Primary Topic
This episode dives into the ideological shifts within the Republican Party, identifying three distinct factions that influence its current dynamics.
Episode Summary
Main Takeaways
- The traditional Republican faction ("GOP Inc.") is now seen as outdated, having been based on a blend of big business and theocratic ideologies.
- Donald Trump's presidency catalyzed the formation of a new voter base, consisting of disenfranchised, traditionally non-elite Americans.
- A third faction, the "New Right" or "Techno Republicans," has emerged, promoting a blend of conservative economic policies and a rejection of progressive cultural norms.
- This new faction is characterized by skepticism towards established elite institutions and a strong advocacy for free speech and cultural conservatism.
- The episode highlights the ongoing evolution and internal conflicts within the Republican Party, suggesting significant implications for its future electoral strategies.
Episode Chapters
1. Introduction to GOP Inc.
The hosts discuss the historical makeup of the traditional Republican faction, highlighting its reliance on big business and theocratic ideologies. Malcolm Collins: "GOP Inc. used to harness disgust-based morality to motivate its base."
2. The Rise of Trump and the Disenfranchised Base
This chapter explores how Trump's emergence shifted the Republican base towards more disenfranchised, anti-establishment voters. Simone Collins: "Trump appealed to those angry at the system, fundamentally changing the party's base."
3. The Emergence of the New Right
Focuses on the newest faction within the Republican Party, driven by tech leaders and new conservative thinkers. Malcolm Collins: "Tech entrepreneurs have started to side with conservative values, forming what we now call the New Right."
Actionable Advice
- Understand the factions: Recognize the distinct groups within political parties to better understand their policies and directions.
- Engage critically with media: With the rise of skepticism towards elite institutions, it's crucial to critically evaluate information sources.
- Foster open discussions: Encourage dialogue between differing political views to enhance mutual understanding and compromise.
- Stay informed on political shifts: Keep abreast of changes within political parties to anticipate their future moves and impacts.
- Advocate for balanced views: Support policies that align with a blend of economic liberalism and cultural conservatism, as these represent emerging trends within the Republican Party.
About This Episode
In this thought-provoking discussion, Malcolm and Simone Collins explore the emerging "New Right" or "Silicon Valley Right" coalition within the Republican party. They delve into how this group, which includes tech entrepreneurs and venture capitalists, is reshaping conservative politics and policy positions.
People
Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, Donald Trump
Companies
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Books
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Guest Name(s):
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Content Warnings:
None
Transcript
A
Hello, Simone. I am excited to be here with you today. Some days I just have, like, this breakthrough in my perception of reality that changes everything for me in a way. Like, I wish people are like, why can't you only record the good, you know, the good episodes? Like, do it once a week, really good.
I'm like, that's, like, not how my brain works. I need to occasionally have an idea and I'll be like, oh, wow, this is earth shattering for me. And I wish I could make, like, a better, a premium, but this is definitely gonna go in the best episodes category because I think I now understand something that was really difficult for me to understand before, and it gives me a better vision of what the Republican Party is and where it's going. I'm so intrigued. Would you like to know more?
So the thing that I didn't understand is I saw this at Natcon, but I've seen this more broadly when I talk to conservatives that are in the old conservative intellectual elite, conservatives from the pre Trump era, sort of staffers, intellectual elite. When I say intellectually, I mean the type of people who are at the think tanks, the type of people who are being paid, like career conservatives, they often come off to me as incredibly socialist, bordering on marxist. And, like, Lyman Stone's a great example of this. He is a hardcore socialist. And I just didn't understand it.
I didn't understand why they identified with conservatism. Now they're christian socialists. And so I could kind of get that. I was like, well, maybe it's that because they're christian, they don't feel that they'll be accepted in the progressive circle, so they just try to push their socialism in conservative circles. But generally speaking, I didn't get it.
I didn't get where this was coming from. And I also feel like my understanding of the conservative party transition was the introduction of Trump. And post Trump has been diluted, or, like, not as good as I would like it to be. It has felt very like, I kind of get it. And I can put together long explanations about what it is, but a really tight explanation that made it easy for me to understand, like how the policy positions flipped in the way that they flipped.
No, I was not capable of doing that. So I had this realization to me, and I was like, oh, my God, everything makes sense, so we're going to go over it. But it is in understanding the conservative party and the waves of the conservative party. So first you had what I'm going to call GOP Inc. This is the pre Trump conservative coalition.
