Lone Candle
Champion of Truth
Some leaders and elected representatives of the Tea Party really believed in their supposed motivations about government spending, debt, and pork. But for the most part, the Tea Party was a big, damn lie. If all those Tea Partiers really cared about such things, they would be protesting and organizing just as hard against Trump right now.
https://reason.com/podcast/2025/10/22/what-happened-to-the-republican-party/
Japan’s first woman prime minister is somewhat populist right.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dFwvVChYp2M
“When conservatives reject constitutional limits on executive power and foment civil conflict, what exactly are they conserving?
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“There was a time when the American right was conservative: appreciative of inherited wisdom, skeptical of rationalism, wary of excessive government power, and against radical change.
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The New Right is not interested in defending these distinctively American ideals. Drawing instead on collectivist, nationalist, and even monarchist traditions from continental Europe, this New Right seeks to wield the tools of government to advance its own social, cultural, and religious priorities. For years, the New Right, by its own admission, has rejected the tenets of classical liberalism, including individual liberty, mutual toleration, and limited government.
https://reason.com/2025/09/26/the-american-new-right-looks-like-the-european-old-right/
“The implication was that people like the Holocaust-denying Gen Z influencer Nick Fuentes and his army of online followers (“Groypers”) were not welcome in the natcon tent. “I think that the border is clear,” Hazony said. “Blood and soil is literally a Nazi term….We are not interested in a nationalism of blood.”
Yet on the first day of this year’s National Conservatism Conference (“NatCon 5”) in Washington, D.C., Hazony gave a speech that didn’t just fail to clarify which elements of the extreme right should not be counted as natcons in good standing; it seemed explicitly to carve out space within the movement for those with antisemitic views. “Nobody ever said that to be a good natcon you have to love Jews,” Hazony, who is Jewish, said. “Go take a look at our statement of principles. It’s not a requirement.”
The comment was in keeping with the larger theme of his speech, which was on the importance of holding MAGA together at all costs. “You can’t win elections without a coalition, and thank God Trump and Vance are great at coalition building,” he said. “But what I’ve discovered in these last few months is that there are some people who just—they’re not into this. They don’t want the coalition. What they want is to be pure.””
So this coalition includes a basket of deplorables?
https://reason.com/2025/09/08/national-conservatism-has-a-bigotry-problem-whether-yoram-hazony-wants-to-admit-it-or-not/
A lot of conservative complaints about free speech infringements are not defending free speech, but defending harassment of disabilities and incitement of in real life harassment. Joe Rogan has trouble understanding the difference between making fun of someone who regularly says stupid stuff about politics on his show, and making fun of someone’s disability.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6kUdtXlb0ms&t=20s
“The potential through-line from Buckley to Trump is also important because of what it says about the right. For years, many Republicans and conservatives claimed Trump was an aberration and not representative of the movement or the party. Today, with many of Trump’s key arguments found in the writings of the right’s most historically prominent voice, that’s harder to accept today.”
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2025/06/15/william-buckley-biography-donald-trump-00392283
“the more tangible potential rupture with at least parts of the conservative legal movement is coming over Trump’s decision to nominate Emil Bove — formerly Trump’s criminal defense lawyer, currently Trump’s enforcer at the Justice Department — to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit.
Prominent members of the conservative legal movement have been publicly speaking out against Bove’s nomination, arguing that he would be more loyal to Trump than the rule of law. That in turn has sparked a backlash against Bove’s critics from Trump allies eager to install a new set of judges who may be less tied to the old guard on the right.”
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2025/06/16/emil-bove-nomination-conservative-legal-civil-war-00405837
Neoliberalism’s Far-Right Evolution | Quinn Slobodian | TMR
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3BEJutJm1sU
Americans when making a mistake, used to have their hearts in the right place but were just screwing it up. With Trump, the heart isn’t in the right place. Trump has destroyed conservatism and Christianity. Christianity was about helping the meek, not power and vengeance. Schools and society have become too focused on self-actualization rather than becoming better and more capable people; too focused on specific career skills rather than improving character.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pA9Bwd1zYDQ
Right wing social media confuses who is a liberal and who is a conservative and misportrays debates.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TrClwxIxDPk