Michael Medfly. * Pox Vobiscum*.
Michael is definitely an intelligent design guy, a conservative religious jew, was openly hostile to dadt and gay marriage. He does not actually deny climate science, but does not go along with the notion that it’s the biggest worry we need to pay attention to.
All that said, we ARE dealing with conservatives here, the OP should not expect to agree with them on everything. Compared to Dennis Prager, Sean Hannity, Limbaugh, Mark Levin, Medved is a saint and a font of reason.
He actually does deny that it is an issue.
Here is Medved in 2013 fawning and lapping what recognized fraudster Christopher Booker says:
Of course the main line they used there was that no warming was being observed, it was wrong then and even more now.
As me and others pointed, there are indeed conservatives that are more reasonable than him. But like others pointed out, maybe he is useful to see what the current middle ideas the right is considering between the reasonable conservatives that still appreciate science and the ones off the deep end.
You might try the hoover Institute especially their online interview show “uncommon knowledge” as well as Thomas Sowell who has written many books and fairly regular columns.
This I occasionally enjoy reading.
It makes FOX look like ignorant garbage; don’t ask what it makes the small alt-news sites look like.
I do find it interesting that here in this decidedly liberal/progressive board, we regularly expose ourselves, so to speak, to sources of conservative thought. Could you see this same thread on a conservative board asking about liberal opinion getting the same level of response?
“I want to read what liberals have to say in their own words.” Most common reply: "Why?’
I don’t know about anybody else, but I was taught that if you don’t know both
sides of an argument you really don’t know your own.
I second what GIGObuster says. What you linked to is in fact completely a denying of the science. It doesn’t even talk about policy solutions because it denies the science to the point that such solutions are unnecessary. In the lingo that is sometimes used, Meyers might be characterized as a “lukewarmer”.
In fact, most of the people who characterize themselves as “AGW (anthropogenic global warming) skeptics” or “CAGW (catastophic anthropogenic global warming) skeptics” are, like Meyers, not ignorant enough to deny the greenhouse effect completely, but just say what he does about the lack of positive feedbacks (or even a net negative feedback) making AGW a small enough effect that it is not a problem.
There are certainly a few vocal ones who deny the greenhouse effect completely but they are somewhat marginalized even within that community. I often liken the ones who deny the greenhouse effect to Young Earth Creationists, in that they are denying the evidence not just in an entire field of science (climate science) but across other even more established fields (physics) too. The lukewarmer types are more like Intelligent Design proponents in that they are not generally denying basic physics but are denying a very large body of evidence within climate science.
Conservatives don’t need to seek out sources of liberal opinion because they have been constantly exposed to liberalism throughout their lives— e.g. early indoctrination in government-run schools, the Hollywood propaganda machine, and the hopelessly unfair and unbalanced leftist slant of the mainstream media news outlets.
(…is more or less what I’d expect to hear in response)
So, even though it seems we had to fight long and bitterly for every inch of progress, actually, we were totally in control the whole time. Which kinda makes sense, since everybody knows that America is basically a center-right country, and all real Americans are aligned with Republican Party principles.
If it makes you feel any better, my new next door neighbors are “brown” people like liberals love to call people that aren’t bright white and they have more American flags than should be allowed including a door plaque that simply says “America” over an American flag. They are perfectly nice but I don’t know much about them because they don’t speak much English. I think they are from somewhere in the Middle East. All I know is that they seem happier to be here than Eddie Murphy in Coming to America. The dream isn’t dead.
It is good that immigrants are assimilating well. Most immigrants are going to be much happier with the state of things here than those of us that are used to it and take it for granted.
If I had just come from a war torn or impoverished nation, and suddenly got me a house, food, a job, and the security in knowing that it is very unlikely for anyone to bomb your house, I’d be a quick convert too.
This is why I don’t understand why conservatives are so terrified of taking in refugees. Even if a few manage to sneak in that wish us ill, they will likely be changed once they see the hedonism we have to offer. (Screw 72 virgins, I’ve got an x box!)
It’s too bad that, while the liberals are willing to accept them, and bring them into our society, the conservative side of our polity does not even want them to step foot within our nation.
This is tangentially related through the lens of the migration crisis in Europe, but here is a collection of words by Douglas Murray:
Personally, I’m willing to open the gates to high skilled immigrants of any ethnicity.
Talk of losing our “culture” because immigrants are brown to me smacks of an ethno state and I cannot abide by that. What makes us American is not our majority whiteness, though some people think that is the spark that makes the nation special and not the ideas it was founded on. In the case of the migration crisis though, it is not high skilled immigration flooding over, it’s a free for all and economic migration. That is not who you want coming in without checks. More than that, many are coming from cultures that have wildly different standards and morays. To me that warrants a massive slowing down of migration and increased scrutiny.
