The Right-Wing Civil War is Here

Paul Schnee | PaulSchnee.com | Jan 6, 2025

The video below shows Sam Harris, an American neuroscientist, philosopher, author and podcast host being interviewed about the brewing civil war on the Republican right.

Harris, who has been afflicted with TDS for some time, reminded me of something I had forgotten namely that Donald Trump said he didn’t know who David Duke was when asked about Duke’s endorsement of him in 2016. This seems highly unlikely. It is possible DT felt he didn’t want to alienate the extreme right. If so, then it was and remains a huge mistake. Harris points out that it was not a mistake made by William F. Buckley who cleansed the Republican Party by denouncing the John Birch Society in 1962 when he took a strong, principled and public stand against anti-Semitism and racism.

Harris goes on to condemn Tucker Carlson & Candace Owens. That they have very large audiences, although extremely disappointing, comes as no surprise to. After all, there are several billion votaries of various religions who are prepared to believe things without the slightest evidence about visitations from angels, conversations with a burning bush, walking on water, raising the dead, making the blind see, and flying on a winged horse from Mecca to Jerusalem. One must add to that the number of simpletons who can never resist a passing bandwagon regardless of the direction in which it is traveling.

Harris’ critique of J.D. Vance is also piercingly accurate. It demonstrates Vance’s cold reluctance to confront a most vicious bigotry together with the lies, distortions and inventions which always accompany it.

Whether his reluctance is due to the fear of losing the support of the extreme right or whether it is due to a genuine belief in its fantastic absurdities doesn’t really matter. Either way, he is unfit to be the V.P. of the United States. In the absence of a large and spine-stiffening injection of moral clarity coupled with an ideological volte face on the part of Vance no Republican should support his nomination as the party’s candidate for the presidency in 2028.