A National Greatness Agenda for Regulating Pornography. Really!

Pornography is one of the subjects/agendas that distinguish conservatives and classical liberals! The article below is written from a conservative viewpoint.

Conservatives tend to promote government paternalism! Then there is the famous American prudishness!

The definition of (hard) pornography is already very difficult. Where does erotic end and pornography begin and so on.

Probably most people, no matter what their political persuasion, would agree that children should be protected from experiencing/viewing/consuming pornography. This is foremost a responsibility of parents, public/private schools etc.

"The Right should pursue politically feasible policies that will help create a better environment for family formation. Producing more marriageable men and women [???] includes cultivating the former’s virtue and confidence and encouraging the latter to make marriage and motherhood a higher priority. ...

An important yet neglected prerequisite for such a culture is enforcing laws against obscenity, which harms both children and adults. The problems with children viewing pornography are well documented. Adult use of pornography severely compromises marriages, leading to divorce and break-ups; makes people more callous, less loving, and less energetic; plays a role in preventing relationships from forming; and is associated with psychological problems like depression. ...

As recently as 2025, the Supreme Court seemed skeptical about state efforts to require age verification for access to obscene websites, a very minimal regulation [???]. ...

More than 10% of men and 3% of women self-report addiction, with many seeking help for compulsive use that undermines marriage and virtue. ...

Pornography Prosecution Task Force. Special task forces should be created at the state and federal levels to prosecute hardcore pornography. The last national effort to do this happened during the George W. Bush Administration. ...

The Right should continue building public support for protecting children and prosecuting hardcore pornography on the internet while laying the foundation for a broader revival of enforcing obscenity regulation. ..."

A National Greatness Agenda for Regulating Pornography - The American Mind "The next stage of the sexual counter-revolution."

Heritage Foundation undergoes mass staff exodus, the entire legal and economic policy staff departed

Bad news! This headline got my attention as the Heritage Foundation is a former employer of mine under the presidency of Ed Feulner!

I am not sure the presidents of the THF including the current Mr. Kevin Roberts (2021-) were good choices following co-founder and president Edwin Feulner (1977-2013, he passed away in 2025). His predecessor was Kay Coles James (2018-2021), she was preceded by Jim DeMint (2013-2017).

Weak or wrong leadership can ruin any institution.

"Nearly the entire legal and economic policy staff of the Heritage Foundation is departing the conservative think tank, and many will be taking up posts at Advancing American Freedom (AAF), a nonprofit founded in 2021 by former Vice President Mike Pence. The mass exodus represents a dramatic rebuke of Heritage President Kevin Roberts in the wake of his refusal to retract an October video defending Tucker Carlson for conducting a friendly interview with the antisemitic influencer Nick Fuentes. ..."

Heritage Foundation undergoes mass staff exodus as cracks open on the New Right "The divisions are no longer just between pro-Trump and anti-Trump conservatives."

Ed Feulner

Marjorie Taylor Greene and now Elise Stefanik, two conservative ladies will quit the U.S. House of Representatives and possible politics

Marjorie Taylor Greene is leaving Congress, resigning effective January 5, 2026. There were news that MTG just got engaged.

Elise Stefanik to Quit New York Governor Race and she will not run for re-election to the House.

I am not very familiar with either lady, but it is noteworthy that these two ladies appear to leave politics behind at this time almost simultaneously.

After the assassination of Charlie Kirk followed the assassination of Ella Cook

Serious stuff! Thanks to lousy media coverage that did not highlight the connection between these two recent politically motivated assassinations, I did not realize until now that Ella Cook (age 19) as also a conservative leader.

R.I.P.

Credits: Massaker an Brown University: Gezielte Tötung einer Konservativen? (It was this German article published today by Tichys Einblick that I became aware of the connection)

Source

China’s Hands Are in America’s Bacon, Hot Dogs. We Should Be Concerned, New Report Says. Really!

Some American conservatives are becoming hysterical and paranoid, if not comical like the Heritage Foundation! Who does not like Chinese takeout? 😊

A case of Sinophobia?

And it's old news too!

"... Over the years, China has expanded its involvement in America’s food system, such as in 2013, when the Chinese-owned company WH Group acquired Smithfield Foods.  

