The Internet's Effect on Intellectual Conservatives
In my experience, there are generally two groups of conservatives: the traditional and the intellectual. The traditional sect is typified by Bible belt, blue-collar whites who support social conservative values, religion, and a strong sense of American pride. The intellectual sort is typified by individuals like Bill Buckley, Barry Goldwater, and George Will. He's a libertarian in the social sphere, though he does support many traditional aspects of culture because, simply, they work. He champions limited government, merit-based economy, and a fortified national defense. (I classify myself as this.)
The former group came to public prominence due to Jerry Fallwell's Moral Majority coup in the early 1980's. This ascendancy did not represent a cultural shift amongst this political bloc. Rather, it reflected the already present social values entrenched in these geographic regions. Voicing politically incorrect opinions concerning black crime rate, feminism, welfare, and nationalistic pride is considered mundane amongst these voters. Yet, when one resides in suburbia, the domain of middle and upper class whites, these opinions are considered at best, improper, and at worst, abhorrent.
As a result, suburbia produces a large portion of ideological drones, individuals who assume liberal politics is the default position of the enlightened and sophisticated. Not only are they exposed to little dissent from the PC agenda, but any contrary opinions are rarely voiced due to social ostracism. Until recently, the conservative suburbanite or elite academic had no forum in which to vent his conservative opposition. He was surrounded by conforming, high intelligence liberals, espousing almost identical positions on the controversial issues.
But recently, this conservative has found a proper outlet for his frustration and his unwillingness to accept the polite doctrine. His potential intellectual and political peers no longer reside in just his geographic vicinity. The Internet, alongside endless amounts of porn and frivolous viral content, serves as a meeting place for the token, intellectual conservative unable to find common ground with his liberal acquaintances or overtly religious peers. Conservative websites and forums, especially those in my "Related Blogs" section, attract a large scope of visitors, many of whom are the product of middle-class, educated parents.
The Internet provides the perfect meeting place for these apostates. The core strength of Internet discussion is anonymity, a means of protecting one's real-life social bonds. By engaging in un-PC discourse on race, government, and culture, many commentators could likely have their lives and jobs significantly altered. Websites are a haven for individuals restlessly noting the destructive elements of society, but apprehensive about voicing these concerns, especially topics with scare tactics like race and gender, amongst friends.
Will this Internet revolution spur any zeitgeist transformation amongst the suburban elite? Maybe, but I doubt it. Suburban America rests on image and nothing is worse than being the wet-blanket, contrarian of the neighborhood. In my personal life, I often (not always) shirk polemical issues amongst mere acquaintances or people I'm not close with, though my immediate family and friends are definitely aware of my un-PC opinions, including eugenics, IQ, and race.
The former group came to public prominence due to Jerry Fallwell's Moral Majority coup in the early 1980's. This ascendancy did not represent a cultural shift amongst this political bloc. Rather, it reflected the already present social values entrenched in these geographic regions. Voicing politically incorrect opinions concerning black crime rate, feminism, welfare, and nationalistic pride is considered mundane amongst these voters. Yet, when one resides in suburbia, the domain of middle and upper class whites, these opinions are considered at best, improper, and at worst, abhorrent.
As a result, suburbia produces a large portion of ideological drones, individuals who assume liberal politics is the default position of the enlightened and sophisticated. Not only are they exposed to little dissent from the PC agenda, but any contrary opinions are rarely voiced due to social ostracism. Until recently, the conservative suburbanite or elite academic had no forum in which to vent his conservative opposition. He was surrounded by conforming, high intelligence liberals, espousing almost identical positions on the controversial issues.
But recently, this conservative has found a proper outlet for his frustration and his unwillingness to accept the polite doctrine. His potential intellectual and political peers no longer reside in just his geographic vicinity. The Internet, alongside endless amounts of porn and frivolous viral content, serves as a meeting place for the token, intellectual conservative unable to find common ground with his liberal acquaintances or overtly religious peers. Conservative websites and forums, especially those in my "Related Blogs" section, attract a large scope of visitors, many of whom are the product of middle-class, educated parents.
The Internet provides the perfect meeting place for these apostates. The core strength of Internet discussion is anonymity, a means of protecting one's real-life social bonds. By engaging in un-PC discourse on race, government, and culture, many commentators could likely have their lives and jobs significantly altered. Websites are a haven for individuals restlessly noting the destructive elements of society, but apprehensive about voicing these concerns, especially topics with scare tactics like race and gender, amongst friends.