And to the left egalitarians on the board that presume that all peoples are identical, that all ideas held and cultural attitudes are no more or less likely to produce problems in the host society, or something close to that kind of hand waving of cultural/religious differences, look at this map.
https://www.google.com/maps/d/viewer?mid=1_rNT3k2ZXB-f9z-2nSFMIBQKXCs&ll=51.361194439314694%2C6.969721633496192&z=5
This is what people worry about. The US is nowhere NEAR anything close to what Germany wrought, the worst we have is not really bad at all, some lower skilled latino immigrants, that still share a closer religious cultural tie even if much of the immigrant population that comes over is lower skilled. That is mixed with some asian immigrants that overstay visas that tend to be higher skilled due to the nature of how they arrive in the first place. We have a relatively small muslim population, and it tends to be higher skilled, both metrics work in our favor. When you get the reverse… well, look at the map.
1). If your goal is truly to understand what non-liberals think, you should ignore the advice from the liberals in this thread. They’re going to steer you towards the kind of conservatives that liberals like, which isn’t what you want. David Brooks at NYT is possibly the most prominent “conservative” writer in America, and many liberals would probably recommend him as their kind of conservative. On the other hand, actual conservatives either ignore or despise him.
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National Review and the Weekly Standard are great sources for understanding what the conservative establishment is thinking. On the other hand, the last year should have made clear that actual conservatives also pretty much despise the conservative establishment.
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I’ll echo what someone said above about Mark Steyn as an individual writer, but your best bet are websites such as The Federalist that publishes many authors, or even better the extremely influential Instapundit, which is mostly a linkfest with commentary. It will have links to the most important articles on the most important websites (also links to lot of blah, so YMMV).
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For thoughtful explication of Trumpism, as opposed to generic conservatism, amgreatness.com is your best bet. The essay on the Flight 93 election was easily the single most important piece of writing about the 2016 election. It’s several thousand words long, and I believe Rush Limbaugh read the entire thing on the air. That essay, and the responses to it, and the responses to the responses, are your best bet for understanding the dynamic on the right that led to Trump.
[snip]
I think you are missing what the OP was talking about.
As the OP said:
BTW as a minority I do have to say that the nativism and prejudice comes loud and clear in that essay you are talking about. So, yeah, important to chew, but not to swallow. That path just leads to California after Pete Wilson tried that nativist remedy (He did win then but the result eventually was a disaster for the GOP in California). The OP is indeed looking at thoughtful conservatives, that eventually will come to be more recognized thanks to the cyclical nature of American politics; not Instapundit, that I have seen how even Infowars talked nice about their efforts to mislead the people on issues like climate change.
The OP asked for thoughtful conservative voices; I take thoughtful to mean “intellectual and serious, as opposed to entertainers like Limbaugh,” and not “sorta conservativeish, but not the kind that liberals think is extreme or unreasonable.” My suggestions were geared towards the former interpretation; those of most of the liberals in the thread, including yourself, were the latter.
I didnt see the OP specifying only sources that would not offend anybody or that can’t be labeled “nativist” ( or for that matter racistsexisthomophobicislamophobiccisgenderedblahblahblah). Since Trump is routinely labeled as such by liberals, anyone attempting to understand the half of the country that supported Trump is pretty much obligated to read the writings of people that get labeled the same way.
Reading the “reasonable” establishment-right types that opposed Trump would just keep the OP inside his bubble.
I’ll nuance that: the OP should not ignore the advice, but remember that it comes from liberals.
On the contrary, the bubble that is troublesome is the one you are trying to get others into.
Really, the OP is about the idea that thinking that all republicans out there are of the Hannity or Rush Limbaugh variety is a wrong one. And indeed it is. It is a lesson that also most of the ones that consume propaganda as news should learn.
You know what a bubble is? donald is juggling a number of them at one time.
"I’ll fix it We’ll do it cheaper we’ll make america great again I’ll figure it out. I’m really smart I’ve got a plan I’m going to get a plan I’ll let you know what the plan is tomorrow It’s about the oil "
This is the bubble. There is no other. It’s something that grew and grew and that gets bigger than you think it could get until you finally think it’s just the new reality. That’s happened to a bunch of you I can tell. Some of us never bought into this one though. Were you playing with the market in the late 90s? Remember?
And then you all know what happens next.
Now what conservative outlet is going to talk about that?
Agree. The point I was making was not “don’t listen to liberals”; there’s plenty of liberals that can distinguish between the difference between “sources I like/find tolerable” and “sources that are useful for understanding the way other people think” (e.g. the New Yorker just ran a piece on the significance the website and essay I mentioned above; even though I assume the NYer writer did not agree with it). My point was that there was some bad advice coming from liberals in this thread.