The Persecution of Gay Pro-Trump Conservative Lucian Wintrich

Link to

Fired from his job at an ad agency for having the wrong political beliefs.

27 non-political questions determine your liberal-conservative spectrum (Click Link)

"Please respond honestly and alone and we'll guess your brain's political ideology."

(Note: if you are using Safari on iOS, you may need to scroll to see all options. There are 5 responses for each scenario.)

"Costly Confessions"

Washington Free Beacon:  Art critics, like Oscar Wilde’s definition of the cynic, know the price of everything and the value of nothing, Roger Scruton says in an essay about kitsch that begins his latest book, Confessions of a Heretic. Today critics praise modern art filled with so much that “tells you how nice you are: it offers easy feelings on the cheap.”

Although early modernists such as Eliot and Pound sincerely attempted to make room for the human spirit in modern life through discipline and sacrifice, according to Scruton, the hard task of sustaining that tradition “proved less attractive than the cheap ways of rejecting it.” Later modernists rejected that costly tradition in favor of a different, century old one of ugly and effortless clichés. Now it is easy to make, sell, and display the objects of the artist, critic, and audience.

Scruton writes that many people today, including his fellow philosophers, favor affordable dogmas that require little thought, instead of the more arduous and costly task of conservatism. Needless to say, this stance has not ingratiated Scruton to some. His new anthology is titled Confessions of a Heretic because the essays in it “reveal aspects of my thinking which, if I am to believe my critics, ought to have been kept to myself.” The essays share the overall theme that Westerners increasingly act like Wilde’s cynic: We value good feelings but do not value the difficult means of sustaining our inheritance. (Please read the whole thing if you can)

http://freebeacon.com/culture/costly-confessions/#sthash.pk2fvPWe.dpuf

Rod Dreher: "Cheer Up, Conservatives"

The American Conservative:  Really good column by David Brooks today, in which he looks to the GOP’s future beyond Trump. Excerpts:

This is a moment for honesty. Valuably, Trump has exposed the rottenness of the consultant culture, and the squirrelly way politicians now talk to us. This is a moment for revived American nationalism. Trump’s closed, ethnic nationalism is dominant because Iraq, globalization and broken immigration policies have discredited the expansive open form of nationalism that usually dominates American culture.

And:

This is also a moment for sociology. Reaganism was very economic, built around tax policies, enterprise zones and the conception of the human being as a rational, utility-driven individual. The Adam Smith necktie was the emblem of that movement.

It might be time to invest in Émile Durkheim neckties, because today’s problems relate to binding a fragmenting society, reweaving family and social connections, relating across the diversity of a globalized world. Homo economicus is a myth and conservatism needs a worldview that is accurate about human nature.

Read the whole thing.  Brooks says that nobody knows what the next GOP will look like, but “it’s exciting to be present at the creation.” I agree. It’s about the only good news to come out of this wretched campaign: knowing that the old model is finally smashed, and the way forward is open for new ways of thinking on the Right. (more)

h/t Michael Haz

Who is Émile Durkheim?

An Open Letter to the Conservative Movement.

By John Kluge March 3, 2016 (Hat tip to Vox Popoli)

Let me say up front that I am a life-long Republican and conservative. I have never voted for a Democrat in my life and have voted in every presidential and midterm election since 1988. I have never in my life considered myself anything but a conservative. I am pained to admit that the conservative media and many conservatives’ reaction to Donald Trump has caused me to no longer consider myself part of the movement. I would suggest to you that if you have lost people like me, and I am not alone, you might want to reconsider your reaction to Donald Trump. Let me explain why.

First, I spent the last 20 years watching the conservative media in Washington endorse and urge me to vote for one candidate after another who made a mockery of conservative principles and values. Everyone talks about how thankful we are for the Citizens’ United decision but seems to have forgotten how we were urged to vote for the coauthor of the law that the decision overturned. In 2012, we were told to vote for Mitt Romney, a Massachusetts liberal who proudly signed an individual insurance mandate into law and refused to repudiate the decision. Before that, there was George W. Bush, the man who decided it was America’s duty to bring democracy to the Middle East (more about him later). And before that, there was Bob Dole, the man who gave us the Americans with Disabilities Act. I, of course, voted for those candidates and do not regret doing so. I, however, am self-aware enough to realize I voted for them because I will vote for virtually anyone to keep the Left out of power and not because I thought them to be the best or even really a conservative choice. Given this history, the conservative media’s claims that the Republican party must reject Donald Trump because he is not a “conservative” are pathetic and ridiculous to those of us who are old enough to remember the last 25 years.

"Captain America Beats Up Conservatives in New Series"

Link to video

Via Washington Times

"I'm a black American woman - can I support the Republican Party?"

"What to do? I'm a conservative, yet 21st-century Republicans are still defending slavery"

As a black Republican woman, from the South, I find it morally repugnant that 150 years after the Civil War ended, 21st-century Republicans are still defending slavery. Because that’s exactly what supporting South Carolina’s or any state’s right to fly the battle flag means. The Civil War began because Southern states seceded from the Union, refusing to abandon their slave economy of whites using and abusing their free black human labor, owned as property.