Will this Internet revolution spur any zeitgeist transformation amongst the suburban elite? Maybe, but I doubt it. Suburban America rests on image and nothing is worse than being the wet-blanket, contrarian of the neighborhood. In my personal life, I often (not always) shirk polemical issues amongst mere acquaintances or people I'm not close with, though my immediate family and friends are definitely aware of my un-PC opinions, including eugenics, IQ, and race.
16 comments:
Hmmm... where I'm from the suburbs tend to vote for Republicans and the cities for Democrats. I know that the parties don't match up perfectly with conseratives and liberals.
I remember a voting trend analysis showing the suburbs as trending Republican in constrast with the cities. I think, however, in upper-middle class suburbs and higher, polite discourse requires keeping politically incorrect opinions quiet most of the time. Of course, schools tend to be even less permitting when it comes to conservative opinions. Even if it's just a support of a Republican candidate, a college or high school student especially in a blue state is in a very small minority when they speak up for conservative causes.
Based on personal experience, conservatives really can be classified into the two types listed in your post. I talked with traditional conservatives who base all their political views around religious beliefs. They are impossible to talk with because they assume they are right on everything and refuse to compromise or have healthy debate.
What I find strange is the Republican/Democrat divide.
Republicans seem to have both traditional (mostly religious) conservatives and classical liberals (libertarians). Democrats are a hodgepodge of secular postmodernists and grievance groups.
Republicans tend to be those who believe in something - either God or the Founding principles, while Democrats seem to be those who believe in nothing or believe only in self-interest.
The unfortunate reality is that any movement that relies on intellectualism isn't going to go anywhere. The Bell Curve is incompatible with direct democracy.
Republicans do best in rural areas everywhere (with the exception of mostly-NAM rural areas).
In the suburbs, it depends on the demographics and the political inclination of the state. Republicans do well in red-state suburbs; Democrats do well in blue-state suburbs. Palin-style populism and social conservatism do not sell in upper-middle-class suburbs in the West and the Northeast
For clarification, I'm thinking of the suburbs in the Northeast and the West coast. In my experience, these suburbs much resemble the community on "Weeds". Being a Republican is pretty uncommon in these circles. And even if one is a Republican, he doesn't go around advertising his disdain for affirmative action, abortion, diversity programs, welfare, feminism, NAMs, liberalism, Obama, etc.
In fact, Roissy just posted an anecdote about the kind of people who move to the suburbs and raise kids there. He explains these people perfectly and this is the kind of people I was tihnking of when I described the typical suburban community (though not all of the men are as castrated as the ones he describes). Disdain for fervent religious belief (not just going to church on XMas and Easter kind of religion) is also present amongst suburbians.
http://roissy.wordpress.com/2009/07/07/role-reversal/
Barry Goldwater was no intellectual-unless your definition of "intellectual" is someone who doesn't take religion very seriously.
The various relevant books and articles that have come out since WFB's death reveal that he also was hardly a man at home in the world of ideas.
WFB did hang out with guys whom almost everyone would concede were actual intellectuals during the glory days of National Review. Guys like Whittaker Chambers, Frank Meyer, Russell Kirk, James Burnham, Richard Weaver and Ernest van den Haag.
STDV,
I was wondering the other day, is hbd creating a new new sort of conservative that's agnostic on abortion? It seems that much of the Sailersphere, with the exception of Sailer himself, has been swayed by the eugenic benefit.
It's not an overwhelming majority, but much higher than the general conservative population.
@ rob:
I honestly have no idea how widespread HBD acceptance is to warrant calling it a "new kind of conservative". Maybe I'll look into that for a future post, though coming up with a metric might be difficult.
Umm I think most HBD bloggers support abortion. On the morality issue, I'm agnostic. But in practical situation, for this situation specifically, I think societal stability trumps morality, so I support eugenic measures.
Most HBDers are also secular, so they wouldn't oppose abortion on religious grounds (Sailer again being an exception).
Umm I think most HBD bloggers support abortion. On the morality issue, I'm agnostic. But in practical situation, for this situation specifically, I think societal stability trumps morality, so I support eugenic measures.
Most HBDers are also secular, so they wouldn't oppose abortion on religious grounds (Sailer again being an exception).
Maybe you could set up an online poll of HBDers?
It would be interesting to see where HBDers fall on a spectrum of issues and what their backgrounds are.
For example, you could ask how they became attracted to HBD ("are you a former libertarian?"), how many are secular, what their college majors are, what type of jobs they have, etc.
