Escaping From the Conservative Media Fraud
“And yes, I’m doing this for profit!” With those smug, pseudo-principled words, every popular “conservative media icon” and “conservative intellectual” tells us, point blank, that we have every reason not to take him seriously, and no reason whatsoever for trusting one word that comes out of his mouth. The modern world of liberty and self-governance is crumbling at speeds that even the bleakest pessimist would find difficult to believe, and the public figures who hold themselves up as the leaders of the resistance are declaring, as though this were a grand mark of pride, that they are in it for the money. That they wouldn’t be doing or saying what they are doing or saying if there were no financial bonanza in it for them. That their getting wealthy is somehow coextensive with the fight for liberty, and indeed money and fame the standard for measuring seriousness in that fight.
These ersatz standard-bearers of freedom make exactly the same case as do the worst brand of American televangelists, who insist that your contributions to their luxury swimming pools will help you get into heaven. To everyone inclined to give credence to any of these mock-political voices — any of them — I can only continue to say, or rather plead, though without hope of being heard: If you really care about the fate of freedom on this Earth, the very best thing you can do, for yourself, your children, and your country, is simple. Stop listening to those charlatans and crisis actors. They are profiting, eagerly and calculatingly, off your despair and your society’s downfall. Your sadness and your country’s deterioration at the hands of totalitarian schemers is in fact the indispensable motor of their business model. Shut them off, cut them off, impoverish them, and then see how many of them are still standing for anything at all at the end of the day. The number, I can assure you with as much confidence as any human being can assure you of anything, will be zero.
Reclaim your life and your independent reason from the mill of this grand swindle. Stop sacrificing two, five, ten hours of your day to the greed-driven exploitation of your hopelessness by these peddler men with their fake elixirs. Give up your understandable but ultimately quixotic need to believe, against all common sense and the evidence of the past thirty years of “conservative media” reality, that someone with a prominent voice is speaking for you, when in truth your supposed public spokesmen are all merely counting on you to enrich them for decades while they accomplish absolutely nothing for the cause of liberty, and contribute less than nothing to the advancement of anti-progressive ideas. Be honest with yourself when you hear them touting their “capitalism,” as though this were a brave political stand — you understand perfectly well how the profit motive works — and admit the obvious: These people hope for, and wish to foster, a vocal, brazen, and aggressive socialist opposition, because that is the condition in which men in the business of selling quasi-conservative demagoguery, and spiritual cocoons for the frightened, will always earn the most money.
Am I suggesting that the profit motive is evil? No, and that question implies precisely the false dichotomy the conservative profiteers are relying on to justify their scam. Profit is no more evil than guns are. But guns used in the name of immoral ends become the tools of evil men. Likewise with wealth-getting. As much as you may respect and defend the rights and profits of the great investor, the hardworking small business owner, or the billionaire real estate tycoon, how would you feel about a man who refused to jump into a freezing river to save his own mother from drowning unless you offered him a thousand dollars? Or a man who responded to his wife’s cancer diagnosis by judging the value of paying for her medical treatment against the earning potential she might attain post-recovery if the treatment were successful? Or — to hit much closer to hard realities — parents who decided that sending their child to a neo-Marxist indoctrination center was a better financial deal than giving up the savings required for a private school, or than sacrificing the material benefits of a second income in favor of teaching the child at home?
Using a gun to protect your family or your community is a good thing. Using one to steal your neighbor’s life or property is not. The profit motive is a great incentive to improve your practical conditions and secure your future. It is not an appropriate mode of thought in the realms of spiritual development, political principle, or moral action, where personal material advantage will often run counter to the proper rational ends, and must therefore be banished from primary consideration. The business model of the big conservative media (in all its manifestations, from print to podcast) is not corrupt because the profit motive is evil. It is corrupt because political philosophy and the crisis of civilization are not business opportunities or popularity contests.
“But what about the mainstream or ‘liberal’ media?” Rinse and repeat.