Emily Wilson, whose online site is entitled “Emily Saves America,” was a devout liberal just a few years ago given to examining the views of people like Candace Owens, Ben Shapiro, Jordan Peterson and others whom she assumed she would despise. To her amazement, however, she discovered they were all intelligent, courageous beings who inspired her to abandon the sentimental drivel informing the Left in favor of the more Rational world-view of the Right. Of course, she has testified, she was shunned by almost all of her “liberal” friends who, while in no way debating the actual reasons for her transition, simply began assailing her with the usual litany of Leftist insults.. i.e., White Supremacist, etc..
P-Rae Easley, a former intern to Barack Obama, began to reconsider her political affiliation in 2018 and is now a staunch supporter of Donald Trump. A Black resident of Chicago, she recently appeared on Fox News where she expressed her outrage that her city’s mayor, Brandon Johnson, also a person of Color, had somehow found the resources to provide housing to hundreds of illegal aliens in public buildings which had previously been closed to the tax paying citizens of Chicago due to insufficient funds! Trump’s policy of prioritizing the needs of America’s own over those who ought not to even be in the country is clearly favored, she insists, by most of the Black residents of her city. Indeed she says at least 50% of America’s Blacks will vote for him in the upcoming election.
David Mamet is a Pulitzer Prize winning playwright and screenwriter who says that while he was raised by parents who were communists, he has now abandoned the Left and become a supporter of Donald Trump. In a recent interview with the L.A. Times he stated: “DEI is garbage. It’s fascist totalitarianism.” Clearly he feels entitled to select people in his various creative projects based on their talents and merits rather than their Race or Gender. Appalled by Hollywood’s new “inclusion standards,” he scornfully summarizes The Academy of Motion Pictures’ criteria in doling out Academy Awards as follows: “I can’t give you a stupid f—ing statue unless you have 7% of this, 8% of that.” For the sanctimoniously “inclusive,” apparently, intelligence and creativity now take a back seat to skin color and the configuration of one’s genitals!
Tulsi Gabbard, a Samoan Hindu and former Democratic representative for Hawaii’s second congressional district, abandoned the Democratic Party in 2022, declaring herself an Independent. Accusing her former party of “cowardly wokeness,” she cited its anti-White racism and seeming disdain for all people of religious faith as issues that led to her transition. Vilified as a traitor on The View, she recently appeared on that program to defend herself. Tulsi was clearly appalled that her hosts had smeared her with all sorts of personal insults without ever really discussing the issues at hand. If you are familiar with my blogs, you are no doubt aware that this despicable tactic is typical of the contemporary Left. Joy Behar, Sunny Hostin, etc., danced around Tulsi’s accusation, yet video evidence shows them openly mocking her on previous programs for her new affiliation with Fox News which, they said, clearly affirmed her status as a “useful idiot” of the Right. Try as she did to explain herself, she simply could not get the ladies of The View to consider the possibility that their approach to the socio-political issues of the day might be irrational if not utterly narrow-minded. As Tulsi is being considered as a running mate by Donald Trump, I assume she is now a full blown Republican.
In April of 2023, U. of B.C. academic Adam Pankratz wrote an article for the National Post entitled: “Leftists are our society’s real threat.” An avowed liberal repulsed by the many “bad ideas” he ascribes to past “conservatives,” he nevertheless insists “that while those on the left are always the first to cry about the need for inclusivity, tolerance and safety, they have a disturbing habit of using violence and repression when they are challenged.” While he still clearly cherishes his liberal values, he seems to feel the political Left has now more or less abandoned them. Indeed he goes so far as to describe Donald Trump’s present legal difficulties “as what many legal observers see as flimsy charges brought against him for political gain.”
I could go on and on citing individuals who are concerned with issues of “social justice” yet see both the Left’s definition of that principle and its subsequent Identity based initiatives as utterly repulsive. While Bill Maher insists he is still a liberal, he has on more than one occasion referred to the “insanity” of many of the views of the “woke” Left. The lesson of his so-called “liberalism” in this rabidly divided world is perhaps that the substance of one’s beliefs is far more significant than how one chooses to identify. Maher’s rational commentaries are almost without exception consistent with the views of people such as Candace Owens and Dave Rubin. Simple fact is that while contemporary “conservatism” is still customarily consigned to the “right,” it by and large tends to the Rational Center, its informing ontology being that of Traditional Western Humanism which sees Man as an inherently intelligent, moral being obligated to behave as such. As this is a common sense approach that utterly supersedes the arbitrary tenets of Identity Politics, significant numbers of traditional liberals seem to be discovering that they have more in common with contemporary conservatism than with the woke and frequently dictatorial parody of liberalism that has come to dominate Western Culture. Their common sense, indeed Man’s capacity for common sense, suggest that Western Civilization may in fact continue to honor the principles upon which it was founded.