On that day, people who didn't go down to the courthouse early to vote, like me, and those who didn't vote absentee, and are voting, will cast their votes.
I've been following politics since at least 1972, when Richard Nixon won his second term in office. I can remember doing so as a kid. I was nine. Teno Roncalio, a Catholic lawyer from Sweetwater County, a veteran of Operation Overlord, and a Democrat, was our Congressman. Gale McGee, a University of Wyoming professor, and a Democrat was one of our Senators. The other was Cliff Hansen, a rancher from Teton County when Teton County still had real ranches, and a Republican, was our other Senator. Stan Hathaway, a Republican Episcopalian at the time, who later became Secretary of the Interior and a Catholic, was our Governor.
Yep, that's right. We had more Democrats in Congress than Republicans. Being called a "Democrat" wasn't a slur.
In the 1980s, a very conservative and extremely religious Wyoming politician who was LDS attempted to have a bill passed targeting pornography sales. He was widely lampooned. HE had not, however campaigned on his faith, even though it obviously had informed his legislative effort.
I can't recall, until Foster Friess run for Governor in 2018, any Wyoming politician making their faith central to their campaign. If you knew much about candidates, you often knew what their faith was, but there was never anyone who boldly claimed "I'm a Christian" as a reason to vote for them. People probably would have been offended if they had, and of course Wyoming was and is the least religious state in the Union.
Something that did happen in that time frame was the arrival of the new Evangelical churches. I pass one every day on my way to work, and two gigantic ones have been built. I know very little about the one that I pass, which proclaims itself to be an "Evangelical Free Church", thereby proclaiming a denomination without realizing that its done so, and even less about the two gigantic ones, other than that one has a huge following, including members who are openly living in sin or violating Christ's injunction about divorce and remarriage.
With their arrival, and the campaign of Freiss, who wasn't from here and was never of here, and the evolution in national politics, we now see Evangelical proclamations thickly made, but with the adherence to the message of Christ thinly understood. One Natrona County legislature, newly imported from Illinois, Jeanette Ward, proclaimed her Christianity while asserting in the legislature that we are in fact not our brother's keeper. Numerous politicians in the hinterland have claimed that the Constitution is divinely inspired, a minority Protestant and minority LDS view that seemingly has wide acceptance in the populist right. A candidate in this district proclaimed his Christianity, and his wife, in his support did the same in a mailer, while making statements that are outright lies.
Now someone approached him and said, “Teacher, what good must I do to gain eternal life?”He answered him, “Why do you ask me about the good? There is only One who is good. If you wish to enter into life, keep the commandments.” He asked him, “Which ones?” And Jesus replied, “ ‘You shall not kill; you shall not commit adultery; you shall not steal; you shall not bear false witness; honor your father and your mother’; and ‘you shall love your neighbor as yourself.’”
The young man said to him, “All of these I have observed. What do I still lack?”
Jesus said to him, “If you wish to be perfect, go, sell what you have and give to [the] poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.” When the young man heard this statement, he went away sad, for he had many possessions.
Then Jesus said to his disciples, “Amen, I say to you, it will be hard for one who is rich to enter the kingdom of heaven. Again I say to you, it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for one who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.”
Matthew Chapter 19.
We are all familiar, of course, with the uncomfortable comment from Christ that its harder for a rich man to enter the Kingdom than it is for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle. This statement is so disquieting that one entire branch of Christianity, the heath and wealth gospel group, has dispensed entirely with focusing on it. They aren't alone, however. I heard plenty of homilies in the 70s and 80s, probably the 90s, from Priets who discussed "spiritual poverty".
I don't hear that much anymore from Apostolic Christians, whose clerics have become increasingly more orthodox.
And I think the warming is real. Vast wealth corrupts. You only have to look at the impact of the vastly wealthy to realize that, whether it be Elon Musk or Donald Trump and their personal morals.
People who look at Trump and see him as a devout Christians are fools.
But then, a lot of American Christians are Christian Light.
How does this relate here?
Well, in a culture loudly proclaiming itself to be Christian, that of the American political right, we see an awful lot of people whose adherence to the basic tenants of the Gospel are absent. That's why one right wing commentator could seriously maintain the Hawk Tuah Girl was exhibiting a conservative value (pleasuring her man, she stated), rather than seeing her for what she is, a sad example of a person whose become debased. Whole sectors, however, of the far right have become debased in various degrees, which is not to say that the left is a beacon of moral purity.
Seeing either party as a Christian one is foolish.
Christians are indistinguishable from other men either by nationality, language or customs. They do not inhabit separate cities of their own, or speak a strange dialect, or follow some outlandish way of life. Their teaching is not based upon reveries inspired by the curiosity of men. Unlike some other people, they champion no purely human doctrine. With regard to dress, food and manner of life in general, they follow the customs of whatever city they happen to be living in, whether it is Greek or foreign.
And yet there is something extraordinary about their lives. They live in their own countries as though they were only passing through. They play their full role as citizens, but labor under all the disabilities of aliens. Any country can be their homeland, but for them their homeland, wherever it may be, is a foreign country. Like others, they marry and have children, but they do not expose them. They share their meals, but not their wives.
They live in the flesh, but they are not governed by the desires of the flesh. They pass their days upon earth, but they are citizens of heaven. Obedient to the laws, they yet live on a level that transcends the law. Christians love all men, but all men persecute them. Condemned because they are not understood, they are put to death, but raised to life again. They live in poverty, but enrich many; they are totally destitute, but possess an abundance of everything. They suffer dishonor, but that is their glory. They are defamed, but vindicated. A blessing is their answer to abuse, deference their response to insult. For the good they do they receive the punishment of malefactors, but even then they, rejoice, as though receiving the gift of life. They are attacked by the Jews as aliens, they are persecuted by the Greeks, yet no one can explain the reason for this hatred.
To speak in general terms, we may say that the Christian is to the world what the soul is to the body. As the soul is present in every part of the body, while remaining distinct from it, so Christians are found in all the cities of the world, but cannot be identified with the world. As the visible body contains the invisible soul, so Christians are seen living in the world, but their religious life remains unseen. The body hates the soul and wars against it, not because of any injury the soul has done it, but because of the restriction the soul places on its pleasures. Similarly, the world hates the Christians, not because they have done it any wrong, but because they are opposed to its enjoyments.
Christians love those who hate them just as the soul loves the body and all its members despite the body's hatred. It is by the soul, enclosed within the body, that the body is held together, and similarly, it is by the Christians, detained in the world as in a prison, that the world is held together. The soul, though immortal, has a mortal dwelling place; and Christians also live for a time amidst perishable things, while awaiting the freedom from change and decay that will be theirs in heaven. As the soul benefits from the deprivation of food and drink, so Christians flourish under persecution. Such is the Christian’s lofty and divinely appointed function, from which he is not permitted to excuse himself."
