White also black

I had to share this sparkling jewel I happened across in my research for the last posting:

By the "radio clowns" I mean all of those salesmen who go on the radio and pretend to be conservatives, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Mark Levin and so on.

These guys are not conservatives. Conservatism, in either its paleo- or libertarian forms, recognizes natural elites. And these radio clowns spend most of their time braying against elites. That's because they're populists. And populism is a form of liberalism.

And in case you were too dumbfounded to absorb that, he repeats it:

...why don't these wannabe conservatives get it? Because they're populists. And populism is a form of liberalism.

I take this to be one of those "anything bad is liberal" arguments—you know, the kind that says the Nazis were not the Platonic ideal of right wing fascism but actually far-left liberals, or that Jesus was a rock-ribbed conservative.  And of course political descriptors like "liberal" and "conservative" are imprecise at best.  Still: gosh.

Comments

[Harold M]

A gem indeed, and in so many ways. The term "natural elites" is sufficiently fuzzy, even in high church conservatism, that the shrieking heads can plausibly lay claim to the egalitarian elitism of being the few who are willing to publicly stand up for the simple, humble, pious, hard working man, who only wants to keep a fair share of his own labors. What makes these few brave souls an "elite" is the sad, sorry state of this depraved culture, in which the unnatural post modern leftist emasculationist agenda is so pervasive that it can be found in the typeface chosen for the children's schoolbooks. Effeminate fonts, embedded in paragraphs of parasitism, with a lesson in moral relativism the unwholesome payload - oh, the humanity! Who, we ask, facing this tragedy, would not want to shoulder the burden of raising a lonely voice in the vast wasteland, etc. etc.

In addition to the "anything bad is liberal" argument, I think he's jealous of their market share.

[James Ferency]

Who are "radio clown" populists? The white working class: abused by the elite class and both parties; socially conservative; economically liberal without knowing it; patriotic; relatively uneducated; thoroughly indoctrinated -- frustrating to behold, impossible to reason with, and more in common with progressives than anyone gives them credit for. What to do? Nobody knows.