Commentary: Longtime former Republican on Patrick Deneen and the demise of the conservative intellectual
This is incorrect.
There is a such thing as a “conservative intellectual”. It’s just that they’ve been long since drowned out by the rest of the party, and the right-wing voting base has no appetite for actual, sensible conservative policies right now.
Go ahead and list an example of one of those past conservative intellectuals and we’ll see how long it takes to dig up an example of them saying something like Civil Rights protesters are all secret communist agents or that child labor and vagrancy laws and debtors prisons are good things.
Like, I get the appeal in wanting to believe the other side is just as smart and well meaning as our side is, but there’s just no basis for that in the historical record. They’ve always been like this and we just keep forgetting.
One can be an intellectual and still a huge piece of shit. Theyre not mutually exclusive. People like Milton Friedman or Henry Kissinger a undebatably intellectuals… but that doesn’t mean they’re angels. It just means they wield their intellect as a whip to beat their opponents with, rather than raising society as a whole.
Honestly this whole “conservatives are just a bunch of dumb rabid animals” is they exact sentiment they want us to feel. Because then we never look at the deeper issues that are actually affecting our world.
For example, Karl Marx. Clearly an intellectual as evidenced by his writings. But his colorblind/radical centrist take on minority rights fits right in with modern conservative extremists. And then the way he framed his opinions led to far right authoritarian regimes co-opting the label of communism.
Muh nazis were akschually leftwing and communists rightwing… Typical nazi tactic
If you think that right wing authoritarianism is communism, I’ve got a democratic republic to sell. The only way tankie logic is consistent is if you believe that Nazis were socialists and North Korea is democratic. But somehow those are not true yet the USSR was communist? You gotta stop gulping down the imperialist propaganda. I could forgive someone for believing it during the Red Scare, but these days there’s no excuse.
Tankie apologetics are a farce.
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