Israel: "Conservatism" left it unprotected
If you want secure defenses, don't let "conservatives" near government
If you want to see what “conservatism” does to a country, look no farther than Israel.
A consensus is starting to form about what left the nation open to the barbarous and savage attack from Hamas on October 6. And that consensus cannot be more devastating to “conservatism.”
Anne Applebaum’s October 21 article in the Atlantic explains it in simple terms.
Extreme “conservatism” weakened Israel to the point where it was vulnerable to such an attack.
This is always the result when “conservatives” get too successful in a democracy. Their inherent character flaws, which I detail precisely in my book Conservative Estimate, erupt into spasms of selfishness that attack the roots of democracy and turn it into feckless autocratic bureaucracies.
Don’t be fooled by the endless “conservative” rhetoric against bureaucracy. They love bureaucracy—as long as it gives them what they want. When it doesn’t, when bureaucracy tells them the truth that what they want is selfish, unjust, and bad for the welfare of society—that’s the kind of bureaucracy they hate.
Look at what Netanyahu did. First, he committed selfish crimes, abusing the power of his office. Then he buttered up Israel’s “conservatives” in the way demagogues always do, affirming their deepest fears and convincing them that “only he can fix it.” Then, he “fixed it” by giving them more than they ever wanted, no matter how unjust it was. Then, he put loyalists and cronies in charge of government instead of competent people. Then, when he got caught breaking laws, he tried to dismantle the legal system so he would never be punished. Then, his cronies—ignorant and incompetent—antagonized the secular forces that defended Israel competently. (The defenses in the area attacked by Hamas were reduced to skeleton crews because the “conservative” morons Netanyahu put in charge thought they could put up electronic monitoring and “automatic” guns to do the work of real troops. That’s why there were no soldiers to respond to the attacks. And his “conservative government” has so much debilitated public services that the cleanup from the attack has had to be performed by volunteers because Israel no longer has competent emergency services.)
This is what always happens when “conservatives” get too much power. It goes to their heads, they think they can do whatever they want, they divert public resources to their own private ends, and they leave their nation defenseless.
This is what Orbán did in Hungary, what the Law and Justice party did in Poland, what today’s resurgent “conservative” autocrats want to do in every democracy where they get a foothold.
And it’s what Trump wanted to do in America. Thank God that he was so monumentally ignorant about government and too fat-headed to learn anything. That alone made it impossible for him to get what he wanted.
But a second Trump term? That would be no-holds-barred. The “conservatives” who nearly took over during his first term have had time now to learn how stupid they were the first time around. They will control Trump much more shrewdly than they did the last time. And that will mean the end of American democracy and the beginning of the downward spiral into weakness and vulnerability.
This is the moment. The 2024 election holds the future of world democracy in the balance. If we allow Trump and the “conservatives” to keep pretending they are just another political movement, we lose. If we submit to the hopelessness that Trump and the “conservatives” are trying to make us feel, we lose. If Republican fools are left in control of any facet of government after 2024, we lose.
So our task is clear. Others may shrug and look away. Decent Americans cannot.
2024 is the line in the sand.
Let’s push “conservatism” back over the line so far that they cannot endanger democracy any longer.
We can do it in one blow.
And then, with liberals in control once again, we can go about the urgent task of rebuilding the post-war international order to make the world safe again for democracy.
It’s way past time to re-marginalize the right!