This coalition used disgust based morality, as we've talked about in other episodes, to motivate its base. Like ew. Like, that would be an EW thing, but, like, who actually made up its elite class, its philosophical class, and the class that it used to staff administrations. It was an alliance of two interests. One interest group was theocrats.
These are people who had a strong religious framework for reality and believed that should be represented in the government and should be legalized. Like, morality should be legislated. And the second, that is, people should be like, the laws should be designed to force people to act more in line with their religious frameworks. Right? And the second framework in this team up was big business and intergenerational wealth.
Now, people today, if you're like Gen Alpha or Gen Z, you'll be like the people who ran large companies. People thought they were conservative. Historically, they didn't think they were the people staffing the White House. They were the core in, like, the Bush era, in the nineties, this was like a Mister Burns type characters that was like, obviously Mister Burns was a conservative and not a far progressive. But now it's inconceivable to think of an organ of a corporation not being at least trying to look woke.
Ultra woke, actually. Here I'm reminded, a lot of a character like Jack Donaghy from 30 Rock. The Jack Donaghy character in the modern world would just 100% be a progressive woke person. But in the time period when 30 Rock was filmed, it made sense to film him as a very conservative person because he was a big business stooge.
Imagine like this. So you go in the nineties, if you went to a company like McKinsey or something like that, the default assumption would be you are a Bush supporter. If you go to McKinsey today, because I have a lot of friends who work at companies like McKinsey and Bain and everything like that. These companies wouldn't even hire someone like me. Like, I would be barred from being hired because I am publicly conservative.
That is how much things have flipped. Also, this reflection helps me realize how perfect an avatar of this old institution, Mitt Romney, was. The perfect big business plus theocrat candidate, and he couldn't win. And that's why the transition to a new system was necessary. Well, there's also true for, like, the billionaires that were made in that generation.
You know, you look at your Mark Zuckerbergs, you look at your Bill Gates, like, really any of them, they all are very much. And a lot of the old money families went that way. There's this conference that you can go to. It's called Nexus, which I've been invited to, you know, because my family is, globally, a lot of intergenerational wealth. I didn't get any of it, by the way.
I was kicked out. But they did have it, which gives me invites to these sort of things, or IPI institute, private investors, I think, something like that. But anyway, lots of intergenerational wealth at both of these. And they are the furthest left things you could possibly imagine. Oh, yeah.
No better way to get a communist these days than be a billionaire's kid. The Institute for Private Investors. So I've been to these, and this is a change. This didn't used to be the case. You know, it used to be that these were pocket conservative factions, but they left the business owners and they left before Trump came around.
By the time Trump hit the stage, these people had left the coalition. And the coalition was desperately signaling to try to keep them on board. But they were mostly gone at that point. And during that era, while the intergenerational wealth was conservative and the heads of companies, you know, your Jack Donaghy's right, like, he was a character that represented this. We're ultra conservative.
Your entrepreneurs and your techies were, you know, people who had made their wealth off of their brains, like your first generation brain wealth, right? These people were actually very progressive. You know, this is your, you know, your Steve Jobs and stuff like that at that period, right? Like, it's super, super progressive. Then, as half of this coalition left, the coalition became somewhat unviable, and the base of the coalition began to get angry.
And then a new demographic, a new voter demographic, came to exist. This is the demographic that Trump appealed to. And I would say this is the angry, disenfranchised. So essentially, the conservative party went from a big business, old money alliance with theocrats to a angry, disenfranchised Americans who are just angry at the way the system is working and do not believe that it cares about them at all. Now, this created a huge problem for Trump in his first administration.
If you're trying to staff your administration with people who are disenfranchised, well, often they're disenfranchised for a reason, and they're really thinking with their emotions. It's not that everyone is. But in the early Trump era, that was, to an extent, the case. And it made it very hard to build, like a cohesive working institution. You need some group of, like, a large pool of competent, hardworking individuals who are okay was working, at least adjacent to bureaucracies, to staff something like this.
Well, these individuals didn't exist in this early era of Trump. And then something queer happened. A new conservative faction began to arise. So if this is the faction that is called in media, often the new right, or that we in previous episodes have called the techno Republicans, they're individuals like Elon, Peter Thiel, Clemass Vivek, David Sachs, Marc Andreessen, and JD Vance. These individuals typically hated Trump when he first came to power.
