Bill Rusher gave me a free lifetime subscription to National Review in 1975, so I have been kept up to date with respectable conservatism since I got out of the business.

Paycheck conservatives have evolved perfectly to suit the media establishment. Anyone who says anything that truly hurts our rulers, as all the conspiracy theories say, like Joe Sobran or Pat Buchanan, is frozen out.
But it is not a “conspiracy.”

I was hardly part of any circle, left or right, but as a matter of getting my pay I knew in detail when each formerly conservative position became taboo.

The reality is understandable if you Mantrify it. That is, you cease to scream and make it a matter of information nobody else is privy to, and look at the obvious facts nobody looks at.

The obvious fact is that paycheck conservatism says that everything is a mess today but every liberal policy before January 1, 1971 was not only OK, but denounces anybody today who thinks like the founders of National Review in 1955 more loudly than anyone else today.

Paycheck conservatives tell about any objections to integration more loudly than anyone, just to prove they are part of the Modern World. That is their job.

To Mantrify the situation, paycheck conservatives ratify each policy they once denounced. When National Review signs on, everybody agrees that “both sides” have agreed and all opposition is extremist.

The system under which we live is a very sophisticated one, and it adapts. At the beginning of the 1960s there was not one national television debate that had a conservative in it. By 1980 those who made their livings as professional conservatives were either outstanding, like Pat Buchanan who had the top political column in America, or they had learned to fit into the system.

Those were the staffers who took “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall.” out of Reagan’s speech THREE TIMES behind his back.

The mantrification of paycheck conservatism is what they say, “We are in a national catastrophe today, but every single step that led to it was wonderful.”

And no one but me will ever boil that down to its absurd reality.