3 Conservative Principles Modern Republicans Despise

Today we explore three conservative principles modern Republicans despise. We’ll discover how our entire Constitution was based on a principle you were taught to hate; why conservatives have always opposed empire – and why that knowledge has been hidden from you; and most importantly of all, we’ll expose the sinister, violent origins of liberalism – and how, despite it all, this ideology still forms the basis of everything even most Republicans believe.

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Chapters

• 1:23 States' Rights and Decentralization
• 10:43 Non-Interventionism
• 19:34 Conservatism Itself

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:02

The reason conservatives always lose is because they're not conservatives at all. The modern conservative movement doesn't just embrace the lies of liberal ideology, it overtly rejects the fundamental principles it was founded to defend. Today, we're going to lay down three of these principles modern Republicans despise, each more controversial than the last. We'll discover how our entire constitution is based on an idea both parties denounced and the schools taught in the hate, why conservatives have always opposed empire, and why that knowledge has been hidden from. And most importantly of all, who disposed the sinister origins of political? And how, despite it often, this ideology still forms the places of everything, and even the most important. Principle number three. States' rights and decentralization. Despite being the cornerstone of our constitution and its best safeguard of freedom, the idea of states' rights is completely alien to most Americans, Republicans included. Most government schooled Americans have either never heard of the concept, or they've been subtly propagandized, into dismissing any talk of it as racist and un-American. The Civil War settled the question of states' rights, once and for all, we're told, and the verdict was, they don't have any. What are you, racist? Our school system has done everything in its power to protect this narrative and stop you from ever questioning it. Because if you do question it, well, let's just say you might come to some very dangerous conclusions. Conclusions that seriously threaten almost all of the federal government's power over your life. Let's get right into them. The reason states' rights and decentralization was once a core conservative principle, especially in America, is because it's the foundation of our constitutional order. Most people have been taught in school that America has always existed as a single unified nation, from 1776 on up, and the states are just subdivisions of this one unified nation. They are all subordinate to the federal government, which is sovereign in all things, and whenever the interests of the federal government and the states collide in any way, the federal government wins because it is supreme and it predates the states. That is totally false. Every word of that is a lie. Long story short, the original American states existed before, not after, the federal government did. Before the Declaration of Independence was even written, ten states had individually seceded from the British Empire. The Declaration didn't declare the independence of a new nation, despite what you learned in school, but quote, free and independent states plural, with full power to levy war, conclude peace, contract alliances, establish commerce, and do all other acts and things which independent states may of right do. Back then, a state meant an independent, self-governing country. It did not mean a province like we think of it today, which is why the Declaration of Independence also called Great Britain a state, but also called Rhode Island a state. It put the two in the same category. The United States started as thirteen countries, in fact, not one. Later, in the Treaty of Paris, the British didn't recognize the independence of one nation either. They recognized the independence of thirteen, quote, free and independent states, plural, which are all listed in the document, just like the Declaration did. This scenario continued under the Constitution. All thirteen states seceded from the Union under the Articles of Confederation, all thirteen states ratified the Constitution, and under the Constitution, the states only surrendered a very short, hyperspecific list of powers to the federal government. As James Madison said in Federalist Paper 45, the powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the state governments are numerous and indefinite. The states ratified the Constitution with the explicit understanding that whenever the government defied the Constitution by going beyond that list of powers they gave it, each state had a right to secede and or declare the unconstitutional laws null and void within its borders. That's called nullification, and that's a power they used repeatedly long after the Constitution was ratified. That's right. The way it used to be, any state could leave the Union at any time for any reason. Any state could flat out refuse to comply with unconstitutional laws with no consequences, really. It was only after the Civil War that any of this changed, and it it never changed legally or constitutionally. Ever since then, we have lived in a post-constitutional order that barely even