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I think a lot of what you say about the right is pre-2021 right. They realized they get no mercy and now are willing to sacrifice their principles.
I would say Desantis war with Disney is a prime example. The right traditionally would have been against punishing Disney for Free Speech, but backed Desantis when he went after Disney within the rules of the law. Even though the Spirit of Free Speech was against doing anything. When you have institutional power to punish your enemies the right seems down with it now. The no pacifist in a foxhole standard has emerged. It’s better to win sacrificing principle than lose and end up dead. Abbott has also challenged a lot of legal principles and challenged Biden to try and stop him when he’s probably wrong on the law. The right also got aggressive with abortion using bad means to do it like Texas civil suit law. My guess is if Hillary was the 2024 candidate and destroyed her hard drive and lost lock her up would be attempted versus just being a campaign slogan.
When the right feels threatened they can do more. Pinochet was on the right and his plan worked. Until recently the right didn’t realize the system was risks. It was just annoying HR ladies and an occasional weirdos to laugh about on college campuses.
It’s not like the right has been opposed to force when it’s necessary. We killed a lot of commies. The right didn’t realize they were in a war until recently.
This, of course, is exactly the same thing that leftist, or members of any other group, tell themselves -- when They break their stated principles for expediency, it's because They are treacherous faithless hypocrites; when We break our stated principles for expediency, it's because We really need to play dirty to win. As for principles like tolerance of differennt ideas, freedom of speech, or body autonomy, approximately nobody gives or ever gave a damn about them; a smattering of individuals here and there may care, but in practice they are ad hoc weapons against customs or laws one doesn't like.
No, leftists are consistent in that they actually write papers about how free speech is a white supremacist social construct that must be abolished etc. etc., see Derrick Bell and Richard Delgado. You have to give them credit for that at least.
https://cyber.harvard.edu/bridge/CriticalTheory/rights.htm
"We need to play dirty to win More Progress" is their stated principle.
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I don't see any assertions about "we" or "they" in the post above. One can conclude that "principles" are no longer maintainable without needing to apply any judgement on the outgroup. All that is needed is a recognition of fundamental conflict.
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I don’t know about that.
The American right has plenty of history with speech restrictions, especially around sexual content. DeSantis is not breaking new ground. He’s approaching from a more secular angle, but it’s the same old song and dance of a Moral Majority. Same for Texas jurisprudence.
Nor is the situation uniquely dire for the right! Keep in mind previous acts of defying the Feds have ended with the 101st Airborne deployed to high school. Or at least a good old FBI shootout. Compared to that the cultural and legal battles are tame.
I think what you’re observing is better explained by the libertarian wing receding from its high-water mark during Obama’s presidency. Trump’s branding has polarized the Republican base and it dominates any media coverage.
I agree they have done it in the past. But what is happening now is different. In the past it was doing it from a position of strength. Now it’s being down as a counterattack.
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Rumors from within DHS tells me that the federal government couldn't find anyone willing to go against the Texas state government during the border brouhaha. There's a decent chance of the federal government simply lacking a monopoly on force these days.
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I don't see how that's an explanation rather than a restatement of the original observation.
Sliders was pretty clear about 2021 as an inflection point. In my opinion, that’s way too late.
The current backlash is a development of populism which has been brewing (at least) since Obama was in office. Crediting DeSantis and Abbott with reinventing conservative opposition? That’s the same kind of mistake as people insisting Trump is going to abolish democracy. He’s not special. They’re not special. For that matter, Obama wasn’t special, either. The situation circa 2010 was uniquely suited to a libertarian opposition. Since then, that support has been redirected to Trump’s platform.
Describing that as “the right realizing they were in a war” is, uh, cope.
It's been as while since I was into econ, so I'll probably butcher some of these ideas, but some brilliant soul had the idea that the best way to model the behavior of individual companies is to a assume their actions can have no impact on supply, demand, employment or any broader trend. They're scarcely more than amoebas in the ocean, driven by forces far beyond their comprehension, let alone their ability to influence them. It is this form of analysis, a vain attempt to present itself of as rational, that I think is the cope, and it's probably worse in politics than it was in economics.
I don't see how that explains anything. It's not like the move away from libertarianism was primarily motivated by the opposition to the left, which is still extremely hostile to it. It was a repudiation of the neocon agenda first. To the extent it went against libertarianism, it was focused on economics, and to the extent that was different from what the establishment of either party wanted to do, it boiled down to the opposition immigration and free trade. Even after Trump took power, he did remarkably little to exercise it in order to implement a cultural agenda. At the tail end of his presidency we started seeing some executive orders that would herald the type of opposition we see coming from DeSantis and Abbot, but they came so late that Biden repealed them before they could have any impact.
In my opinion this shows that his timeline is mostly correct, and the fact that DeSantis and Abbot are being singled out for criticism shows they're doing something different from the other Republican governors.
"The right realizing that they were at war", might not be the right explanation for what we're seeing, but at least it's an explanation. I still don't see your argument as anything more than a restatement of the fact that the right moved away from libertarianism.
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I see 2021 as a time where the right got comfortable adopting tactics the left had been using longer.
Before 2021 I thought the GOP stayed towards traditional powers like voter backlashes or challenging things in the Supreme Court.
Post 2021 they have added more direct challenges like busing illegals to blue states, giving a FU to Biden on the border when I think his position wins in court, muddling things up in lawfare (which is different from doing what a court tells you to do), etc.
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Desantis and Abbott are probably fairly uncommon political talents, just like Obama was and Trump is.
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