Showing posts with label social conservatives. Show all posts
Showing posts with label social conservatives. Show all posts

Wednesday, September 24, 2025

 

THE RISE OF THE "CHARLIE KIRK CONSERVATIVES"

by Robert Bidinotto

(from a 9/24/25 Facebook post)
 
 After watching the televised memorial for Charlie Kirk on September 21, 2025, I'm convinced that his martyrdom for his convictions -- and martyrdom is the only proper word for it -- is going to be transformational to the country, in ways people don't yet grasp or anticipate. 

In recent decades, for reasons many of us know, the American "narrative," like the Christian "narrative," have been under relentless assault by the enemies of Western civilization. The stories undergirding both America and Christianity have stopped being credible or resonant with millions. Cut loose from the steadying anchor and sure rudder these narratives once provided, our society has gone adrift, floating aimlessly into the shoals of cynicism and the swamps of decadence, then sinking into an undertow of political disintegration and division -- and thus allowing, at home and abroad, the incursions of piratical nihilists to plunder and scavenge from the wreckage of our civilization. 

Spiritually, the loss of our unifying Narratives has left a gaping hole in the minds and hearts of Americans (and Western societies, generally) -- a pervasive sense of hopelessness, aimlessness, and anxiety. 

Yes, all this stems from the absence of a coherent, compelling story -- a Core Narrative about the world that is both explanatory and inspiring, that makes sense of the world and provides individuals a purposeful role and a meaningful identity -- a Core Narrative for individuals that, simultaneously, provides a unifying mythology for the broader society and culture. 

As a teenager, Charlie Kirk sought and found such a Narrative for himself in Christianity...but also in America. In his mind and heart, Charlie wedded the Narrative of Christianity to the Narrative of America: to "the American dream" -- and to the Enlightenment values of individualism, self-responsibility, self-reliance, personal liberty, individual rights, free speech, free-market capitalism, and constitutionally limited government. In his mind and heart, he wove together those two threads of Narrative and Myth -- the Christian and the American (with its Greco-Roman and Enlightenment roots) -- into one seamless fabric...into one Core Narrative. 

That Core Narrative became Charlie Kirk. Under its spell, Charlie became a human dynamo of evangelical passion. It transformed him into a young man of boundless self-confidence, irrepressible optimism, passionate truth-seeking, and fearless action. Aided by extraordinary gifts of native intelligence, authentic idealism, appealing good looks, and self-acquired oratorical ability, Charlie's Narrative vision became a compelling magnet that attracted thousands -- especially young lost souls, adrift in the moral and spiritual swamps of contemporary America. 

I have fashioned my own Core Narrative. In many ways, it overlaps with Charlie Kirk's. Its roots and rationale draw mainly from the secular side of the American Enlightenment and Greco-Roman traditions, and not the Christian side. 

Still, in terms of attitudes and practices of daily living -- in terms of how he and I would approach work, human relationships, and politics -- there is not much difference between my vision and that of the late Charlie Kirk. I could very easily, and very happily, live and flourish in the America he envisioned -- and among the kind of Christian Americans that would inhabit it. 

That became obvious to me during the huge, globally watched celebration of Charlie's life on Sunday. As the cameras panned over the thousands and thousands of decent, peaceful, normal Americans in that enormous audience, I thought: "These people are the poorest excuses for 'fascists' I have ever seen." 

I'd like to address the rest of this message primarily to my secular-individualist friends and colleagues, including non-religious Objectivists, libertarians, and conservatives. 

Watching the Charlie Kirk memorial -- and observing how his exemplary personal life, idealism, and decency have touched, inspired, and galvanized huge and growing numbers of Americans -- reinforced my conviction about the irreplaceable necessity of developing not only a philosophy, but also a Core Narrative, to guide individuals and society. 

