Dissident-Conservatism & Christian Nationalism

A continuing essay series examining the conflation of politics and religion.

MAGA Mike Johnson, in the center, praying with a group of Republican lawmakers on the House floor during a round of votes that eventually elected former Speaker Kevin McCarthy in January. Photo credit, Jon Cherry/Reuters

But what’s most important? Republicans taking over. And Republicans being able to keep our country! -Ainsley Earhardt [A conservative Christian]¹

Chaos agents, disruptors, dissident-conservatives or whatever appellations are applied to the House of Congress members who are actively obstructing “what has now been an orderly operation of legislative government for well over 200+ years,”² are not acting on whims or out of petulance, but rather are operating to intentionally disrupt liberal governance at the federal level, this is all part of a wider movement within the far right to attempt to create conditions for itself that will allow as many cracks as possible in the systems of governance to be exploited in order to secure a movement-conservatism aligned White House Administration, ideally in line with a conservative voting Congress, and conservative ruling Supreme Court, all in service of capturing the reins of federal power.

Kevin Roberts the president of the Heritage Foundation, the organization that is spearheading the efforts of the foundation’s pet Project 2025, in an interview posted online last December, stated as part of a nuanced answer "I am kind of enamored with the idea of ‘dissident conservatism,’” in response to his interviewer A.M. Fantini the editor-in-chief of The European Conservative, whose posed the following line of thought for Roberts to consider and answer

…my own thinking has changed. I think it is time to re-engage people in political battles and to fight back more aggressively.This requires a new form of conservatism, of which Trump was a catalyst. It is happening in Europe now, too. Some people have referred to this as ‘disruptive conservatism,’ which is almost an oxymoron …

“It is—but I kind of like that!” [Roberts]

… or ‘dissident conservatism.’ Is this the new conservatism that we need?³

The movement-conservatism’s far right wing considers itself genuinely threatened by the liberal consensus, so much so that it and its proponents are willing to cause chaos in order to achieve their goals of dominance for the purpose of being able to create conservative policies; even when, despite their best efforts, as Jerry Taylor of the Niskanen Center observes:

Within the GOP, however, the constant tension between doctrinal purity (enforced by an influential cadre of movement leaders devoted to publicly policing ideological orthodoxy) and the need to compromise in order to pass legislation makes it difficult to move an ambitious conservative agenda through Congress. There are never enough purists to overcome Senate filibusters or override presidential vetoes. Republicans who respond by looking for compromise to marginally improve existing laws are savaged by ideological policemen for compromising on principle. Paralyzed by their inability to pass meaningful legislation, Republicans spend most of their time on “messaging” bills and resolutions that have zero chance of enactment.⁴

And so therefore, as Taylor further states,

Republican political behavior, however, does not make sense given their stated objective; rolling back the size and scope of government. That requires legislation. Legislation requires politics. Politics requires compromise. And compromise requires the party to abandon rigid commitment to principle.⁵

An additional example of Taylor’s observations, in particular the point on ““messaging” bills,” are well exemplified in any number of

Heather Cox Richardson

’s “Letters from an American” such as in her most recent posting “November 9, 2023 (Thursday)” as follows:

Today, although the House managed to vote on a series of extremist bills designed to signal to their base—lowering the salaries of government officials they dislike to $1 a year—the House Republicans had to pull the Financial Services and General Government appropriations bill after extremists loaded it with antiabortion language so they could not get the votes to pass it even through the Republican side of the aisle; earlier they had to pull the bill to fund Transportation, Housing and Urban Development, and related agencies.⁶

You may have heard the phrase, ‘Do you know what time it is in America?’⁷ spoken by some of the current brood of Neo-Republicans. This is an allusion to the cold civil war being conducted against the Democrats and is a reminder that due to the Democratic Party’s skills with the “art of government” they are losing the war for control of government and consequently their ability to assert, conserve, install, and maintain their extreme conservative ways of life, that truly belong to the past and have been slowly but surely becoming irrelevant and unwelcome to modern society.

“it’s past time to lay the groundwork for a White House more friendly to the right. For decades, as the left has continued its march through America’s institutions, conservatives have been outgunned and outmatched when it comes to the art of government.”⁸

In crafting this essay, which I initially started out with the objective of explaining dissident conservatism, I once again found myself confronted with same the basic root cause of the problems created by dissident conservatives such as those seen in the current House of Congress and institutions with thought leaders aligned with Kevin Roberts—the problem of committed adherence to a deity centered thinking paradigm—it is simply unavoidable and so incredibly deeply entrenched as to be mind-boggling; and consequently I find myself trying as best as I can to reduce what I have come to realize is a multi-threaded-tiered-thinking process that defies easy short explanations. One such example of the problem of theocratic thinking is to be found, again, in the “November 9, 2023 (Thursday)” edition of “Letters from an American:”

North Dakota state representative Brandon Prichard was much more explicit. Opposed to the measure [The decision of Ohio’s voters to protect abortion rights on Tuesday], he wrote, “Direct democracy should not exist…. It would be an act of courage to ignore the results of the election….” According to James Bickerton of Newsweek, Prichard has previously called for Republican-dominated states to “put into code that Jesus Christ is King and dedicate their state to Him.”⁹

Along the way of my researching and studying these things I have had to become reacquainted with the workings of American government, its make-up and how it is intended to work.

