The political, cultural and economic battle lines are being drawn throughout the West in stark clarity. A real war – so far, thankfully, non-violent for the most part – is taking place between the forces of internationalism, otherwise known as "globalism," and those who value the sovereignty and uniqueness of individual groups of people comprised in the nation-state.
It's clear that progressives are squarely in the camp of internationalism, seeing displays of local patriotism as "jingoism," "xenophobia," "racism" and whatever other silly words they can come up with. It's also clear that the leading populist movements making headway today identify with nationalism, with President Trump, elected to be a true change agent for America, openly pronouncing himself an adherent of that very term.
Where, then, does this leave members of the spent force that dominated Republican politics for some 30-odd years? The news that The Weekly Standard, a sort of flagship publication for neoconservatism, is ceasing publication showcases the precipitous decline in the fortunes of what has become a thoroughly discredited ideology. The Standard announced on December 14 that it was shutting its doors, citing "double-digit declines in its subscriber base all but one year since 2013."
Flushed Out
With their own base crumbling beneath them, neoconservatives are going to have to choose a side in the ongoing struggle of the day. In point of fact, however, they've been on one side all along, with the ridiculously inappropriate term "conservative" serving as a mere fig leaf to disguise their true orientation.
After all, there is nothing conservative about promoting endless intervention abroad, nonstop wars that have drained our national treasury and open borders in the pursuit of cheap labor, er, "free trade."
Neoconservatives enjoy using terms like "classical liberal" to describe themselves. Yet that term seems to have no real meaning whatsoever except to serve as a way to say, "I'm not with Trump."
Neocon icon Bill Kristol, co-founder of the now-dead Weekly Standard, has himself said the Never Trumpers who make up his dwindling band of followers should “rebrand” as liberals. The reason, whether overtly stated or not, is that populism is the ultimate dirty word to these people. This is the real reason why any support for President Trump whatsoever is unthinkable. As Democrats continue to lurch hard to the left and populist nationalists stand with Trump, the neocons will be forced to come clean and publicly join the forces opposed to those who want to reclaim their governments in the name of the people.
Globalist Champions
In fact, they've already begun to do just that. Prominent neocon think tank the American Enterprise Institute has joined up with staunch leftist organization The Center for American Progress to oppose the wave of what the two groups derisively label "authoritarian populism" sweeping over Europe and America. The two seemingly opposed yet in fact quite compatible organizations share a stated aim to "defend" the "international order" that is being imposed on the people of the West. A joint statement by the two groups reads:
"The defense and rebuilding of democratic politics and discourse … requires sustained intellectual engagement. It demands a reinvigorated case for how liberal democracy, openness, pluralism, and a rules-based international order can deliver on the promise of shared prosperity and common security."
Further reading fully exposes the false representations of "free trade" as a "conservative" pursuit and "migration" as a matter for progressive support, as the leftist and the neocon groups both agree to support these twin snakeheads of globalism.
"As a general rule, openness – both to trade and migration – makes societies more prosperous and resilient," the joint statement reads. "Policymakers need to make sure that the benefits of openness are shared fairly, but going back to a world of autarchic, closed societies is not an option."
None of this should be surprising to those who know the roots of the neoconservative movement that hijacked the Republican Party in the late '80s. Irving Kristol, the father of Bill and a leading founder of neoconservatism, was a Trotskyite who was suspected by the FBI of associating with Soviet spies.
When Bill Kristol talks of channeling his “inner socialist” is this what he is referring to?
Flushed from their comfortable camouflage as "conservatives," there are two options available to these strident opponents of populist nationalism. They can openly ally with progressive leftists, shamelessly discarding their past declarations of belief in "small government" and "individualism" in the process, or they can seek a new home in the key support structures of globalism: international institutions like the United Nations and the European Union, big box media organizations, and monopolistic social media outlets.
But the Yellow Vests are out and the jig is up.
This second path seems the most likely. That joint AEI-CAP statement explicitly endorses the European Commission's attempts to come up with "a 'code of principles' that online platforms and social networks should follow." It explicitly supports these companies fixing their algorithms to "facilitate users’ access to real news stories," i.e., only the news these elitists want people to read.
But the Yellow Vests are out and the jig is up, Mr. Kristol. Why not show some rare intellectual honesty and come right out and declare your true loyalty to the New World Order globalist establishment? Another fake conservative magazine is not going to accomplish anything anymore. We're past all that now.
