Today's Open Road offering  is one we have seen before, on which I have not written my own personal review, Wicked Angel: https://openroadmedia.com/ebook/wicked-angel/9781504053150 going in this promotion for $2.99. (I did, though, contribute to the final impact of the cover: that devilish red cloud-tinged sky.)  

On six topics TC's novels had a great deal to say that stoked her reputation as an outspoken (some would say, hysterical) conservative. What her novels said often continued more informally into her front and back pieces. This newsletter has reported on all six. 

1. A Republic, not a Democracy, is what a strong vibrant society needs: This ran throughout both "A Pillar of Iron" on Cicero and "Glory and the Lightning" on Pericles and Aspasia, always spoken in the voice of Solon.  

2. The most evil of people would find their army of supporters among the rabble: Such as Cataline had the gifts of a demagogue, who easily divined what would attract the riff-raff– which TC presented as akin to the trolls in "Lord of the Rings." It was, though, the destruction of the Republic (of Rome) to which TC attended in "Pillar of Iron." 

3. There is no such thing as lasting progress:  Mankind will forever cling to its fundamental nature. As much as TC pulls in the presence of Jesus – in her Mediterranean novels and in her "modern" engagements of everyday people with Him – she insists despite His progressive message, that only fools believe in progress. 

4. You must believe in the precious insights of the righteous ones: TC's book-jacket photos never failed to array her in the mantle of a righteous believer in Catholicism. Alas, though covered with purplish words, her defense of the faith was surprisingly superficial and grotesquely fanciful. Witness a novel like Your Sins and Mine. Again, the contrast with the actual Jesus, a wisdom teacher with great insight, rather than his aura, couldn't be clearer.

5. There never was a more pernicious organization than the IRS: While just one place where TC paraded her disgust and venomous hatred for most of society, early in Peggy's autobiography she appears as a klaxon-voiced termagant unleashed upon IRS personnel. If you had met her this wouldn't surprise you. Though, if you were in awe, you might approve.

6. Coddling children – not recognizing their fundamental nature – will destroy our Society: The John Birch Society – by placing her as the only female on their six-member board – touted her "On Growing Up Tough" (1971) as their paean to her core message. Variants of it appear in the novels of her last 15 working years, with "Wicked Angel" an example. 

In the remainder, instead of concentrating on TC, I paraphrase modern commentators on how to extract what might be (or are) the goals of today's conservatism. The first, Ross Douthat, a conservative, does not equate conservatism and the Republican party. The second – a dialog between Ezra Klein, a liberal, and Nichole Hemmer, a moderate conservative – does equate them. 

Ross Douthat: What is it that Conservatism should be conserving?

One powerful answer is that conservatism-under-liberalism should defend human goods that are threatened by liberal ideas taken to extremes. 

1. The family, when liberal freedom becomes a corrosive hyper-individualism. 

2. Traditional religion, when liberal toleration becomes a militant and superstitious secularism. 

3. Local community and local knowledge, against expert certainty and bureaucratic centralization. 

4. Artistic and intellectual greatness, when democratic taste turns philistine or liberal intellectuals become apparatchiks. 

5. The individual talent of the entrepreneur or businessman, against the leveling impulses of egalitarianism and the stultifying power of monopoly.

The fights have given conservatives a clear stake in the liberal order, a reason to be invested in its institutions and controversies even if they might doubt some of its premises.

So the question, then, is what happens when the reasons for that investment weaken. When the things the right imagines itself conserving seem to slip away? 

• What does it mean to conserve the family in an era when not just the two-parent household but childbearing and sex itself are in eclipse? 

• What does it mean to defend traditional religion where institutional faith is either bunkered or rapidly declining? 

• How do you defend localism when the internet seems to nationalize every political and cultural debate? 

• What does the conservation of the West’s humanistic traditions mean when pop repetition rules the culture, and the great universities are increasingly hostile to even the Democratic-voting sort of cultural conservative?

These problems explain the mix of radicalism, factionalism, ferment and performance art that characterizes the contemporary right. What are we actually conserving anymore? Answers range from the antiquarian (the Electoral College!) to the toxic (a white-identitarian conception of America) to the crudely partisan (the right to gerrymander) to the most basic and satisfying: Whatever the libs are against, we’re for.

Nichole Hemmer and Ezra Klein: Can conservatism justify aiming at minority government?

To be a Republican right now, as the Liz Cheney scenario shows, you must buy into the big lie. That you consume conservative media and distrust all other media outlets. This is a process of decades. 

Politicians took from Trump that it wasn’t his policies. It was his style that won him the presidency. It’s that red meat, anti-liberalism, insult-driven, media-oriented style of politics.

Republicans speak to a very loyal, committed base that responds strongly to rhetorical red meat, that responds strongly to the fight, that wants to see their representatives take it to the left, whatever that looks like.

Barry Goldwater pushed the idea it is a republic, not a democracy. He resisted not just of the civil rights movement, but the one person, one vote ruling that comes out of the Supreme Court in the 1960s. There was a resistance to majoritarianism, at least in a strain of the Republican Party in the 1960s. If anything, as politics circled back to Republicans over the years, the acceptance of this position grew into Donald Trump's base. 

Voter restrictions promulgated by Republicans grew openly starting in the 2010s, and now are pushed vehemently. The energy of the Republican party comes from a no-compromise base. 

Conservative media is where the base can translate its views into power. An Echelon Insights poll this year asked respondents whether they believe politics is about enacting good public policy or ensuring the country’s survival as we know it. Only 25 percent of Republicans said policy. Almost 50 percent said survival.

But if winning elections is no longer necessary, if you’re willing to manipulate what’s happening in state governments and on election boards in order to render an election null and void, then there is simply no incentive to stop. 

Mainstream media doesn't elevate the voices of institutional power in either the Democrat or Republican party. It plays to having both sides represented. It only quotes even when what is said is at best a tremendous exaggeration, or an outright lie. The economic system that runs mainstream media relies on controversy and clicks. 

If winning elections is no longer necessary, if you’re willing to manipulate what’s happening in state governments and on election boards in order to render an election null and void, then there is simply no incentive to stop. 

Not always, but over the past 60 years or so, most Americans we wanted to have a democracy with the participation of as many people as possible. And we should make that possible by making the rules such that people have access to the ballot box. And if that isn’t a core Democratic Party principle, the one that underlies every other one, then have a real problem on our hands.

Back to me

Checking the place of the six topics that I attributed TC to these two short essays show she is relevant, though you need both essays to cover her range. Further, she didn't have to explain herself top a live audience. One reason: TC only spoke to the public through her novels. To my knowledge, the JBS is as close as she got to the media. 

One of this newsletter's recipients did give me her take on Wicked Angel. 

Apr 1, 2021, 5:32 PM subject: Wicked Angel ....reviews

The ultimate theme of the novel is....if you are a “liberal” parent, you will create wicked little children who will destroy and kill.

The ending is so hideous.   TC was obviously “influenced” by the 1956 film, “The Bad Seed”....so she created her own.....  Except hers is an evil little boy.

Goodreads has some interesting reviews.   It’s called terrifying, nightmarish and “sociopathic.”  Someone said it’s like a Twilight Zone episode.

One person commented that TC’s female characters...especially mothers.....always have “fat ankles.”   Actually, they only have fat ankles, wide feet and chunky legs if they are liberals.