I'm on the conservative side, mostly, and I'm deeply disappointed by most prominent conservative voices. There's much more of value in conservative thought than people hear from conservative mouthpieces in the media, but instead we get ugly stupidity.
If you look at the political incumbents on both sides you’ll be sorely disappointed. Many people who end up in positions of leadership in either parties are basically insiders who did their time and climbed the ladder, and who are deeply unpopular.
Candidates who garner a lot of attention are actually viewed as a threat by the incumbents and are usually buried, destroyed, or sidelined. Take Yang, Tulsi and Ron Paul as a few examples.
I agree. Even though I'm a liberal, I'm sad to see the conservative intellectual tradition in such bad shape. I always felt it would be better for your opponents to rally around their best arguments/figures rather than their least savory arguments/figures. I think it has also made us (liberals) lazier--we don't need to bring coherent, reasoned arguments because we can settle for "well, at least we're better than Trump". We're all racing to the bottom.
I agree with this as well. It would be wonderful if there were a major political party in the US advocating for liberties, families, and the cultivation of markets. Modern Republicans claim to be this, and in practice... aren't.
I think that you have a point about how the media portrayal of Trump differed from the reality, but Trump is an example of what I'm saying. He had some good instincts, and a vague sense that we lost our way forty or so years ago, and he may value family, markets, and some sort of liberty, but he can't mount a coherent defense of those things, because he doesn't really understand them. He has some positions, albeit flexible ones and an odd mix at that, but no underlying principles — no philosophy of liberty. How can you expect to move a country in the right direction, and make a lasting change to how we think politically, without principles?
I can't agree that he doesn't understand the value of family, markets, and liberty. He does - and these things are not complicated. The great majority of citizens in these United States have believed in them for hundreds of years.
But some people these days want us to stop believing in those values, and they are very vocal. We need more public intellectuals in the mold of Thomas Sowell, and politicians that would listen to their council.
I couldn't have put that better. And it's compounded by our increasing unwillingness to say controversial things in public, for fear of the mob. We aren't having conversations that are really necessary.
