Alan Joseph Bauer
Dr. Bauer is a scientist and columnist for Townhall He wrote a 12/3/24 editorial which I will copy down below and then comment on. The title of his editorial was, Why Do Conservative Politicians Move Left?
This question is significant and answering it is of critical importance. We all know that conservative politicians (judges too) move Left, but that liberal or Progressive politicians and judges rarely move Right? Why do these conservative politicians betray or seem to betray their own values?
My view is unconventional. I think Republicans mostly are not fanatics and ideologues, so they do not unite wholly as one face and one opinion as do the true-believers on the Left, like Democrats and Leftists do. Republicans jump all over for reasons of weakness, personal advantage, deliberate value betrayal, revenge, jealousy, and gain, but their corruption and double-crossing, though harmful, is not nearly as corrupting and damaging as the lockstep unity of the Left goosestepping their way through history.
Leftists with the immoral altruist-collectivist ethics, and their bottomless ambition to rule and bind all, are absolutely corrupt already, and their worldly victories and glomming onto more and more governmental control of the masses, only feeds their political sickness, their insatiable appetite to direct all.
I think most Democrat politicians and judges are true believers, faithful fanatics advancing their holy cause at every opportunity, and such people do not betray their own values, do not go against what others of their ilk say publicly, and most of them say what they mean and mean what they say. They are sincere but this kind of sincerity is frightening and creepy.
There are genuine conservatives--who over the years remain faithful to their values and to promises made to their voters--like Chip Roy and Ted Cruz that are conservative unapologetically and never waver in their values by moving left, neither betraying their values nor their constituents. But most conservatives are not true believers but are more individualistic than are Leftist fanatics, the rabid joiners on the Left, so it easier for them to betray their own values for gain, to go along to get along, and they horse-trade unscrupulously and without guilt, making all kinds of stench-emitting deals with Leftists to get what they want in exchange.
The other issue is conservative career politicians that stay in the Swamp too long, lose touch with their principles and voters back home, and side more and more with the lobbyists and Washington insiders growing government which is a Left-wing platform.
Also, almost all politicians, if they stay in Washington long enough, become corrupt, larcenous and tell lots of empty promises they have no intention of keeping. Lying is now a way of life. Politicians in power too long almost always turn on the people who they are there to serve. These entrenched swamp-dwellers end up ruling the masses that voted for them. This ruling elite turns on the people and work endlessly and variously to oppress, subjugate, and exploit them, and this culture and way of life is quite compatible with Leftism.
This is why I like terms limits, small government, maximum personal liberty and privacy, unfettered capitalism and in the constitutional republic with individuating supercitizens; with these protections in place, we are best protected from ruling elites and career politicians.
With individuating supercitizens in charge, naturally weak and depraved politicians are still inclined to be corrupted to take bribes to enrich themselves and grow government to live off of, to tyrannize, to enslave and to beat up the masses, but the new kind of in-tune, assertive, savvy voters are the rulers and watchdogs with a hyper-alert sense of any politician that is wavering or considering betrayal of the people. Once alerted to his diabolical machinations, the people will jerk so hard on his short leash that he will soon come back into line, or they will work tirelessly to primary him and vote to boot him out of office. It will not take long for him and his slimy ilk to understand what formidable citizens that they are up against, and he likely will come to heel as commanded. Centralized power corrupts all, so we must keep power decentralized as much as possible and keep the individuators running society.
Conservatives relatively are individualists and individuators so they will be faithful and sometimes falter and sin and betray and make false promises these. The paradox is that optically these conservative politicians look less principled, more faithless, and corrupt than the Leftists who seem steadfast and united in comparison.
Conservatives can be and often are corrupt in their selfish scheming, but this corruption is mild and harmless when compared with the absolute corruption of true believers, Communists, selfless, pure, and idealistic at that. These scary progressives are totalistic in their selflessness. These ideological purists tremendously unified because in their holy cause there is not dissent tolerated or expected. No deviance from the party line is allowed: pure conformity -is their ingrained view of the world, so all Progressives move as one and all speak as one. All their politicians vote as one block: they impressively to seem to be consistently principled, but that is the illusory image they have crafted for the outside world to perceive: they are just consistently one-sided.
