How did traditional conservatives become neo-conservatives aka commies?

Part of the answer,  of course,  is that commies who had supposedly become conservatives were able to entice them with promises of wealth and power and moral certitude. But how was this possible?

The short answer is that the sons and daughters of traditional conservatives lost their faith.  Over a couple generations — 1930 to 1980, say — the thread of the faith was cut, or at least largely unraveled, such that these new generations simply could not understand any longer what words like ‘God’, ‘Christ’, ‘Church’, ‘Christian’, ‘soul’ (etc etc) meant. These words had become hollowed out and, since they had formerly supplied the foundation and anchor for traditional conservatism, what was left was a world without foundation in which, as Nietzsche had predicted, only the ‘will to power’ could supply some semblance of coherence.

This bare ‘will to power’ could be exercised in either of two basic ways.  There was the George Bush option and the Dick Cheney option. The Bush option was to exercise the will to power to define what the hollowed out words — ‘God’, ‘Christ’, ‘Church’, ‘Christian’, ‘soul’ (etc etc) — would now mean.  What had formerly defined us would now be defined by us. This easily led to the result that it was impossible to do wrong — or at least to do wrong that would not immediately and automatically be ‘forgiven’. If I’m going to exercise my will to power to redefine things, of course there must be some advantage in it — how else could it be a genuine exercise of power? For Bush and his many millions of fellow controlling shareholders in the kingdom of God, the great advantage was that there was no longer any need to rue past misdeeds or to worry about the morality of future ones. All would be forgiven by the God they had redefined for the soul they had redefined in the name of the Christ they had redefined. They were therefore entirely free to take from others whatever they wanted and to do whatever violence was necessary in the process. (If this sounds more like communism than conservatism to you, you are beginning to get the picture.)

The Cheney option ended up in the same place, but without the unnecessary and somewhat distasteful dancing around with self-interested theological redefinition. If the old foundation was irretrievably gone, and the will to power was all we have left, let’s exercise it exactly as Nietzsche said it would be exercised — ‘beyond good and evil’. For this option, we are entirely free to take from others whatever we want and to do whatever violence is necessary in the process  exactly because morality has absolutely nothing to do with life. The only question is how well I marshal power and then exercise it.

Modern conservatism thus became fitted with two wings, a self-declared moral one and an avowedly amoral one, both of which were united in the idea that there is no eternal negative consequence to evil action. At least for Americans. For either it would be immediately and automatically ‘justified’ (a richly  ambiguous concept) on account of ‘faith’; or it would not actually be evil because everything is relative and, anyway, there is no eternity in which negative consequence might ensue.

Since both of these wings are utterly thoughtless, they belong to a vehicle that has no on-board pilot.  A drone.

Are you being steered remotely?

Congratulations!  You are a conservative!