This is the first of what I hope will be a series of posts on the future of the Right following the collapse of the old Right positions that have held sway, really, since the 1970s. Today, Arky has the floor.
What is the Right? It is a widely assorted collection of people who can be categorised under the following:
1. Christian Right. Further divided under categories such as Catholic Right, Evangelical Right and the demoralised, disillusioned rump of what remains of the traditional protestant denominations such as Anglicans and Presbyterians.
2. The Libertarian Right. Further divided into true libertarians, free marketeer purists, and globalist pigs masquerading as libertarians.
3. RINOs. Leftists and opportunists pretending to be compassionate and reasonable versions of the right, seemingly unaware that their smug framing of themselves in this way comes with the presumption that the basic tenets of the right are mean and selfish, i.e, these are idiots, rogues, dullards and spivs.
4. Reptiles. These are the P.J. O’Rourke types who want all the taxation and ego policies they imagine belong on the right, with none of those pesky morals or beliefs which cramp one’s style. Basically sociopaths, perverts, and where they intersect with free marketeers: drug dealers and pimps.
5. Traditionalists and Nationalists. The Delcons. Allowed themselves to be bent over by every major right political party in the West and responded only with grumbling, letters to soon to be defunct papers which didn’t get published and withdrawing from volunteering at booths.
6. Pissed off old Labour and their children, befuddled traditional liberals in the American sense of the word, and Men and Women of a Practical Bent. That is anyone still trying to make a life for themselves that makes some sort of sense in the face of the current onslaught of utter insanity.
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What possible future is there for this motley crew with few if any underpinning common interests or beliefs, other than a paralysing fear of what is currently occurring? The only possible pathway to success is some future unifying figure able to organise and galvanise most of them around the following: Countering the CCP. Late term abortions. Meaningful work. Ending the worst excesses of cronyism. Countering cultural Marxism in schools, public broadcasters, health and universities by privatising or defunding entire systems and handing out vouchers.
To do so that leader must avoid and ignore the leftist manufactured logic and word traps of: Identity politics, political correctness and anti- colonialism. And resist those on the right with obsessions about taxes, tariffs, useless foreign engagements and “free” trade. These are usually combined with some useless reflexive virtual signalling or other weirdness that no one in the category of Men and Women of a Practical Bent give a fig about.
Without some unifying religious beliefs, I’m not sure it can even be done. Trump may have come as close as any man possibly can.