They never cease struggling forward with their only goal: to take over all of society and convert or terrorize all into submitting to society be run along lines with the holy cause of Leftism. These Leftists always fight for victory in good time and bad never taking foot off the accelerator. Leftists are completely corrupt: they believe their lies and will die to advance them in order that they may take control of everyone and everything. Their sole ambition is gather absolute power to themselves and their Party, with no quarter given or asked for
It is no wonder that weak, treacherous, foolish, divided, cowardly, bickering conservatives are handled easily by the Democrats. Too often Republicans are weak, vacillating internally bickering in insane circles so they can shoot each other down in their circular firing squads.
Conservatives and Republicans (RINOS) will often betray their own kind, while eagerly, easily compromising and giving the company store to Leftists.
The individual conservative still is selfish enough to be independent and limited in his greed for power and money. This is the makeup of the conservative who is a hybrid political creature, mostly joiner but a bit of a loner or individualist.
With the arising of loner individualists as individuator supercitzens then conservatives can be principled and not very corrupt, and are not very corruptible, or interested in betraying the masses, nor their own conservative party.
Leftists are not principled nor incorruptible; they are just ideological purists on the making to turn America into hell.
Let’ see what Bauer thinks.
Bauer: “There is a noticeable trend in Western countries in which ostensibly right-leaning politicians go full lefty. Why?
Moshe ‘Bogie’ Yaalon is not a name familiar to most Americans. Yaalon was chief of staff of the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) and served three years as defense minister in one of the Binyamin (Bibi) Netanyahu’s governments. Then something happened. He moved to the left. In more recent elections before retiring from politics for a lack of any real support, he was on the side of Yair Lapid, Netanyahu’s nemesis on the left side of the Israeli political spectrum. Last week, he made waves when he claimed that Israel was involved in ethnic cleansing in Gaza. Even the UN point person on genocide said that Israel was doing no such thing, after which her contract was not renewed. How could a former soldier, a leader of men in battle, accuse the IDF of something that is patently false, namely the systematic murder of Palestinians for no military aim? Why did Bogie betray his old outfit? Part of the answer is his hatred of Bibi. Just as Trump Derangement Syndrome causes people to say and do very dumb things even against their interests, there is a similar phenomenon here for all of those who loathe Bibi Netanyahu.”
My response: The Leftists and Never-Trumpers like Liz Cheney hate Trump as bad as Bogie hates Bibi, and hatred explains why these jacked-up conservatives betray their principles and cause to spite their loathed enemy, but they still are free enough and individual enough to choose to betray their rival, whereas Leftists in the cultural Leninist mass movement rarely are afforded the right to betray a rival; they are even more corrupt than the conservative ex-loyalists, but Leftists appear loyal out of noble principle, when in fact they are united because total conformity and groupthink in messaging is their obeyed command.
Baur: “One cannot overestimate the damage that comments like those of Yaalon and people like him do. If one looks at the Telegram feed of Abu Ali Express in English, one of the best sources of real time information on the fighting in the Middle East, he often brings statements and reports from Arab and Iranian sources quoting Israeli politicians who go against their government. So, comments like those of Yaalon will immediately get play in the Lebanese, Iranian and Yemini news and online accounts. How could somebody so august as the former defense minister of the state of Israel be wrong? But he is wrong, and by every measure Israel has performed beyond any previous country in minimizing civilian casualties in a dense urban battlefield. Everybody knows that if Israel wanted to wipe out Gazans wholesale, it could do so either by carpet bombing or closing the inlets for international aid. Israel is doing neither, and nobody can say of the 800 soldiers killed since the 7th of October, 2023, how many died because the army and its lawyers put too much emphasis on protecting civilians over performing proper military activity. Is it 10 or is it 100?
