It is often surprising to see just how narrow the range of “official” political expression in the United States really is. The Cathedral, especially at the federal level, allows only a very circumscribed set of political opinions to be expressed and acted upon. These opinions focus upon the center-left portion of the political “spectrum” (this term itself being of dubious utility), and generally encompasses those opinions held by mainstream Democrat “liberals” and Republican “conservatives.”

This narrowing of the political playing field, of course, purposefully excludes millions of Americans, both on the far Left and on the traditionalist, nationalistic, pro-American Right, and its doing so is actually a structural feature built into the duopolistic system. This was made apparent in the current election cycle where Sanders supporters (who represent a more “authentic” leftism than Hillary’s cabal, which is primarily interested in the spoils of corruption which flow from multicultural pie-division) found themselves essentially disenfranchised by their own party, a fact which was hammered home as inescapable fact with the release of the DNC emails by Wikileaks. On the Right, traditionalists, nationalists, and other Alt-Righters (who themselves represent a more genuine “conservatism” than do the Ted Cruz/RNC style “conservatives”) beat off attempts to do the same to Trump, who (for better or for worse) emerged as the only genuinely pro-American, pro-nationalism, anti-globalism candidate the GOP had to offer.

One of the unintended consequences of this narrow political radius in American politics is that those who are inside its boundaries tend to mimic each other in type much more than they often think they do. This is certainly the case with mainstream liberals and conservatives. Because they both essentially follow check-box ideologies instead of thinking for themselves, they tend to manifest many of the same personality traits. Further, even though there may be differences between them on some (though not all) issues, liberals and conservatives will often share similar underlying principles which they merely apply differently.

At this point, a definition is in order. When using the term “conservative” in this post, I am referring to the type of “inside-the-beltway” Cathedral conservative represented by most Republican elected officials and other political hack types involved with that party. These folks include, but are not limited to, the sort of hard case “Never Trumpers” currently crying over the threat to their open borders and cheap foreign labour source (aka “cuckservatives”). While proclaiming their purity and their principles, it’s pretty apparent that these folks are more interested in perpetuating their portion of political power. Trump and the Alt-Right in general are a threat to that.

Anywise, here are several similarities between conservatives and liberals:

Emotionalism

One thing you can count on from conservatives is for them to pat themselves on their collective backs for how rational, objective, and well-reasoned their political opinions are. Yet, the reality is that they are just as emotional and reactive in their ideological responses as any liberal is. Don’t believe me? Then try this – the next time you’re dealing with one of these Ted Cruz clones on an internet forum, remind them of what a waste of lives and money the George Bush/Barack Obama wars for oil and democracy in the Middle East have been, and that if you really “support the troops,” then you won’t send them to die in some God-forsaken desert so that banksters can make more billions in profit. Then step back and watch the fun.

Liberals are widely known to act almost entirely on emotion. Every policy directive is centered around tugging the heartstrings about some poor, disadvantaged group or another. However, conservatives aren’t much different. They are just as prone to supporting and implementing idiotic and counterproductive legislation on the spur of the moment emotional as any liberal does. How do you think we got the PATRIOT Act, for instance? In the wake of the recent shootings of police officers, it was not uncommon to hear conservatives screaming for a FEDERAL LAW TO MAKE IT A CAPITAL CRIME TO KILL A POLICE OFFICER!!!!! Ahem. This, despite the fact that the Constitution which conservatives profess to love so much makes absolutely no provision for doing this, or that this would just create another class of federal victimhood which conservatives claim to be against. Who can forget arch-cuckservative and Ted Cruz supporter Glenn Beck handing out teddy bears and soccer balls to the poor little illegal immigrant kids down on the border? All of this is pure, raw emotionalism, just as much as is Hillary Clinton’s refrain of “do it for the children!”

An Irrational View of Individualism

One of the failings of modern conservatism is its obsession with imitating libertarianism. Libertarianism is the epitome of everything wrong with “ideology” – it is completely unworkable in practice, rests on a set of anti-realistic premises, and is derived from a mixture of philosophical systems (primarily objectivism and utilitarianism) which are destructive to traditional culture and society. The fact that conservatives are so enamoured with it and with many of its proponents such as Ayn Rand and Henry Hazlitt demonstrates how unmoored from its moral and traditional roots conservatism has really become.

