"The biggest ideological changes of the Trump era are not on *my* side. It’s the rest of the 'right' that changed."
"The biggest ideological changes of the Trump era are not on my side. It’s the rest of the 'right' that changed. ...
"To those observing from the outside, it is obvious that people who sign up for Trumpism completely transform themselves. Free marketers become protectionists, secularists become 'culture-war Christians,' people who once sang paeans to the Constitution become advocates of one-man rule. Most disturbingly, people who used to talk in old Reaganite terms about the positive contributions of immigrants now delight in the administration’s performative cruelty toward immigrants. Look at Marco Rubio, the son of Cuban refugees who is now the chief enforcer of the administration’s arbitrary detention of foreigners.
"Compared to that, I have been an island of stability. ... [W]hile my background would have been described as being 'on the right—back when that meant something different—I was never a conservative and not even quite a libertarian. For the general reader, I usually described myself as a 'secular free-marketer,' and that’s still true. But the context of the times has changed, and the main fault line in American politics is very different from what it was ten or fifteen years ago. ...
"I’ve been talking for a while about how I suspect we’re in the middle of a vast new political realignment, and that has now crystallised. The new political spectrum isn’t left versus right. It’s liberalism versus authoritarianism."
5 comments:
I think he might be right that we're undergoing a vast political realignment, as I've been increasingly finding people on the left who are less objectionable, and I have more in common with than many on the right. As with Tracinski, I'm pretty sure that's not because my politics have changed.
The idea that Democrats have not become more left leaning over the last 50 years is nonsensical.
Transgender issues, climate change, critical race theory.
That comment’s largely symptomatic of where the Right has gone wrong. Not that I’d probably disagree with you on the three issues you name, but the fact you choose to emphasise those issues over all the other more important issues where Trump et al are screwing it up big time.
Another possible explanation for the dramatic movement (or that explains a part of it, anyway) is that while that "the right" has moved overtly rightward, too many non-right (e.g., former libertarians and alleged Objectivists) have *become* right. They've *embraced* the sewer.
Very sad.
Case in point - it would seem that Democrats are now more in favour of free trade than Republicans. Also their more hawkish position in standing up to Russian aggression. Positions more traditionally associated with the right, and much more significant on a geopolitical scale than transgender issues.
Reagan would be turning over in his grave.
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