When conservatives do finally make it into an administration, they often don’t know what to do or how to seize the gears of power effectively. Through their action, inaction, and their encyclopedic knowledge of volumes of technicalities about the federal workforce, certain career federal employees are masterful in tripping us up.¹⁰

The “certain career federal employees” Chretien refers to above are metaphorically singled out throughout various conservative talking points of which two of their most familiar, amongst others, are namely—”the deep state,” “the swamp,” and “the permanent political class”—these are the dedicated individuals of whom Trump, during his final months of occupying the White House, signed an “Executive Order on Creating Schedule F In The Excepted Service”¹¹ that would in the words of

Joyce Vance

make

“a change in civil service rules that made it possible to fire employees in policy positions “at will”—for no reason at all… But the order was characterized by people in the knows as a “‘stunning’” attempt to politicize the civil service and undermine more than a century of laws aimed at preventing corruption and cronyism in the federal government.” It was the logical outcome of Trump’s obsession with a “deep state” that he believed was out to get him.”¹²

While the above two examples of the workings of government are granular in measure they are crucial to a non-partisan operation overall of government. Other larger concerns that I will be discussing center on the topics of Federalism, the Republic, and the idea of the “laboratories of Democracy” just to name a few; in all these areas and more it can unquestionably be said that the efforts of not only the highly visible individual personalities of politics from all across the spectrum of government, but also in the active work being conducted behind the scenes, most especially by the numerous non-profit organizations, such as those deeply involved with the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, there are deep wells of legitimate and dark monies by vested interests in support of a Christian Nationalist agenda.

At this point in this essay I must adhere to my self-imposed reading time limit of no more than ten minutes and stop here for today.

This essay series is a continuing work.

Robert J. Rei, November, 10, 2023

(All bolding emphases are mine, RJRei)

"There's only one corner of the universe you can be certain of improving, and that's your own self." -Aldous Huxley

1. “Fox News Left Shell Shocked by Dems’ Election Night Romp” Justin Baragona Senior Media Reporter, Nov. 08, 2023, https://www.thedailybeast.com/fox-news-left-shell-shocked-by-democrats-election-night-romp

2. Democratic Policies Prevail in the Laboratories of Democracy:

3. “Fighting for Our Institutions: An Interview with Kevin Roberts” The European Conservative, A.M Fantini, December 23, 2022, https://europeanconservative.com/articles/interviews/fighting-for-our-institutions-an-interview-with-kevin-roberts/

4. “Are Republicans the Party of the Status Quo?” Jerry Taylor, Niskanen Center, February 13, 2015, https://www.niskanencenter.org/are-republicans-the-party-of-the-status-quo/ as quoted in full in the following Substack article:

THE REPUBLICAN IDEOLOGICAL BREAKDOWN

5. Ibidem

6. November 9, 2023 (Thursday)

“Claremont was one of the very few serious institutions on the right to make an intellectual case for Trumpism. This is not an accident. Nor is it an accident that Claremont has never identified with any of the conservative (or liberal) factions. When commentators try to label us, they usually just say “Claremont conservatives.” “True MAGAs” is another label—occasionally used by those who think Trump voters inhabit yet another enclosure in the conservative zoo. In fact, however, they are not a partisan faction or an interest group at all. On the contrary, the position they represent transcends the conservative divisions by representing the true, non-partisan understanding of America. (Yes: this is a bold claim. I will defend it in a moment, along with the claim that Trump voters are essentially “Claremont conservatives.”)”

7. "“Conservatism” is no Longer Enough” March 24, 2021,(“Knowing What Time It Is”) Glenn Ellmers, The American Mind, https://americanmind.org/salvo/why-the-claremont-institute-is-not-conservative-and-you-shouldnt-be-either/

8. "Project 2025” (Commentary|Conservatism) Spencer Chretien, (“Spencer is Associate Director of the 2025 Presidential Transition Project at The Heritage Foundation.”) (“This piece originally appeared in The American Conservative”) January 31, 2023, https://www.heritage.org/conservatism/commentary/project-2025

9. See note number 6

10. See note number 8

11. “Executive Order on Creating Schedule F In The Excepted Service” October 21, 2020, The White House, 45th Administration, (Trump Administration) https://trumpwhitehouse.archives.gov/presidential-actions/executive-order-creating-schedule-f-excepted-service/

12. Frogs Boiled: What Trump is Planning for a Second Term