Both liberalism and conservatism are ideologies which focus on the individual to the exclusion of the community in which the individual resides, essentially atomising the individual and turning him into a robotic homo oeconomicus whose only goal in life should be to enrich himself at the expense of the other members of his community. You might be surprised that I said this about liberals, but let’s look at what they essentially want the individual to do, which is to vote and otherwise provide political support to liberal politicians as a result of a direct appeal to the individual’s greed for other people’s money. Despite the rhetoric about “all coming together to help those in need,” what liberalism is essentially all about is disengaging individuals from their natural communitarian support centers (the family, the church, the community, the männerbund) and isolating them so that they vote for more government largesse as they look out for themselves at the expense of anyone else. This is a very destructive and selfish form of individualism.

But conservative individualism is not really much better, specifically because of the taint of libertarianism. Rather than focusing on finding the natural and rational place for each individual within the larger community, conservatism encourages a similar strain of selfishness which goes far beyond a reasonable definition of enlightened self-interest. It was this perversion of the normal human motive of self-interest which caused the Industrial Revolution to be (and is still becoming) so much more detrimental to the human spirit than it would have been had a more traditionally-oriented and humane approach to the the individual and his economic world, such as distributism, been at play instead of the libertarian ethos that came to the fore in the early-to-mid 19th century as a result of utilitarianism and romanticism.

In both cases – the liberal and the conservative – the view of the individual does not accord with reality, so their approach to the individual does not either.

Egalitarianism

From the previous point about the atomisation of individuals by both liberalism and conservatism flows the view that all individual people are essentially interchangeable. This interconvertibility leads to the belief system which we can broadly refer to as egalitarianism, which assumes that anyone can do anything equally well and has an equal right to do so. Egalitarianism takes many forms, some of them dear to liberals, and some to conservatives, but both originating from the same basic failure to understand the reality of human existence.

Liberals love egalitarianism. Egalitarianism has been the cause, either directly or indirectly, of nearly all of the social pathologies which are tearing apart Western society in both Europe and the Anglosphere. For instance, from it has arisen feminism, with its destruction of traditional patriarchal society and the traditional family, producing a host of social diseases ranging from the modern era’s crime wave to the rise of homosexualism and other deviant alternatives which are now accepted as “normal.” Another poison fruit of egalitarianism is multiculturalism, which is essentially the false belief that all cultures, all societies, are of equal value and worthy of equal respect. This form of egalitarianism has had a markedly destructive effect on everything from our post-1965 immigration policy to the education which our children receive at all levels of schooling.

Conservatives, despite criticising some of the more overt liberal lunacies, accept the same essential underlying premises that the liberals do. As a result, they end up going right along with the same essentially anti-traditional, anti-family, anti-American agenda which characterises liberal approaches. For instance, conservatives are just as enthralled with feminism as liberals are. Don’t believe me? Then why is Megyn Kelly such a hero for so many of them, when all she did was virtue signal typical feminist talking points at Donald Trump? Why do conservatives love “strong women” like Joni Ernst, because she is apparently handy with a knife? Why do so many conservatives applaud whenever a female intrudes into some new area of the military or other dangerous and traditionally male field (after the requirements have been dumbed down for her, of course)? Likewise, why are so many conservatives infatuated with the idea that millions of imported foreign workers from Mexico and Central America with an average IQ of around 90 will be interchangeable with millions of white American workers with an average IQ of around 100? This is, after all, the belief that fundamentally underlies the cuckservative open borders obsession – getting cheap workers who can do the same job for a quarter of the price so that their Chamber of Commerce buddies can save a few bucks…regardless of the long-damage it will do to our demographics and economic innovation.

Globalism

Closely related to the point above, both liberals and conservatives generally agree that globalism is good while nationalism is icky and bad. Because people are interchangeable, they should be able to move around wherever they want and be accommodated in this to whatever extent is necessary to allow them to do.

Liberals love the idea of transnationalism, of “moving beyond” the traditional divisions of mankind into separate nations with separate traditions, mores, cultures, languages, and societies. Liberals, if you will remember, are the ones who love the idea of weakening the sovereign nation-state and subjecting it to all kinds of rules and regulations through the UN and other multinational and international organisations. They’re the ones who keep trying to find a way to implement the UN’s treaty on small arms (which would assault the right of Americans to own and use firearms lawfully) despite the fact that the Senate has consistently refused to even take it up for consideration. Liberals are the folks who have systematically helped to use world financial organisations like the World Bank to saddle Third World countries with debts that they can never hope to repay, thus enslaving them to the transnational elite. Ultimately, liberals believe that all cultures can be made to essentially do the same things and act in the same ways, hence there should be no problem with subsuming them all under one worldwide banner.

