“The hypocrisy of the American Christian Conservative. They call themselves lions and wolves but then go to church and are called to be shepherds and sheep.”

The Religious Right is an interesting wing of the American political spectrum to me. From the impractical moral code they violate, as their church leaders violate children, to the inability to see all the contradictions in their so-called “principles”, the christian conservative is so far removed from reality it’s no wonder they contradict themselves constantly.

While I certainly hold the Christian Conservative viewpoint to a certain level of contempt, it’s the Conservative movement as a whole that I find to be the true Sheep in Wolf’s Clothing. They pose as the side for freedom and individualism but are just as anti-individual and collectivist as the opposite side of the aisle. To quote Ayn Rand “Both [conservatives and liberals] hold the same premise-the mind-body dichotomy– but choose opposite sides of this lethal fallacy.”

To put it simply, the mind-body dichotomy is the belief that the mind and body are different entities, and not an integrated whole that makes up the human being in its entirety.

In addition to the mind-body dichotomy, a key concept to understanding the falsehood of the two parties being diametrically opposed, is the Matrix-pill metaphor.

Much like the movie states, there are two pills. The blue pill makes you forget what you know and go back to believing everything that’s told to you in reality. In real life this is illustrated by believing that the corporate press isn’t lying to you, that politicians really are doing what’s best for you and have your best interests at heart, and that “there’s nothing else to see here”. 

The red pill continues the journey down the rabbit hole, and so the truth begins to be found out by the protagonist. In reality this results in one seeing the ruling institutions as what they are. This would be at the very least flawed, if not downright illegitimate and malevolent. However this may also result in one becoming a virulent conspiracy theorist, as one begins to doubt the legitimacy of literally everything they see.  As one of my favorite authors Michael Malice would say, “you take one red pill, not the whole bottle”.

When one takes all the red pills available, the individual is all of a sudden in a new world, lost and afraid. They no longer know what’s up or down, or who to believe. This is when the shepherd comes to add to his flock. 

For the non-religious right-winger, it’s become the cult of MAGA with Donald Trump at the helm. The man that will “drain the swamp” and is constantly throwing aside all of the “fake news” that comes his way. Clearly I’m no fan of Donald Trump, but I completely understand why and how he has gained favor with a broad part of the country. For more on the New Right read my previous article that illuminates how the movement has developed and gotten to where it is now.

Keep in mind that even without jumping into the void of red pills the Conservative Christian sect of the right is always ready and waiting to be led. There’s a quote from the beginning of the movie “The Departed”, that I think really highlights my opinion on the matter. Jack Nicholson’s character says “Church wants you in your place..kneel, stand, kneel, stand…you go for that sort of thing, I don’t know what to do for ya. Man…makes his own way.” 

The irony is not lost on me that the Conservative Christian movement, that laughs at Democrats for being “sheep”, is so quick and eager to get on its knees to subordinate its own will, emotions and most importantly mental-state to an all-knowing and all-seeing invisible entity. As stated in the introductory quote, the lion and wolf willingly come to their master who will guide them…to what end I know not. Whether it be God or country, the Right seems to always have its own shepherd to come back to.

Now on its face you can see the first similarities between the two parties…but this is only the first step and solely through the Matrix metaphor. In order to see where the similarities really shine through I once again I quote from Miss Rand:

“The conservatives want freedom to act in the material realm; they tend to oppose government control of production, of industry, of trade, of business, of physical goods, of material wealth. But they advocate government control of man’s spirit, i.e., man’s consciousness; they advocate the State’s right to impose censorship, to determine moral values, to create and enforce a governmental establishment of morality, to rule the intellect. The liberals want freedom to act in the spiritual realm; they oppose censorship, they oppose government control of ideas, of the arts, of the press, of education (note their concern with “academic freedom”). But they advocate government control of material production, of business, of employment, of wages, of profits, of all physical property—they advocate it all the way down to total expropriation.