As I have often written and said, a philosophy and a Core Narrative serve interrelated, but separate purposes. Both offer individuals an integrated view of the world and their role in it. But a Core Narrative is a story that dramatizes your worldview: it offers you a role in that drama, and an identity in the world; and it motivates you to take action. A philosophy, by contrast, only explains your worldview, teasing out its many implications and offering an abstract, systematic rationale for them. But being conscious and abstract, a philosophy has little power to touch your subconscious wellsprings of emotion and motivation -- to personalize those abstractions and inspire you to act. 

A philosophy is like a map to help you chart the course of your life. A Core Narrative is like a video that helps you visualize and experience your life journey. A philosophy is like looking at architectural blueprints of your planned house. A Core Narrative is like taking a 3-D virtual tour through your planned residence -- or like looking at an actual miniature model that helps you experience the reality of your future home, in the here and now. 

And that leads to the problem I pose to my secular philosophical and political colleagues. Yes, we have charted terrific philosophical maps and detailed blueprints for our worldview; but we don't have enough compelling videos, virtual tours, and actual models for our worldview to be properly, fully experienced. 

Now, many of you are going to reply, "What about the novels of Ayn Rand? She created great models of inspiring characters!" 

And so she did. But only two novels -- and written in a style and voice and level of abstraction that don't speak to everyone today. At best, I could say, "Yes, but we need more like these -- a lot more." 

But I think we need something else, too. And I'm not sure we can get it in our lifetimes...or even in the next century. 

You see, the Core Narratives of Christianity and of America have acquired their mythological status and resonance precisely because of their distance from our era. Those who revere historical characters from the Bible or America's founding can do so because the mists of time mask those people's personal foibles and failures, leaving us with stories mainly about the best of their character and achievements. The passing of centuries thus has allowed them to rise to legendary and heroic stature. 

Today, however, even the most exemplary figures are not immune from 24/7 reputational dissection by social media gossips, podcasters, and cable news commentators. It took centuries for Christianity to develop, because the claims of its believers were spread by word of mouth, and not subject to legions of often-hostile "fact checkers" and reputational smears in viral messages. But imagine if Jesus and his Apostles had to undergo a daily onslaught of instant, intrusive scrutiny, "fake news," and internet rumor-mongering. 

My point is that while creating a new Core Narrative for individuals is certainly possible in our time (Rand did that for thousands), creating a new cultural mythology for our entire society is a very different proposition. In America and globally, existing worldviews have social and cultural roots that harken back into antiquity. Uprooting and replacing this mythology with a new mythology would/will take a very long time -- and these days it would have to do so under the glaring spotlight and probing microscopes of the media.

 I think the best we secular individualists can do, for now, is to fashion, flesh out, and live our own Core Narrative(s)...as individuals. The proof of a Narrative's value will be what we make of our own lives. Then, over time -- decades, perhaps centuries -- some singular individual who heroically embodies such a Narrative will arise and stand out as its champion. That exemplary individual may then acquire mythic and legendary status. His own story might become the spark of a new cultural movement and mythology, turning his private Narrative into a social crusade akin to a secular individualist religion -- with its own infrastructure of ceremonies, rituals, and institutions commemorating the legend. 

A second thing we secular individualists can do, for now, is to stop regarding what I hereby label the "Charlie Kirk Conservatives" as our adversaries -- let alone as our "enemies" (like a few morons in Objectivist circles are doing). Far from it. Charlie Kirk may not have shared our metaphysics; but he shared most of our basic ethical and political premises, and in fact he was a model of reason, honesty, independence, integrity, productivity, and justice. He, and the thousands of followers who regard him as a role model, are our natural allies. As I said earlier, I could flourish happily in a world of Charlie Kirk Conservatives -- and so could you. 

For now, we secular individualists have a philosophy, but not a Core Narrative that is sufficiently developed and compelling enough to replace theirs. Nor do we have a heroic exemplar of our worldview who can capture the public imagination as has Charlie Kirk. Nor do we have the cultural legacy of such a hero: an infrastructure of ceremonies, rituals, and institutions that can forge social bonds and traditions built upon shared beliefs and values. We have little if any of that sort of thing -- not yet. 

And you can't replace Something with Nothing. 