Conservatives follow the same essential impulses, however. For conservatives, when the choice is between nationalism or internationalism, they almost always choose the latter. That’s why so many conservatives on both sides of the pond were viscerally opposed to Brexit, for example. Conservatives adore globalism because it is the offspring of the “free” trade that they love so much – a position which puts them in full agreement with Karl Marx. Marx supported “free” trade because he knew it was a way to destroy the very concept of the nation-state and replace it with the sort of one-world system that has long been the goal of the Communist and Socialist Internationals. Conservatives have fully embraced the libertarian mantra that “free people can cross borders freely.” Because conservatives value mammon more than they do traditional societies and cultures, they see no reason why the wants and needs of industrialists and financiers should be constrained by silly concerns about national borders or the destruction of the livelihoods of first-world workers. After all, one group of people is just as good as another, right?

Liberals may want a socialistic global system and conservatives may want a capitalistic global system – but ultimately what both of them want is an global system.

Unrealistic Foreign Policy

This same egalitarian impulse also results in the ridiculously idealistic and nonsensical foreign policies which both liberals and conservatives (in particular neo-conservatives) pursue.

The fundamental premise for both of them is that foreigners are essentially just like us. That’s why they believe that we can import millions of them into our Western countries and not have it detrimentally affect our cultures and societies. It’s also why they believe that we can invade those same foreigners, who will welcome us with open arms as we bring them the enlightenment of our democracy and nude beaches. If people are fungible, then why can’t nations be as well, goes the thinking. Since both liberals and conservatives fervently believe in the Fukuyaman “end of history” thesis whereby the entire planet will eventually morph into an utopia of secular democratic post-national sweetness and light, both find it inconceivable that there would be other nations out there (such as, say, Russia, China, and the Muslim world) which would not want the same. As a result, both liberals and conservatives have abandoned the foreign policy realism that tended to dominate the West until the first half of the 20th century, and replaced it with a ridiculously idealistic approach with no basis in the way the world really works.

This is why the Left was always trying to conciliate the Soviet Union during the Cold War, even though it was blatantly obvious that this was not swaying the Soviets toward a more Western viewpoint, but was merely encouraging them to more aggressively spread Communism around the third World. Likewise, it’s why the Neo-Cons had no trouble imaging that we could invade backward tribalistic societies such as those in Iraq and Afghanistan and start planting Western notions like “democracy” and “teaching women how to read” – and it’s why the Neo-Cons were so genuinely surprised when the Ay-rabs and Afghanis resisted this.

Insulation from Reality

Lastly, we come to the similarity which really makes all the others possible, which is the fact that both liberals and conservatives are simply insulated from reality. In every area – domestic policy, foreign policy, election dynamics, you name it – both groups consistently fail to understand just how tone-deaf and out-of-touch they really are.

Liberals were completely caught off-guard when the backlash against the Black Lives Matter protests occurred. How could anyone support cops over thugs? How could anyone question the narrative of white cop genocide against innocent black men? Don’t they understand that we’d call them “racist” and silence them? How could the possibly resist this?

Conservatives were completely caught off guard when Republican and independent primary voters rejected one cuckservative GOP candidate after another in favour of Donald Trump, the crass buffoon who nevertheless managed to take the pulse of the actual voters in a way that the GOP conservative mainstream hadn’t been able to do since 1987. How could anyone be so “unprincipled” as to support Trump? Don’t these people realise how socially unacceptable Trump is? Can’t they get it together and pick one of our more polite and sociable candidates who isn’t a “racist” or a “sexist”?

Both groups just don’t get it, and it’s likely that most of them never will. Both liberals and conservatives have been inside the beltway for so long, have played the game too much, to ever be able to see around their own foibles and follies. Hence, whenever the little people out there in flyover country start to revolt, whether they be Bernie Sanders lefties or Donald Trump alt-Righters, the problem is obviously not with the liberals and conservatives, but with the little people themselves. They just not smart enough to get why the duopoly’s elite knows better. They’re just not savvy enough to understand why the game needs to be played. They’re just backward yokels making poor decisions because they’re stupid and ignorant and racist and nativist and…

It’s insulation from reality. The liberals and conservatives both exist inside a self-imposed socially-autistic cone of silence, an epistemically segregated fact-space which cannot allow anything that exists outside of the Cathedral’s rigidly defined political radius to intrude into the world of their narratives. So liberals assume they can continue to grow more and more corrupt, become more and more blatant about their election fraud and hate-America tendencies, without provoking pushback. Conservatives assume they can continue to affect a superior air and berate nationalists and alt-Righters about “principles” without ultimately destroying their own party and rendering themselves even more ineffective than they already are. Both of them are simply pettifogging themselves into an eventual situation from which fancy speeches and $10,000-a-plate dinners won’t be able to rescue them.

And if the Great Reset does end up coming, then we’ll all have something in common.