From a letter to Diognetus (Nn. 5-6; Funk, 397-401)
I'm fearful of what this election holds in more ways than one. One thing I'm afraid of is that the co-opting of Christianity by the Trumpists will harm it. The only really Christian party in the race is the American Solidarity Party, but it doesn't stand a chance. Some elements of Christian Nationalism are actually deeply Christian, with an understanding of Apostolic Christianity, whereas some parts are American Protestant, which have an erroneous view of the end of the Apostolic Age. They are not compatible. The deeper National Conservatives, for that matter, are an insurgent group within the far right seeking to slip in, take over, and effect a sort of social revolution. They saw J. D. Trump as their Trojan Horse, but thought they were through the gates of Troy too early.
Real Christian movements do rise up periodically. But that's what they do, rise up. They aren't imposed down. Some of that has already occured, with the far left reacting strongly to it. But that doesn't seem to be appreciated here.
I don't see a lot of really deep Christianity out there in the political field. If I did, frankly, quite a few of those things that the Democratic left have proclaimed as weird would be practiced, which may be why J. D. Vance, for all the negative attention he's attracted, is the only really honest figure in the Trump camp. He does believe the traditional things he says, I'm quite sure, currently regarded as "weird" or not. But then, like the members of the New Apostolic Reformation, which he's not party of, he's seemingly willing to make common cause with lies in order to try to advance what he regards as a greater good, something that's always tactically iffy and morally reprehensible.
Satan, we're told, is the father of lies. Lying, we're told, is a sin. In Catholic theology at least, it can be a mortal sin, which has not deterred at least one Catholica elected official here from campaigning on a whopper during the last election. Lying always has a bad end.
Lying will have some sort of existential bad end for those now doing it. Lying to yourself does as well. You can't really be "a devout Christian" with multiple marriages, or when shacked up, or when favoring your career over others or over nature, or while prioritizing wealth,
And if you are seeking to transform society, you have to give society a reason to transform. Simply declaring that you are on the side of God doesn't really do that.
By The logo may be obtained from Socialist International., Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=5214135
I don't really think J. D. Vance is weird.
I think Trump is pretty weird. I'm concerned that he has accelerating dementia. His press conference the other day was jammed packed with gibberish. A rational GOP, which doesn't exist, would at this point show him the door. Rather than a rational GOP, however, we have the Populist masses and a collection of forces with agendas, such as the National Conservatives, Christian Nationalist, etc. Some adore his meandering gibberish as they are unthinking or actually quit thinking about what's going on years ago. Some tolerate it as they know that when he's in office they can basically shove him aside and run the bus. Some, I strongly suspect, figure that if elected, which they were planning on, age and the 25th Amendment or a pine box will take him out the back door of the White House and put them in the leather upholstered executive chair.
I think J. D. Vance was in that last category. By supporting Donald Trump, I suspect, he and people in his obit, were figuring that that Trump would play the same role that the Ghost plays in Hamlet. . . departed and out of power.
If that's what Vance was figuring, that's not weird. It's probably correct in terms of the expiration of Trump's mortal coil or his cerebrum. The latter would be, of course, slightly more problematic than the former, but in a pinch, would likely work just as well, save for some disruptions from the Maga Militia crowd.
Anyhow, Trump is getting weird, but neither Harris or Vance are weird. What they are is poles apart in existential views, and they both really have one.
Harris is a politician of the political left, which has gone increasingly leftward since the mid 20th Century. Indeed, it's final descent into the far left is what sparked, in part, the populist counter reaction. It's adopted lifestyle politics with lifestyle's that were regarded as "weird" until fairly recently, and frankly many still are.
At the same time, the full bore assault on culture that commenced in the 1960s was hugely successful, normalizing behaviors regarded as immoral at the time, but which now are not. That's why, in no small part, people are proclaiming J. D. Vance as "weird". As I noted here earlier, Vance isn't of the populist line of thought, he's an actual conservative, but a National Conservative of the Rusty Reno, Patrick Dineen, Kevin Roberts, type. Vance expresses cultural views that have in varying degrees been under attack since the 1960s, but which have remained all along in some sectors of the culture and are attempting to stage a comeback, or even more, gain entry and acceptance for the first time.
That race, if it were on the surface, would be a really interesting existential one.
Chance are high that the country isn't really comfortable with it. Certainly the unwashed populists who see nothing inconsistent about proclaiming themselves Christian while admiring the Hailey Welch or Sydney Sweeny wouldn't really be all that comfortable with the views of Roberts and Vance. But for that matter, a lot of suburban moms or the now lauded/condemned "cat ladies" are probably not all that comfortable with the views of Sanders and Harris.
That contrast would serve a purpose in and of itself.
The race, however, we actually have is a national embarrassment due to the figure leading the GOP.
Trump is “like a couch, bears the impression of the last person who sat on him.”
Ann Coulter, far right commentator, and former supporter of Donald Trump.
The entire time that Donald Trump has been in the news as a political figure, I've had a hard time figuring him out. I can tell what most political figures stand for, claim to stand for, and whether they are sincere or not.
And they are certainly not all sincere, as the gaggle of Republican office holders who remain from the pre Trump days now buying all in to Trump demonstrate.
But Trump's hard to figure.
I think I've come to the conclusion that Ann Coulter, whom I generally really dislike, is quite correct. As Coulter, no matter what you think of her, actually believes what she says, she grew disgusted with Trump really early, determining basically that he was a phony.
I can't tell if Trump is, or was, even smart.1
That's hard to judge at a distance. Two Republican Presidents who were really smart were often sort of assumed, while in office, not to be. One was Ronald Reagan, and the other was Dwight Eisenhower, both of whom had perfected the art of acting like they weren't all that sharp in order to use it to their advantage.
Eisenhower, as one of his biographers Carlo D'Este noted, had learned in the Army that it was often better to not appear to be the sharpest tool in the shed but to hang back, taking in the opinions, and trust, of others. By the Second World War it was obvious to all that he was in fact extremely intelligence, but part of the manifestation of that was that once he was President, he reengaged the act to his advantage. If you ever hear a recording of Eisenhower in a private speech, such as when Kennedy called him up to get advice on Indo China, it's a shock. He doesn't even seem like the same person.
That same shock has been noted by people who spoke to Reagan privately. Reagan perfected as an actor an "ah shucks" one of the crowd personality, but in reality he was extremely intelligent. People who came in to discuss a topic with him were often stunned that his grasp of it was vast, while the public, particularly the American left, wondered if he was a doddling old fool right from the onset. His mental decline by the end of his second term was obvious, but it wasn't there from the first. It served him well, however, as it was possible to believe on something like the Iran Contra Scandal that maybe he didn't really know it was happening.
Trump, on the other hand, seems to me to genuinely not have all that sharp of an intellect. That would explain some of the outrageous and stupid things he says, of which there are a plethora. Being a wealthy man his entire life, he's gotten through life being able to say stupid outrageous things and not draw rebuke from those around him, and in turn be encouraged in his own belief that he's really smart. Just as the political and economic class of current China tends to assume that everyone at the top is really smart, as they've been weeded out that way, Trump probably believes he's a genius as everyone has always told him he's a real smart guy.
