@DavidGudeman, surely you aren't proposing that there are exactly zero racists who purport to be conservatives or libertarians? That seems equally as unlikely as there being not even one racist Democrat.

@Nohbdy, The comment I was responding to didn't say that there exist conservatives who are racists; it clearly implies that opposing anti-racism is a conservative trait in general. Modern conservatives are, for the most part, classical liberals. They believe in the ultimate value of the individual, not as a member of a group, but for his or her own sake, as an individual.

@DavidGudeman, this seems like a fairly reasonable statement. It's a stance I also held to be true, twenty years ago. Setting that aside, that stance says nothing about policy positions, or the way people should or should not treat each other, or society's role in providing assistance to those ultimate individuals. Tell me what your VIEWS are. Jumping in a bucket with 'conservatives' doesn't tell me enough.

This will probably quickly tire me, and I really oughtn't jump back into the fray. Work tomorrow and all that. Let me short circuit my point. Kaya has preconceived notions about conservatism. So do you. And other conservatives are out there busily absorbing any remaining credibility around the word conservative and filling it with things that would make the founding fathers eat their wigs.

@Nohbdy, the difference is that I get my ideas of what conservatives are by talking to conservatives and reading what conservatives write. Kaya only knows about conservatives by things written by people who hate conservatives. Who is most likely to really get what conservatives are like?

@DavidGudeman, you're generalizing, and making an appeal to your own authority. The people most loudly trying to represent conservative values are doing it in front of a television camera, haven't read a book in years, and loudly and publicly rebuke common core conservative principles. The movement is whatever it is at the time. It's why I left.

Sure, Kaya's wrong. Fine. Great even. Point made. Racism is bad yes? Okay. You say conservatives are the only true anti-racists. We both know full well racism lives on in the movement, and it hasn't been meaningfully rebuked because without the racists, the conservatives can't form a coalition capable of getting enough votes. It can't. And that's not the fault of actual conservatives, but rather duplicitous Republicans, who, more and more, aren't in fact conservative at all.

So it's all finally coming to a head and the anti-semites and literal Nazis William F. Buckley Jr. tried to delegitimize ages ago are talking openly about actual violence.

And... well, I don't want to go on. People should talk less in terms of labels and more in terms of actual policies. So many people have disingenuously hefted the aegis of conservatism that it's no longer possible to determine what it means to them when they say it.

@Nohbdy, I dispute your claims about the racists. There is a tiny group of trouble-makers who get on Republican sites and spout racists, but (1) they are always pushed back against until people just get tired of it, (2) they also frequently talk about how much they hate conservatives and Republicans, and (3) They are mostly anti-capitalist and anti-American. The idea that these people are in any sense conservatives or allied with conservatives is preposterous.

What they are is rabble-rousers who invade conservative online forums to try to pry people way from the conservative cause. Conservatives do not need them to win elections because there can't be more than a few thousand of the faithful, though they occasionally have a movement like Rand Paul where they fool conservatives into thinking they are conservatives for a while.

@DavidGudeman, the confederate flag was flown by enemy hands in the Capitol and my own capital C Conservative senators tried to legitimize those people and provide them cover. A representative of mine hand delivered a flag to a convicted insurrectionist. This isn't just online, they're promising more violence every day, and the only reason a politician ever opens his mouth is to get reelected.

They know exactly who they're carrying favor with and why, and it's because a party split would completely end their chances of a majority in either chamber.

Anyway. We won't see eye to eye here. Maybe it's enough that we agree people can be better. I have to get back to work.

@Nohbdy, There are no convicted insurrectionists. Your use of the term betrays you for a dishonest and politically motivated commenter.

@DavidGudeman, politically motivated describes any attempt to define policy, governance, law and order. What happened that day was not tourism, and the only reason you even care that I used the word is because you worry about what it means for people who WEREN'T inside the Capitol. Demanding the effectiveness of existing law is a cornerstone of American Conservatism and it comes before demanding new law.

And they aren't denouncing the couple of openly stupid congress people who are standing directly by the rioters, because they need the seats, and the votes of the people who think that invading the Capitol was justified, no matter how nuts that is.

Anyway. I'm really done now, and, we really won't come to any conclusion here. I won't be back.