The conservatives see man as a body freely roaming the earth, building sand piles or factories—with an electronic computer inside his skull, controlled from Washington. The liberals see man as a soul freewheeling to the farthest reaches of the universe—but wearing chains from nose to toes when he crosses the street to buy a loaf of bread.

Yet it is the conservatives who are predominantly religionists, who proclaim the superiority of the soul over the body, who represent what I call the “mystics of spirit.” And it is the liberals who are predominantly materialists, who regard man as an aggregate of meat, and who represent what I call the “mystics of muscle.”

This is merely a paradox, not a contradiction: each camp wants to control the realm it regards as metaphysically important; each grants freedom only to the activities it despises. Observe that the conservatives insult and demean the rich or those who succeed in material production, regarding them as morally inferior—and that the liberals treat ideas as a cynical con game. “Control,” to both camps, means the power to rule by physical force. Neither camp holds freedom as a value. The conservatives want to rule man’s consciousness; the liberals, his body.”

One side claims that they want you to be free to speak your mind, to be free to question the powers that be, but don’t you dare try and create new ventures with your mind and money, that money needs to pay for welfare programs! The other side claims to let you alone to build whatever you want, and attempts to champion your ability to do as you please economically, but god forbid you’re a woman that wants an abortion! Or heaven forbid you want to speak out against the tyranny of organized religion. Let us not forget that after 9/11 many a Conservative commentator was saying how we invited this attack upon us by the wrath of God due to our modern proclivities.

The funniest part still is that that quote is from the 60’s, and so much of that has changed for the worse as parties have gone against what they previously stood for.

In a system that no longer values individual rights or holds freedom as the categorical imperative that insures the success of the nation, both sides have become entrenched in a war of regulation and policy as the preferred methods for advancing their own party agendas.

The Left, previously having been the champions of free speech, goes about making sure that its own ideas are not only held to be mainstream, but that dissent is demonized and censored at all costs. Luckily we have seen great reporting by Matt Taibbi over on substack on this subject, under the name of The Twitter Files. In addition to the advocacy of censorship towards dissent, the Left has seemingly forgotten how anti-corporation and specifically how anti-pharmaceutical it used to be. Since the pandemic the Left has been joined at the hip with this industry in order to influence the taking of vaccines, pass policies for mask mandates and social restrictions. I’m all for the science for vaccines and medicine in general, but if you a with a straight face can tell me that a woman has the right to an abortion, but an individual doesn’t have the right to decide what medicine they put into their own body, you don’t understand principled thinking or individual rights in the slightest.

The Right, which historically has been the party of individualism and the party of small government, has been on the warpath to continue to legislate its way into people’s private lives. Bedrooms and operating rooms are the frontier that the Right has been going into legislating against so that individuals must conform to its own moral decrees. Not to mention the tax cuts to the corporate class, which while I support less taxes, those cuts do increase the deficit between the amount of taxes brought in and the money the government spends. While we all know the government will spend regardless of it having any money to back it up, this does increase overall price instability, which negatively affects the lower and middle class disproportionately. 

We’ve also seen the Right attempt to ban books in some states when it comes to subject matter like Critical Race Theory and Queer Theory. Now I have my own issues with those two schools of thought, along with the reductionist philosophy of postmodernism and its pedophiliac founder, Michel Foucault, but that doesn’t mean we ban books. 

Again the method shouldn’t be to the power of legislation and government fiat.

It isn’t through stoking the flames of the culture war that further divides the people of this country. It’s through open debate and constructive conversation. It’s through actual education and not indoctrination.

The Sheep in Wolf’s Clothing is the Democratic party.

The Sheep in Wolf’s Clothing is the Republican party.

One side sees their own as the righteous and the other as filled with moronic plebs, eager to do their masters bidding. Both sides resort to legislation and smear campaigns to try and defeat the other. Both sides have their leaders and narratives that they follow blindly and unquestioningly. I recently heard a lifelong Republican say that after the vaccine mandates, and the pursuit of Donald Trump by the DOJ, he’s “starting to lose trust in our government”. While I’m sure it’s scary for someone to have their worldview begin to crumble, I see it as the start of the healing process.