I saw something emerging at the Kirk ceremony that, for the first time in decades, has given me real hope for America's future. I saw Charlie Kirk's personal integration of exemplary character, Christianity, and American Enlightenment ideas and values being fused into a Core Narrative that instantly captured the imagination of the country. I witnessed the personal story of Charlie Kirk being woven, before my eyes, into the Core Narratives of Christianity and the American Enlightenment, in a way that was reviving, in millions of people, a passionate, patriotic dedication to our Founding Fathers' legacy. 

His wife called the movement Charlie launched not a revolution, but "a revival." And so it is. I believe this movement is going to grow to become culturally and politically transformational -- and that Charlie Kirk is going to become a pivotal, legendary figure in American history. The story of his life and martyrdom will become an indelible chapter in the broader American Narrative. 

Through his willingness to converse and cooperate with political cousins in Objectivist and libertarian circles, Charlie Kirk will undoubtedly serve as an ecumenical role model for his movement, going forward. And we secular individualists would be colossal fools not to join with them, assist them, and defend them, whenever we can make common cause, culturally and politically. 

Charlie Kirk Conservatives are our natural compatriots in the defense of Western civilization from the nihilists. They represent the best of America, people whom we should welcome into our lives as our allies, as our neighbors, and -- yes -- as our friends. 
 

Thursday, March 24, 2016

The Republican Crack-Up, Revisited

Perhaps the smartest political observation I've read in a long time comes from Joel Kotkin, a conservative Democrat and a noted demographer. In the March 20, 2016 issue of the Orange County Register, he wrote a fertile column about the rise of Donald Trump in the Republican Party. Kotkin's piece was laden with excellent observations, but none so important as this:

Successful political parties unite interests under a broadly shared policy agenda. The Clinton Democrats may seem ethically challenged, condescending and bordering on dictatorial, but they share basic positions on many core issues and a unifying belief in federal power as the favored instrument for change.

In contrast, the Republican Party consists of interest groups that so broadly dislike each other that they share little common ground.

This is a great insight, and it explains pretty much everything that has gone wrong with our nation politically for the past century.

The Democrats are a coalition of interest groups held together with a general unifying ideology: big-government progressivism. The Republicans, by contrast, are a coalition of interest groups without any single unifying ideology. Historically, their only basis for unity has been their shared enemies: the Democrats (and various points in the Democrat agenda). Members of the GOP have little in common ideologically -- only occasionally overlapping interests (often for diverse reasons), but mostly opposition to specific Democrats or specific Democrat initiatives and policies (again, for diverse reasons).

Put another way, there has been no basis for Republican unity in principle, except perhaps for a strong national defense. However, on matters of domestic policy, constitutional limitations on government power, economics, immigration, trade, civil liberties, individual rights...on just about everything you can name, Republicans are all over the map. There's no single principle, let alone broader political philosophy, that holds the party factions together.

Which explains why America has moved inexorably to the left over the past century, since the first Progressive Era. You have leftists, represented by the Democratic Party, who know exactly what kind of a society they want, and why. They have an underlying worldview, a Narrative, buttressed by academic theories and rationalizations, and translated into long-term policy goals. By contrast, the Republicans have none of this, and (perhaps except for Goldwater and Reagan) they have not had a leader who imposed upon the party, from the top, a unifying worldview, Narrative, theoretical rationale, or policy goals.

And it has finally led to what many are now acknowledging to be an impending crack-up of the Republican Party.


A Warning from 1996

Not that any of this should be a surprise. In fact, I anticipated the party's disintegration in a long 1996 monograph titled The GOP's Foreign Imports, published by the Institute for Objectivist Studies. In that essay, I observed that "Within the GOP, a philosophical meltdown is occurring." In words that could have been written today, I described how "the Republican majority in Congress is paralyzed and adrift, its energy gone, its direction uncertain." And, foreshadowing the emergence of Trumpism today, I noted: "Meanwhile, the populist/nationalist insurgency of commentator Pat Buchanan in the GOP presidential primaries impelled his nervous rivals to compete with him in bashing big business, immigrants, and imports."