Smithfield, a company largely known for its bacon, controls a quarter of U.S. pork processing, distributing products through brands such as Eckrich, famous for its sausages and deli meats, and Nathan’s Famous, the iconic hot dog brand, the America First Policy Institute explains in a new report, released Wednesday, detailing China’s threat to American agriculture. ..."

China Is Making Our Bacon. That's No Baloney, Report Warns.

A conservative Oregon state representative is shocked that Medicaid spending covers Strip Club Outings for developmentally disabled individuals. Really!

What is wrong with that as long as those visits are not excessive or exclusive or against the will of the individuals?

Should mentally disabled individuals never have a chance to see a strip club or perhaps even to participate in the event?

Even the employees or owners of strip club may benefit from such a visit.

"Oregon state Rep. Dwayne Yunker began asking questions when he discovered the state was using tax dollars to bring developmentally disabled clients to a strip club this past summer. 

Yunker—a Republican lawmaker in a very blue state with a Democrat super majority in the legislature—has exposed this and other controversial Medicaid spending in the state that has little or nothing to do with medical or health issues. ...

The Oregon Department of Human Services informed the lawmaker in mid-August that denying the strip club outing could jeopardize federal Medicaid funding, Yunker told The Daily Signal. 

Specifically, the state agency referred to a federal law that requires state Medicaid programs to help disabled people integrate into the community. ..."

Oregon Medicaid Funds Used for Strip Club Outings

Glenn Beck: Soros empire finally crumbling? The proof is piling up. Really!

Why has Glenn Beck become so boring? To beat up again and again on a 95 year old man, who has become the nemesis of the right and who has already transferred his "empire" to his son.

Move on Glenn Beck! Why do you attack windmills?

"Globalist progressive puppet master George Soros turned 95 years old last week on August 12.

“He's outlived almost all of the people [including Glenn Beck] that tried to stop him and, to be honest, most of the economies that he tried to collapse,” says Glenn Beck. ..."

Soros empire finally crumbling? The proof is piling up | Blaze Media "Glenn Beck exposes Alex Soros’ many billion-dollar blunders."

Ann Coulter on immigration, Reform UK & the Epstein files

Recommendable! Caveat: I did not watch the whole interview. I have not heard or read from Ann Coulter in some time.

Tracing the Sexual Revolutions: How the Assault on Marriage Is Destroying Democracy. Really!

Sometimes it is quite amusing when conservatives muse about sex!

When biblical connotations are abused!

The invention of the oral contraceptive pill in 1960 must pure horror to this man! 

"In October 2022, a New York City judge decided that polyamorous relationships — that is, sexual-romantic relationships involving more than two persons — were entitled to the same legal protections as relationships of two persons. ...

How did we get here? After all, wasn’t it just a decade ago that same-sex marriage proponents — my friend Jonathan Rauch for example — were dismissing conservative arguments that expanding marriage’s definition would eliminate any possible principled ground for declining to extend the same rights and recognition to polyamorous and polygamous relationships?

In his powerful and timely book Sex and the Citizen: How the Assault on Marriage Is Destroying Democracy, Conn Carroll makes a compelling case that our contemporary cultural woes in the realm of marriage, gender, and sexuality are ultimately the fruit of the same poisonous tree [???]: the sexual revolution of the mid-to-late 20th century. ..."

Tracing the Sexual Revolutions | American Enterprise Institute - AEI

Robert P. George

William Buckley and his drive to propel America to the right

Recommendable! However, it has a lefty bend and the video does not well explain the influence and intellectual arguments of Buckley very well.

Who was the last conservative to win the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination?

According to the Coolidge Foundation it was John W. Davis (1873-1955), who ran and lost against Calvin Coolidge in 1924!

In the 21st century this party has become the Dimocratic Party. Very bad for a two party only democracy like the US.

Coolidge’s opponent: “the most perfect gentleman I have ever met”

Meet J.D. Vance's Jewish chief of staff, Jacob Reses

Recommendable!

"Jacob Reses’ earliest political activity, as a teenager, involved campaigning to raise local taxes and denouncing the right-wing commentator Ann Coulter as “spewing hate.” ...
Usha Vance, the potential second lady who is Hindu and Indian-American ...

But Reses, a New Jersey native whose grandfather escaped the Holocaust and who became a Republican during his first year at Princeton University — after interning for Hillary Clinton ...