resembles what our founders intended. Now, why should you care about this? Why should you pay attention to this history? Why should you care about states' rights and decentralization and all this stuff that sounds pretty boring to most people? First and foremost, decentralization is the only way to truly limit government. And states' rights is a form of decentralization that we have a really strong case for in America, which is why states' rights is so important. As we've seen many times on this show before, democracy is not the way to limit government. It always means more government power in the long run, not less. And if that can't limit government, what does? What does weaken government power, what does make it more accountable? Decentralizing it. Accountability comes when decisions are made closer to you. You have a lot more influence over your town or your county or your state and the people governing it than you ever could over the US as a whole. Having one vote of 500 is actual influence. Having one vote of 150 million is a joke. You especially have more accountability when you have a common culture, religion, values, and community with the other voters, which can and does happen when power is decentralized, instead of being one meaningless speck in a sea of a highly polarized multicultural empire that can't agree on the most basic things. That's why intelligent supporters of popular government throughout the ages, from the ancient Greeks to us, always recognized that it's impossible to run a whole nation or empire that way. The power must be highly decentralized. That's why ancient Greek quote-unquote democracy was in reality a patchwork of autonomous city-states with homogeneous cultures and values where 85 to 90% of the population couldn't vote. Because that's really the only way popular government works in the long run. But not only does decentralization limit government, it also aligns with human nature and it aligns with the good. Last year, J.D. Vance cited St. Augustine's principle of Ordo Amoris, or the order of loves, to justify putting America before all other nations. And he was right to do that. But putting your nation first is only the first, most basic and obvious step of the equation. Under this principle, rightly ordered love starts with God, then extends to your family, then to your community, then to your state, in an American context, and only then to the nation as a whole. The concerns of the world at large, of course, barely even register in this equation. This principle in political form is known as subsidiarity. It means authority should be decentralized to the most local competent level. It's the polar opposite of globalism. Anything your community can do should not be done by your state. Anything your state can do should not be done by the federal government. Power should be kept closer to the people, not the people as an abstraction, not of the people through mass democracy and mob rule. It should be kept closer to them by being kept closer to their families and communities, by being decentralized. This moral principle was the basis of our Constitution, and if we want to restore our country, it's long past time for conservatives to revive it. Principle number two. It's been the party of the Bushes, of Lindsey Graham, and of Randy Fine. And don't mistake my meaning, Democrats have consistently been just as bad, if not worse. But that's to be expected of them. Because, despite everything you've been told, non-interventionism is not a neo-hippie idea for low testosterone college activists crying about Gaza into their soy milk lattes. For the first 200 years of American history, this was the view red-blooded conservatives consistently upheld, and liberals and progressives consistently hated. Behold the words of George Washington, the least hippieish man in American history, in his famous farewell address. The nation which indulges toward another nation a habitual hatred or a habitual fondness, is in some degree a slave. It is a slave to its animosity or to its affection, either of which is sufficient to lead it astray from its duty and interest. He went on. Sympathy for the favorite nation, like, for example, just putting this out there, Ukraine or Israel, facilitates the illusion of an imaginary common interest in cases where no real common interest exists? It infuses into one nation, like America, the enmities of the other, and betrays the former into participation in the quarrels and wars of the latter, without adequate inducement or justification. Does that remind you of anything? Does that remind you of America consistently meddling in the Middle East on behalf of Israel, our favorite nation, when our interests do not really in any way align with it? Maybe bombing Iran, maybe regime changing it like we're currently discussing? But if that sounds eerily similar to America's present relationship with a certain foreign country, wait till you hear what Washington said next, because it's a lot more blunt than that. Against the insidious wiles of foreign influence, the jealousy of a free people ought to be constantly awake, since history and experience prove that foreign influence is one of the most baneful foes of Republican government. Excessive partiality for one foreign nation and excessive dislike of another cause those whom they actuate to see danger only on one side, and