Sound familiar?

I cited an earlier column I'd written, in the January 1995 Freeman, in which I had said: "The GOP stands precariously on deep philosophical fault lines, and already we're hearing rumblings of coming tremors that could shatter the...coalition.... Torn by ideological contradictions, the GOP is coming apart at the seams."

In the monograph, I elaborated:

The party has long maintained a "big tent," sheltering many opposing ideological factions. Cementing this uneasy alliance weren't shared premises, but shared enemies.... The primary contest [of 1996], noted U.S. News & World Report, quickly became "a slugfest over the ideas and identity of the Republican Party," a battle that "exposed a network of fissures and fault lines that is dividing the party and encouraging Democratic hopes of retaining the White House in November."

Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.

I went on in the monograph to identify a number of warring ideological factions within the GOP.


Warring Philosophical Factions

First were the "pragmatists" -- "the ballast of the Republican Party," made up of "unprincipled champions of consensus, convention, and compromise. Philosophically vacuous but personally ambitious, pragmatists stand for everything...and nothing." These are most prominently represented by the members of the party Establishment.

Then were what I described as "anti-individualists." These come in several varieties. First are the "conservative welfare statists," who believe in big, activist, "compassionate" government social programs -- but who (in contrast to the Dems) promise to distribute and redistribute government goodies on the cheap. So they don't talk about repealing ObamaCare, for example, but instead "taking the best parts of it and making them work better." Unlike the unprincipled pragmatists, these Republicans (the George W. Bush/John Kasich types) are sincere...but they are liberals at heart. Which is why they have been described as "Democrat Lite."

Another variety of anti-individualists are the "tribalists." I described them as those who "draw their personal identities from collective affiliations. They believe there are inherent conflicts of interests among men that pit their group against all others in a battle for status. This prompts them to see themselves as victims of powerful elites, group favoritism, and dark conspiracies.... These 'angry voters' are drawn to divisive demagogues, from Huey Long to George Wallace to Ross Perot to Pat Buchanan." (And today, of course, to Donald Trump.)

I further subdivided the tribalists into two factions. First, "nationalists, [who] believe there are inherent national, racial, and/or cultural conflicts of interest," and who can be found "shouting 'America First!'" because "they see themselves in a 'cultural war' to preserve our 'national identity' from foreign and minority influences. They thus reject foreign trade, treaties, immigration, and racial/ethnic integration." The second faction are "populists, [who] define themselves not by nation or race, but by economic class. They believe there's a fixed national economic pie to be divided, so any gains by others must be at their expense. They thus see themselves as 'little guys,' exploited by a privileged elite of bureaucrats, businessmen, and bankers." (Trump deliberately appeals to both factions.)

In addition to the various sorts of pragmatists and anti-individualists (e.g., conservative welfare statists and tribalists), there is an anti-Enlightenment faction within the GOP: those who reject the Enlightenment values of reason, individualism, the pursuit of personal happiness and fulfillment, self-realization, and personal choice -- usually on religious and/or cultural grounds. They (wrongly) identify such premises with personal subjectivism and moral relativism, and as an antidote, they advocate the subordination and sacrifice of the individual to the broader society and religious dogma. In short, they promote conservative cultural collectivism. These are the "social conservatives" who believe that government should impose Judeo-Christian values on society, by law if necessary, in order to advance social cohesion and keep unruly, self-indulgent individuals in line.

Finally, the GOP harbors a minority of "individualists...the most intellectual and principled elements on the Right," consisting of "economic conservatives and political libertarians, as well as Objectivists." These are the champions, respectively, of free markets and free trade; of "constitutional conservatism" and limited government; and of the Enlightenment worldview of reason and individualism. But today, this principled minority finds itself increasingly marginalized and outnumbered within the GOP. The hostility of the pragmatic Establishment toward "constitutional conservative" Senator Ted Cruz provides one example; the primary results provide another.