And then, as we've talked about in other episodes, some people, like JD Vance, but also many other thinkers, they began to bridge the gap with this community. So this community had begun to move against the progressives for two reasons. They saw that progressivism was beginning to become a nazi cult. As we pointed out before, you know, they value human dignity based on a person's ethnic group, with Jews at the bottom. And when they were like, no, they don't.
You know, they literally. So if you look at the. The National Academy of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine recommended prioritizing racial minorities for Covid vaccines. They sought safe lives. And ACIP of the CDC indicated that it went with this framework when it was deciding.
So they were literally not based on a person's medical needs, but based on a person's race. They believed some races were more deserving of human dignity than other races. And you look in there like, oh, we don't hate Jews. It's just a zionist. And then you point into a video of a jewish person, not a Zionist, walking on a college campus and being randomly attacked by a group of progress.
Like, no, you can say you don't feel that way, but that's what's become the mainstream of your party. And then you can look at the castration of children that's become more and more rampant. And they're like, oh, we're doing this to save trans kids. But we know from the 2024 study, development of gender non consensus during adolescent and early adulthood that. So this is a 2024 really good longitudinal paper.
Over nine in 1011 year olds who feel discontent with their gender and aren't given the social transition stuff. They end up growing up to be a 23 year old who is 100% comfortable with their gender, but they're either. Just gay or autistic, just sterilizing a portion of autistic. And it's nine gay and autistic kids for everyone. Trans kid like, it is insane.
And a lot of these pull yourself up by your bootstraps, people. Then realized, and this was a message made clear by people like JD Vansitz. And one of our appalachian viewers sent this to us. They said, vance is urging the tech elite side to side with. He said first he said that the tech elite sided with the liberal elite or the big business owners because they were both elite historically.
But I don't actually think these two groups are really ever on the same side for that long. In the era of GOP Inc. The tech elite were always on the progressive side. And the other faction, the big business and blue bloods, they were always on the conservative side. So they're just reorienting things in the way that they naturally reoriented.
And it was, you know, Vance is urging the tech elites decide as rural Appalachia, because rural Appalachia is scrappy and entrepreneurial. We have a quote, unquote, pull yourself up by your boots mentality that tech entrepreneurs like. And that is true. They actually found a great deal of personal synergy. And as the progressive group began to become more religious, that is, just believe these things.
It doesn't matter what the data says. It doesn't matter what's obvious and real to you. I mean, so you had this switch, and this was the core switch that happened during the Trump era, or this happened recently is in the nineties. It was big business, intergenerational wealth, conservative, tech entrepreneurs, progressive. Now it's tech entrepreneurs, conservative, intergenerational wealth, and big money or big business progressive.
And so this. Which then explains to me also why GOP Inc's remnants are so damn communists, because I did not understand this to begin with. GOP Inc, historically had to appease the big business interests. It had to appease, it was an alliance between theocrats and big business and intergenerational wealth. And so they had to, you know, go for this more capitalistic like approach.
When all of that left, they no longer needed to appease that faction. And that faction left all of their, you know, intellectual circles, everything like that. And as such, they began to think. And also, they were not the old Calvinists of Oldenhouse. Right?
Like, this is mostly like a catholic group these days. Yeah. And there's nothing inherently capitalistic about Catholicism or being a Baptist or being, you know, an evangelical christian of like, any typical american sort. Right? So, yeah, well, it's something that the wokes actually used to chastise them for.
Why aren't you feeding the poor? If that's what your Jesus guy was all about? Why are you helping the disenfranchised? And they've moved to a, actually, this is what we need to do mindset. But then there's the other filtering mechanism that pushed them into this position.
The secondary filtering mechanism that pushed them into this position is these are individuals who have spent their entire adult careers working within bureaucracies. Conservatives that don't have a social event to them or a pro bureaucracy bent to them are not going to be able to maintain those positions their entire lives. So, yeah, just the ones who survived in the same establishment long enough are going to be inherently bureaucratic. Absolutely. I bet, huh?
B
Okay. And so that's what caused this transformation. But there is a secondary thing at play here. Well, first, I want to hear your thoughts on this first bit here.
This makes a lot of sense. It was always confusing to me that I always saw conservatives as being, let markets make a solution. Right? Let business do business and less government is good. And then to show up at Natcon this year and hear people there say, oh, no, bureaucracy is good.
I just want it to be more christian or, you know, well, fuck the. Base was one of the things they said. They were like, we don't care, or. Let'S ban pornography, or let's, yeah, like. All these sort of crafts, big government good, as long as it's run by us kind of mindsets, really blew my mind.