they veil and even second the arts of influence on the other. Real patriots who resist the intrigues of the favorite are liable to become suspected and odious, while the favored nation's tools and dupes usurp the applause and confidence of the people to surrender their interests. Wow. Wow. If George Washington was around today, he would certainly win Anti-Semite of the Year, along with Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens. What a raging Nazi that Washington. And a conspiracy theorist, too. Just listen to that guy ranting about the tools and dupes of the favorite nation, manipulating Americans into blindly supporting them. Unhinged bigot, probably on the payroll of Qatar and Putin. Let's finish with this last short line of Washington's that would become the guiding principle of conservative foreign policy until the 1950s. Virtually all the founders agreed with Washington on this. Thomas Jefferson's famous policy was, peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations, entangling alliances with none. James Madison said, no nation can preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare. And John Quincy Adams said, America goes not abroad in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own. And for all of almost all of American history, from the founding to the post-war era, opposition to foreign wars and interventions has come almost exclusively from the right. During the French Revolution, liberals and Democrats wanted to support France while conservatives opposed it. Liberals and Democrats were eager for war with Britain in 1812 while conservatives opposed it. Liberals and progressives, like Theodore Roosevelt, led the charge to fight in Cuba in the Spanish-American War, colonize Latin America, and catastrophically enter World War I. They also pushed America toward war long before Pearl Harbor forced us into it. At every step of the way, the Conservatives formed most of the opposition to war, empire, massive military spending, and favoritism toward other nations. It's only after World War II that disillusioned leftists like Irving Kristol, who called themselves neoconservatives, conducted a hostile takeover of the Republican Party, kicked out the America Firsters like Robert Taft, and brought on the era of Uniparty foreign policy. Which it's been like that ever since. This explains why people who are otherwise conservative are so easily manipulated into supporting stupid wars that can only expand the government they want to limit, increase the spending they want to cut, and needlessly kill people when they want to be pro-life. Without even knowing it, they have been sold liberal internationalist slop by the conservative establishment for their entire lives. A lot of these older conservatives are under the impression that Gen the Gen Z rights' increasingly non-interventionist views are new and dangerous propaganda from online radicals. In reality, these foreign policy views are far more traditional than theirs are, and they're steeped in America's founding values. Gen Z may have rejected their grandpa's version of conservatism wholesale, but they're returning to their great-great-grandpa's version of conservatism, in foreign policy and countless other areas. This all comes back to the principle of ordoamorous that we discussed earlier. Historic conservatives were non-interventionists because their love and their interest was properly ordered toward their country and their people, not toward other countries and other peoples. They wanted to solve the problems of their countrymen before they solved the problems of Venezuelans or Iranians. America First wasn't just a policy of political expedience, it was a moral principle. And if modern Republicans truly wish to roll back the empire and restore the conservative republic our ancestors failed to defend, it's a principle we can't afford to ignore much longer. Principle number one, conservatism. You heard correctly. The number one conservative principle modern Republicans despise is conservatism itself, even though most identify themselves as conservatives. Though conservatism in and of itself doesn't have any principles in a vacuum, As we discussed a few episodes ago, it can have principles in context. Conservatism always has to have one of two things to make any sense. First, a society, culture, and civilization to conserve, and second, an enemy philosophy that wants to radically transform it. At the origins of the left-right divide centuries ago, that civilization was Western Christendom, and that enemy was the liberals of the Enlightenment. Modern conservatives don't want to conserve Western Christendom, and they can't conserve it either, because it's already dead. Instead, they want to conserve secular liberal modernity from communism, which is obviously worse. And their enemies are not liberals but Marxists. The modern divide in America is not between conservatives and liberals, it's between liberals and Marxists. Once you understand that, things start to make a lot more sense. That's why I did the Five Liberal Lies series we just finished last episode. Through all of the lies we debunked, liberalism has been the common thread. Liberalism is the origin of every lie about democracy, every lie about equality, every lie about rights, secularism, ideology that we went through. It is the cancer that slowly killed the Christian