So, the Libertarian Conservatives Were Right Again?
They lost Massie in the attack by Conservatism 1.0 ("CINO's" . . . "Conservative in name only") but Conservatism 2.0 was right about the Iranian War . . . or so it seems.
Since the start of the Iranian War, conservatives have lined up like playground boys choosing teams for Red Rover.
Conservatism 1.0 has mocked allegations that the war was going badly. It was 1945, for them, and the Americans had just knocked out Germany, Italy, and Germany without missing a World Series. "FAFO Iran" was the slogan. This is the MAGA base, combined with pro-Israel forces like The Daily Wire (or so I've been led to believe . . . I don't much venture over to TDW anymore because I believe it's hopelessly compromised)
Conservatism 2.0 has been saying that it's going badly. We immediately face-planted by taking out an all-girls elementary school and costing the world access to the Straits of Hormuz, then we found out our weapon arsenal is not bottomless and Iran had a lot more missiles than we thought. Conservatism 2.0 consists of libertarians and the podcast bros who came over to the Right because they realized it was crucial to kill the BiderHarris hologram before it and its army of NGOs destroyed the First Amendment.
The Free Press lined up with Conservatism 1.0 on this issue (even though TFP was started by Bari Weiss, who was in the vanguard of Conservatism 2.0).
But as of this morning, TFP appears to have conceded that Conservatism 2.0 has been telling the truth:
This War ain't going well.
Its very un-Memorial Day-like cover story:
Eli Lake
Thanks largely to this War, the world is facing a financial meltdown, the far left might seize control of both houses in November, the American military has lost its veneer of invincibility, and we've nearly exhausted our precision munitions and missile interceptors. Most significantly, the entire world knows we're Stretch Armstrong on the verge of snapping:
The drones, short-range missiles, and speedboats Iran uses to harass and threaten international shipping are all stored in underground bunkers. To get to those targets, the U.S. would need to use the penetrator bombs like the ones dropped on Iran’s nuclear facilities last June during Operation Midnight Hammer. The U.S. still has around a thousand of these munitions, according to a military source. But many of them are needed to deter North Korea and China.
My point here? Simply this: The libertarians, for all their left-hemispheric prickish ways, are far more reliable than commentators on the Right or the Left. Why? That's the subject of a different post, but in a nutshell: The Right and Left spin "narratives," in the true post-modern sense of the term: Stories created to advance a narrative, not to tell the truth. And both Right and Left serve the Establishment or, more specifically, different segments of the Establishment, so neither can be trusted. Libertarians, meanwhile, don't serve the Establishment (which is why they always lose, btw . . . not sure how to get around that one), so they're free to tell the truth.