WASHINGTON — Rod Dreher’s new Substack, What I Saw And Heard In Washington, serves as a warning to Republicans: Nick Fuentes and his followers are a formidable force, and we must be ready to act.
The question is, “Act how?”
Dreher never truly answers the question in his 6,000+ word, 11-page essay about his meeting with Vice President JD Vance and Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán.
Dreher recognizes that American youth have been lied to; they know they are “screwed” economically. They have spent their lives being told, “as whites…they are what’s wrong with the world,” and their reaction is “F—k that.” I agree with Dreher’s observations.
Dreher also observed,
The institutions of our society, as they see it, have lied and lied and lied, and still lie. They still lie in many ways about race (e.g., refusing to be honest about black crime), they lied about Covid, they lied about males and females, and they forced the insanity of gender ideology on us all. The military lied about Iraq. The universities embraced and enforced ideologies of lies. The Catholic Church lied about sexual abuse, and the connection to the prevalence of sexually active gay priests honeycombing the institution. They lied about the benefits of mass migration and diversity. They lied about Trump and Russia. The political parties and their corporate allies lied about what globalism would mean for ordinary people.
The media have lied and do lie about most things. This past weekend, everybody was talking about the new report in Blaze media alleging that the mysterious January 6 pipe bomber was in fact a former Capitol police officer — the implications being that the whole event was orchestrated by the Deep State to discredit Donald Trump.
But Dreher freely admits, “I still don’t have an answer.” However, he nearly reaches a conclusion when he states near the end of his tome, “This is why Mr. Vance’s breezy dismissal of the struggle to remove extremists from the right-wing coalition as ‘infighting’ is a mistake. What he dismisses as internal squabbles is the difficult and necessary work of moral and political hygiene for the conservative movement—and the country.”
This is where I take exception with Dreher.
First, the word “extirpate” means to root out and destroy completely. This is Buckley-era stuff—deciding who is in and who is out of the Right. Buckley dismissed Pat Buchanan, Ayn Rand, and numerous others, leaving us with a Neo-Conservative mess of pottage. The result is a broken country and millions of young men that lack a vision.
I personally find JD’s “breezy dismissal” the right course of action.
Let me explain.
Vice President Vance is acknowledging two things. First, we live in a free country where people can choose whether or not to associate with others. The saying goes like this, “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.”
Americans are free to act foolishly if they wish—that’s their right. However, they do not have the right to break the law or harm others. The actions taken by the Trump Administration and DOJ against BLM and Antifa are justified: they need to be stopped. These groups are dangerous, corrupt, and responsible for killing people and damaging property. People need to go to jail.
Secondly, Vance rightly recognizes that the Democrat Party and their allies in the mainstream media (MSM) want nothing more than a bloodbath on the Right, in order to split the coalition of common-sense Americans, and, surprise, surprise, take down Trump--which lays the groundwork to take out JD.
So, it’s best to move forward and avoid issuing official extirpation papers that resemble those of communist governments.
And Dreher, who has spent time analyzing the rise of communism and their illiberal anti-free speech policies, should know better than to go down that road, as that is the real road to Fascism.
