a gay Brazilian socialist either.
Basically what this article describes is the horseshoe theory. In the final analysis both far left and far right are brothers from an other mother. Both are collectives and they both despise individualism, Both are in favor of government control that is amicable to their version of utopia.