As a college professor for 38 years and an “out-of-the-closet” conservative for at least 20 of those years, I’ve gotten used to being a little careful about what I say around my almost uniformly left-leaning colleagues. I just never thought I’d have to exercise the same caution when communicating with people on my own side.
Perhaps that’s why I found it so disconcerting a couple of weeks ago to be attacked by conservatives on social media for saying something manifestly conservative.
The specific topic was Pete Hegseth, President Trump’s nominee for Secretary of Defense. I expressed reservations about Hegseth’s behavior in 2017 when by his own admission, he had “consensual sex” with a married woman he met over drinks while attending a conference.
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To be clear, I support Hegseth’s nomination. I don’t believe he committed any crime. But I also don’t believe he acted honorably in that situation, and I’m a little concerned about having someone leading our military who would allow himself to be picked up by a random woman at a bar. Rather than acting like Hegseth did nothing wrong, Republicans in Congress should be asking him tough questions about his behavior. I need assurances it won’t happen again.
This does not seem to me to be a controversial take. Nevertheless, fellow conservatives immediately pounced on my presumed lack of ideological purity. I was accused of being a RINO, a leftist, a Bill Clinton apologist, and a prude. My interlocutors seem to believe anyone who isn’t 100 percent committed to every single Trump nominee, regardless of red flags, must be banished from the tribe.
And therein, in my estimation, lies the greatest danger to the MAGA coalition: the potential for it to be destroyed from within by self-appointed purists seeking to purge it of heretics—defined as anyone who doesn’t agree with them on every issue.
The left, as embodied by the Democrat Party, has been doing this for decades, and it’s one of the main reasons they find themselves where they are today: in utter disarray, licking their wounds and screaming impotently into the void.
Despite having clear, historical electoral advantages, Democrats were unable to build a winning coalition in 2024 for the simple reason that they basically kicked out of their party anyone who wasn’t completely on board with abortion up to birth, mutilating and sterilizing children, allowing third-world gangs to take over our major cities, and mandating covid “vaccines,” masks, and lockdowns.
As a result, many were “red-pilled” and ended up coming over to our side. Prominent examples include Elon Must, Tulsi Gabbard, and Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., but I personally know several lifelong liberals who decided, a few years ago, that Democrats had lost their ever-lovin’ minds and conservatives—with whom they certainly do not agree on everything—at least represented some degree of sanity.
Indeed, I’ve observed this dynamic even within academia.
In early 2021, I began hearing privately from colleagues—some I’ve never met, some I’ve known for years—thanking me for what I’d said publicly about the botched pandemic response and other issues. Most weren’t willing to “come out,” but they made it clear they agreed with many of my takes. A few even took a huge risk and shared some of my posts. As far as I know, they’re still employed. And I’d be willing to bet that most, if not all, of them, secretly voted for Trump—in many cases, probably the first time they’d ever voted for a Republican.
If it were up to the purists in the conservative movement, those people would probably be rejected or tossed out because they don’t completely agree with the purists or with me on issues like abortion, immigration, LGBTQ rights, or support for Israel or Ukraine. Brothers and sisters, to quote Saint James from his eponymous epistle, “these things ought not so to be.”
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Donald Trump won in 2024 because he was able to bring together many people from diverse backgrounds with various life experiences and differing views. What we all agree on is that our government has gotten too large, too powerful, and too corrupt. It has become a threat to, rather than a protector of, our freedom. It must be reined in, lest we descend into actual fascism. Then, we can go back to arguing about income tax rates and how to handle immigration.
If we start purging people now that we’ve won, however, we’ll never get to that point. The left will regroup and, finding us in a weakened and depleted state, retake the government. And we may never again in our lifetime have this opportunity to make lasting changes.
So let’s take our cue from President Trump, who, over the objections of some in his own party, has named Gabbard, RFK, Jr., and other former Democrats to key positions. Or if you don’t want to listen to Trump, how about Ronald Reagan, who famously said, “The person who agrees with you 80 percent of the time is a friend and an ally—not a 20 percent traitor.”
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Cover by Jared Gould using image of Trump by Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff on Flickr
