Some of you might remember me expressing my complaints about a mass-abandonment of fusionist conservatism in favor of tyrannical reactionary politics after the George Floyd riots.

Now we are finally seeing some of those people come forward and explain their rapid change of course.

A commentator recently published this article in The Federalist (a sketchy Democrat-sounding name in the first place): https://thefederalist.com/2022/10/20/we-need-to-stop-calling-ourselves-conservatives/

This is the central point of it:

Whatever the term or image, the imperative that conservatives must break from the past and forge a new political identity cannot be overstated. It is time now for something new, for a new way of thinking and speaking about what conservative politics should be. The fusionism of past decades, in which conservatives made common cause with market-obsessed libertarians and foreign policy neocons, is finished. So too is Conservatism Inc. and the establishment GOP it enabled, whose first priority was always tax cuts for big business at the expense of everything else. The election of Donald Trump in 2016 heralded a populist wave and the end of Republican politics as we knew it, and now we are in uncharted waters.

To be sure, there has been plenty of talk on the right lately about what should be done differently now. Some, such as Sohrab Ahmari, Gladden Pappin, and Adrian Vermeule (along with a larger cohort of conservative Catholic thinkers), advocate a conservatism that is comfortable with big government and in fact sees it as necessary not only for the common good but to tame what Ahmari recently called the “private tyranny” of woke corporations empowered by unrestrained market forces. Conservative Catholics, he argues, should today claim ownership of a pro-worker, even pro-union political agenda that once belonged to the left, and which produced generations of Democrat-voting Catholic workers.

Indeed, a willingness to embrace government power has been a topic of fruitful debate on the “New Right” in recent years, as it should be. However uncomfortable traditional “small-government” conservatives might be with Ahmari’s argument, it is more or less true.

Put bluntly, if conservatives want to save the country they are going to have to rebuild and in a sense re-found it, and that means getting used to the idea of wielding power, not despising it. Why? Because accommodation or compromise with the left is impossible. One need only consider the speed with which the discourse shifted on gay marriage, from assuring conservatives ahead of the 2015 Obergefell decision that gay Americans were only asking for toleration, to the never-ending persecution of Jack Phillips.

The left will only stop when conservatives stop them, which means conservatives will have to discard outdated and irrelevant notions about “small government.” The government will have to become, in the hands of conservatives, an instrument of renewal in American life — and in some cases, a blunt instrument indeed.

To stop Big Tech, for example, will require using antitrust powers to break up the largest Silicon Valley firms. To stop universities from spreading poisonous ideologies will require state legislatures to starve them of public funds. To stop the disintegration of the family might require reversing the travesty of no-fault divorce, combined with generous subsidies for families with small children. Conservatives need not shy away from making these arguments because they betray some cherished libertarian fantasy about free markets and small government. It is time to clear our minds of cant.

In other contexts, wielding government power will mean a dramatic expansion of the criminal code. It will not be enough, for example, to reach an accommodation with the abortion regime, to agree on “reasonable limits” on when unborn human life can be snuffed out with impunity. As Abraham Lincoln once said of slavery, we must become all one thing or all the other. The Dobbs decision was in a sense the end of the beginning of the pro-life cause. Now comes the real fight, in state houses across the country, to outlaw completely the barbaric practice of killing the unborn.

Conservatives had better be ready for it, and Republican politicians, if they want to stay in office, had better have an answer ready when they are asked what reasonable limits to abortion restrictions they would support. The answer is: none, for the same reason they would not support reasonable limits to restrictions on premeditated murder.

On the transgender question, conservatives will have to repudiate utterly the cowardly position of people like David French, in whose malformed worldview Drag Queen Story Hour at a taxpayer-funded library is a “blessing of liberty.” Conservatives need to get comfortable saying in reply to people like French that Drag Queen Story Hour should be outlawed; that parents who take their kids to drag shows should be arrested and charged with child abuse; that doctors who perform so-called “gender-affirming” interventions should be thrown in prison and have their medical licenses revoked; and that teachers who expose their students to sexually explicit material should not just be fired but be criminally prosecuted.

If all that sounds radical, fine. It need not, at this late hour, dissuade conservatives in the least. Radicalism is precisely the approach needed now because the necessary task is nothing less than radical and revolutionary.

To those who worry that power corrupts, and that once the right seizes power it too will be corrupted, they certainly have a point. If conservatives manage to save the country and rebuild our institutions, will they ever relinquish power and go the way of Cincinnatus? It is a fair question, and we should attend to it with care after we have won the war.

Another expands on this: https://www.theamericanconservative.com/the-end-of-conservatism-or-birth-of-a-new-right/

Askonas, who teaches politics at Catholic University of America, says that if conservatism wants to survive, it is going to have to figure out "how to build technologies to fortify tradition and advance human flourishing." That should be the thing that conservatives should most want to conserve -- but in order to determine what counts as "human flourishing," we are going to have to be clear about what constitutes human flourishing (something far more meaningful than "the freedom to do what you want to do"), and that's going to mean having to advocate for a clear and substantive idea of what it means to be human.

He's right. It will enrage libertarians and cause the small-government conservatives of the Reagan era to fall and not be able to get up. But what choice is there? The Left does this all the time. We have gone in a short period of time from an era in which the Right saw the State as the enemy, to an era in which the only major institution of American life where the Right can exert any influence is over, yes, the State.

You foolish Galatians! What convinced you to do a 180 degree turn? You have become everything you hate! Authoritarian, reactionary, socialist, fascist, anti-American, anti-freedom...is this not the spitting image of the very enemy with whom the fight against is what you use to try justifying this?! You are only letting them win! Not only do they want to trick you into supporting their big brother agendas, but they get you to make fools of yourselves so as to add credibility to their accusations of you being Nazis. They were clearly wrong, but now you are only proving them right! This is exactly what the left wants. No matter which side wins, LBJ's deep state always wins, and freedom always loses. You say we can worry about corruption after the war, but by then it is already too late. And I fear that just like every other expansion of government in history, the "war" is merely an excuse, and there are no plans to reign the state back in if and when it is won.

Those who promise glory and splendour with a totalitarian state are misleading you. It will only lead to tyranny and oppression, and more benefits for the elites, whichever side they act for. You have converted to a false gospel. There will be gulags and concentration camps and censorship and unthinkable torture and barbarism. The thought police will be knocking on your front door. Everything will be illegal, and life will be intolerable and full of constant fear. You are afraid now? This is nothing compared to what is coming. Liberals were deceived with the same trickery ages ago, and this is exactly what it is leading to. What makes you any different? If you go along with this, America is finished. Give me liberty or give me death!

I invite you back to liberty and love and reason. Those who demand tyranny and persecution of their enemies act only out of emotions of anger and vengeance, and wholly self-interest. And the consequences of that are dire.

May America be saved. I wish you all well.