Political Extremism Wins Battles, but Loses Wars

Purity testers — puritans — Jacobins of the left and right, dominate, wielding  disproportionate influence. In America.

And around the world.

They are pushing virtue at the point of a bayonet.

Long run, that's a losing strategy.

The original Puritans are long gone. Samuel Adams, "the last Puritan," departed in 1803.

H.L. Mencken defined Puritanism as "the haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy." Unfair to the original Puritans.

Yet fair dramatic license.

New ayatollahs emerge.

Here in America, Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., must bow to the demands of a camarilla of ultra-MAGA Republicans. These just held a critical defense bill hostage to fight (admittedly obnoxious) cultural Marxist social policies.

In Israel, Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu must meet the demands of the ultra-Orthodox. Per The New York Times: "Mr. Netanyahu has promised ultra-Orthodox leaders a new, separate city for (ultra-Orthodox) Haredim where the Haredi lifestyle would guide planning. He has agreed to increase funding for Haredi seminary students and provide access to government jobs without university degrees."

Iran has its Guidance Patrols, colloquially known as the "morality police." And Afghanistan? The Taliban restored The Ministry for the Propagation of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice.

In India, per Reuters, "Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) have dusted off a potentially divisive plan to enact a common set of personal laws for all, irrespective of religion. ... Currently, India's Hindus, Muslims, Christians and large tribal populations follow their own personal laws and customs, alongside an optional secular code, for marriage, divorce, adoption and inheritance."

Adieu Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, World's Largest Democracy!

And so on. What does this mean for American politics?

Two scholars write at Foreign Policy on why America's lunatic fringelings, left and right, are uniting in opposition to America's moral duty to strongly support Ukraine's fight for liberty and justice against the brutal Putinvasion.

Jan Dutkiewicz at Harvard Law School and Dominik Stecuła at Colorado State University, writing recently at Foreign Policy, observed: "[A]n overwhelming majority of Americans do not hold coherent ideological views. People who do are, in many ways, outliers. … Populism is simply a worldview that pits average citizens, 'the people,' against 'the elites,' whom whom populists view as corrupt. ...

"On the right, for example, it manifests in 'America First' nationalism, isolationism, and the distrust of experts and the news media. On the left, it manifests in the distrust of the traditional party establishment as well as of business interests and mainstream commentators. ... In both cases, it foments a contrarianism that is perhaps most visible on issues where there is a rare national consensus, such as support for Ukraine."

I'm no contrarian, merely a "traditional values" full spectrum paleoconservative. I am in sympathy with traditionalists: pro-life, pro-marriage-classic, pro-family and, candidly, an aspiring patriarch!

So ... I'm also one of the loneliest of political creatures, a pursuit-of-happiness-archconservative. I believe that using punitive measures to impose virtue is socially, politically and culturally counterproductive.

Punitive measures create blowback.

I am all for traditional values. That said, why such values matter, matters.

The evidence is persuasive, overwhelming truly, that such values are more conducive to happiness than those of the left's dystopian imposition of radical egalitarianism and, in the tart, elegant formulation of feminist scholar, Elaine Showalter, "sexual anarchy."

I am equally oppositional to reactionary attempts to bring about "The Handmaid's Tale." No to Cotton Mather Conservativism! Mather defended the Salem witch trials to which he was adjacent, authoring "The Wonders of the Invisible World. Observations as Well Historical as Theological, upon the Nature, the Number, and the Operations of the Devils (1693)." Did not age well.

Mine is not a call, like that of then Gov. Mitch Daniels, R-Ind., many years ago, for a "truce" on the social issues (to fight the deficit). A political blunder.

This is a call for a smart strategy: promoting the pursuit of happiness! Let's win the cultural counterrevolution by storming the commanding heights of happiness.

Not by being a bunch of grumpy old men and cranky old womyn pushing virtue as if administering cod liver oil to truculent delinquents. Wins battles. Loses wars.

What wars? For orthodox cultural hegemony.

Per Pew Research, Catholicism, Christianity, even Mormonism are in a steep decline. Bad news!

The old ways, the fostering of many bonds of family and friends, are the good ways. They're happiness' secret sauce.

To gather political energy into a movement or a campaign let's cue up "All You Need Is Love," not "The House of the Rising Sun."

Might lose a few battles. Wins wars.

Progressives? Conservatives?

Stop pushing virtue at the point of a bayonet.

Ralph Benko, co-author of "The Capitalist Manifesto" and chairman and co-founder of "The Capitalist League," is the founder of The Prosperity Caucus and is an original Kemp-era member of the Supply-Side revolution that propelled the Dow from 814 to its current heights and world GDP from $11T to $94T. Read Ralph Benko's reports — More Here.