25A052 Conservative Follies by Jim Davies, 12/30/2025

Occasionally we market anarchists are mistaken for conservatives, or "right-wingers", for it saves our adversaries the labor of engaging the brain. The Nolan Chart corrects them.

It's quite true that we share some common ground; more so, in my case, than with the socialists who have stolen and distorted the "liberal" label. In particular many conservatives are very good at economics, at least in a domestic context; though they may get loose and woolly when it comes to international trade, with its tariffs and embargoes. But on some other key issues, I could be confused with Lefties.

I've often given limited endorsement here of Prager U, whose Dennis Prager puts some excellent material on the Net, from a conservative perspective. The Hustle, for example, is a series of short videos that portray inventive businesses begun and run by young people. And during Dennis' present persistent illness, CEO Marissa Streit has done an amazing job in his place, while also interviewing top newsmakers like Viktor Orban (PM of Hungary) and Douglas Murray (author of the seminal book The Strange Death of Europe.)

But last month, there were a couple of PU 5-minute videos that were the pits; and they well exemplify the weakness of conservatism.

One was made for Vets' Day and was a peon of praise for the US military, presented by Major Pete Hegseth, now the US Secretary of Defense. He enthusiastically recalls that it saved Europe from German domination in WW1, and the world from Japanese and German Fascism in WW2, and so on; even if we accept those claims as true, the fact is that the US military's right to exist (in the Constitution) relates only to the defense of America. It has no business elsewhere, and if there had been no expectation of it joining the fray, WW1 would have ended in a negotiated draw at least two years earlier, with millions of lives saved; then WW2 would not even have taken place and there might even have been no Bolshevik Revolution in Russia.

The other dreadful PU video lauded the murderous undeclared war against small ships in the Caribbean - see the ZGBlog Venezuelan Coke. American buyers of cocaine are making very foolish choices in my view, but they alone have the right to make them. Growers and shippers and dealers of the drug are merely doing business; taking advantage of a demand. Yet this video, made by folk who supposedly favor freedom of trade, are approving murder on the high seas - while condemning piracy by Muslims off the Horn of Africa.

In both these videos Prager U is reflecting Conservatism quite accurately. These are matters where conservatives take leave of reason. They are right to say that America is exceptional, an example to the rest of the world of the merits of even partial freedom; but their idea of freedom does not go nearly far enough. They (and Prager U particularly) have failed to grasp that there is no rational alternative to self-ownership, and so that even a small government is an abomination.

That's the key point at which Conservative and all other political philosophies leave the rails of rationality. Because each of us has the natural right to run our own lives, each and every one of them is fundamentally wrong, for they all presume that society needs governing, in this way or that. The obscenity is not the imposition of Left values or Right ones, but that force is used to impose either set.

Ultimately, they want and enjoy power, like all the others.