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Entry: Why the Right Moves Left Link: http://www.takimag.com/blogs/article/why_the_right_moves_left#12976 Post contents: Paleoconservatives frequently devote much time and effort to the creation of substantial cases that certain historical dates or events profoundly affected the nature of conservatism. The year 1865 or the New Deal’s advent usually suffices for those historians who have this purpose in mind. But what of the American System and its proponents, Calhoun and Clay? Lincoln thoroughly suppressed the notion of states rights and FDR’s consolidation of an egalitarian centralist state on the political lines of National Socialism, were merely battles, lost in a general conflict. With all due respect to Professor Gottfried, his personal views on the democratic process are unsound and they obscure his perspective of traditionalism in the 21st century. He views the vote, as an activist method and has discussed using it as such, in the past. In fact, voting will not serve as even alleviation for one’s social conscience. It serves no purpose and is a gradually decaying as the people whom it was intended to enable are either entirely indifferent and apolitical or feel that their token ballot is worth as much as their voice. The end of conservatism began with social-democracy’s advent. Monarchists may blame Republicanism for this, but it was Republicanism, diluted with liberalism which provoked the crises of thought that resulted in the exaltation of the individual, those men and women devoid of distinctiveness in any way, shape or form and part and parcel of the faceless masses. Mankind was not made for democracy. Its indelible effect upon mankind has been negative, so determined were its advocates to implement social-democracy upon humanity that they resorted to social-engineering to destroy the final vestiges of traditionalism which could not be eradicated from the human psyche. The left-liberal drift began in the 17th century and by the 19th, it had undergone profound alterations before emerging as social-democracy. Liberals became reactionaries with a depressing regularity. Their ideology has undergone no alteration whatsoever. The times changed and they did not. To begin with Karl Marx on what we might call the “left” for convenience sake, or to begin with Burke, Kirk or the Southern Agrarians on the supposed “right” is impossible, for these are no more than reflections of a greater, eternal traditionalism or anti-traditionalism, respectively. Today, we have two parties, one in power, devoted to keeping things as they are the other in opposition, whose purpose is to speak of the future, where things will be as they should. Neither of these parties is politically motivated. Sent at: 2008 07 05