If Trump doesn't have a great intellect, what he does have is another type of intelligence. He's a good salesman.
I wouldn't say a great salesman, as he's had a lot of business failures and his enterprises have been bankrupt more than once. But he is a good salesman. He knows how to sell. And like good salesmen, he can sell what he's selling. He doesn't have to believe it.
Over the years I've known several people who were good salesmen, some of whom were really intelligent. Their hallmark, however, was the ability to sell. They'd often move between one sales job and another. If you know them well enough, you'd sometimes find that they really didn't have all that great of interest in what they were selling, whether that was cars, houses, basketballs or whatever. Sometimes they personally had a massive disinterest in the product they were selling. It was the selling that they were interested in.
I strongly suspect Trump is like that.
At some point, for some reason, Trump decided to enter politics and his selling sense was that rank and file rust belt and lower middle class Americans were unhappy and disgruntled, with some very good reasons existing for that, so he sold them what basically amounted to snake oil in 2016. Once in, he needed people to run the government and they came in and did it, defeating his wildest and most dangerous ideas. People didn't buy the snake oil in sufficient quantities in 2020, so now he's turned to a new improved product.
Populist Outrage.
Populist Outrage is a dangerous cocktail in the US right now. It includes everything from the New Apostolic Movement to the Hawk Tuah Girl, all one brew. You literally have Mike Johnson quoting the Bible and some TikTok Tart describing spitting on male sex organs all in the same group. But snake oil cures what ails ya, and people are buying.
J. D. Vance, on the other hand, is the real deal.
I really haven't followed Vance until now and while his book Hillbilly Elegy sounded interesting when it was released, I didn't read it and I'm not going to. When it was released, what the general reaction was, wat that it was a well written elegy to his roots, and to the hillbilly class, now in desperate straits, from somebody who had rising up out of that class into affluence. That might in part be right, but like McMurtry's contemporarily set novels, they were not only reflecting the people he came out of, but were also a more intellectual reflection of their virtues in spite of their vices.
Vance is genuinely fairly remarkable. He came out of a real blue collar, hillbilly background and became very well educated. What was missed is that as he moved along, through education and influence, he became something other than what American liberals simply assume that education does. He didn't become an educated liberal, looking back on his drug fueled hillbilly ancestors, but rather became an educated National Conservative intellectual.
He's not a populist, and isn't even ballpark close to one.
For good or ill, he's more in the nature of a Beloocian. I.e, if you brought Hilaire Belloc back today, made him an American, and had him run for office, you'd get J.D. Vance.
That's why he comes across to many on the left, and not a few on the right, as "weird". All along he's been saying the things that National Conservatives and Illiberal Democrats have been saying. If he sounds like a Christian Nationalist, that's because all National Conservatives are Christian Nationalist, even if they aren't observant, whereas not all Christian Nationalist are National Conservatives by any means.
Vance has a lot more in common with Viktor Orbán,, Giorgia Meloni, Philippe Pétain, and Francisco Franco than he does with Trump or Mike Johnson.
More this than this.
We've dealt with National Conservatism here before, but we didn't address is how smart they've really been since 2020. Unlike the goofball hordes that go to Trump rallies wearing absurd red, white and blue costumes. It's actually fairly deep, and it early on set out it goals in print, as we've noted here:
Its founder in American politics, if not its overall founder, is Patrick Deneen and its backers can be found in the pages of R. R. Reno's First Things. Quite frankly, that puts it in the intellectual heavyweight category. It's issued a manifesto, and the signers of it include some well known conservative thinkers. Deneen has issued at least two well regarded books on the topic. Its central thesis is that liberalism has failed, in part due to its success, and is now consuming itself, and the entire culture of the West with it, by a frenzied orgy of libertine, mostly sexually focused, individualism. What needs to be done, it holds, is the preservation of democracy, but Illiberal Democracy, with the boundary lines of the culture externally enforced. It sets its manifesto out as follows:
1. National Independence. We wish to see a world of independent nations. Each nation capable of self-government should chart its own course in accordance with its own particular constitutional, linguistic, and religious inheritance. Each has a right to maintain its own borders and conduct policies that will benefit its own people. We endorse a policy of rearmament by independent self-governing nations and of defensive alliances whose purpose is to deter imperialist aggression.
2. Rejection of Imperialism and Globalism. We support a system of free cooperation and competition among nation-states, working together through trade treaties, defensive alliances, and other common projects that respect the independence of their members. But we oppose transferring the authority of elected governments to transnational or supranational bodies—a trend that pretends to high moral legitimacy even as it weakens representative government, sows public alienation and distrust, and strengthens the influence of autocratic regimes. Accordingly, we reject imperialism in its various contemporary forms: We condemn the imperialism of China, Russia, and other authoritarian powers. But we also oppose the liberal imperialism of the last generation, which sought to gain power, influence, and wealth by dominating other nations and trying to remake them in its own image.
3. National Government. The independent nation-state is instituted to establish a more perfect union among the diverse communities, parties, and regions of a given nation, to provide for their common defense and justice among them, and to secure the general welfare and the blessings of liberty for this time and for future generations. We believe in a strong but limited state, subject to constitutional restraints and a division of powers. We recommend a drastic reduction in the scope of the administrative state and the policy-making judiciary that displace legislatures representing the full range of a nation’s interests and values. We recommend the federalist principle, which prescribes a delegation of power to the respective states or subdivisions of the nation so as to allow greater variation, experimentation, and freedom. However, in those states or subdivisions in which law and justice have been manifestly corrupted, or in which lawlessness, immorality, and dissolution reign, national government must intervene energetically to restore order.
4. God and Public Religion. No nation can long endure without humility and gratitude before God and fear of his judgment that are found in authentic religious tradition. For millennia, the Bible has been our surest guide, nourishing a fitting orientation toward God, to the political traditions of the nation, to public morals, to the defense of the weak, and to the recognition of things rightly regarded as sacred. The Bible should be read as the first among the sources of a shared Western civilization in schools and universities, and as the rightful inheritance of believers and non-believers alike. Where a Christian majority exists, public life should be rooted in Christianity and its moral vision, which should be honored by the state and other institutions both public and private. At the same time, Jews and other religious minorities are to be protected in the observance of their own traditions, in the free governance of their communal institutions, and in all matters pertaining to the rearing and education of their children. Adult individuals should be protected from religious or ideological coercion in their private lives and in their homes.
5. The Rule of Law. We believe in the rule of law. By this we mean that citizens and foreigners alike, and both the government and the people, must accept and abide by the laws of the nation. In America, this means accepting and living in accordance with the Constitution of 1787, the amendments to it, duly enacted statutory law, and the great common law inheritance. All agree that the repair and improvement of national legal traditions and institutions is at times necessary. But necessary change must take place through the law. This is how we preserve our national traditions and our nation itself. Rioting, looting, and other unacceptable public disorder should be swiftly put to an end.