Reses’ steep ascendance in conservative politics has included a fellowship at the Claremont Institute; an influential role at the Heritage Foundation’s lobbying arm; and a stint in the office of Josh Hawley, the Republican senator from Missouri who calls himself a Christian nationalist, proposing that America’s political traditions are Christian in character and intent. 

He is intensely private, leaving little digital record of his views, and both he and many people close to him declined to be interviewed. ..."

Meet J.D. Vance's Jewish chief of staff, Jacob Reses - Jewish Telegraphic Agency

Reese is at the right hand side of Vance

Why Europe’s Right-Wing is More Divided Than You Think

Recommendable!

Brussels Mayor Attempts To Shut Down National Conservatism Conference by Force

Why did the conservatives choose such a hostile environment for their conference?

Was this an intentional provocation for publicity and attention etc.?

Brussels Mayor Attempts To Shut Down National Conservatism Conference by Force It's a good thing opponents of the move can appeal to the liberal values of free speech, free association, and equal treatment under law.

On Three Conservative Minds by Edwin Feulner or why American conservatism is not very convincing

These are remarks by my former boss! They represent a nice, concise summary of conservative thought in America over the past 80 years or so.

"Edwin J. Feulner, Jr., is the founder and former president of the Heritage Foundation"

What distinguishes classical liberalism from conservatism or where did Ed Feulner err: 

1. He made no mention of individual liberty and responsibility/accountability
2. He made no mention of a limited and small government
3. He made no mention of federalism, the right to secede, separation of power, term limits
4. He espouses Kirk's principal no. 5 "adherence to custom, convention, and prescription" without any qualification. Unfortunately, all three are subject to voluntary and reasonable modification over time as open and free societies evolve and move on
5. Technological progress is too often derided or reviled

Where do classical liberals and conservatives agree:

1. Natural inalienable rights
2. All lives matter (born and unborn). Every life is precious
3. Constitutional law and democracy
4. Law and order. Due process
5. Freedom of speech
6. And more ...

According to Feulner, Russel Kirk was partially a conservative out of touch with  or ignorant of technological progress and the enormous opportunities it offers like a grumpy old man.

"Conservatives with at least a basic grasp of the history of our movement know that the victory of 1980—when the former governor of California was first elected president, launching the Reagan Revolution—began in an unlikely place: the ashes of defeat. And not just any defeat, but a decidedly crushing one: the election of 1964, when Barry Goldwater lost in a landslide to Lyndon Johnson.

Yet ... conservatives can trace the triumph of the 1980s even further back. At least a decade earlier, in fact—to 1953, when three highly influential books were published: Leo Strauss’s Natural Right and History, Robert Nisbet’s Quest for Community, and Russell Kirk’s Conservative Mind. ...
Yes, William Buckley’s seminal volley, God and Man at Yale, had come out in 1951, but it was still a relatively new work, and National Review wouldn’t debut for another two years. Derided by the intelligentsia, ignored by the media, and unsung even by its adherents, conservatism was so ill-regarded that the very notion of a “conservative mind” was considered oxymoronic. Left-liberalism, then in its post–World War II heyday, appeared to be the wave of the future. Who could challenge its seeming hegemony? ...
Strauss demonstrates that the idea of “natural right”—that there is such a thing as immutable truth, which remains true for all ages—goes back at least as far as Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, and it can count the United States of America among its progeny. But later political philosophers rejected the idea of natural right. ...

According to Strauss, this rejection is not only ahistorical; it’s a recipe for disaster. As he writes in Natural Right and History, the relativism it spawns “leads to nihilism”—the rejection of all moral and religious principles in the mistaken belief that life is ultimately meaningless. ...
Nisbet, however, noted the deterioration of such institutions as the family, the church, and the neighborhood had not, as many intellectuals had predicted, liberated man. Instead, it had produced alienation and despair. The simple fact is that, to quote the historian George Nash, man cannot live in “Hobbesian isolation.” As Nisbet points out, “The quest for community will not be denied, for it springs from some of the most powerful needs of human nature—needs for a clear sense of cultural purpose, membership, status, and continuity.” ...

Civil society is the antidote. To live in freedom, man must break the bonds between himself and the state through a revitalization of intermediate associations, such as the family, the church, and the neighborhood, the “little platoons” of life about which [Edmund] Burke spoke so eloquently. ...

