The Bull Elephant has responded to co-founder Jeanine Martin’s rank nativism as much ado about nothing. Deplorable, but not actionable, and certainly not — in their own eyes — worth disassociation.
Which is fine. Birds of a feather. I could not disagree more.
…but let’s not pretend at what The Bull Elephant is about.
The blog was established as the mouthpiece for the populist branch of the Republican Party of Virginia’s State Central Committee. What is alarming to this writer in particular is that the failure to condemn such sentiments as Jeanine Martin’s nativist attacks regarding legal Americans — specifically anti-communist freedom fighters who served American interests in the Vietnam War against our enemies — is seemingly tossed aside as little more than the reversal of left wing tactics.
The Bull Elephant’s contributors are more than happy to employ Alinsky-style tactics when it benefits their short-term goals, but refuse to be paid back in their own coin much less engage in a specific policy debate about the merits and demerits of — in Jeanine Martin’s own words — being “sick to death of the illegals and many of the legals.”
Bearing Drift and a host of other outlets in the Virginia blogosphere have desperately tried to maintain their independence from the Republican Civil War, with little effect, which in turn forces many of us to choose sides. Today, any of that free speech, free minds, and free society stuff that Reagan believed in goes right out the window when even the slightest disagreement occurs. It is the principal complaint from many conservatives about the rise of the populist-driven Tea Party, and the purges continue.
I am certain that, once the Virginia Conservative Network arrives in force, Bearing Drift will be too far to the right for some. That’s to be expected.
While there are voices that say they will refuse to work with the moderates and even the conservatives if they do not espouse 100% of the populist interpretation of creed, it is incredulous to believe for a moment that conservatives will and should willingly work with rank nativists and racists. Such sentiments from the GOP’s founding to today have traditionally been drummed out of a political party that fought slavery, Jim Crow, segregation, for civil rights legislation, the defense of human life, and for the high walls and wide gates Mr. Albertson espouses.
…but to link arms with the nativists? The folks who think that those of us who are not “racially aware” are cuckservatives?
Not cool.
Richard Weaver was a political thinker of the mid-20th century who did a great deal to defend what he termed agrarian principle in the face of the modern age, and specifically defend conservatism against its communitarian critics of the left and the right. Regarding the late Russell Kirk’s A Program for Conservatives he wrote:
For a generation we have been taught from many sources that there is but one way for us to go, and that is to follow after the Garadine swine. Mr. Kirk is a young man, high minded, eloquent, learned in history, and filled with the conviction that these things need not be. His work is a brave retort to the disorganizing heresies of our time.
For many years anyone raising his head above the level of current chaos has been in danger of having it struck down by a malevolent crew who say their profit in dissolving our institutions. I predict that this is not going to happen to Mr. Kirk. He knows how to fight this battle; and his natural allies, who are legion, are beginning to awaken.
For the better part of a decade, we have seen this “malevolent crew” run amok and do precisely this: destroy institutions and profit in the exchange. Kirk knew better than to do this, and ultimately the Republicans of the mid 20th-century were wise to reject the populists and racists in toto — no matter how hard the Democrats attempt to pin both upon us in the wake of the Southern Strategy of 1964. That marriage occurred in 1994, when the Ross Perot faction welded itself to the GOP.
Unfortunately, there was some scum attached.
This scum has been active.
They have been loud.
They have driven away many of the old volunteers who used to put in hours on phones.
They have driven away many of the old volunteers who used to put in hours knocking on doors.
They have driven away the business community.
They have driven away the fiscal conservatives.
They have driven away the social conservatives.
They have driven away even the liberty movement — the future of the party, IMO.
They have even driven away pro-lifers and home schoolers.
They have driven away our elected officials.
…and they are bringing in the very worst to make up for the gap.
Until conservatives have the moral courage to stand up for fellow conservatives, and drive out those voices who tear down “hmongs” and others, we’ll never become the conservative movement we ought to be.
Stand up, conservatives.
People who tear down anti-communists aren’t conservatives; they’re fearmongers. People who attack “the other” because of their culture, race, or ethnicity aren’t conservatives; they’re nativists. People who profit off of the destruction of our institutions aren’t working for the cause of freedom; they’re pretending at it.
As Ronald Reagan was so fond of saying, those voices don’t speak for the rest of us.
Let the battle lines be drawn, folks. The civil war between the conservatives and the populists has been long overdue, and it’s time to clean house and make a clear and unambiguous break from those who would introduce racist or nativist sentiment into our Republican Party.
It’s called leadership, folks. It will not make you popular… but as a wise man once said, you either stand up or you sit down.
For one, I will stand.
