More Gay Than the Pope’s Pajama Bottoms

Introduction

If you don’t zoom out too far, Ben Shapiro had some really good things to say at the Heritage Foundation recently. Here you go, check it out at this link.

[Huh. I linked to it in my tweet thread, but am now told it is not available anymore. But you can’t deny that I tried.]

At any rate, Shapiro said that lack of definition regarding the conservative movement was a disastrous “open borders” approach. And just as a nation cannot be a nation without control of its borders, so also a movement that lacks ideological definition cannot be a movement. All of that was true and good.

As he was doing this, Shapiro appealed to the founding principles of the Heritage Foundation, which were “free enterprise, limited government, individual freedom, traditional American values, and a strong national defense.” Now I happen to be in favor of all five of those, and nothing written here should be taken as casting shade on any of them. Yay for all five. Two yays.

But there is still a problem with Shapiro’s application. And it is a big one.

Aimed at Tucker

The point he was making was aimed at Tucker. He considers Tucker an opponent, and not as a fellow conservative who has made some errors here or there. The criticism would be that Tucker is no longer a real advocate of limited government or free enterprise (praising feudalism, for example), or that he undermined national security by giving Putin that softball interview, or because he underestimates the threat that radical Islam presents to America, or is too critical of our relationship with Israel. Things like that. And, truth be told, there is some truth in all of that. A lot of people who still like Tucker do agree that he has got a case of the wobbles in some areas. Fair point.

But if you are going to read Tucker out of conservatism because of such wobbles, you are not going to be able to stop there. Shapiro is correct that conservatism needs definitional boundaries. If you don’t have a border, you don’t have a country. But definitional boundaries are not an automatic safeguard. They can also catch you up in a purity spiral, and a movement can splinter into a hundred pieces also. There is more than one way to assume room temperature. If your country Balkanizes into a bunch of little pieces, you don’t have a country either. Both cautions are needed. Definitions are needed, and sensible priorities placed on such definitions . . . also needed.

I bring all this up because one of the things listed by Shapiro was this pesky thing called “traditional American values.” This is a phrase that encompasses a host of things—individualism, love of liberty, a hard work ethic, clear title to property, the rule of law . . . and that perennial favorite, heterosexual normativity. The cultural perversions that were ushered in by the sexual revolution were introduced in the sixties, mainstreamed by the media in the decades following, and then imposed on all of us by SCOTUS in the dreadful Obergefell decision. There is absolutely no way for anyone to argue that “traditional American values” includes same sex mirage, drag queen story hours, transing the kids, buying babies from surrogates, and all the other fruit-of-the-month selections. Nevertheless, a whole lot of “conservatives” have accommodated themselves to this wretchedness.

But this is an area where Tucker is standing far more firmly than many of his critics in the mainstream conservative movement. Douglas Murray, noted conservative author, is homosexual. Scott Bessent, Secretary of the Treasury, is homosexual. Spencer Klavan, podcaster son of Andrew Klavan, is homosexual. Dave Rubin of The Blaze is homosexual, and he and his partner celebrated openly when they bought a baby. Guy Benson of Townhall is “married,” and he and his partner also obtained a son via surrogacy. And when Milo recently appeared on Tucker’s show, while he had some pointed criticisms of homosexuality—in response to the question “why are you gay?”—his mannerisms were still really effeminate and gayer than the pope’s pajama bottoms. And Milo also went on Tim Pool to say that Charlie Kirk was gay, that Charlie and Erika were about to be divorced, and that Charlie might still be alive somewhere. All this was nothing more than catty gay gossip. Nothing like an effeminate celibate on the tube, dishing up imaginary dirt.

Now if that Heritage creed is a good working definition of what American conservatism ought to be—as I think it is—then we have to come to grips with the fact that we no longer have an intact conservative movement. Not at all. It has already gone bye-bye. No significant group represents all five in any meaningful way. The movement has already broken apart, and different voices and institutions have retained control of some of the larger pieces. Alexander’s empire was one thing, and the Seleucid piece was quite another.

What we really do have is a really large and informal reactionary movement—many have moved away from Woke, and DEI, and #MeToo, and all that whites-are-uniquely-evil nonsense. But such reaction, even if the recoil is long overdue, is not the same thing as conservative principle. And neither is pragmatism the same thing as principle.

Why Marriage Is Fundamental

So when it comes to the definition of conservatism, we do need border control. But there is a difference between defending conservatism’s southern border, which would be the definition of marriage, sex, fertility, abortion, and the image of God in man, and defending our border with Manitoba, which has to deal with the occasional errant moose. A moose would be something like misreading Trump’s tariffs.