Speaking of Kirk, although his best-known book is not a work of enchantment, it certainly broke the spell under which American conservatism had languished for more than one hundred years. The publication of Kirk’s landmark study, hailed by Whittaker Chambers as one of the most important books of the twentieth century, changed all that. Kirk showed conclusively that conservatism had an illustrious lineage, and he proved that many of the finest British and American thinkers, including Burke, Coleridge, John Adams, and John Calhoun—to say nothing of luminaries such as Tocqueville, Newman, Disraeli, Santayana, and Irving Babbitt—espoused this philosophy. He also demonstrated that much of America’s success derived from her conservative principles. ...

His book was not only, as Lee Edwards asserted, “a brilliant distillation of conservative thinking over the past 150 years,” but also “a scathing indictment of every liberal nostrum, from the perfectibility of man to economic egalitarianism.”  ...

Kirk unmasked the shallow rationalism of the cynical French philosophes and unveiled the egotistical underpinnings of Rousseau’s romantic sentimentalism. He exposed the heartlessness of utilitarianism and the absurdity of its founder and disclosed the spiritual bankruptcy of materialism in all its malefic forms. ...

Kirk’s book sets forth six “canons” or principles that provided a credo for American conservatives: 

1) belief in a transcendent order, including natural law; 

2) respect for the “variety and mystery of traditional life”; 

3) recognition that civilization requires classes and orders; 

4) acknowledgment of the crucial link between freedom and private property; 

5) adherence to custom, convention, and prescription; and

6) awareness that change is not necessarily reform, and agreement that Providence plays the final role in the affairs of men.

...

A critic for all seasons, he [Kirk] denounced the automobile as “a mechanical Jacobin” and reviled television as an electronic demon. No friend of modernism, he condemned materialism and all its works, including secularism, utilitarianism, positivism, statism, progressivism, and atheism, to say nothing of “power-tipsy professor[s],” “Behemoth” universities, and “quarter-educated” collegians. 

... "

Three Conservative Minds - Intercollegiate Studies Institute

Heritage Foundation on ‘Time Has Arrived’ to Legalize Polygamy, Writes New York Judge

The subject of polygamy serves well to distinguish conservatives and classical liberals!

Probably few classical liberals would oppose polygamy! If several adults voluntarily decide get married with each other, because of love and desire to be close together, then why not. Should legalized polygamy later turn out to be a disaster, it can be reversed.

Conservatives like to mix in the debate all kinds of horror scenarios like adult incest or pedophilia or instability for children and so on. These are vivid imaginations, but wrong headed.

"... The media laughed off the conservative movement’s concerns about the slippery slope when Democrats pushed to sexualize the military 20 years ago. Now, almost two decades later, with American parents in the fight of their lives over transgenderism and judges paving the way for “plural marriage,” it unfortunately proves we were right. The LGBT’s fight was never about marriage—it was about every social norm. 

Back in 2003, the late Justice Antonin Scalia warned of a day when state laws “based on moral choices” against “bigamy, same-sex marriage, adult incest, prostitution … adultery, fornication, bestiality, and obscenity” would all fall. ...

An astonishing 23% of the American public thinks polygamy is “morally acceptable” in 2022, Gallup shows—more than triple what it was (7%) ...

And why not? If “love” and “consent” are all that define a relationship, then proponents of incest, pedophilia, and group marriage can follow the LGBT playbook all the way to validity. ..."

‘Time Has Arrived’ to Legalize Polygamy, Writes New York Judge

Notes on 2 Massachusetts Towns Create Legal Polyamorous Partnerships

When a leading Christian conservatives like Tony Perkins (current President of the Family Research Council) uses blatant demagoguery to make his point! I am not even sure Mr. Perkins really speaks for the majority of  Christian conservatives in America.

For the purpose of this blog post, I mean to understand polygamy/polyamory as the consensual, romantic, and voluntary partnership between unrelated adults.

For Mr. Perkins polygamy/polyamory is akin to Sodom and Gomorrah! He compares or alludes polygamy to "adult incest", "bestiality, and obscenity" and "pedophilia". He even uses/abuses a quote of the late Supreme Justice Antonin Scalia for his purposes. This is extreme and deplorable agitation! 