A Coalition Shattered

I wrote all of this in 1996. Twenty years later, nothing has changed -- except that the 2016 GOP primaries have revealed, with painful finality, that these logically irreconcilable factions have no rational basis for continued cohesion. At the outset of the primary season, a host of candidates vied for the Republican presidential nomination, representing every shade of pragmatist (Christie, Gilmore, Pataki, Graham, Trump), conservative welfare statist (Kasich), tribalist (the populist/nationalist Trump), religious social conservative (Carson), cultural collectivist (Huckabee, Santorum), constitutional conservative (Cruz, Fiorina, Jindal), libertarian (Paul), and economic conservative (Rubio, Bush, Walker, Perry). 

Now, ask yourself what any of these factions have in common. Can individualists (constitutional conservatives, libertarians, and Objectivists) make common cause with nationalist or populist tribalists? Can advocates of reason and individual liberty make common cause with conservative collectivists? Can anyone from any faction who is serious about his principles make common cause with -- or trust -- the unprincipled pragmatists?

Moreover, with the presidential nomination of Trump the Tribalist (and unprincipled pragmatist) looming ever more likely, the last pretenses of any principled distinctions between the Republican Party and the Democratic Party have been obliterated. We are likely to face two competing forms of statism, and two equally authoritarian and thuggish candidates for our nation's highest office.

Abraham Lincoln famously said, "A house divided against itself cannot stand." During the 2016 election cycle I have been raising the alarm about the rise of Trumpism in the GOP precisely because it deprives individualists of any hospitable home in a viable major party. And also because whether Trump wins or loses, we have finally, sadly reached my long-predicted crackup of the Republican Party.

So...where do we go from here?


The Path Forward


Our first task is to face and grasp the cause of the problem. The problem is intellectual chaos. In terms of vision, philosophy, goals, policies -- of Narrative -- the GOP is everything, and nothing. That's why even with an electoral majority in Congress today (as in the early 1990s), the Republicans cannot rally around a single alternative to (say) ObamaCare, or a proposed budget, or a policy to deal with the looming disaster of runaway entitlement spending, or even a coherent strategy to deal with ISIS. Philosophically divided, the party is paralyzed by indecision; too many logically incompatible values, principles, and agendas are clamoring for collective agreement, with each splinter faction trying to impose its own on the others.

That can't happen. Collectivist decision-making may work for those who embrace collectivism; they are used to sacrificing individual interests for the sake of the group. But it emphatically does not work for those who champion individualism, by which the ultimate evil is sacrificing one's values for the sake of group "harmony." Those who embrace constitutional conservatism, free markets, and individual rights on principle cannot sacrifice their principles and go along with the statist agendas of pragmatists, tribalists, and social conservatives, in the name of "party unity." (The same can be said of sincere, principled social conservatives.)

 No, individualist ends can only be advanced by individualist means.

In my opinion, bright, articulate advocates of principled individualism who aspire to public office should stop trying to "convert" or "take over" the Republican Party. That's a fool's errand, a futile waste of time, and a contradiction: You can't impose individualism on others.


Instead, I think they should aim to establish themselves first as champions of individualist principles and values on platforms outside the party apparatus, before entering politics. Perhaps through the media -- columns, talk shows, entertainment, public speaking platforms, etc. They should acquire a reputation and public following that way -- independently -- and then enter politics.

Ronald Reagan achieved public fame first as an actor, then as a public speaker touring the country. His famous speech for Barry Goldwater in 1964, "A Time for Choosing," established his "brand" as a principled, articulate conservative. So, when he launched his political career, he already was well-known and well-liked. Because his brand had been so firmly established,
he didn't even bother to go up through the party ranks. His first run for political office was to be governor of California -- not for some smaller office. Similar examples of this "independent outsider" strategy could be cited, including Arnold Schwarzenegger and, yes, Donald Trump. They established attractive brands as individuals first. Then they just marched in and entrenched beachheads within the GOP, pushing aside hostile Establishment rivals by the sheer numbers and force of their followers.

