Thread by @DamonLinker

Rusty Reno's talk at the National Conservatism conference. He proposes 7 propositions....

Prop 1: The church is the agent of Christian universalism. Only the church can overcome divisions and restore unity to the human race.

Prop 2: America is a nation, not a church. Rejecting this has led to “delusions of an American-led liberal empire.”

Prop 3: Every nation is in some sense a chosen people. Irreducible particularity of each nation, with its own tradition, people, history. Task is to cherish and perfect.

Prop 4: The Bible/the church … (missed this one, sorry)

Prop 5: Modern ideologies seek an unbounded empire. They treat the nation as an illusion. Liberalism seeks a “mild but universal empire … of liberation and prosperity.”

Prop 6: A mass becomes a people through shared loves. (Augustine) He’s angry about the luke-warm patriotism of our educated elite. We share citizenship in a great nation. Can the left affirm this unity?

Prop 7: Nationalist politics can serve end of true Xian universalism. The nation as a ready for our sinful self-regard (building on the family). Patriotic love is a great cure for our self-love. The loves we share as Amer can prepare our hearts for a higher, more universal love.

Wow, Yoram Hazony's talk is a full-on broadside against the conservative movement from George HW Bush down thru today, attacks on libertarianism, etc. "Today is our declaration of independence."

Hazony at the National Conservatism conference: Throw out God and Christianity and Judaism and within two generations you can't tell the difference between a man and a woman.

Next up in 30 minutes, keynote by Tucker Carlson: "Big Business Hates Your Family."

No, I'm not joking.

Tucker takes the stage.

3 things Tucker has learned about the left:

1. The main threat to you living the life, what you believe as you want doesn't come from government (here or abroad) but from the private sector. Comes from companies.

Non-libertarian conservatives can't even form the thoughts or words. Oreos with gender politics. Brazen act of propaganda against our kids. Profound statement against nature. Not federal govt doing it. Corporation doing it. Libertarian response: "Start your own Oreo company."

We live in a world of monopoly power. Can't create your own Google. A choke point for information. Power vested in a small number of hands. It's awful, terrifying. Potential risks: make whole ideas disappear. Take away words, lose ability to think of the concepts.

They are corrupt. The anti-trust think tank in DC takes money from Google. It bothers the left but not the right because their minds are addled by "build your own Google" ideology. Acknowledge the things right in front of you.

Trump election was so shocking, some wondered, "if this can happen, what else is true?" "If the Loch Ness Monster is real, what about the Yetti?"

"This happened [Trump victory] and see what else I can think?" What else is in the attic? Everyone is lying, both sides. Who are the good guys and who the bad guys. Good guys aren't good.

2. It's all a Freudian projection: Whatever they accuse you of doing is what they're doing. Antifa is fascist. "You're a racist": people so focused on the subject who are denouncing everyone else is racist. A psychological syndrome.

They aren't interested in peaceful coexistence. Never occur to Tucker to choose friends based on politics. Go to Hardy's in Alabama and ask what they think about sexual habits in Brooklyn. Probably zero people. Even evangelicals. They wouldn't care.

Do the opposite and in Brooklyn they stay up at night haunted by thought that someone somewhere isn't with the program and communicating with someone else. Reeducation. The real evangelical faith. Can't remove the religious impulse. Redirected to woke politics.

I am for living with people I disagree with, diversity, etc. That will never change.

End of remarks. Now to questions. (He started by saying he'd offer 3 points, only made two.)

Tucker: Is diversity good in your marriage. "I like divinity, just don't lie to me about it." How does it make us stronger? If I married someone who doesn't speak English and hated all my views, would that improve my marriage?

Question: "Given that leftists control 99% of Silicon Valley, universities, etc., what gives you hope we will prevail?" Answer: I don't know we'll prevail. Then he attacks House GOP. Hates them. Says left is right about income inequality. Not sustainable.

Question: Is Elizabeth Warren a potential ally? Tucker touts "Two-Income Trap." Then attacks her, says she's crazy, race-obsessed. But she was right that it was huge deal when one income couldn't support a family, a key to woke capitalism.

Corporations support abortion because they want women to have fewer kids. Good for business.

Tucker: This is never discussed. Talk to Republicans on the Hill, they never take prom-family position in favor of raising your own children.

Who will raise your kids is central question of your life. But family is inconvenient to business. Sheryl Sandberg lectures us on this. We've allowed the most unhappy people in the country to run things.

Tucker: Warren's point about families was more important than everything written in past ten years by social conservatives.

Question for Carlson: How do you feel about being paired by John Bolton as keynote? Says he disagrees with him on everything. Doesn't say anything else.