Judge Tulsi Gabbard Through the Other End of the Telescope
Judge Tulsi Gabbard Through the Other End of the Telescope
Is she centrist with strong love of country, or a Klaus Schwab plant on a mission to destroy America? How you judge, not the facts, will determine how you answer.
Tulsi Gabbard, 2020 Democrat presidential candidate and former member of the US House of Representatives from Hawaii, publicly divorced herself from the Democrat Party this week—one month before the elections.
For the past two years, Ms. Gabbard had been every conservative’s favorite Democrat. But her defection brought a chorus of boos from the right. While the Democrats seemed to say, “good riddance,” many Republicans, including MAGA Republicans, said, “stay away.”
We must ask why conservatives would looks this gift horse in the mouth, and, to do so, we must rely on ancient wisdom.
Gabbard the Independent Democrat
Tulsi Gabbard first impressed conservatives at one of the Democrat debates in 2019. I was afraid of her. She’s attractive, a military officer who rose from the enlisted ranks, a surfer, and a true independent, equally comfortable with Bernie Sanders and Tucker Carlson.
After dropping out of the race and being snubbed by her own party (she was the only Democrat candidate with at least one delegate who was not invited to the 2020 convention), Gabbard became a prolific tweeter. And many of her tweets sounded more like Newt Gingrich than Nancy Pelosi, leading me to tweet on May 1:
And on June 12, 2022:
Now that Gabbard has shaken the dust of the DNC from her sandals, we know she won’t be pivoting left on November 9. Nor will she seek the Democrat nomination for president in 2024. She no longer stands a chance.
While Gabbard has not adopted a new party, she certainly left the Democrat plantation. She is an independent, and just endorsed MAGA candidate for the US House, Joe Kent. Via JustTheNews.com:
Joe Kent is a former Green Beret and the husband of fallen soldier Shannon Kent, who was killed in the 2019 Manbij bombing in Syria. Kent won the Republican primary against Jaime Herrera Beutler, who was one of the 10 Republicans who voted to impeach Trump.
You would think Republicans and conservatives would welcome an intelligent, attractive former Democrat with open arms.
Some have. Many have not.
Despite Gabbard's long history of taking positions contrary to the Democrat party (she was the spokeswoman for a coalition defending traditional marriage from 1998 to 2004, for example), a large faction on the right took to blogs and twitter to vilify the former WEF Young World Leaders fellow (class of 2015).
While I can understand the need for a long honeymoon with Tulsi, the absolute certainty with which some people have labeled her a “Trojan horse” is shocking.
But that “stay away” attitude is not surprising when you consider how we moderns have been trained to judge.
We Look Through the Wrong End of the Telescope
One of the rules of theology and philosophy prior to the 1960s was that we must judge ourselves through the eyes of our ancestors, not the other way around.
Or, as my old writing professor, Col. James Rembert, said: If writing about the Vandals, you cannot reference Hell’s Angels because Hell’s Angels did not exist at the time of the Vandals. It is unfair to compare the Vandal to something that could not possibly have influenced them. (The central thesis of the paper on which Col. Rembert imparted this knowledge had as its guiding thesis that the Vandals were ancient Hell’s Angels, so I got an F. I also learned something that stuck.)
When you think about it, it’s only fair to judge ourselves through our ancestors’ eyes. It is never fair or insightful to judge them through ours. For example, the present Bishop of Rome likes to judge harshly his predecessors based on his privileged position of having their history as hindsight.
Worse, our modern schools and texts teach students to hate their ancestors because the intervening social norms have changed. Thus, we tear down statues of Christopher Columbus and Robert E. Lee—two men no one alive today could best in courage, decency, and sacrifice.
Rather, we should learn to judge ourselves through the eyes of the ancients. What would the first-century Christians say about my life? Could I stand to hear it?
Likewise, we must judge a person’s actions according to the situation at the time they made the decision to act.
In the case of Ms. Gabbard’s pariticipation with the Young World Leaders program, Ms. Gabbard was an up-and-coming star in the Democrat Party, and the World Economic Forum was largely a mystery to Americans. Nothing in its name set off alarm bells.
It’s perfectly reasonable for a young Democrat member of Congress to consider a WEF fellowship a feather in her cap.
