For years, I have been arguing that “conservatism” is a pathological moral condition. “Conservatives” are infected with the virus of fear. Their world view is distorted by this virus. Their excessive fear makes them respond to life’s experiences with far more hostility than is good for human beings. And their repeated warped responses become habits, and their habits corrode their morals.
And that’s how we get today’s Republican party—which is no longer a political party but a cult of arrant wickedness involved in politics only because it offers “conservatives” pathways to power. No wonder Trump is their orange god. He fashioned himself in their image and they, in their insatiably selfish wickedness, raised him up as their golden calf.
Two days ago, Tom Nichols, who considered himself a Never Trump conservative before he left the Republican party, agreed with my long-standing conviction that Republicans and their “party” now have to be rejected by every legal means possible—including moral denigration and relentless moral shaming.
Of course, I don’t know whether Nichols’s departure from the Republican party stems from an inner moral “healing.” It is always possible—though rare—for the “conservative” virus to go into remission. Occasionally, the moral vision of infected individuals clears. They come to see that decent morality, which they used to ignorantly deride as “liberalism,” is morally healthy while their former diseased ethics were unhealthy.
But whatever the state of Nichols’s moral health, he is absolutely right about the moral degeneracy of his former party. And he is especially right when he says this in the wake of Trump’s latest indictment:
Trump and his media enablers, of course, will fume that any criticism of choices made by millions of voters is uncivil and condescending—even as they paint other American citizens as traitors who support pedophiles and perverts. Trump has made such accusations, and the implied threat of violence behind them, part of the everyday American political environment. This brutish bullying is aimed at stopping the rest of us from speaking our mind. But after today, every American citizen who cares about the Constitution should affirm, without hesitation, *that any form of association with Trump is reprehensible, that each of us will draw moral conclusions about anyone who continues to support him,* and that these conclusions will guide both our political and our personal choices. (Italics added.)
As I have been saying for years, support for Trump is an admission of moral degeneracy. More than 70 percent of Republicans support him unequivocally. By doing so, they arrogantly proclaim their moral degeneracy.
Now that Trump will have to stand trial for his crimes, decent Americans can no longer tolerate Republican support for this fascist monster. They support him because they know that if American government is left to work on the principles established by the Framers, it will systematically extinguish their diseased desires. It will refuse their diseased demands. It will force them back into the shadows, from which they only emerged because their fear-filled souls, racist to the core, could not tolerate a black president.
So whether Nichols has completely recovered from the disease of “conservatism” or has only experienced a partial remission, he is certainly right that decent Americans must now take a stand. They must draw moral conclusions about anyone who continues to support Trump. And those conclusions must include the conviction that no one who supports Trump has any place in our politics or in our civic life. They are too diseased and corrupted. We cannot allow them to destroy everything we hold dear.
This conviction must be communicated to them in every way we can think of that does not cross the boundaries of legality. I do not say “the boundaries of civility” because we can no longer be civil to those who would destroy the very democracy that makes civility possible.
We allowed “conservatives” to behave like spoiled children out of civility. Then we allowed them to behave like juvenile delinquents out of civility. Then we allowed them behave like narcissistic assholes. And finally, they trashed Congress.
That is the end of the line for “conservatives.” Decent Americans can no longer maintain that Republicans merely have different, but legitimate, beliefs about government. As I show in my new book, Conservative Estimate, “conservatives” have no legitimate “beliefs.” They have only intense, insatiable fear—fear that devours every decent impulse, every just instinct, every right inclination.
Decent Americans must start making their moral conclusions clear to the benighted denizens of the degenerate “conservative” subculture. We must stop supporting “conservative” businesses and let them know why—because they are morally degenerate. We must stop associating with “conservative” relatives and let them know why—because they are morally degenerate. We must shun “conservative” co-workers and let them know why—because they are morally degenerate.
As Nichols says, we may lose friends, associates, and business opportunities by being so blunt. But unless we start to cut “conservatives” off from decent society, they will destroy it.
And then there will be no friendships, no associations, and no business opportunities that don’t come with intolerable oppression.