The Right: Recitations of facts, outrage at the Left. By the Z-Man.

At an event like Mencken [a US conference for the “independent right”], you can see why conservatism failed. ..

At a conference like Mencken, which is still rooted in the conservative habits, the speeches are all recitations of facts, empirical examinations of the Left’s arguments and appeals to the reason of the audience. The only place you see emotion is outrage at the excesses of the Left. There’s a pride in not allowing that outrage to infiltrate the arguments made on behalf of conservative issues.

That was an effective approach, in a country that was close to 90% white, which was America in the 20th century. The conservative movement turned the GOP from a minority party into the majority. By the 1990’s, even Democrats like Bill Clinton were ready to declare big government dead. Then the effects of demographic replacement started to show up at the ballot box. That overwhelmingly white majority began to decline, so those appeals to reason had a shrinking audience.

That is why Buckley conservatism is dead. It turns out that there are no sound empirical reasons to defend your homeland, at least not ones that will cause men to sacrifice for the effort. Those arguments need passion, not four color graphs with supporting tables and citations. The answer to the Left’s demand for immigration was not a tweedy intellectual, but a man with passion for his people and his way of life, willing to rally his people to do what must be done to defend those lands…

Like herding cats:

At the after-party, I was reminded why right-wing resistance to the Left has always fallen to pieces on contact with the Left. Even in a crusty fringe crowd like at Mencken, there is a weird pride in no one toeing the company line. The Left never tolerates free thinkers, which is why they can maintain disciple. The Right has always assumed that the ideological discipline of the Left is a vice, so they have made sure to have a diversity of opinion. The sperg army will never be a match for the Left.

This is, of course, the result of generations of conditioning as to what it means to be right-wing. Instead of being a stand-alone, positive set of beliefs and aspirations, it is a laundry list of complaints about the Left and a determination to be the mirror image of what is understood to be left-wing at the moment. To be a right-winger is to never impose discipline on the ranks, so everyone is free to be an army of one. The Left, of course, is then free to pick them off one by one.

Yes, the non-left have become the defenders of reality, on topic after topic. They are reacting to the left, who use their media monopoly to promote fantasies that help them win power and make the changes they want.

Trump uses emotion back on the left, not just the usual recitation of facts. Unforgivable. Other non-left leaders around the West are catching on.