And this free market approach was gone. I also thought that cultural sovereignty was universal across all conservatives. You know, basically, don't tell me how to live my life like, I want to practice my religious freedom. And therefore, you know, we should all be fighting for that. The fact that conservatives, despite the fact that really all they should be fighting for right now, like they should before getting to be coercive, to impose your culture on other people, even if that is your ultimate plan, it's so bizarre to me that they're not first saying, okay, just let me do my thing.
Instead of forcing me to do your thing, they're just immediately, no, you're going to do my thing. Which is also bizarre to me. I would expect them to first try to get to a neutral point before they go to the other extreme from being forced to forcing. So, yeah, I didn't understand that. And now that you're showing me how there's factions forming and also that Trump has chosen a faction that's not GOP Inc.
I'm quite heartened. Yes. So now I need to read to you, because I found this fascinating. I decided to bring some questions to AI to see if it's just me who's thinking this. Am I imagining something?
A
Is there really a new faction of conservatism? What do they care about? So I went to perplexity and I asked, I am trying to name a growing faction of conservatives that includes voices like Elon, Peter Thiel Chamath, and Vivek Ramaswamy. Who else would you put in this group? This growing faction of conservatives you're referring to is often called the new right or the Silicon Valley right.
It includes tech entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, and business leaders who have shifted towards more conservative right wing views. Based on the search results and additional context, here are some key figures that should be considered part of this group. Elon Musk, Peter Thiele Chamath, Vivek Ramaswamy, David Sachs, JD Vance, so you notice it unprompted, included JD Vance in this group and Marc Andreessen. So it's not just me who's saying JD is in this group. It's, I prime an AI with this.
And it's like, yeah, he's part of this new right and Marc Andreessen. This group has a few common traits. Then it goes into, like, their, you know, silicon valley background and everything like that. But then I thought something else was really interesting, so I did a follow up where I said, what are common policy positions they push? And it said, because I thought this was an interesting summary.
The new right or Silicon Valley right, which includes figures like Elon Musk, Peter Thiel Chamas Palsa, and Vivek Ramaswamy, shares several common policy positions. These include economic libertarianism. They advocate for free market principles, reduce government intervention in the economy, and deregulation. Sounds good to me. Yeah, with the neoliberalism.
B
This is what I thought conservatism was. This is so weird. Which emphasizes individual freedom and responsibility and minimum state intervention and economic affairs. Cultural conservatism. This group often holds socially conservative views, including a commitment to traditional values and public morality.
A
They tend to oppose progressive cultural movements and emphasize the importance of maintaining cultural norms and traditions. Skepticism of elite institutions. There is a strong distrust of established elites and mainstream institutions such as media, academia, and government agencies. The skepticism is rooted in the beliefs that these institutions are dominated by leftist ideologies that seek to undermine conservative values and policies. So, so far, you're like, oh, this is like 100% us native or sorry.
Nationalism and popul populism. They often support nationalist policies that prioritize the interests of their own country over globalist agendas. They. This includes a focus on America first policies and a resistance to international agreements that they perceive to undermine national sovereignty, free speech, and anti censorship, a significant policy position as a defense of free speech. In opposition to what they see as censorship by tech platforms and other institutions.
They argue that current policies disproportionately silence conservative voices. A critique of woke culture. They are vocal critics of woke culture and identity politics, which they believe stifles free expression and promotes division. This includes opposition to affirmative action and other policies they view as promoting social justice at the expense of a meritocracy. Exactly.
B
Usually I would say it's us, except for when it comes to social policy, I would say that we take a much more free market or libertarian approach to social policy. Which isn't to say that we don't get all over and criticize certain social approaches, but we take it more from a, well, they suck and they're going to disappear. Like, they're going to fail. We've talked about creating government departments that fund episodes of shows like they did in the seventies, about, like, anti drug shows. So, like, cornet films.
Like show. Yeah. So, no, we're totally in that we promote the idea of the government intervening in companies that own the medium of communication. In the same way the United States government used to nationalize things like the postal service and create really heavy regulations around things like telephone lines, and yet we don't have that around things like the companies, like YouTube, for example, that might censor what you and I are saying to each other. I agree with you on that.
Where I would draw the line with our policies, though, is coercive tactics like saying this is. It's saying that this group doesn't do that. So it's not relevant anyway. So next. I don't know.