Like I said earlier, I am in favor—strongly in favor—of all five of the things Ben Shapiro outlined. But I don’t value them all equally. Sodom may have had a strong national defense, but that did not protect her when the fire of Heaven fell. Gomorrah may have encouraged small businesses in a way that left them untrammeled by excessive bureaucratic regulations, such that their small retail shops were booming. In the long run, nobody ought to care how those ancient retail shops were thriving. What was the GDP of the Cities of the Plain two years before the fire fell? We don’t know because all those records got burned up also.

Marriage is fundamental. A conservatism that has failed to protect that, and gave up on the war right after they lost a major battle, is a conservatism that, in Dabney’s words, is merely the “shadow that follows radicalism to perdition.” Defending the “integrity” of a conservative movement that has open homosexuals on staff is to play the role of Baghdad Bob.

Every ostensibly conservative candidate for office needs to be asked if he is opposed to Obergefell, and whether or not he would labor to overthrow Obergefell. Would he refuse to vote for any SCOTUS nominee if that nominee were not clearly opposed to the travesty that was Obergefell? If the answer is anything other than a full-throated yes, then the man you are talking to is not a conservative. He might be useful in various side battles, but conservative? . . . no. Why? Because conservatives conserve the essential things. Conservatives know what the essential things are.

Libertarians can be helpful, but they are not conservative. Dave Rubin makes fun of things that need to be made fun of . . . but he is no conservative. Defense hawks can fund the making of bombs that protect Nigerian Christians, for which they are most grateful, but that is not a full-orbed conservative worldview.

We can use the pieces of the former conservative movement, but we must not kid ourselves. The pieces are just pieces.

What Are We Fighting to Conserve Exactly?

In most modern settings, cultural conservatism was about preserving and protecting the heritage of the West. For a long time, we were resisting the abolition of the West. That’s what we were doing for most of my adult life.

But we have now come to the point where we are fighting against the abolition of man. What are we seeking to conserve now? We are fighting to conserve humanity.

Why are human beings anything more than meat, bones and protoplasm? Why are we to be reckoned as anything more than moist robots? The answer is not found in Darwin . . . the only thing found down that darkling road is despair. We were endowed by our Creator with certain inalienable rights, and His signature written on the guarantee of those rights looks like this—male and female. “Male and female created He them.” In the image of God He created them, you know, male and female. You know.

If you do not know what a man is, or what a woman is, or what marriage is for, then . . . please follow me closely here . . . you do not know what anything is. If you do not know what a woman is for—which is for a man, and not for some butch lesbian—then you do not know what human beings are. If you do not know what a man is for—which is not for an attractive catamite—then you do not understand God’s design for humanity. And if you do not know what human beings are, then how on earth can you tell me what human rights are? The folly descends until it finally tumbles into the Abyss. Where it belongs.

So if you cannot define man, woman, husband, wife, child, marriage, and so forth, then I am certainly not going to let you define conservative for me. What, exactly, would you be conserving? Nothing that is worth conserving.

Names That I Go By

I am often asked about my willingness to be called a Christian nationalist. And I am certainly willing to be called that, and believe that I am in a fair position to be able to define what that means. But let’s suppose that I have over-estimated my abilities in that department, and let’s say the term Christian nationalism is successfully captured by Jew-hating Crusader avatars with laser-eyes. Let us say that the dank dwarves successfully shoot all the horses. . . .

If that day ever comes, then I will no longer call myself a Christian nationalist. I will cheerfully hand in my papers, and be off down the road—hands in my pockets, whistling.

Like I said, a lot of people have asked me about my association with the term Christian nationalist. And there is enough unsavory stuff going on over there in the fever swamps that one at least understands the question.

But nobody asks me that same question when I call myself a conservative—even though this label is much closer to being successfully trashed. But I do still call myself a conservative—even though in my mind the same limitation applies. Does “conservative” now mean open acceptance of sodomy, just so long as the homosexual concerned understands how supply and demand work? If we get to the point where “conservative” means that, then again, Trumpkin-like, I will be down the same road, calling myself something else. Maybe the appropriate word at that time would homeless.

If any open homosexuals, pretending to be “married,” worked at the Heritage Foundation, would it have been possible for Ben Shapiro to give a speech decrying that? And if he had done so, would it have been received in the same way? Would he have been applauded for his courage? The answer to that question is—in the current climate—don’t be silly.