West across the centuries, but nevertheless, almost everyone who calls himself a conservative is a liberal. And when I say liberalism, I don't mean modern liberalism, what we think of when we hear the word today. I mean the ideology of the Enlightenment that paved the way for it, the West's bipartisan political religion, the ideology you might even accept without realizing it. It all started with a movement called the Enlightenment, and the Enlightenment carried the questioning of authority that began with the Reformation and the Renaissance, to not just questioning the authority of the Church, but to questioning all authority whatsoever. The Enlightenment was a movement of highly educated philosophers who often dabbled in deism, atheism, and Freemasonry, who came up with an entirely new revolutionary ideology and way of viewing the world called liberalism, classical liberalism. Enlightenment liberals based their ideology on what they called the state of nature. This was a hypothetical fantasy world, they claimed existed far back in the mists of time, before mankind had created any government or social structures. In this ancient utopia, they claimed everyone was in a state of perfect autonomy, equality, and freedom. No one was accountable to anyone else, no one ruled over anyone else. There was no government, no institutions, no churches, no classes, no hierarchy of any kind. Everyone was perfectly independent, his own king, his own priest, his own god. It is the origin myth of the liberal religion. It was a perverted Garden of Eden narrative. Then tragically, at some point in the past, the liberals said, government and social hierarchy and privilege corrupted this utopian dream world. This was the fall of man. But the state of nature remained the Enlightenment's moral ideal and the foundation of all the democratic and egalitarian ideas liberalism would start to claim and that conservatives believe today. W i even if they don't believe in this whole state of nature thing. Whatever autonomy and privileges man had in the state of nature, the liberals said, all modern-day people had natural rights to. They were natural rights because they came from the state of nature. Man didn't inherit original sin from the fall, and inherit the need to be governed and restrained because of it. He inherited a list of entitlements from the liberal Eden dreamed up by philosophers and ideologues. Restraint and authority weren't the imperfect solutions to man's corrupt nature and the social problems stemming from them. They were the cause of man's corrupt nature, which meant that human nature could be perfected by abolishing them. Any ancient government was usurpation, any restraint was tyranny, any inequality was injustice. Since our ancestors were perfectly equal, allegedly, we all have a right to total equality with everyone else. Since our ancestors had total freedom in this myth, we all have a right to pursue our appetites with no restraint. And since there was no government or society in the state of nature, we all have a right to rebel against and tear down the order we live under, wipe the slate of history clean, and begin the world over again, as Thomas Paine said, to align with the alleged rights of the state of nature. This was the redemption story, the hope of mankind's salvation, the gospel of revolution. The age of miracles was over. The age of reason had come. Describing it in religious terms like this isn't drama and exaggeration. These were the exact terms many liberals thought of their worldview in. It's why the liberal French revolutionaries went into cathedrals, stripped them of their crucifixes and any imagery of Christs or the saints or anything like that, and replaced them with depictions of pyramids, the rising sun and the all-seeing eye. As the historian Christopher Dawson said, the cross had been replaced by the Tree of Liberty, the grace of God by the reason of man, and redemption by revolution. This is also why they would worship the goddess of reason and rededicate Christian altars to nature and liberty in torchlit Masonic ceremonies. It's why they rounded up and executed some two thousand priests, hundreds of monks and nuns, and untold numbers of laymen through guillotining, drowning, and mass shooting. And that's just the tip of the iceberg. We don't have time to get into all the Freemason secret society stuff today, but that was a big part of it, too. Liberalism is an anti-Christian religion. It is a violent religion, but it is the basis of all the most fundamental political ideas Americans take for granted. From democracy to equality to separation of church and state, to the live and let live philosophy of moral license. This is the root of the conservative movement's weakness and ineffectiveness. It's why conservatives believe all ten of the lies we covered in the last two episodes. Republicans are trying to defend the West when they defend these liberal ideas with the poison that killed it. And that's why conservatives should reject Jacobin liberalism and embrace true conservatism, along with the other principles we cover today. Thanks for listening to The Conservative Rebel. If you enjoyed it, please consider leaving a review and following it on your favorite podcast platform and sharing it with a friend. It helps us get the message out to even more people like you. I'll see you next time.