I mean, where I will, like, you know, JD Vance is. JD Vance is really on the edge of this group. He's got a foot in both communities, but he speaks to this group and he is adjacent to this group. But I wouldn't call him an avatar of this group. If you're looking for an avatar of this group, you're looking for someone like Elon Musk.
A
Yeah. In the same way that Peter Thiel built his political opinion sort of before this group existed. And he's also been an influence in JD Vance, which has influenced him with a lot of mysticism, which is why people like James Lindsay freaked out when JD Vance was admitted, because he sees a lot of JD Vance's mysticism that came from some of the influencers of Pater Thiel and will likely do a different episode of that. I'm not as worried about that. You know, I think that, and this is a fresh take that you're going to hear here.
While I support Trump and JD Vance, I do believe that God gives man signs. And when I see a group of people walking around in red hats that say which on them, I'm like, eventually these people are going to be our enemies and we need to take that into consideration. For people who do not know, MAga is the feminine version of Mago. You know, when you read the Bible like Simon of Magos, that is Simon the sorcerer. It means a female searcher sorcerer.
That is a witch. The Bible tells us do not. It tells us to be wary of witches. And so when a group of people come to, I just think that God makes these things obvious. It's weird how freaking obvious sometimes that God makes his will.
And I think that this is one of those instances where we just haven't had to deal with it yet. Right now they are on our side, but God has told us to not overcast our chips. Okay, what, you, you disagree or you feel uncomfortable with the fact that there is a group of. That's a weird thing, right? That's got to be weird to you.
It's red hats that say which on. Them make America great again. That's a weird phrase. It's a weird, it's weird that they shortened it. And it's weird that it says which.
B
Not really. Maybe I'm too autistic to get it. You're schizoid enough to get it. You know what I mean? I'm schizoid enough to be.
A
You're like, yeah, it's a group of people who wear red hats that say which. I don't say which. They say maga. It's which in, in Latin, sweetheart. It's loud.
B
Define maga. Google. What does maga mean in Latin? The language of the church. Okay, Latin, fine, because, yeah, because everyone's still doing masks.
A
I'm not using some obscure language here. Simone. Wizard. Sorcerer. Poisoner.
B
Poisonous. Magical. Magus. Noun, adjective.
A
I'm just saying it's not like I'm choosing like schizoid or something. Schizoid. Schizoid. Schizoid. Latin, the language of the church.
Sorry, I just gotta be like. Anyway, so I'll go further here. What does it say after that? It says that they use the use of government to counter leftist influence. Unlike classical liberals who believe in limiting government power, the new right advocates for using government power strategically to counteract what they see as overreach of the left in cultural institutions and spheres.
These positions reflect a blend of economic liberalism and cultural conservatism, aiming to reshape the political landscape by challenging both traditional conservative and liberal paradigms. And I looked at this and I was like, wow, this is a weird coalition of political beliefs that I thought you and I had come up with on our own. But it's like, no, like, this is, or not come up with on our own. But, like, I thought that our political position was more unique than I think it really is. I think it's a reflection of a mainstream and growing faction of the conservative party and one that has, to an extent, just been knighted by Trump.
But I'm wondering your thoughts on this. Yeah, I think it's a good side, a good sign that we're converging on something similar because it implies that it is a natural and logical reaction to where we are as a society, economy and government. It's a good thing. It's a good sign. And I'm glad to know that we're not alone.
B
But I'm also disturbed to know that this wasn't the norm because I have that same bias that most people do, which is you assume that if someone is nice and reasonable and they seem intelligent, that they hold the same views as you. And going to Natcon and seeing that, oh, actually the establishment of republicans, which are nice, wonderful, smart people that I like, if so, of course, I assume that they're going to, they're going to hold out the same stances as we are. Really don't. And they're part of this old faction, which is largely socialist, which is quite socially coercive, you know, that wants to ban pornhood, wants to do all the, I mean, they also want to do some other things, like in project 2025, led by the Heritage foundation, which is definitely of the old guard, but seems curious about the new guard. So that's like, it can update.
Yeah, yeah, it looks like it could update. But, you know, like, there are some things that seem more in line with new stuff, you know, like sort of breaking out a lot of ossified bureaucracy seems to be a part of it. But then also these, you know, more coercive or very conservative, socially conservative tactics. I don't know. I mean, Trump has been very clear about where he stands on this.