6. Free Enterprise. We believe that an economy based on private property and free enterprise is best suited to promoting the prosperity of the nation and accords with traditions of individual liberty that are central to the Anglo-American political tradition. We reject the socialist principle, which supposes that the economic activity of the nation can be conducted in accordance with a rational plan dictated by the state. But the free market cannot be absolute. Economic policy must serve the general welfare of the nation. Today, globalized markets allow hostile foreign powers to despoil America and other countries of their manufacturing capacity, weakening them economically and dividing them internally. At the same time, trans-national corporations showing little loyalty to any nation damage public life by censoring political speech, flooding the country with dangerous and addictive substances and pornography, and promoting obsessive, destructive personal habits. A prudent national economic policy should promote free enterprise, but it must also mitigate threats to the national interest, aggressively pursue economic independence from hostile powers, nurture industries crucial for national defense, and restore and upgrade manufacturing capabilities critical to the public welfare. Crony capitalism, the selective promotion of corporate profit-taking by organs of state power, should be energetically exposed and opposed.
7. Public Research. At a time when China is rapidly overtaking America and the Western nations in fields crucial for security and defense, a Cold War-type program modeled on DARPA, the “moon-shot,” and SDI is needed to focus large-scale public resources on scientific and technological research with military applications, on restoring and upgrading national manufacturing capacity, and on education in the physical sciences and engineering. On the other hand, we recognize that most universities are at this point partisan and globalist in orientation and vehemently opposed to nationalist and conservative ideas. Such institutions do not deserve taxpayer support unless they rededicate themselves to the national interest. Education policy should serve manifest national needs.
8. Family and Children. We believe the traditional family is the source of society’s virtues and deserves greater support from public policy. The traditional family, built around a lifelong bond between a man and a woman, and on a lifelong bond between parents and children, is the foundation of all other achievements of our civilization. The disintegration of the family, including a marked decline in marriage and childbirth, gravely threatens the wellbeing and sustainability of democratic nations. Among the causes are an unconstrained individualism that regards children as a burden, while encouraging ever more radical forms of sexual license and experimentation as an alternative to the responsibilities of family and congregational life. Economic and cultural conditions that foster stable family and congregational life and child-raising are priorities of the highest order.
9. Immigration. Immigration has made immense contributions to the strength and prosperity of Western nations. But today’s penchant for uncontrolled and unassimilated immigration has become a source of weakness and instability, not strength and dynamism, threatening internal dissension and ultimately dissolution of the political community. We note that Western nations have benefited from both liberal and restrictive immigration policies at various times. We call for much more restrictive policies until these countries summon the wit to establish more balanced, productive, and assimilationist policies. Restrictive policies may sometimes include a moratorium on immigration.
10. Race. We believe that all men are created in the image of God and that public policy should reflect that fact. No person’s worth or loyalties can be judged by the shape of his features, the color of his skin, or the results of a lab test. The history of racialist ideology and oppression and its ongoing consequences require us to emphasize this truth. We condemn the use of state and private institutions to discriminate and divide us against one another on the basis of race. The cultural sympathies encouraged by a decent nationalism offer a sound basis for conciliation and unity among diverse communities. The nationalism we espouse respects, and indeed combines, the unique needs of particular minority communities and the common good of the nation as a whole.
And its been further developed since then, although Dinneen2 and Reno3do not seem to be leading the charge any longer, nor is Rod Dreher4, who for a while just urged societal retreat. Now Kevin Roberts5. , head of the Heritage Society, is, and he's taking the movement into a concrete action oriented direction. He's written a book, Dawn's Early Light, on that very topic. It's Amazon write up states:
America is on the brink of destruction. A corrupt and incompetent elite has uprooted our way of life and is brainwashing the next generation. Many so-called conservatives are as culpable as their progressive counterparts.
In this ambitious and provocative book, Heritage Foundation President Dr. Kevin Roberts announces the arrival of a New Conservative Movement. His message is simple: Global elites — your time is up.
Dawn’s Early Light blazes a promising path for the American people to take back their country. Chapter by chapter, it identifies institutions that conservatives need to build, others that we need to take back, and more still that are too corrupt to save: Ivy League colleges, the FBI, the New York Times, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, the Department of Education, BlackRock, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the National Endowment for Democracy, to name a few.
All these need to be dissolved if the American way of life is to be passed down to future generations.
The good news is, we’re going to win.
The Swamp is so drunk on power that the elites don't realize the ground is moving beneath their feet. In Washington, they wear foreign flags on their lapels, but they don’t protect our border. They wave around the Constitution, but they don’t respect its wisdom. They appeal to Reagan, but Reagan would never put up with this non-sense.
Their decadence will be their downfall. A new day is here.
The forward to that book was written by one J. D. Vance.
That, National Conservatism in its most proactive form, is what J. D. Vance stands for.
Vance's biography really demonstrates this. He didn't go from hillbilly poverty to populism. He went from hillbilly poverty into the Marine Corps, and then into university where he met budding National Conservative type intellects and developed into one. Along the way somewhere, he converted into Catholicism, which is the oldest and original Christian religion, and which has a deep sense of the existential and a profound tradition. While its far from the case that all Catholics are National Conservatives or Illiberal Democrats, or anything like that, it is fair to say that observant Catholics are horrified by the cultural decay of the west and its unliking from an existential sense in a manner and way which protestants, including those in the New Apostolic Movement, are not, which is not to say that they are not.6
So what's with all this "cat lady" and pro natalism stuff?
It ties right into the overall world view of much of National Conservatism in its recent most radical form, and indeed in some ways is an evolution away from its original intellectual corps.
It's an undercurrent in conservatism, but there's definitely a strain of it which is genuinely intellectual that emphasizes, perhaps hyper emphasizes, traditionalism in a very definite sense, including traditional male and female roles to an extremely strong degree. They're not romanticizing the 1950s, or indeed, romanticizing anything at all, but looking back, way back, to a time and way of thinking in which this was not questioned in any fashion. Indeed, in the corners of the Internet where they hang out, you can find them discussing the social norms of the Middle Ages in comparison to those of the present, and they're serious about it. I need not and indeed don't have the bandwidth to go into all of that now, but it touches on a lot of topics, not all of which I'm not completely sympathetic to.
So is this "weird"?
Well at least some of Project 2025 is downright weird, as for example the proposal to create "Freedom Cities" in "unoccupied" portions of the public domain in the west. That is, well, Bat Shit Crazy. And its hard not to listen to the Dr. Taylor Marshall7and the Simone and Malcolm Collins8of the world and not thing, "well, that's weird".
Other stuff is more in the nature, however, of Bellocian Traditionalism and by any measure, it's certainly no weirder than the tranvestite genital organ obsessed "woke" view of much of the left, which indeed is deeply weird. And here's where, in fact, much of instinctive populism and National Conservatism meets. The MAGA crowed don't have the faintest clue who Hilaire Belloc is, or even grasp that it doesn't matter what your local Evangelical Free pastor said, divorce and remarriage is barred by Christianity, but they do grasp that in the natural order of things the Hawk Tuah girl may be gross, but she's not gender confused and something odd is going on here that needs to be addressed.
