Tornado Alley (PROG)

[fuagf]

In his most recent column .. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/02/opinion/liberals-conservatives-democracy.html?partner=slack&smid=sl-share , the New York Times’s resident social conservative argues that liberals have overstated the right’s contempt for democracy and underestimated their own movement’s ambivalence about popular self-government.

That's from - No, Democrats and Republicans Aren’t Equally Anti-Democratic
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=168804693 .. the one you replied to.

"Ross Douthat is a horse's ass" He sure comes off as leaning heavily to that in that article.

Another of his: * Ross Douthat, Opinion columnist, argues that rather than desiring large-scale change from President Biden .. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/20/opinion/biden-president-inauguration.html?action=click&pgtype=Article&state=default&module=styln-opinion-biden-100-days®ion=MAIN_CONTENT_2&context=storylines_opinion , “a meaningful majority of Americans may be satisfied with recovery, normalcy, a phase of decadence that feels depressing but not dire.” ,, With other opinions, here, Joe Biden May Have Only Two Years to Get Things Done
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=161150246

Douthat is one of those conservatives who still see American conservatism more as it was before Trump

The Truth Behind Bari Weiss’s Resignation From the ‘NYT’

[...]

The New York Times carries some conservatives, but it does not reflect conservative politics

The NYT always had its own, generally liberal editorials, but the opinion page was established in 1970 to provide a venue for a wider range of opinions. “Points of view in disagreement with the editorial position of The Times,” said publisher Arthur Sulzberger, “will be particularly welcomed.” And still today, Bennet wrote to Splinter, “we’re looking to challenge our own and our readers’ assumptions.”

Recently, that concern has taken on a new edge. The traumatic and unexpected 2016 victory of Donald Trump convinced a great many people in elite political circles that they are hopelessly out of touch, there is a whole parallel country of which they are only dimly aware, and they urgently need to understand the perspectives of the people who rallied behind Trump.

This has led to entire subgenres of news journalism, like “rural white people are very upset .. https://www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/2018/04/race-rising-anxiety-white-america/ ,” or “Trump supporters still like Trump .. http://time.com/5013542/donald-trump-one-year-later/ ,” or “get to know this Nazi; he’s just like you and me .. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/25/us/ohio-hovater-white-nationalist.html .”

But it’s a different dilemma for the opinion page. Bennet clearly believes liberals live in a bubble. He wants to challenge them. It still hasn’t occurred to him to challenge them from the left, so he goes out looking for more conservatives.

But what kind of conservatives are on offer at NYT?

Consider, oh, David Brooks. His conservatism, of Sam’s Club affectation, fiscal conservatism, tepid social liberalism, and genial trolling of center-leftists at Davos — whom does it speak for in today’s politics, beyond Brooks?

Or Ross Douthat. He is sporadically interesting, often infuriating, but above all, pretty idiosyncratic. His socially conservative “reformicon” thing — whom does it speak for in today’s politics, beyond Douthat?

Bret Stephens and Bari Weiss are a familiar type of glib contrarian. Their opposition to Trump has given them undue credibility among Washington lefties, whom they relentlessly (and boringly) troll. But whom are they speaking for? What has the Never Trump movement amounted to?
[...]
Conservatism is now Trumpism
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/replies.aspx?msg=166219030

Another - Rush Limbaugh and the Petrification of Conservatism
An extraordinary career for the man, a long defeat for his ideology.
By Ross Douthat
[...]
Such a system, predictably, was terrible at generating the kind of outward-facing, evangelistic conservatives who had made the Reagan revolution possible. There are threads linking Reagan to Donald Trump or William F. Buckley Jr. to Sean Hannity, as the right’s liberal critics often note. But to go back and watch Reagan and Buckley is to see an entirely different approach to politics — missionary and confident, with a gentlemanly comportment that has altogether vanished.
P - In its place today is a fantasy politics, a dreampolitik, that’s fed by a deep feeling of grievance and dispossession. Part of this feeling is justified, insofar as liberalism really has consolidated cultural power everywhere outside Conservatism Inc. But the right’s infotainment complex is itself a major reason for that consolidation. Conservatives have lost real-world territory by building dream palaces, and ceded votes by talking primarily to themselves.
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=162007858

Douthat's opposition to abortion seems to be based on a concrete belief that a zygote is a human being:

The Case Against Abortion
Nov. 30, 2021
[...]
There is no way to seriously deny that abortion is a form of killing. At a less advanced stage of scientific understanding, it was possible to believe that the embryo or fetus was somehow inert or vegetative until so-called quickening, months into pregnancy. But we now know the embryo is not merely a cell with potential, like a sperm or ovum, or a constituent part of human tissue, like a skin cell. Rather, a distinct human organism comes into existence at conception, and every stage of your biological life, from infancy and childhood to middle age and beyond, is part of a single continuous process that began when you were just a zygote.
P - We know from embryology, in other words, not Scripture or philosophy, that abortion kills a unique member of the species Homo sapiens, an act that in almost every other context is forbidden by the law.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/30/opinion/abortion-dobbs-supreme-court.html

A bit like seeing a bolt as a car.