A
So, you know, if you look at, like, how do you merge these two groups? Because there are, that is the tech entrepreneur group and the, you know, angry, disenfranchised group. Right. Because there are a few areas where they're going to chafe with each other. Right.
Yeah. And Trump has done it. So, for example, the new Republicans, they're generally pro gay people being able to live their lives. They're even pro adult trans people. But they are very antagonistic.
For example, as JD has two programs that try to transition children or that try to convince or really brainwash children into this weird gender ideology cult thing that we've talked about in other episodes where I say that, you know, like a cult basically grew under trans ideology. And I think that most of the new Republicans realize that, and they're very scared by that. The clupda is the holy guide to living pure. This will help explain. First, her name's Lorraine, too.
We're all Lorraine. And you will be Todd, a name chosen especially for you. Oh, you're an oppressed minority. You're a cult.
Excuse me, are y'all with the cult? We're not a cult. We're an organization that promotes love. Yeah, this is it. So I want to read something from Richard Hanania.
He tweeted this. So he said Trump personally dictated the new RNC language on abortion and gay marriage, which are, I think, the two issues where these two groups need to be able to synergize. That is, the tech elite are okay with being more restrictive on these things. And the disenfranchised Americans often want to go on absolute positions towards these things, or there's a small faction of them that does. That is really loud, actually.
I wouldn't even say the rural disenfranchised group doesn't care about these things. The group that cares about these things is GOP Inc. And Trump is trying to keep enough of. GOP Inc. Was basically telling them to fuck off.
B
I mean, it's still a significant contingent. Well, it's a significant context of funding, but it's not, you know, as voters, it's not the future of the party. No. And so what is Trump doing here? So I'll read what Richard Hanania said.
A
Trump personally did it dictated the new RNC language on abortion and gay marriage. His team put the delegates in a room, took their phones, and Trump said, you're going to pass this and you're going to do it quickly. Night of long knives for social conservatives is what it was called. And then he showed something from a paper that had come out on this or an announcement about this. Mister Trump made clear to his team that he wanted the 2024 platform to be his and his alone.
He wanted it to be much shorter and simpler and in some cases, vaguer. He was especially focused on the language about abortion, which he recognized as a potentially potent issue against him in a general election. He wanted nothing in the platform that would give Democrats an opening to attack him. And he made clear to his aides that he was perfectly fine with bucking social conservatives, for whom he had delivered a tremendous victory by reshaping the Supreme Court with a conservative supermajority fair. Mister Trump also stressed that he did not want to define marriage as between one man and one woman.
Instead, the document contains a vague statement open to interpretation. Quote, Republicans will promote a culture that values the sanctity of marriage, end quote. He could not be throwing in harder with the new Republicans and against GOP, Inc. If he tried. These are issues that don't matter to the rural disenfranchise that much.
Okay, so he's choosing a side between GOP, Inc. And new Republicans, he's saying, or, and the new right, or techno conservative, as we call them sometimes. And he's saying it's a new right. That's who I'm with. And I think it's incredibly shrewd.
Yeah, but you have any further thoughts here? Well, what does this mean for the longer term future of the party, especially if Trump wins, having made this tone. Setting decision that he's saying, and he's aware of what the base actually wants. So, according to, especially the young base, according to Pew, in 2014, 61% of Republicans under 30 favored same sex marriage, while only 35% opposed it. It's an incredibly unpopular opinion.
Gallup poll from 2021 showed that 55% of Republicans overall, since overall, not just young Republicans, supported same sex marriage, it's a majority opinion in the Republican Party. In 2015, 63% of Republicans under 30 supported protecting lgbt individuals from discrimination. So again, the majority, when you're talking about young conservatives, are pro that. And then if you look at Pew, nearly half of republicans younger than 30 say that abortion should be legal in all or most cases. So this is far to the left of our opinions on abortion, 47%.
And so this is the next generation. And then you could say, well, what about, like, the mainstream concerns? And I can put a graph on screen here. It shows that 64% do not take this life begins at conception mindset. They want to, you know, restrict abortion, but they still want it to be accessible.
I think JD Vance is public initial point on this. The twelve week position actually falls in line with what a lot of Europe thinks on this point. And probably what we'd agree with, I think twelve weeks, pretty good. It's interestingly, it's also around where Islam believe installment happens. And it's not that far from early catholic thinkers on when insultment happens.