Put another way, some if it is scary James Watt Weird 9 while some of it probably seems "weird" to you if the Mantilla Girls seem weird. If they don't, it may make you uncomfortable depending on where on the social conservatism scale you fit, but its not really weird. The fact that much of modern America and all of the left find it all weird is because of how far to the left hit needle has moved in the past forty years.
Trump, on the other hand, can be really weird.
The National Conservatives, unlike the populists, are pretty deep, and pretty smart. Very smart, in fact. And they've realized what the red, white and blue populist crowds have not. Trump doesn't' really stand for anything.
They do.
They also know that they can't get a National Conservative elected into the Oval Office.
But what they've gambled on was two things. One was that the populists are too dim, and Trump too lazy, to draft his own agenda. They did that for him, through Project 2025. They bet they can get a start on a National Conservative revolution, and that's how the chief of the Heritage Foundation has put it, through a lazy Trump.
They've placed a bet on a certainty, that being that Trump won't last an entire four year term. He'll die within the next four years, assuming that old age and advancing intellectual decline doesn't get him before the election, and they gambled that they could get a Chief Executive into office who was one of their own through the Vice Presidency.
That figure is J. D. Vance. And up until Joe Biden dropping out of the race, it looked like the bet was going to pay off for sure.
Vance has been willing to play the part, while never disavowing what he's always stood for. He's sort of a National Conservatives Manchurian Candidate, with the National Conservatives waiting for age, disease, or senility to take out a sitting Donald Trump. Trump, too shallow to really bother to care about it, was willing to go along with a seemingly fawning J. D. Vance, probably never realizing that Trump's merely a temporary vehicle for them to get into office, and start their revolution.
Now those plans seem to have been disrupted, maybe.
The problem, in part, is that they wrote a 900 page book.
Project 2025 was designed to be, as noted, a blueprint for a lazy President. But once you publish a book, people start reading it, and they start asking questions about the people who wrote it. Particularly if one of those authors has written a second book about his pending National Conservative revolution.
Now, when people are distracted due to mental fog and don't touch it, that's not much of a problem. But once they do, if any of it is outside of the mainstream at all, and a lot of Project 2025 is, and if any of it is weird, which some of Project 2025 is, attention will start being paid in spades.
And that may very well spell the end of there being a chance that National Conservatives shall remake the nation via an electoral revolution. Too confident in themselves, they seem to have shot their bolt. Americans are now uncomfortable with the direction they want to take the country, which is in a direction the country's never really gone before.
Footnotes
* This thread was started several days ago, and its really worth noting that a lot of things have developed since I first started posting it, including a huge amount of attention on J. D. Vance, and discontent in Republican ranks regarding him.
**It'll be hard not to note all the references to various Catholic figures in National Conservatism, which may lead to the impression that National Conservatism is a Catholic thing. It isn't. Indeed, one of the primary figures in Illiberal Democracy is Viktor Orban, who is a Presbyterian.
What's probably notable here is that the deep intellectual history of Catholicism and Apostolic Christianity in general has lead some of those who realize how shallow modern Western Culture is into the Church. That doesn't make it a movement of the Church, and as some Catholics have feared, these movements pose a risk to Catholicism at least in the US, where it is a minority religion. Indeed, it's likely that some members of the New Apostolic Movement, thin theology that they have, do not even recognize Catholics as Christians when in fact they are the first Christians.
1. I'm hugely reluctant to opine on somebody's intelligence remotely, but at this point, it's hard not to. Some of the things Trump says are amazingly dumb. So much so that it raises a lot of questions regarding a wide variety of topics.
It's notable that Trump fairly frequently brings up his own intelligence, which is something intelligent people rarely do.
2. Patrick Dineen is a professor at Notre Dame who has written on Illiberal Democracy and National Conservatism favorably.
3. R. R. Reno is the editor of First Things, and a convert from the Episcopal Church to Catholicism. He's also on the Dineen end of things, but not as pessimistic about democracy as Dineen is.
4. Rod Dreher is a writer who wrote The Byzantine Option. He's moved to Hungary. Dreher was a Protestant who converted to Catholicism, and then converted to Orthodoxy.
5. Kevin Roberts is the main intellectual figure behind The Heritage Foundation and has a Wyoming connection, in that he was at one time the head of Wyoming Catholic College.
6. It's worth noting here that members of this movement and those on the fringe of it, sometimes the very fringe, have seen some notable conversions to Catholicism in recent years. These include Candace Owens, Tammy Roberts Peterson, wife of psychologist and author Jordan Peterson, and Eva Vlaardingerbroek.
7. Dr. Taylor Marshall, also a convert to Catholicism, is an extreme traditionalist who has come to engage in conspiracy theories about the Vatican. He's on the fringe right.
8. Simone and Malcolm Collins come across as genuinely weird. Their leaders of a pro natalist organization with Simone having indicated that she intends to have children until, basically, her uterus blows out. The Collins are atheist and frankly have somewhat of a scary Social Darwinist view of the world. They therefore fit into the really weird side of pro natalism, where Elon Musk can also be found, who have an incorrect feeling that but for massive procreation, society is going to fail, which is completely incorrect.
Showing, I suppose, how old school Neanderthal I am, Michael Collins looks so anemic, and Simone Collins so unattractive, that the thought of their fitting the bill in a basic way to create a lot of children is surprising.
Watt was Reagan's Secretary of the Interior and basically believed that as Christ was returning very soon, there was no reason not to use natural resources with a mind towards conserving them.
Liberals and Conservatives have more in common, than they do to the other categories noted above
Populists and Progressives share many common traits.
Confused?
We hope to clear that up. But let's start with this. A lot of commentary, particularly of an uneducated type, keeps referring to Donald Trump as "a conservative", and sadly, a lot of true conservatives fall right into line with that fallacy. Populists right now continually refer to themselves as conservatives, which is because they don't know what conservatives actually are.
They'd likely be horrified if they did. And indeed, occasionally they are.
Donald Trump is not a conservative. He's a populist, or is appealing to them. There's a world of difference. People who figure he stands for conservative values are deeply misguided on this point. He doesn't. But in the right/left thin gruel political world we live in, it's slightly understandable how people could be misguided on this linguistic point.
But it's wrong.
Let's take a look at it. More particularly, what are conservatives, liberals, populists and progressives, the four main branches of what we have around in terms of political philosophies right now.
Let's start with this. What is a conservative?
What is a conservative?
Logo of the British Conservative Party.
At the core of their Weltanschauung, conservatives believe that human nature is essentially fixed, and that it's been fixed by an existential external. Religious conservatives believe that the existential external is God, but not all conservatives are religious conservatives.1 Those who aren't, like George F. Will for example, would hold that the existential external is essentially our evolution.2
Because this is the core belief of conservatives, conservatives are strong advocates for the application of Chesterton's Fence, which holds:
This is why people tend to think that what conservatives stand for is not changing anything. This isn't really true, but they are very cautious about it. Conservatives do not have any real faith that human nature is set to improve, and therefore have a large degree of caution regarding the changing of anything that's substantial until it can be determined why that thing came into existence in the first place.