Getting a decent profile of HBDers will also help us recruit others who share similar backgrounds and philosophies.
Well, my conservative, Catholic family has embraced the "demographics is destiny" line. Abortion is bad, but since it's mainly liberals killing their young, it could be worse. They will have to deal with it when their numbers dwindle in 20 years, and when they go to meet their maker.
Issues regarding the ethnic/racial future of the USA and other White-Western countries ought to be more discussed. Nothing like scaring complacent suburban middle-class Whites in to action by sketching out to a dystopian future in which feral Hispanics/Blacks/Asians/etc run rampant across the land and thus make decent lives difficult to impossible for hard-working and law-abiding White families.
Whites, being more intelligent than Blacks or Hispanics, clearly have a better future time orientation...thus more Whites can be brought over to our side by examining the likely future condition of a USA which becomes overrun with non-Whites. We must be stark and even alarmist in this regard - we must continually tell American Whites that the USA will become a multiracial sewer lorded over a plutocratic Jewish elite who lives away from the chaos in walled compounds (see: Brazil) if Whites do not again regain a sense of White racial consciousness and work together as proud Whites to turn back the non-White tide.
Keep noting to people that the increasingly pitiful condition of the now non-White U.S. state of California will become commonplace across the entire USA as Whites become less of a majority in the country overall - states will fall like dominoes to the non-White hordes and thus inevitably decline just as California has. Keep referring back to this, constantly pounding in to people’s heads that we’ll all turn out like California is the non-White tide is not turned back, that this is guaranteed if steps are not taken to prevent it - Pat Buchanan’s recent article on this topic - http://buchanan.org/blog/pjb-california-here-we-come-1585 - along with his excellent books, are very good reference points.
A recent book review by some Jew in “The Atlantic” magazine somewhat hints that the non-Whitening of California has lead to its slow decline: “It was a sweet, vivacious time: California’s children, swarming on all those new playgrounds, seemed healthier, happier, taller, and—thanks to that brilliantly clean sunshine—were blonder and more tan than kids in the rest of the country. For better and mostly for worse, it’s a time irretrievably lost. … he lovingly and exhaustively chronicles such topics as the byzantine political, fund-raising, and public-relations effort to build Los Angeles’s Music Center (and in the process illuminates the central place choral music occupied in Los Angeles’s Protestant culture, as well as the tension—once intense, now faint but unmistakable—between the Jewish Westside and the ever-declining WASP establishment of downtown, Hancock Park, and Pasadena … These people were overwhelmingly white and native-born, and their common culture revolved around nurturing and (publicily) educating their children. … To a Californian today, much of what Starr chronicles is unrecognizable. (Astonishing fact: Ricky Nelson and the character he played in that quintessential idealization of suburbia, The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet, attended Hollywood High, a school that is now 75 percent Hispanic and that The New York Times accurately described in 2003 as “a typically overcrowded, vandalism-prone urban campus.” - http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200907/california
@ TUJ:
GNXP did a survey. I think it answers most of your questions. It doesn't however answer how widespread HBD belief in within the larger society:
http://www.gnxp.com/blog/2009/02/gnxp-survey-results.php
OneSTDV,
Based on that survey, it appears libertarians are very well represented at GNXP Classic.
This confirms my suspsicion that many HBDers are disgruntled libertarians who tilt agnostic/atheist.
Most conservatives are populist nitwits (like most people in our radical nation-states), and (like libertarians) they often have fairly sound conclusions supported by the most absurd nonsense and horrible argumentation. Though I have common ground with groups as diverse as communists, nazis and libertarians I think they are all fundamentally neurotic ideologies. They mainly cause smart people to look really stupid.
"GNXP did a survey. I think it answers most of your questions. It doesn't however answer how widespread HBD belief in within the larger society:"
OneSTDV,
I think this is simply a matter of presenting the information. I followed a link from GNXP to isteve on the topic of the differences in minority scores on graduate school admissions tests. The scores were eyepopping. Anyway from there I looked at data from LaGriffe. I sort of double checked him by looking up census data for how many blacks and whites there were of a certain age and cross referenced that with how many took the SAT from a PDF from the College Board website. After considering the percentages and scores were consistent, I concluded he wasn't making it up. Didn't take long to just face the facts after I had seen them presented. However, these facts are not presented to the mainstream because people in the media want to believe in equality, and those who just want the truth, while perhaps not a minority are not exactly catered to by the media. It is not like 60 Minutes is going to do a segment with an HBD proponent and his new book.
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