In Baby Steps, CPAC Re-Learns Conservatism

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By Allan Stevo

There was a period where a group of socialist intellectuals came out of the University of Chicago and laid ruin to Washington DC and American political life by joining the Republican Party and making their way into positions of leadership.

When these most unconservative of folks started going by the term neoconservative, they also had an effect on American intellectual life, particularly as it relates to conservatism. Instead of creating a new term to describe themselves, they temporarily co-opted an existing term and made American Conservatism into a bigger government movement. By co-opting this term, they caused disarray for their intellectual opponents rather than confronting them head on. A neo-conservative though, is the opposite of a conservative.

CPAC, the annual political gathering of conservatives near Washington DC has been an important front in the intellectual battle in American conservatism and intellectual trends across the West.

When Ron Paul started winning CPAC straw polls a few years back, you could feel CPAC getting a little less neoconservative. It’s principled conservative, paleo-conservative, constitutional conservative, and libertarian core was alive and well at this place. It was a place where values could reliably matter in a D.C. where values meant so little. Rand Paul did the same at CPAC, dominating the straw polls and energizing the conservative movement along with many others. Then the world took a back seat when a bunch of silverbacks entered the room and pushed their way around.

Trump and crew. They may not be my favorite intellectually, because they miss some important points, but damn am I happy to have them raging at the left in this moment of intellectual revolution we are in the early stages of. I’m damn happy to have them in the bully pulpits they have but more importantly, happy to have them on the Internet, in this terrain of freedom and voluntary association that the world has been gifted. For anyone who wakes up every morning with a burning desire to do the work of a public intellectual – reading and writing with and for others – what an amazing time it is to be alive.

Ron Paul was a threat. That’s why he got shut out so much and his supporters so harshly dealt with.

Trump is a 10x of that threat. As are people like Milo Yiannopoulos, Stefan Molyneux, Paul Joseph Watson, and many others. We live in a time where the ability of an individual to lead an intellectual revolution in America is supremely unhampered by many of the forces that once sought to silence dissent. We are in the midst of it and they can’t seem to quiet down some of the most principled activists, no matter how hard they try. We are in a renaissance of public intellectual and activist philosophers, and it is uncoincidentally taking place in an era where technology allows one individual to have unlimited reach to share his or her ideas with any other individual seeking to hear them.

Meanwhile the neo-cons are in their death throes. McCain has to go all the way to Germany to speak about his love for world government without getting booed. Prominent left-wing Republicans and their Democratic allies have shown a need to be underhanded in 2016 and 2017 to prevent their crony sanctuaries from being overrun by Trump supporters. And an over-running is what would happen without neo-cons being underhanded.

So many of them showed their true colors in 2016 by supporting Hillary over Trump, demonstrating the one party nature of the “two party system.” So many of them continue to show their true colors today in the face of a truly threatening intellectual – 50% Jewish, 100% gay, foreign born, so well-spoken and well read, yet of a playful and entertaining demeanor that fits the age, Milo Yiannopoulos is incapable of getting attacked and silenced the way many on the right are so easily attacked and silenced.

For decades “anti-Semite,” “homophobe,” “racist,” “xenophobe” were terms yelled at people who were intellectually the farthest they possibly could have been from such things. Inappropriately throwing these words around has long been a reliable way to silence opposition from anyone making the most effective and most threatening arguments against socialism, against bigger government, against the state. Misusing such words, belittles those words and the real meaning that they have to describe important ills in the world.

Another way that has been reliably used to just silence the argument of an effective person in opposition is to make public some aspect of their life they would never have wanted made public. This disgusting maneuver has long been used to make a person look less reliable or has been threatened to be used to shut a person up. Attacking the person is very different than attacking the argument and has no place in an intellectual debate. This inappropriateness of the use of the ad hominem has long been realized among educated people, perhaps going as far back as the writing of Aristotle, by whom a similar concept illustrated but a different term used to describe it.

We are seeing a special era take place in American political life – a winning presidential candidate was unable to be silenced, blackmailed, or taken down by a messy personal past. Trump wouldn’t stand for it and the American public wouldn’t stand for it. A messy past, either today or half a millennium ago when Machiavelli wrote, has long been the way to silence an opponent whether vying for intellectual influence or vying for power. Ad hominem after ad hominem attack appeared over the course of the 2016 campaign, attacks that Donald Trump was apparently unscathed by. Considering the level of attack that took place, this is quite the victory.

Now we approach a second important test of that limit. If Milo too appears at CPAC and continues to dominate the air unscathed, we will have proven Americans becoming increasingly resilient to the ad hominem.

Then a third level of testing will follow: Can an everyday person, even if that be a straight white man on the right with baggage, return to being a full participant in American intellectual life, fully welcome to bring forth any intellectual argument without his biographical details being used to say whether he’s “allowed” to say such things. For us to enter a time where an American is unable to be silenced just because of a past or even a present that has nothing to do with the argument at hand – would prove an amazing asset to American intellectual life. The diminishment of this subtle, yet ever-present form of discrimination in American culture would be a blessing to say the least, for it makes room for real intellectual thought and real discussion to take place. Can Americans pursue an America where the skin color of the speaker plays no role in evaluating an intellectual argument rather than descending into a tribalism of fighting for special privileges based on biographical details of a speaker? What a gift it would be for it to be the norm societally to be able to place the argument at the forefront of intellectual life and tell those bearing ad hominems to take a back seat. What a victory over racism this would be, what a victory for the American experiment.

This will not happen if the neo-cons and their lapdogs have anything to say about it though. Their grip on power is loosening so significantly that they can’t even command authority at CPAC, where Jeb Bush for several years has been welcomed to the stage with booths, and now today where a neo-con whisper campaign against Milo is proving irrelevant, and if anything perhaps that whisper campaign will even backfire by bringing tremendous free publicity, selling out the event, and for years into the future filling CPAC with many more Milo supporters than Jeb Bush supporters.

I am rooting for Milo. The man is fighting an important fight for all Americans – the political extremists on the left will not silence him with violence and the political extremists on the right will not silence him with their whisper campaigns.

By the end of the week, we will know how much power the neo-cons still posses at CPAC and how much power they have to silence someone like Milo who believes he has an important truth to deliver and who refuses to be silenced.

May America, and the intellectual foundation of the West, pass this test with flying colors.

EDITOR’s NOTE: The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author, they are not representative of The Libertarian Republic or its sponsors.
Allan Stevo (@AllanStevo) is a New York City based businessman who writes at the political and cultural blog 52 Weeks in Slovakia (www.52inSk.com).
(Author’s Note: This piece, was written in the 12 hours before the neo-cons, amassed their forces. CPAC is a little more neoconservative than I realized. An attack is being waged on the concept of free expression in the West – and Milo has become a figure in that attack. For the sake of all who desire to participate in the Western tradition of thoughtful free expression, may this attack play out in his favor.)

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