Happy Moderates

Interesting things appear at a website named Law & Liberty. Today there is a review of a book by political scientist George Hawley entitled The Moderate Majority: Real GOP Voters and the Myth of Mass Republican Radicalization (2024). 

Hawley reaches a couple of conclusions about the bulk of Republican voters.

The first is the role and importance of cultural issues in how ordinary Republicans see the world. The gap between Republicans and Democrats, Hawley shows, is wider on cultural attitudes than on views on economic policy.

A second important lesson from Hawley’s book is that Republican voters, contrary to conventional wisdom, are happier and more optimistic about their upward mobility prospects than liberal voters.

So, the conclusion is that Republicans are happy with traditional cultural values, Democrats are not. The distance between the parties on economic issues isn't as wide. Happier people tend to be okay with the status quo and unhappy people not so much. 

I'm a happy person most of the time, the status quo has worked for me and mine. I haven't been happy with what the woke have tried to enact; MAGA seems a reasonable corrective.

Echoes of Gilbert and Sullivan

I was disappointed yesterday - the first day of the fedgov shutdown - no terminations of federal employees were announced. Politico writes that could soon change.

OMB chief Russ Vought told House Republicans on a private call Wednesday that the administration will start mass reduction in force moves, or firings, of federal workers “in a day or two.”

If it turns out the promise to fire workers was a bluff, I won't be happy. There have to be many employed in woke units who, in Gilbert & Sullivan's felicitous phrase, "never would be missed." Here's hoping Trump has his "little list" ready.

Cold Civil War

Richard Fernandez does a PJ Media column called Belmont Club, and often has insights COTTonLINE has relished. Today is no exception.

September 2025 has been an interesting month.The undeclared cold civil war in the West is everywhere coming out of the closet. Both the Woke and Populist coalitions in every country have openly declared political war on one another — clashing over ideology, generational voter bases, and economic policy.

The eerie thing about it is not that the kinetic level of confrontation has increased; even the Kirk assassination followed a string of attempts on other figures. It's just that no one pretends not to see the conflict any more. Yet it is still a cold conflict in the West — for now.

Fernandez doesn't pretend to know where this is going, or how it will turn out. We continue to live in what the ancient Chinese called "interesting times," viewing same as a curse. 

The current deadlock over funding the government is but a minor skirmish therein. Woke is currently on the back foot.

Later ... I find it curious, as Fernandez notes, this same conflict is occurring in a number of countries at the same time, not all of them "Western." And it didn't particularly begin in the US.

The Hegseth Speech

The Department of War has issued an official transcript of SecWar Pete Hegseth’s speech yesterday to the GOFOs. It is long and, if we are critical, somewhat repetitious. But worth reading.

Hegseth is trying his darnedest to change a woke culture that was forced upon the military by Obama and Biden. To survive, all force leaders had to pay lip service to those civilian leaders’ woke wishes, but some became true believers. 

The committed wokesters Hegseth wishes to separate from his command. He advises them to do the honorable thing and resign or retire. Here is my favorite quote from the speech.

Today is another liberation day, the liberation of America's warriors, in name, in deed and in authorities. You kill people and break things for a living. You are not politically correct and don't necessarily belong always in polite society.

That really describes George Patton. I’d conclude with a quote, variously attributed to George Orwell and Winston Churchill, which makes Hegseth’s point.

We sleep safely at night because rough men stand ready to visit violence on those who would harm us.

The profession of arms doesn’t work if those standing ready aren’t plenty rough, well-equipped and willing to "kill people and break things" at scale.