Celebrate the Decline

At the beginning of the year I outlined three trends we should cheer.

And now, just three months later, one of them is proceeding so rapidly that the bad guys are in an outright panic.

Thus: a recent column in Commentary, a neoconservative publication, warned that “anyone with the Internet can write a blog or tweet or Facebook post or can Skype or record a podcast. The castle no longer has walls. The gatekeepers are mostly useless.”

That’s pretty much what I said, too, except my remarks weren’t a warning. They were a celebration.

The result of this decades-long, Stalinist enforcement of a party line – a party line that has grown ever more leftist over the years – is the present condition of what we laughingly call the “conservative movement.” Its major figures and organizations are now devoted to open borders, the idea of America as a “propositional nation,” and ceaseless military interventions in the name of global democracy and human rights. This is pure leftism, but the poor kids who attend the summer seminars of the right-wing think-tank world will be solemnly instructed that civilization itself is at stake in the defense of these principles.

Buckley got his conservatism the establishment respectability he craved, in this sense: it’s to National Review writers and others of that style that the mainstream turns when it wants a predictable and safe right-of-center view. But what great conservative victories can National Review point to in exchange for making itself acceptable to the New York media and cultural elite? The magazine at least pretends to believe in “limited government,” but exactly how much has the state retreated since the great mission of respectability began?

I think we know the answer.

According to Commentary, we are supposed to be concerned about bloggers, podcasters, and independent writers. I’m more concerned about Commentary, National Review, and the rest of the pretend-opponents of the state, who in their distinctly leftist style spend their time excommunicating and demonizing people who aren’t inclined to confine themselves to the three-inch spectrum of allowable opinion the New York Times deigns to grant us.

So the gatekeepers are in a panic. They are losing their grip on public opinion. Because if you can believe it, people these days are impertinent enough to entertain ideas that might not win the approval of the New York media and cultural elite. Worse still, they persist in these ideas despite the finger-wagging of Commentary and the rest of the neoconservative thought police, who when the chips are down can be counted on to join forces with the left in demonizing dissidents.

The thought control and party line of the Buckley years are crumbling before our eyes.

Here’s a good rule to live by if Commentary and National Review are panicking, you should cheer.

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