Slavery in America, which lasted far longer than in Britain, was an abomination. So why did the Republican Party, which is in desperate need of minority voters, not come out in fierce opposition to the flag two weeks ago, when the topic erupted?

Telegraph Top voted comments...

Henry Wilson
Many Blacks fly the Confederate flag in South Carolina. This author claims to be a conservative but in reality she is not. That flag in 21st century America does not represent racism for most of those who fly it. It represents pride in an era of American history which no longer exists. Nothing more. Should we dump the Union Jack because it flew over an Empire which abused half of the word's population in the name of Rule Britannia? Of course not. This whole "dust up" in the States is the way Radical Liberals punish Southern Conservatives for having the audacity to be the location of a "lone wolf" racist murderer of church goers. It is all about the Radical Left sticking it to the Conservatives. Nothing more. Britons should not allow ourselves to be pulled into this foreign bit of nonsense.

Jonathan DeBusk, Henry Wilson
"Many Blacks fly the Confederate flag in South Carolina." Citation needed. Extraordinary claims need extraordinary proof. I'm from South Carolina. 30% of the population is black and I have never once seen a black person fly the battle flag. And finding one somewhere suffering from Stockholm Syndrome does not *many* make.

"Who Are the Racists: Conservatives or Liberals?"

"Is Nick Searcy Hollywood's angriest conservative?"

Showing Up To Riot (via Small Dead Animals)

For the last five years his role as Raylan Givens's tough-but-tender father figure Art Mullen on the Kentucky TV crime saga Justified, which has now come to a dramatic end, has been one of the finest performances in a series absolutely full of them.

Somehow, he's managed to do all this while being one of the most brazenly outspoken conservatives in the liberal-dominated entertainment industry. With the honorable exceptions of James Woods and Jon Voight, most Hollywood Republicans tend to keep their opinions to themselves. But not Searcy.

Prompted by the 2012 death of conservative firebrand Andrew Breitbart, Searcy found himself searching his soul. “Bullies on the Left, they want to call you names and categorise you and make you respond,” Searcy once said. “They want to make you say, ‘Why are you saying that? I’m not that.’ So when [Breitbart] passed away so suddenly, I just sort of had this moment where I asked myself: Why am I scared? Why am I letting these people do this to me? Now, I’m not."

The Telegraph

Conservatism as Counterculture

Excerpt from the March 9, 2015, issue of National Review

There is now the phrase “movement conservative.” When I first heard it, I thought it oxymoronic. Conservatism is establishment and tradition, not protest and reform. But “movement” suggests struggle against injustice, the overcoming of some oppression. So it is telling that many conservatives now think of themselves as part of a “movement” and refer to one another as “movement conservatives.” A great irony that slowly emerged out of the turmoil of the 1960s is that conservatism became the new counterculture — a movement that was subversive in relation to the established liberal cultural order. And, continuing this irony, liberalism became the natural home of timid conventionalists and careerists — people who find it hard to know themselves outside the orthodoxies of mainstream “correctness.” And what is political correctness if not an establishment orthodoxy?

What drives this conservative “movement”? Of course there are the classic motivations — a commitment to free-market capitalism, smaller government, higher educational standards, the reinforcement of family life, either the projection of strength abroad or, conversely, a kind of isolationism, and so on. But overriding all of this is a cultural motivation that might be called the “pinch of stigma.” The special energy of contemporary conservatism — what gives it the dynamism of a movement — comes from conservative outrage at being stigmatized in the culture as the politics in which all of America’s past evils now find a comfortable home.

This stigmatization is conservatism’s great liability in an American culture that gives dissociation preeminence, that makes it the arbiter of all other social values. Contemporary conservatism is, first of all, at war with this cultural stigmatization. Its ideas always swim upstream against the perception that they only echo the racist, sexist, and parochial America of old — as if conservatism were an ideology devoted to human regression. For conservatives, it is, in the end, a bewildering war against an undeserved bad reputation. And how do you fight a bad reputation that always precedes you? (read the whole thing)

"Smelling Liberal, Thinking Conservative"

"[R]esearchers found evidence that people are instinctively attracted to the smell emitted by those with similar ideologies. In one memorable instance, a female participant asked the scholars if she could take one of the samples home, describing it as “the best perfume I ever smelled.” The scent came from a man who shared her political views. Just before, a different woman with the opposite views had smelled the exact same sample, declared it “rancid,” and urged the researchers to throw it out. Ideological like-mindedness exerts a biological pull on our attraction, it seems — and deep disagreements can really stink."

I took this test back in the late 90's early 2000's and I was not surprised then to find myself in the purple. I am a little surprised, today, to find myself closer to the left. A quick inventory however, to use self help lingo, a quick rationale could be that the times, the zeitgeist, the things that define left/right now, have changed and I have changed along with them. As I went around the vortex. I think it also helped, or hurt, depending on your point of view, that I was a regular reader of the Althouse blog. I was traumatized ;) I'm kidding of course.