And they believe that certain things, human nature, as noted, is essentially unchanging. Given this, they hope we all do as well as we can, but they don't have any view of remaking humanity or creating Heaven on Earth.
I'll note, I am, on most things, a conservative.
In most societies overall, except in cultures that are deeply conservative, conservatives are a minority. They may be a large minority, but they are usually a minority. The reason for this is that conservatism is, by its nature, somewhat pessimistic. Conservatives hope things get better, but more than that hope they don't get worse, and often hope that the better is a return to some status quo ante that was less messed up.
Conservatives are nearly always a minority, which is one of their weaknesses, but they are also generally intellectual by nature, which is part of the reason that they are a minority and are comfortable being one. Conservatives suspect most people instinctively agree with them, but don't know why, and they're comfortable with that as a rule.
A strength and weakness of conservatives is that they are reluctant to change things until its proven they need to be. Conservatives believe that Chesterton's fence should have a pretty strong latch, or maybe even a keyed lock on it. That's also a strength, however, as they're much less prone than others to whims of any kind.
Because conservatives do not feel that humans are in control of their natures, conservatives tend to be somewhat pessimistic as a rule, but they also don't except a lot of humankind in general. They generally feel that people are left best to their own devices, but they are not anarchists or libertarians, as they believe that order is necessary and a good.
To give a few examples of recent, more or less, conservatives, we have the following. Probably, William F. Buckley is the supreme example of a post World War Two conservatives. George F. Will would be a close second. George Weigel, must less well known, would be a third.
In terms of politicians, we have, currently, Mitt Romney. Ronald Reagan was a conservative, but imperfectly so. Margaret Thatcher was another. Herbert Hoover, who was a much better President than he is credited as being, was a conservative. Winston Churchill was a conservative, as was his nemesis Éamon de Valera.
To look at some illustrative issues, in the abstract, as politicians and individuals both vary and compromise, we'll take some more or less contemporary examples, and carry them through.
Abortion. Conservatives oppose abortion as they believe in an external, and therefore don't have the right to destroy a human life without just cause. This view, I'd note, is not limited to religious conservatives.
Death Penalty. As a rule, conservatives have tended to support the death penalty, as it's always existed. They are clearly capable of having their minds changed on the topic, slowly.
Gender issues. I'm lumping this all into one category, but conservatives as a rule feel that homosexuality is a person's own business, but it shouldn't change institutions like marriage. They don't believe transgenderism is real, as the science isn't there.
Climate Change. Early on a lot of conservatives were skeptical on climate change, but few would outright dismiss it. Many were cautious in accepting it, however, consistent with their general reluctance to immediately accept something new.
Economics. As a rule, conservatives tend to be in favor of a free market, with as little government interference in the economy as possible, basically taking the view that the best economy is one in which people get to decide things for themselves and that overall, the economy is really too complicated for human micromanaging.
Immigration. Conservatives have been for restricted immigration, believing that excessive rates damage the economy, impact national culture too rapidly, and impact sovereignty.
Defense. Conservatives are for a strong national defense, as they support sovereignty. Prior to World War Two they were opposed to that extending overseas, but since the war they've applied the lessons of history and are very much in favor of extending defense beyond the seas, if not necessarily always intervening in foreign wars. Two give to contemporary examples of this:
The Russo Ukrainian War. Conservatives are for supplying aid, and a lot of it, to Ukraine as Russia is a demonstrated enemy of the West and if not addressed will have to be at some point.
Hamas Israeli War. While conservatives were actually very reluctant to support Israel in 1948 when it became independent, they've come around to it as it's the only substantial democracy in the Middle East and, accordingly, they feel it should be given the ability to defend itself.
William F. Buckley, who intellectually defined the modern conservative movement.
What, then, are liberals?
What is a liberal?
Logo of the former British Liberal Party, with its color expressing its middle of the road nature.
We don't hear much about liberals anymore. Progressives, which we will deal with below, have sort of taken over the political "left" in recent years, and liberalism, in a modern context, has weakened, which is a tragedy.
Liberals actually hold the essential core value that conservatives do, that being that there is an existential external that has set human nature. They believe, however, that human nature can be improved, and that it requires collective effort to do that. Unlike conservatives, who hope we all do as well as we can, liberals feel that we can all be made better. That's the real difference between traditional conservatives and traditional liberals.
Liberals see the world much the way that conservatives do, but have a very optimistic view of human nature and are certain that it can be improved. The early GOP was a liberal party and therefore, when you consider that, Lincoln appealing to "the better angels of our mercy" makes a lot of sense. Conservatives would appeal to angels as well, but not "ours", and for help.
Because liberals believe that human nature can be improved, they see government, and the organs of government, as vehicles that can do it. Therefore, liberals have a lot of faith in the organs of government to basically drag the mass along into an improved state, as they see it.
Right now, however, real liberals and real conservatives are few and far between. That's because we have populists and progressives dominating the field.
In most societies, liberals are the majority. To some extent, that's because they are optimistic, and tend to believe they can make everything better than it currently is.
Looking at our issues, we have the following.
Abortion. Liberals generally support allowing abortion up to a certain number of weeks, although this isn't universally true. The intellectual underpinning of this is weak, but is based on the concept that by doing this they're supporting the rights of women.
Death Penalty. Liberals are pretty uniformly opposed to the death penalty, believing that it achieves no real purpose and is inherently barbaric.
Gender issues. Liberals, like conservatives, generally used to hold that homosexuality was a person's own matter, if they were subject to it. They've come to support regarding homosexuality as equating with heterosexuality in recent years on the belief that this improves the living standards of everyone.
Transgenderism is a new thing, but generally liberals lean towards supporting transgender "rights" on the concept that as it seems to occur, it must be natural, and society shouldn't hurt people who express it.
Climate Change. Liberals fully accept that this is occurring and is a grave crisis, and they want governmental action on it.
Economics. Contrary to what people like to imagine, conservatives and liberals really have very similar views of the economy. The difference is really at the margin in how much governmental action there should be in the economy, and what the tax rates are. If viewed from the abstract, however, tehir views are essentially the same.
Immigration. Liberals generally believe that all people are the same or can be the same, so they dismiss cultural issues regarding immigration. They are for controls, but having a desire to improve things for everyone, they're generally in support of a much higher immigration rate than conservatives.
Defense. Traditionally, contrary to what people like to imagine, liberals have been in favor of a strong defense and also have been quite interventionist. There are exceptions, but the "improve things for everyone" viewpoint resulted, throughout the 20th Century, in a much higher inclination by liberals to intervene in foreign wars than conservatives have had. Since Vietnam, this has been much less the case, however.
The Russo Ukrainian War. Liberals are very much in favor of aiding Ukraine for the same reason that conservatives are, and also as Ukraine leans towards the west in culture and values.