So I find that pretty interesting. And it also, interestingly, I find this really interestingly, is that if you correlate the early catholic thinkers with what we actually know about the science, and we'll get more into, like, abortion stuff in a different episode, it correlates with when the nervous system begins developing. So I think that, you know, when the church was still in communion with God, it understood God's will in regards to this, because that's actually kind of remarkable that they sort of guessed when the nervous system started developing without any knowledge of that. But anyway, that's like our religious. I'm going to take that aside.
But what I'm saying is, if you're like, what's the consequence of him allying himself with this faction? He's allying himself with factions that represent the base, not factions that represent an out of touch and bureaucratic elite caste that really have nothing to do with the party anymore. And another point we'll get to in another episode, which I really love to talk to you more, is this deontological religious system that in the nineties people thought was stable and you had like the quiverful movement and stuff like that. Their kids deconverted at astronomically high rates. It turns out it's just not an intergenerationally stable system.
They were like, we're going to create the generation of Joshua. We'll do a few episodes on this. But what turns out, and I think you're seeing this in like the eight passengers family, for example, right? When you take this deontological moral perspective, it is very bad at intergenerationally keeping people and the groups that are doing that are just not relevant, relevant in the future. It is the active theological conversation and inconsequentialist moral systems which seem to be able to actually motivate high fertility, which you see across traditions, whether it's Catholic or Mormon or something like that, you see some factions that are adopting these and maintaining high fertility.
B
But thoughts that makes sense, and I'm excited for that. But is there a chance that this highly socialist, we'll say christian socialist faction, instead becomes a dominant faction? And how would that in population numbers? Not at all. I think that we have risks from them.
A
Like so, so the Heritage foundation, where they're like, we'll do Project 2025 and we'll staff the white fest for you. Trump don't worry about it. We'll handle it all. Trump telling them basically to go off was very smart. I like Heritage foundation people.
I think they can update. But this original plan of, like, banning pornography, saying life begins at conception, which basically means IVF gets banned. I putting kids on a military list, you know, this is not the new Republicans. This is some weird old theocratic holdout. And I think that when I talk to people at the Heritage foundation, many of them are totally rational, normal people who follow the base.
What I'm assuming is there's probably some donors to them or some faction that they think they need to please, or maybe some old people who are still haven't been purged from these organizations and during the Trump administration, because Trump seems very alive to this. You know, they're going to go through and they're going to clean house so that we can, and then begin hiring people like you and me and other, you know, thought leaders in the new right to begin to add a perspective that is more representative of both the republican base but also the republican next generation, which is important if we want to keep the party healthy and strong. There. I think there was a plan to try to take over with a christian marxist value system. And we even saw this was the pronatalist movement.
I mean, Lyman Stone did this. Lyman Stone wrote this, like, manifesto about how the Collinses aren't true pronatalists, because the Collinses aren't socialist. They don't believe, because they look at the evidence that social handouts work, that cash payments to families work, that the government should have control of how many kids a family should have, and therefore they are antinatalists. And it's like, I loved it. He's like, therefore they're not conservative or they're not.
The new right were two of the words he used. And I was like, we're not conservative because we're not Marxists. But I think that a lot of people like him. They do. They have attempted over and over again to try to wrestle control of movements that, you know, other people have built, people like Trump, people like us.
And you just need to be vigilant against them. And frankly, they need to be shamed and kicked a bit. Like, when I say kicked a bit, I think Trump did a good job with the project 2025 thing. I don't think he needs to throw out this database. I think he should probably use it.
I think he can work with the Heritage foundation as long as they understand. Don't try to, like, take your socialist nonsense, your far left wokey ban porn nonsense, and try to incept it into what is actually the conservative base's desires these days or banning gay marriage or something like that. Like, this is not modern conservatism, okay? It's not what the base wants. It's not what the new philosophers in the party want.
It is. And I think that a lot of these groups can learn. I think that they need to come to accept that their theological traditions are not a majority, enough of the american population to do anything other than hurt them. When you put these extremist positions around when life begins or gay marriage or something like that, even if you believe in them, right? Like, even if you think, oh, it's good that the government's enforcing people to live this way, which doesn't get anyone into heaven.
So I don't like. Even if that, and I really want to stress this point again. There is no christian denomination which believes that you have helped a person's chance of getting into heaven by adjudicating their morality. If anything, you have just removed an opportunity for them to reflect on their own immorality and potentially build a relationship with God. So you have hurt them in that regards, and you have hurt our society further by preventing republican candidates from potentially winning.