Upon further review, I believe the test is slightly skewed.

The Times Picayune: "Conservative website hotel blackouts..."

"[T]he curious matter of conservative websites consistently getting blocked at the Hyatt Place hotel in Riverhead, Long Island. The company that runs the desktops available to guests there, Uniguest, did finally respond to my query, but several e-mailers from around the country described similar experiences at hotels blocking access to perfectly legitimate conservative websites."

The Uniguest e-mail was "sent on behalf of Uniguest's Marketing Director who was traveling and not able to respond personally." Here's the meat of it:

"Was sorry to hear about your disenchantment in being limited in your ability to surf freely. As I trust you can appreciate, in an effort to protect our Internet users in hotels and other public spaces throughout the world, content filters are placed on our software that attempt to provide a safe browsing experience free from explicit sites and hateful content. Importantly, in some instances, the filters rules have unintended consequences and block sites that common sense would deem safe. For example, occasionally small portions of content will trigger the filter until that content is removed. This can temporarily affect websites with frequently updated content as the filter operates in real-time. The block would occur whether the domain name was Disney.com, CNN.com or any other site that meets the filter's threshold of flagged keywords.

"Thank you for bringing this to our attention. It appears that the problem has resolved itself and the websites you pointed out in your article are available for viewing at the writing of this email."

I was a bit puzzled by that "hateful content" bit, and unsure if Uniguest means sites like The Drudge Report, Instapundit, and PowerLine are now available on all the company's computers or just at the Hyatt Place in Riverhead. I've asked for clarification on those points.

The column also generated considerable e-mail, almost all of it from people who said they have experienced very similar blackouts of conservative sites at hotels across the country. (read more)

"At Kosherfest, a 40-pound chicken nugget and a Conservative hechsher"

"The 25th-annual, two-day kosher food expo kicks off in Secaucus, N.J., tomorrow [today] and is expected to draw more than 6,000 people, all of them ready to nosh."

Kosherfest will feature products from over 300 companies and more than 20 countries.

For the first — and perhaps last — time, the expo will also include a kosher supervisory agency run by a non-Orthodox rabbi. Rabbi Jason Miller’s Kosher Michigan certifies more than 50 businesses and is one of only a handful of non-Orthodox supervising agencies in North America. In an email interview, Menachem Lubinsky, Kosherfest’s founder and co-producer, said that Kosher Michigan is “the first non-Orthodox agency that has even attempted to exhibit at the show” and that it “fell between the cracks.”

“The sales people did not realize that Michigan Kosher was not an Orthodox agency,” he said. “The show is under the kosher supervision of the Association of Kashrus Organizations (AKO) and there will be signs posted throughout the show that AKO takes responsibility only for those booths that are either AKO members or offer products that meet AKO standards. He is clearly not a member and his products do not meet AKO standards. Show management will take steps to assure that only AKO approved exhibitors participate in the show in 2014.”

Interviewed by phone, Miller, who is based in suburban Detroit and certifies over 50 companies, most of them in the Midwest, emphasized that he had not hidden his Conservative identity; in fact, Kosher Michigan’s exhibitor blurb, which he said has been on the Kosherfest website for months, states in the first sentence that the agency was founded in 2008 by a Conservative rabbi.

“Certainly the ultra-Orthodox do not want to believe a non-Orthodox rabbi is able to run a successful kosher certification agency, but the facts on the ground are that that’s what’s happening,” he said. “The marketplace — the consumers — have the loudest voice in this industry so the market will dictate which certification agencies are authentic and which are not … My goal has always been to increase the number of kosher options without increasing the cost.”

portions of an article written by Julie Wiener for Telegraph Blog

"Want to Win a Political Debate..."

Try making the liberal argument... the article doesn't say that outright, but, I read between the lines.

Gun control? Abortion? The new social science behind why you’re never able to convince friends or foes to even consider things from your side.

I started reading this article with some interest, until it dawned on me, the article is basically saying that "wining a political debate" is the worthwhile desired goal. Never mind the substance of the positions. Never mind why would you want to have a debate in the first place. 

Imagine that instead of arguing about the quantity of gun deaths, for example, you make the case that universal background checks will allow a mom with two young kids to feel less nervous about the strange, reclusive man who lives down the street. Now your point is much less threatening. People will never believe they help bring about the deaths of innocents, but they can believe they failed to consider the peace of mind of some person they don’t know. The argument is objectively weaker, but it’s more likely to be below the threat threshold that leads to automatic rejection. It might actually be considered.

None of this is to say that when somebody is unknowledgeable or uncommitted it isn’t best to use your most powerful argument. And for political parties the priority is often driving activism rather than changing minds, and thus threatening arguments may be a better choice. But if you’re trying to convince a friend to change his views, it might be worthwhile to go against your instincts and hit him with all your weakest points.

The article is not worth reading. Go ahead if you want to, I cant stop you. I'm just warning you that I made a mistake bring it to your attention. It's liberal propaganda of the pernicious kind. If its worth anything, it should be read as a sign of what to look for when the debating society comes at you with their "weaker argument" bullshit approach.