Those of us who do not aspire to public office should look to support qualified, articulate, attractive, principled outsiders who do. (It's one reason I supported Carly Fiorina early this primary season. I wish that Trump's distracting celebrity presence hadn't obscured her many merits.) A second choice would be political insiders who have demonstrated a long track record of standing firmly on principle against the corrupt Establishment within the system. (It's the reason I currently support Senator Ted Cruz against the tribalist Donald Trump and the conservative welfare statist Governor John Kasich.)

As for those of us who don't want any direct involvement in politics, but who still wish to promote the kind of changes that affect politics, I have said for years that the place to focus is not politics, but culture. Ayn Rand and Andrew Breitbart were both courageous visionaries, and they both agreed -- in Breitbart's memorable words -- that "politics is downstream from culture." What affects culture more directly are stories. Not think tanks, not college professors, and not the abstract ideas and theories that flow from either -- but ideas as they are dramatized and romanticized in the form of narratives.

We urgently need to reclaim and romanticize the Western Enlightenment/individualist worldview in popular entertainment. We need the constant celebration of individualist virtues and values in art. We need to patronize and encourage the good stuff, not merely fight the bad stuff.
Negating negatives is not the same thing as producing positives.

Similarly, we need to honor, and to defend from attack, those who champion and protect our basic American institutions. This includes our police and military, our entrepreneurs and self-made individuals, our great historical leaders and cultural icons (including America's Founders). We need to extol their virtues as virtues. We need to celebrate their lives, giving them awards and recognition. Today's kids are tomorrow's leaders, and they need not only fictional models, but real-life exemplars of individualist virtues.


But yes, as a corollary to our positive efforts, we do need to declare war on today's artistic nihilism, whose toxic influence creates the sort of morally vacuous, shapeless entities who are fit for nothing but a welfare state or a collectivist colony. And yes, as a corollary to creating and defending values, we do need to confront evil's enablers -- especially its academic, political, and media enablers. We can't remain mute as our culture's values and institutions are under assault.
 

However, we must always remember that fighting evil is a secondary task. Our civilization is perishing due to over a century of nihilistic assaults on its basic philosophical values. That nihilism has created a void, a cultural vacuum. You don't fight a void; you fill it.

Our primary focus -- as George Washington put it -- must be to "raise a standard to which the wise and honest can repair."


Advancing a New Narrative

 

Note that all of this has very little to do, at least directly, with the Republican Party: taking it over, deposing its corrupt Establishment, fighting over its platform provisions at conventions. It has very little to do with politics, period -- at least not directly. It dwells instead on the task of affecting the culture that lies upstream from politics.

The left has long understood the importance of "narrative control," which is why they have colonized Hollywood and the arts. As a result of their efforts, we can now throw facts and logic at people till the cows come home; but because our enemies have shaped the narratives by which people assimilate and interpret facts, we always lose the arguments. They process everything we say to fit a Core Narrative embedded in their brains, the dominant storyline that guides their lives and integrates their thoughts.

We need to take charge of that storyline. We need to advance a new Core Narrative for our American culture, but one rooted in individualist premises.

We need to hammer that Narrative home in every venue, using every media, cultural, and political platform. The Core Narrative of American Individualism needs to be translated into thousands of specific stories and examples, into countless variations on its basic themes, and then applied to new contexts in fresh ways. We need to see it manifested in novels, plays, and movies. We need it in TV shows and historic documentaries and biographies. We need it in video games, and children's picture books, and songs, and poetry.

The Individualist Narrative needs to be romanticized, honored, championed, and defended. And its enemies need to be challenged, opposed, mocked, and fought -- just as they have done for over a century against ours. 


This is not primarily a political battle. It is a battle for hearts and minds, over what it means to be human. It is a battle over the nature of our fundamental ideals, values, motives, and purposes.

It is a cultural war.

But it's not a cultural war whose goals are to be defined and represented solely by social conservatives versus cultural leftists. It's time that those of us who are principled individualists march onto the cultural and political battlefields as a third force, armed with our own Narrative.