It’s also reasonable to believe that Gabbard was unaware of the policy points on which the WEF disagreed with her own position. Or, she may have thought those points were unimportant at the time.
We must view, then, her participation in the Young World Leaders program through her 2015 eyes, not from our privileged position in 2022. It is unfair and uninformative to do the reverse, even if we apply the “reasonable person” standard.
Yes, a reasonable person in Gabbard’s position in 2015 would have accepted the invitation to the Young World Leaders program. Even many conservatives would have wanted that stamp on their resumes.
Now, Let’s Look at Gabbard’s Actions
I mentioned earlier that Gabbard was an early opponent of gay marriage, but that was not her only pro-family, pro-American position. Tom Luongo of the blog Gold, Goats, and Guns provided an excellent background on Gabbard yesterday:
This was a woman who in 2016 after being ‘groomed’ for greatness resigned from the DNC over Hitlary’s corruption of the primaries at a moment in time everyone, and I mean EV-ER-Y-ONE, thought Hitlary would be the next president.
Even I didn’t believe my own arguments that Trump would win in May 2016.
Gabbard defied the most vindictive woman in US political circles. A woman with a presumed body count that measures in the dozens who was supposed to seal Davos’ deal to sell the US out to the globalists and their planned Great Reset.
That takes immense stones and speaks to a lot of personal integrity.
Gabbard enlisted in the National Guard following the 9/11 attacks in order to defend America. She was, at the time, a member of the Hawaii State House of Representatives, having been elected at the age of 20.
Gabbard had dropped out of college to run for the state house, but she completed her degree while serving both the country and her state. She was commissioned an officer in the Guard and served a tour of duty in Iraq during Desert Storm.
While some on the right claim she was instructed by her WEF handlers to make like a badass conservative, Tom Luongo points out the insanity of this argument:
Now, you can construct some MI-6/John LeCarre narrative that she was just playing the long game for Klaus, but seriously folks, Occam’s Razor is almost always valid.
When she ran for President in 2020, was she promoted to be the one who would stand with Joe Biden? No. If she was Klaus’ girl she would have been.
She would have gotten more than 1 delegate. She wouldn’t have been given the Ron Paul treatment at the convention.
No, what she actually did was destroy the presidential ambitions of the woman-of-color who had been chosen, Kamala Harris.
And she did it without any DNC support whatsoever. She did it with almost no speaking time. It was the most effective political takedown in history save Ron Paul’s destruction of Rudy Guiliani in 2008.
To believe this narrative that Gabbard is a WEF Trojan Horse means you have to believe in a stage play so stupid and complicated it beggars belief. So, I ask everyone in the audience, if you are triggered by Tulsi Gabbard, reflect on why that is and where those feelings come from.
I hope I’ve answered “where those feelings come from.” They come from judging someone else’s past through the lens of your own present.
Converts Never Stop Converting
Many conservative icons started life as communists:
Whittaker Chambers, who brought down Alger Hiss and exposed the Soviet influence in the United Nations, was a communist agent before turning Christian.
James Burnham was editor of National Review and author of my favorite books, Suicide of the West, after having worked as a communist analyst.
John Dos Passos was a communist who fought against Franco in the Spanish Civil War before becoming an icon of the right.
And, talk about mere party switchers, did you know that Ronald Reagan was a Democrat until 1967? His endorsement of Barry Goldwater was profound because it came from a Democrat and everyone knew it.
My experience in politics and religion is that converts never stop converting. Almost all of the traditional Catholics I follow online are converts. Same in politics. Could you argue that cradle conservatives Buckley or Goldwater were more conservative than Chambers, Burnham, and Dos Passos? Hell, those converts gave up their jobs, friends, and families by turning right. They spent their lives looking over their shoulders and sleeping with one open. Though all three experience financial and professional success after their conversion, they had start over from nothing.
In Tulsi Gabbard, we have the potential for culture-change. I’ll concede she could also be the Trojan horse some fear. But I’ll put my bet on Tulsi’s continued shift to the right, as long as we don’t screw up and piss her off.
I’ll leave with this: I’d rather have Gabbard as an ally than an enemy, so I will pray for her continued conversion in politics and, especially, in Christ.