This year's election has been a devastating wake up call for the conservative movement. John McCain rode a tentative confidence out of the primaries, and his subsequent loss to Barack Obama left the GOP scrambling to reinvent itself.
The Republican National Convention replaced its leadership with Michael Steele. A man expected to put a fresh face on the GOP, but who instead seemed to spark a blogosphere battle about whom the "real" leader of the conservative movement is. Unification, solidarity, whatever word one wants to use to mean a team working toward a common goal, was not the end result.
But this "reinvention" is antithetical to what the word "conservatism" -- the ideology around which the GOP claims to revolve -- explicitly stands for. Conservatism is about protecting the ideals upon which the nation was founded. And not about hiring perception managers to fix public opinion.
(Not that I'm accusing the Republican party of such tactics, but a loss of identity in the public forum can lead to desperate measures. And neither party is without survival instincts.)
What the conservative movement needs are more people like AlfonZo Rachel -- 'Zo to his blog-o-buddies at Hotair.com -- and Steven Crowder, former "babe magnet," according to his Web site. If conservatism is to survive, it will need voices brimming with the raw candidness found throughout the vlogs these men post to YouTube.
The former (YouTube channel "machosauceproduction") is an Air Force brat who was a "panty-huntin' teenager" who experimented with psychotropic drugs. He is a man who speaks fondly of his great-grandmother, a former slave, who lived to 114 years of age -- 112 years independently -- who, as 'Zo puts it, "was a woman who truly embraced freedom."
Rachel is a man of great convictions who can articulate without hesitation, doubt or stammering for the best possible word any aspect of what he believes -- nay, knows -- to be true. Even Rush Limbaugh commented at his CPAC address that conservatives can speak off-the-cuff about their ideologies -- drawing the comparison to Obama, who needs a teleprompter even at the briefest of speeches.
'Zo speaks with passion about slavery throughout history and explains that no ethnicity, no race or people have not been involved with slavery at one point or another. He goes so far as to say that black people were practicing slavery and oppression against whites millennia before white people perpetrated it against blacks. Everyone can look back through their genetic history and find despicable behavior on the part of their ancestors. The point being is that it is how we, the modern, contemporary generations behave toward each other now that matters.
But this is only the tip of his iceberg of topics. He addresses abortion, environmentalism, gun control and the fundamental nature of our constitutional republic, to name a few.
His production value is minimalist in the utmost, and that adds to the raw charisma of his messages.
The latter (YouTube channel "StevenCrowder") is a former child actor born in Detroit and raised in Canada. His vlogs become progressively better with each addition, both production-wise and in delivery, as he becomes comfortable with the media, thereby allowing his humor to flow more readily.
He addresses some of the same topics as 'Zo -- topics that inspire the most passion in conservatives -- but his knowledge of the Canadian health care system is especially important. He sums up the Canadian health care plan as "don't get sick."
Sure, it's simplified for comedic effect, but his description of a visit to a Canadian hospital gives one pause concerning socialization, his hyperbole notwithstanding.
But isn't that the purpose of the satirist: to boil off the excess and show us the absurdity behind, well, behind life?
Crowder makes an insightful and eloquent observation regarding PETA as an organization where "nobody's against your pro-animal agenda, it's that your message is ultimately anti-human."
In his latest he takes on torture and the Guantanamo Bay detention camp. His most inspired work yet. I don't want to give away any of its juicy goodness so I will simply quote another of his eloquent insights, this time regarding Abu Ghraib: "The very fact that Abu Ghraib was considered such a travesty and so appalling to Americans proves that we hold a higher standard than our enemies."
I know some of you will guffaw at my celebratory look at video bloggers as though I had just discovered the medium. No, the purpose here isn't to evangelize about the miracle of the Internet, but celebrate new voices of clarity. New voices of reason.
These two vloggers exemplify the sensibility of what William F. Buckley Jr. was writing about when he penned the National Review's mission statement. Specifically, this passage: "The largest cultural menace in America is the conformity of the intellectual cliques which, in education as well as the arts, are out to impose upon the nation their modish fads and fallacies, and have nearly succeeded in doing so. In this cultural issue, we are, without reservations, on the side of excellence (rather than "newness") and of honest intellectual combat (rather than conformity)." [Emphasis mine.]
Though the upper echelon of the Republican Party has set out to reinvent itself from pain of defeat, it is individuals such as AlfonZo Rachel and Steven Crowder who have a firm and untiring grip on the core values of American conservatism. And their easy vernacular speaks more forcefully than any consulting pundit the RNC may hire.