Hamas Israeli War. Most real liberals support aiding Israel, as they've always had a strong desire to support the Jewish state since the end of World War Two.
In terms, again, of recent examples, Robert Reich, who teeters on the edge of progressivism, is one. Bill Clinton was another. Nancy Pelosi is another example, as is Chuck Schumer. Going back a bit further, both John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson were liberals. Frankly, Richard Nixon was as well.
A controversial example would be Theodore Roosevelt. While his breakaway political party was The Progressives, he was a pretty far left political liberal, as was his cousin Franklin Roosevelt.
Franklin Roosevelt, arguably the most clearly Liberal of American Presidents.
What is a populist?
Emblem of the former Populist, or People's Party.
This has certainly been the Age of Populism.
Populists believe that the good is determined by the collective wisdom of the masses. So unlike conservatism and liberalism which believe that an existential external had defined what human nature is, populists believe that the collective common sense of the people defines that, and that's an existential collective internal.
Because populists believe that, it's a particularly shallow political theory and particularly subject to the storms of the time. Populist can be, and have been, on the radical "left" and the radical "right". Indeed, when Trump was coming up in 2016 so was Bernie Sanders, and they both appealed equally to populists. A lot of the same people who now worship Trump, worshiped Sanders.
Right now, people confuse populism with conservatism as populism in the US stands, as it often has in the past, for an Evangelical variant of the American Civil Religion. Protestant in its view, it basically holds a very shallow version of Christianity which is mostly focused on sex, and mostly focused on homosexual sex being bad. Beyond that, it longs, just as it had in the mid to late 20th Century in the South, for a mythic version of American history in which everyone supposedly did really well economically and there were no problems (no drugs, no alcoholics, no mentally ill, no violence, etc.).
Populism has been an occasionally strong current in the American political stream from time to time. There was, at the turn of the prior century, a Populist Party that existed from 1892 until 1909, and which we should note did very well in Wyoming's elections of the period. It was, we might note, regarded as a left wing party.
Populism is only popular in a society during times of extreme economic or social distress. Massively pessimistic in its outlook, Populist always have the belief that they are under siege and are therefore extremely given to conspiracy theories of all type. They are, accordingly, very easy to manipulate. They also tend to be given to ignorance, which plays into this, as they believe folk wisdom is the ultimate source of knowledge on everything. And what it says, is that they're swimming in the shallow end of the pool, quite frankly.
The strength of populists is mass. They tend to be numerous, when conditions give rise to them. They also tend to be extremely strong-willed in their beliefs, even fanatically so.
Indeed, that's a weakness.
More than any other group, populists are prone to raging hatred. As their beliefs arise from a collective mass, anyone contesting them is regarded as a lunatic enemy of the people. Populists are, therefore, highly prone to tribalism and fanaticism
An additional weakness is that they're highly prone to being led by others. In Weimar Germany, for example, populists sentiments were heavily reflected in the German Communist Party and the Nazi Party, with some people whipping back and forth between the two. Rank and file Nazis were essentially populists, even if the leaders were not. The same is true of rank and file Reds during the Russian Revolution and Russian Civil War, as well as with the Greens. Communism and Anarchy were mass movements as they were shallow, and made up of "common sense".
As this demonstrates, populists generally actually lack a philosophy, but don't realize it. They "sense" or "feel" rather than think, and therefore are easily led by those who can tap into that.
A good example of how populist can be easily manipulated into something extreme. We never "treated" viruses with soup, and we aren't treating them now with "communism". But the anti-scientific anti-vax movement has attracted populist with the concept of a pass that looked like this, that never existed.
Because of this populists are very easily led by other movements, when a savvy leader comes along and can manipulate them. And often, but not always, those leaders are quasi populists themselves. Both Lenin and Hitler were. Franco was not. Nor was Mussolini. All were able to lead the masses.
Turning to our set of issues, we have the following.
Abortion. This is actually hard to say as Populists vary on this to a fair degree. They all, right now, oppose abortion, but are prepared to compromise on some vague number of weeks if for no other reason that makes it easy.
Death Penalty. Populists are for it, as its always existed, and for its extension, as the people who get executed seem to be part of an evil "them".
Gender issues. Populists are very much opposed to homosexuality and transgenderism as they sense its not party of the collective norm. They share this view with Conservatives, but tend to be nasty and virulent about it, rather than thoughtful.
Climate Change. Populists just don't believe its real. The collective group of them doesn't, and therefore individual ones don't, evidence to the contrary aside. As populists engage in a sort of group think, that's what they think.
Economics. Populists say they are for a free market economy but have no real understanding of economic issues. They're for protectionism as that protects us against a foreign them.
Immigration. Populists are radically opposed to immigration as the people who come in are part of a foreign them, and are not part of us. They believe that immigration problems are the result, in some instances, of a conspiracy.
Defense. Populists support our troops, but appear to have the old William Jennings Bryan view of things, and he was a populist, that troops shouldn't leave our shores. They are radically opposed to intervention in any war overseas in the belief that none of them matter to us, almost.
The Russo Ukrainian War. Populist oppose aiding Ukraine. Being prone to be led around, some of them oppose the war as Donald Trump is a fan of Putin, and therefore they are too. Others oppose it as its overseas and they don't think it matters.
Hamas Israeli War. Populist are oddly in favor of Israel, which is contrary to their general political alignment. This is for an odd reason, which is that a lot of populists are Evangelical Christians who have an apocalyptic view of the Jewish state, so they tend to believe that God has commanded us to support Israel.
Giving really outstanding example of populists is a bit hard to do, to some extent, as they tend to fail over time, and then be forgotten. But there are some notable examples. Louisiana's Huey Long was a populist. Fr. Charles Coughlin was as well. George Wallace was for much of his life, but he became a conservative in his final years.
Huey P. Long, Depression Era populist.
What is a progressive.
Poster of the Russian Socialist Revolutionary Party.
Like populism, progressivism has existed in the United States for a long time, and perhaps just about as long as populism.
Progressives believe, like populists, that human nature is controlled by an internal existential, but in their case they radically believe that it's controlled by an internal individual existential. So, unlike progressives who believe in a sort of mystical will of the people, progressives believe that each and every individual has a radically individual reality that's a supreme existential good.
Progressives are convinced of radical individualism while at the same time having very low faith in people in general.
Because of their world outlook, progressives tend to share some odd traits with populists, and indeed historically they are both left wing in their political, and they tend to exist at the same time. Progressives tend to be radically opposed to human nature, and therefore given to conspiracy theories of a type. They tend to be anarchic in their expressed views, just as populists tend to be, but they favor autocracy in reality, just as populists ultimately tend to be. Societies that essentially degrade to a struggle between populism and progressivism, usually spectacularly fail, with late Republican Spain and late Weimar Germany being distressing examples.
In terms of Progressives, for reasons that we'll explain below, popular examples are often associated with other movements. Having said that, figures like Noam Chomsky, AoC, Henry Wallace, are good examples. Much of current academia, for peculiar reasons, is made up of Progressives. There aren't, however, any countries current governed by them, unlike Populists.