In his conclusion: "Once a culture rejects God’s design, basic biology, and thousands of years of civilization, there are no boundaries."

Nobody knows what God's design is not least Mr. Perkins! What a pretense, what a blasphemy! Of course, there are boundaries and they are well defined by (natural) law in e.g. in the Ten Commandments!

2 Massachusetts Towns Create Legal Polyamorous Partnerships

Very Incomplete Six Core Beliefs Of Conservatism

Posted: 7/10/2018

Just received by e-mail the Six Core Beliefs of Conservatism thanks to the Intercollegiate Studies Institute (Motto: Education for liberty).

The Six Core Beliefs of Conservatism excerpted from Russell Kirk (“The following is excerpted from The Essential Russell Kirk, a collection of his finest essays and writings.”)

The funny thing is that the word liberty is mentioned only once, words like freedom or free society a total of 2. Individual liberty is conspicuously absent from this document.

Very regrettable! Very disappointing! One of the biggest mistakes conservatives can make!

Friedrich Hayek wrote a famous essay titled “Why I am not a conservative”, which is part of his book titled “The Constitution of Liberty” (originally published 1960). A few appropriate excerpts from this essay here (emphasis added):

1. “The tug of war between conservatives and progressives can only affect the speed, not the direction, of contemporary developments. But, though there is need for a “brake on the vehicle of progress,” I personally cannot be content with simply helping to apply the brake. What the liberal must ask, first of all, is not how fast or how far we should move, but where we should move. In fact, he differs much more from the collectivist radical of today than does the conservative.”
2. “But, as the socialists have for a long time been able to pull harder, the conservatives have tended to follow the socialist rather than the liberal direction and have adopted at appropriate intervals of time those ideas made respectable by radical propaganda ”
3. “This brings me to the first point on which the conservative and the liberal dispositions differ radically. As has often been acknowledged by conservative writers, one of the fundamental traits of the conservative attitude is a fear of change, a timid distrust of the new as such, while the liberal position is based on courage and confidence, on a preparedness to let change run its course even if we cannot predict where it will lead.”

Conservative Soul Searching After The Debacle

A Recent Article

Post presidential election of 2012, conservatives of all persuasions are analyzing and debating. Most recently Mr. Peter Berkowitz in an Opinion page article titled “Conservative Survival in a Progressive Age” (unfortunately, subscription required) in the Wall Street Journal on 12/13/2012.

What’s In A Headline

The headline chosen by Mr. Berkowitz can easily make one cringe.

First, conservatives (Mr. Berkowitz means those advocating individual liberty and self-government) do not have to worry about survival. The general trend of all human history is and will likely continue to be towards more individual liberty.

Second, Mr. Berkowitz implies in his headline that we are living a “Progressive Age”. The Bible was already very progressive, I might say. Age of Reason or Enlightenment is perhaps too old fashioned. For a fellow of the Hoover Institution to allude that conservatives maybe dispensable in a progressive age is a poor judgment of conservatism.

Berkowitz Advocates Limited Big Government

To quote Berkowitz: “The first entrenched reality is that big government is her to stay. Instead [conservatives] should think and speak in terms of limited [big] government.”. How awful is that for a conservative? To accept big government as an eternal reality is to have it backwards. A big mistake of analysis and judgment. There is no compelling reason why government has to be big in a sense that it significantly affects or controls all aspects of each citizen’s life.

Worse, Mr. Berkowitz contradicts himself since he defines conservatism as individual liberty and self-government. Well, if all people would exercise responsible self-government we would barely or rarely need a government. Thus, good limited government helps people to become more responsible for themselves and improves self-government of the people.

The Sexual Revolution Perhaps The Greatest Social Revolution

To quote Berkowitz: “The second entrenched reality, this one testing social conservatives, is the sexual revolution, perhaps the greatest social revolution in human history. The invention… of the birth control pill meant for the first time … women could … reliably control reproduction. … to enter the workforce and pursue careers.”. Mr. Berkowitz spends about a third of his article to argue that “… social conservatives should refrain from attempting to use the federal government to enforce the traditional understanding of sex, marriage and the family”. I think, he gives way too much weight to the influence of so called social conservatives.

Without the Age of Reason/Enlightenment and Capitalism, the birth control pill would probably still not be invented. The Agriculture or the Bible was already a social revolution.