A couple of months ago, I wrote a piece for Chronicles magazine taking the 1776 Commission Report to task.
You can’t be called a “conservative” if you’re attempting to “conserve” a left wing agenda. Case in point, the Commission trumpeted Frederick Douglass, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Martin Luther King while placing all the evils of American society at the feet of John C. Calhoun, the same John C. Calhoun who Russell Kirk lauded in The Conservative Mind. Notice he didn’t list Douglass, Stanton, or Abraham Lincoln in the book.
These “conservatives” want to avoid being called a racist, so they try to play the left’s game on the left’s field by the left’s rules.
The left sees right through it and still calls them racist. What have these “conservatives” gained? Leftist talking points about America.
Case in point, Princeton historian Kevin Kruse wrote an op-ed for MSNBC this week chastising Republicans for their attempt to co-opt Martin Luther King as a conservative.
He’s right, as Paul Gottfried pointed out. This isn’t news. King should never be labeled a conservative, but neocons are going to neocon.
You see, conservatives can never win this game, which is why they should openly reject the Fairy Tale of the proposition nation and righteous cause myth.
That doesn’t make them racist. It makes them realists. Let the left cling to a version of American history that doesn’t match reality and call them out for it. They’ll certainly try to make emotional please for “equality” and “justice,” but once they overplay their hand, and they will, those idiotic platitudes will fall on deaf ears. It’s already happening with “defund the police” and critical race theory.
I discuss these issues in Episode 464 of The Brion McClanahan Show.