Yaalon’s betrayal of Israel and his earlier shift is nothing new in Israel or in the Western world. Ariel Sharon was the famous ‘bulldozer’ who pushed the construction of settlements and the aggressive fighting against Arab armies. Yet, the same Sharon left the Likud and started a new party that promptly pulled the Jews out of Gaza and effectively started the march towards the October 7th massacre. Yitzhak Rabin, another successful fighting general, gave Yasir Arafat the keys to the West Bank and the means to kill over a thousand Jews during the second intifada. Ehud Barak almost gave away half of Jerusalem during one of his meetings with Arafat under the watchful eye of Bill Clinton. Ehud Olmert, once considered a Likud hawk, nearly did the same after he replaced Sharon.
In the US, right-leaning politicians also got wobbly. Thus, one can find Dick and Liz Cheney supporting Joe Biden, whose policies of an open border and a pronoun-directed military have significantly weakened the U.S. internally and on the world stage. Dick Cheney was considered the most right-leaning politician in George W. Bush’s circle; the left called him Darth Vader and he seemed never to meet a war that he didn’t like. Yet, his contempt for Donald Trump and the millions who want an America that functions again, outweighed whatever conservative ideas he might still harbor, and he came out for a man whose Justice Department threw patriots into jail for the crime of parading around the Capitol. In England, former conservative Boris Johnson had policies that were indistinguishable from those of the left. He brought fully into the climate scam and wanted to ban British wood-burning stoves. His Tory policies for trans would be on part with those of any leftist government.
So why do right-leaning, card-carrying conservatives go left? Part of it would appear to be self-preservation: they move to positions that they believe are more popular and more likely to keep them in office. Part of it may be that their stated positions have no roots in religion or political philosophy.”
My response: They betray their conservative principles because they are filling exigent personal needs or favors, or because their stated positions have no roots in religion or political philosophy, but their corrupt is only partial. The complete corruption of the true believing Leftist is such that he is ruthless and without mercy or deviation all the time. The fair-weather conservative friend might be two-faced and fence straddling, but he can still be virtuous occasionally or all seeks is a little petty larceny, not to rule the world as the postmodernist Marxist lust after.
Bauer: “Yes, when they wrote for a conservative website and ran for office, they really believed in small government, states’ rights, the end of DEI, and no trans surgeries for kids. But after the election, they became beholden to donors, they see that if they tweak their views a bit, their favorability goes up, and the left loves nobody more than a conservative turncoat. How much airtime did Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger receive for their betrayal of the Republican Party? How often were they invited onto ultra-left shows to badmouth Donal Trump and his supporters until they got the boot from Congress?
One can definitely say that there are those on the left who move right. Tucker Carlson famously worked at MSNBC and gave Rachel Maddow her first job. Nobody 20 years ago would have called Donald Trump a Reagan Republican, but there is not politician since his ride down the escalator in 2015 who had better articulated a vision for America that is more conservative and positive. Donald Trump is not beholden to donors and he has deftly put together a coalition that includes people who would never have voted for him but are fans of Bobby Kennedy Jr., Tulsi Gabbard, Elon Musk and Joe Rogan.”
My response: When conservatives go from left to right it is usually a matter of a change in mind about core political principles and is genuinely felt and expressed.
Bauer: “Before Yaalon’s shameless comments, I thought to write an article along the lines of conservative politicians going left. Donald Trump has put together an impressive team of serious individuals to run the various departments of the executive branch. We need them not to go wobbly, not during their confirmation hearings and certainly not when they are in charge. ‘Reality’ can either be met with uncompromising commitment to truth and values or can be allowed to change one’s position to get by or get ahead. Either people bend reality to their will or they get bent by it. Every department needs a serious overhaul and an investigation into malfeasance—from the Covid shenanigans of Dr. Fauci, to the political prosecutions of the DOJ and the disastrous retreat from Afghanistan. People of indomitable stamina will be needed to fix a broken government. DOGE must be relentless in rooting out waste and fraud in America’s bloated budget and bureaucracy. May God grant President Trump and his incoming team the strength and dedication to mission to make America succeed again. There is absolutely no time to lose.”
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