Progressives in recent decades have tended to lurk under the surface of liberals, so they don't erupt into existence the way Populists do. Being opportunistic, however, they've done so very much since the Obergefell decision, and then in reaction to Trump.
On our issues, we find the following:
Abortion. Progressives are radically in favor of abortion as they are radically in favor of any one human deciding their own fate, and the fate of an unborn person doesn't matter, as they are not yet born.
Death Penalty. Progressives are opposed to it, but mostly on a knee-jerk level. This is borrowed from the Liberals, and it's been adopted without much thinking. Having said that, termination of a life does radically end that person's ability to decide anything, so this is overall consistent with their views.
Gender issues. Progressives believe that this can and should be radically determined by the individuals, so basically they don't really believe that genders, science notwithstanding, really exist.
Climate Change. Climate Change impacts everyone, so Progressives are for immediate government action to address it.
Economics. Progressives lean towards radical economics, so concepts like Universal Basic Income and whatnot, that seem to be capable of individual use, are heavily favored. They like state intervention in the economy and society, to the extent it seems to free up anyone individual.
Immigration. Progressives, like liberals, don't believe that culture really matters, so they're heavily opposed to restrictions of significance.
Defense. Prior to the recent wars it would have been hard to say what a Progressive position was on defense, other than that Progressives like to use the Armed Forces as a petrie dish for social change. Given the various world crises right now, however, things have become clearer.
The Russo Ukrainian War. Progressives favor aiding Ukraine as Ukraine is a western nation in culture, and Russia is not.
Hamas Israeli War. Progressives want the war to end, as probably everybody does, but have an odd belief that we can decree this to be so. Younger Progressives tend to support Hamas as it seems like it involves the rights of more people than the Israeli cause does. Not really believing in anything externally existential, the rapes and murders committed by Hamas don't really matter to them.
Robert LaFollette, Progressive of the early 20th Century.
How these categories bleed into each other, creating confusion.
In no small part due to the adoption of the French Revolution "right wing/left wing" political map, we tend to think of all political categories as existing as a scaled line, when in fact their world more closely resembles a box, or perhaps intersecting circles. This confuses people in general, including those who fit any one category. For example, a lot of populists right now genuinely believe that they are conservatives, when in fact they are anything but. Put another way, a lot of members of the Freedom Caucus would actually feel a lot more comfortable at a Bernie Sanders Coffee Klatch than they would at a William F. Buckley Society cocktail party, and by leagues.
To start with conservatives again, as conservatives apply Chesterton's Fence to all sorts of things as a philosophical principle, they may see populists who arise due to social stress as members of the same group. To give an example, conservatives are rightly horrified by the gender nonsense that's going on right now, and more than that look back to male/female social roles that seem more solidly grounded in an existential other. Populists take the same outward approach, but that's because the collective mass of them tells them that what is going on is weird. Conservatives tend to support strong border and immigration policies as they believe in the principal of sovereignty, which has long existed, and they fear they value national culture and fear that uncontrolled immigration can damage it. Populists tend to support the same, but because the people coming across the border are part of some mysterious other, who are almost not real people, or at least not equal people.
On other issues, however the differences begin to become more apparent. Conservatives have always tended to support a strong national defense on sovereignty grounds, although that doesn't always take the same expression. Therefore, while conservatives of the 1930s were isolationist, they were also more than willing to build a strong Navy that projected power well beyond the United States. In recent years, they've been strong proponents of collective security, often aggravating liberals by being willing to see authoritarian regimes as potential defense partners. Populists are universally strict isolationist, as they feel anything beyond our borders doesn't matter.
Economically, conservatives generally tend to be fiscally restrained, but not unwilling to apply the American system where it will seem to work. They believe in balanced finances. Populists believe in balanced finances, but take a hyper stingy view of expenditures, virtually never seeing any expenditure as benefiting the populist mass. Therefore, funding for schools, something conservatives have long supported, becomes sort of an anathema to some populists. Strong education in science, math and history as a conservative position degrades into limited education on the populist end, as they have watched populist raised children evolve into conservatives, liberals or progressives.
Western conservatives (but not European conservatives) had tended to be in favor of limiting government, as they basically feel, in a pessimistic sort of way, that people are generally better off figuring out things for themselves rather than having the government do it, or do things for them. Populists are for a limited government as they hate the government, seeing it as the conspiratorial "they" that's out to destroy them and the culture they believe in.
For this reason, conservatives and populists confuse each other as being part of their ranks. Populists continually claim they are conservatives, when in fact they are not. Populists have been told that the Republican Party is the home of conservatives, which after 1912 it came to be, and as they believe that they are conservative, they believe anyone in the GOP who doesn't think the way they do is a Republican In Name Only. Ironically, populists were in the Populist Party at the turn of the last century in the US, and then in the Democratic Party for decades. What they are complaining about is the traditional positions of the Republican Party.
The same is true of liberals and progressives.
Liberals tend to be basically in favor of social liberty for the same reason that conservatives are in favor of limited government, they feel that people are best left to figure those things out for themselves and will ultimately figure the right thing out. Progressives want to force a brave new social world view on everyone. Liberals are more willing to use the government and government money for what they think the common good is than conservatives are, but progressives are willing to use both to force their view on what the good is on people who disagree with it. Liberals (like many conservatives) are supportive of preservation of the common good, through public and environmental policies. Progressives are as well, but they're more much willing to dictate an extra view on how people should generally behave. Liberals, like conservatives, have traditionally been in favor of a strong national defense, but have been, since the Vietnam War, very careful about using it beyond our shores unless absolutely necessary. Progressives, like populists, never see it as necessary as a rule.
Because liberals and progressives overlap, they confuse each other as being on the same scale on the left, which in fact, they're in different circles or boxes. Liberal inability to see the distinction has been to the benefit of Progressives, who have come to increasingly dominate the Democratic Party in recent years.
Liberals and conservatives tend to have a lot in common, but not be able to realize it, in part because liberals feel they need to make camp with the progressives, and the conservatives do make camp with the progressives.
A warning
And here we get, in a way, to where we are now.
Conservatives in the modern West, and always in the English-speaking West, have democracy as a primary virtue, in spite of being aware that they're never in the majority, although the National Conservative movement, which is reactionary in the true sense of the word (it's reacting to something) is weakening that and looking to a pre Second World War model of European conservatism.
Liberals are always in favor of democracy.
Progressives and Populists really aren't quite often. Sometimes they are, but often they are not.
And Progressives and Populists only are in the forefront of politics in odd, and dangerous, times.
We are in odd and dangerous times.
Footnotes:
1. Hindu conservatives, and there are millions, would say "gods", or some variant of it, we should note.
2. Evolutionary biology is almost an elemental fixture of conservatism. Indeed, scientists who are evolutioanry biologist have been rebuked, in recent years, by progressives simply for stating scientific truths.
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