To play this little silly, I don't know what it is, status game, it makes no sense. You are hurting conservatives ability to win because this isn't something most of the conservative base agrees with. It's something that galvanizes democrats to get out there and vote. I think sort of the last gift that the sort of transitional group Trump's group gave to these people was this conservative Supreme Court, was the Supreme Court decision on abortion, which I think is just, I do think this should be a state's rights issue. And now we need to move on with what conservatives actually think instead of what these small pockets of extremists think that conservatives should think if they weren't so stupid.
It's basically what they think. I mean, that's what we got from the conference is a lot of these people just think that the base is stupid because they look at this disenfranchised, angry group of voters in the same way that the leftist bureaucrats do. They're like, just sit back, relax, and let the bureaucrats make all the decisions. This gives me hope, Malcolm, and it makes a lot of sense. It helps to explain a bunch of things that really confuse me about what are conservatives now that it's exciting to see things moving in an interesting direction.
B
It's just kind of crazy also how capitalism is kind of going full circle. I see the cycle there of, you know, originally one could say, like, productive, world changing companies were conservatives and began to falter. And now, once again, sort of productive, world changing companies are conservatives. So just different from a new wave of capitalism, a new wave of business formation. So that's also interesting.
A
Well, that's actually really interesting. I think both theocratically and in terms of business. The conservative circles are the ones where intellectually lively discussions are happening. Yeah. Where generation is happening.
B
I feel like conservatism feels more generative to me, whereas progressivism feels more degenerative to me. Rot, excess and rot or decline, whereas conservatism is more the belt tightening, the discipline, and then the growth, the new growth. Well, it's austerity and discipline, I think, are two of the key conservative values that you're just not going to get in these progressive circles. And I think vitalism is becoming a key conservative value instead of, you know, the old conservative party that we would argue was motivated by, like, ick, like, against gay, because gay ick, you know, and then we learned that's a stupid way to build morality. I like, that's what Mother Teresa basically taught the world.
A
Like, yeah, just because somebody initiates a disgust reaction in you like a leper, doesn't mean you shouldn't hug them and show them love. Like, that's a pre evolved thing that was meant to keep you healthy and safe. And sure, you have offspring, but that doesn't mean it's a good sign of actual morality. A lot of our listeners disagree on that. They're like, no, disgust.
B
Good. Yeah. When I see a deformed person and I feel disgust, that's a wonderful thing. That's God telling me that they must have sinned. Was this like, well, you know, on average in the past, people before germ theory and whatnot benefited from being afraid of people who had visible problems, open wounds, deformities, etcetera, because it could be associated with.
A
I understand how this moral system evolved. But, you know, we also, you know, if you go to early Christianity, like, what's happening, you know, in the tabernacle, you know, when they're escaping Israel and they're ripping apart birds and throwing blood all over their worship area, like, our religion evolves. Okay. Yeah. And we need to, and I think that's commanded of us by God, is to continue to and even Catholicism.
Their view that life begins at conception, evolved. That's only about, I think, 200 years old. Was Pius the 9th. That's not what, you know, Thomas Aquinas thought. That's not what Augustus of hippo thought.
That's a new belief, and that's okay. We evolve and we evolve again until we get closer to what God wants us to believe. That's what techno puritanism is all about. Right, my friend? Oh, yeah.
I love you, Simone. You are an absolute star. What are we having tonight? Am I gonna. People hated us for our last night's food.
They were like, this is not what a carnivore eats. You know, you're having teriyaki beef with stir fried rice. I'm very excited for that. I've actually been saving up for that today because I'm looking forward to that. Yeah, they were like, what about your seed oils?
Because I was having, what, like, gyoza last time and, like, tomato soup and I don't know, maybe I'm getting my seed oil. I actually don't care. I don't want to live for seed oils. I thought seed oils were out. I don't know.
They're like, look at a rogue nationalist. Yeah, we've had him on his show, right? Like, he tell us that the way we're eating is, like, terribly unhealthy. And I'm like, I really don't care. Like, I'm not here to live forever.
I believe in forever puppy. That's the way we see humanity. People are like, why are you so okay with dying? Are you tired of your puppies getting too big to handle? Are you sick of your cute little puppy puppies turning into doll and try forever puppies.
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Where it's this. Do you know what I'm talking about? No, but I can guess. You take it back whenever it gets old and begins to become boring and sad and nihilistic, and then it becomes excited again, just like our kids. Oh, God.
B
I love you. I love you too.
A
I love you too.