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The conservative movement is going to have to ask some tough questions and perform some uncomfortable housekeeping chores to avoid an all-out ideological civil war.  We have been concerned about this for some time.

Back in December 2022, when Trump was still a candidate, we wrote about his ill-fated dinner with the black rapper Kanye West and his sidekick, Nick Fuentes.   Later, we followed up with a three-part series on the growing problem of antisemitism within our movement. We compared our current troubles to those in the Conservative movement before. We noted we have no Conservative leader of the gravitas of William F. Buckley, Jr. Unfortunately, things have deteriorated to the point that our movement is now seeing open rhetorical warfare between thought leaders such as Tucker Carlson and Mark Levin. 

This is likely to spread and soon involve more combatants from both sides of the issue.

We urge you to watch the videos in the video section today, specifically those by Shapiro, Levin, and Stakelbeck.

At some point, everyone who considers himself a Republican and a Conservative will have to choose sides. While one may have nuanced disagreements with the government in Jerusalem, our shared values, basic conservative principles, our shared love of freedom, and our concern about the alliance between the International Left and Islamism put us at The Prickly Pear at odds with Tucker and others like him.

The Left has even a bigger anti-Semitic problem, and we don’t want to follow their direction.  Conservatives need to address this internal problem and not let it fester into something worse.

If there is a fault in this divide, we put it on the aggressors: Candace Owens, Tucker Carlson, Nick Fuentes, The American Conservative Magazine, libertarian Dave Smith, and others like them.

As the Trump brand of MAGA remarkably recovered from political purgatory, they have decided to open this rift as widely as possible very early on in his new term.  Why, we can’t really understand.

Conservatism is still a minority view in both the cultural and political spheres. Anti-Semitism is against Conservative principles, and secondly, it is not suitable for our brand.  If allowed to spread, it will harm the ascent of Conservatism as a governing philosophy.

Still, after the October 7th attack on Israel and its counterattack against Hamas and Hezbollah, the rather blunt anti-Israeli arguments coming within our own ranks are morphing into open antisemitism. This is not good for our movement.

After the murder of Charlie Kirk, they appeared to want to alienate Kirk’s followers from Kirk’s unequivocal support for the Jewish state.  They tried to tell us what he “really thought”, even though the public record is quite clear. Kirk’s new book is about why he wants to celebrate the Hebrew Sabbath and its value.

We found these attempts to hijack sympathy for Charlie Kirk both distasteful and disrespectful. 

The only possible motive we can think of for the timing of their attack is that, post-Trump, they want to be in charge of foreign policy.  Trump himself has been a friend and ally of Israel better than any before him, yet he makes it clear to the Israeli government when he demands they be part of his peace plans. Trump’s peace plan is still cooking, so to speak, and the final meal has not been eaten.  We have urged caution.  Beware of signing agreements with people who regularly break agreements, such as Hamas.  But he got Israel to join his plans. We will see.

The current struggle mirrors in many ways the fight between Pat Buchanan and William F. Buckley, which had been dormant for so many years, but began with tremors a few years ago and is now an open, exploding volcano.  Yes, the names and players are different, but the principles are the same.  That is why our three-part series went over Buckley’s arguments.  If you are not familiar with them, please re-read the series. 

Conservatives should not be collectivists.  We are individualists.  We should not judge people by bloodlines but by their actions.  We have principles and standards, and the same standards should be used to judge all those we support or oppose. There are no special standards for Jews and no special requirements. To demand different or higher standards is a hallmark of antisemitism, as Buckley pointed out decades ago.

As we mark two years since that Sabbath slaughter, with Hezbollah’s rockets still raining and Gaza’s tunnels crumbling under IDF precision, conservatives must confront a bitter truth: This infighting among us isn’t advancing limited government or individual liberty. It’s handing ammunition to our shared foes—the unholy alliance of radical Islam and the international left—while eroding the very principles that define us.

It started as a legitimate tension. Post-Afghanistan fatigue made Carlson’s warnings about “endless entanglements” resonate: Why funnel $3.8 billion annually to Israel when Detroit crumbles? TAC amplified this with pieces framing U.S. support as a “neocon liability,” echoing paleoconservative isolationism. Levin and his allies fired back, branding it moral abdication—Israel as the West’s outpost in a sea of jihadist tyranny.

The U.S. federal budget for fiscal year 2025 (October 1, 2024–September 30, 2025) totals approximately $7.0 trillion in outlays. U.S. aid to Israel in FY 2025 consists primarily of $3.8 billion in military assistance (via Foreign Military Financing and related channels), with minor economic and other components.  This represents about 0.05% of the overall federal budget.

But the US gets something back for that, especially intelligence and significant military and commercial innovation. Critical anti-missile systems and even laser beam platforms against drones are getting battlefield experience. Unlike other conflicts, there are no American boots on the ground, and Israel does not want them.

For .05% of the budget, that hardly seems worth ripping up the Conservative movement. That money could easily be saved elsewhere.  To eliminate it (which we think should be done in time) hardly moves the needle on our severe fiscal crisis.  So this really can’t be over money, can it?

But what began as foreign policy haggling has curdled into something uglier. Carlson’s October interview with Nick Fuentes—an avowed anti-Semite peddling “Zionist Jews” conspiracies—crossed the Rubicon, defended by Heritage’s Kevin Roberts as “free speech.” Suddenly, the debate veers into the paradox of antisemitism: Jews as eternal victims (Holocaust echoes, Oct 7 horrors) and shadowy rulers (AIPAC as “disloyal cabal”). This isn’t conservatism; it’s collectivist grievance, the left’s identity politics in a MAGA hat.

Yes, Tucker and others should indeed have their say, as Kevin Roberts suggests.  But those who oppose those views have equal free speech rights.   We need to exercise those rights.

It violates Frank Meyer’s fusionism—liberty through individual choice, not tribal smears—and mocks the Hebrew Bible’s imprint on our Founding, from Locke’s Talmudic natural rights to Adams calling the Jews “the most glorious nation” for birthing monotheism and ethics.

That intellectual history point is another irony.  We have just seen a wave of books recently about the Hebraic influence on the Founding.  Not long ago, it was said that the Founding was the intersection of Athens and Jerusalem. Still, most of the emphasis was on the “Enlightenment” or “Athens” influence, as secular professors downplayed the religious input and elevated the secular influence.  Recent history shows that there was a significant difference between the religious hatred (and Jew-hatred) of the French Enlightenment of Voltaire and others, and the Hebrew-influenced Scottish and English Enlightenments, which mainly influenced the Founders. It is almost as if some people are afraid to acknowledge the Jewish thinking embraced by the Founders and the English common law.

Libertarians, conservatism’s quirky cousins, mirror the mess. The Mises Institute—built on Jewish exiles Ludwig von Mises and Murray Rothbard—hosts anti-aid isolationists, while comedian Dave Smith mocks “Zionist neocons” to Libertarian Party cheers. The Ayn Rand Institute remains pro-Israel, tying it to rational self-interest rather than mysticism. Their split? Same poison: The”Non-aggression principle” used as a cover for selective standards.

The “non-aggression” principle never said that a person or a nation cannot defend itself when attacked. There would have been no war in Gaza unless Hamas started it, ruthlessly attacking civilians and taking them hostage.  Is Israel supposed to ignore the first responsibility of government, protecting the lives and freedom of its people?  In what libertarian fantasy world are these people living?

Exacerbating this is foreign meddling, with Qatar—Hamas’s banker and host—pouring $250 million since 2016 into conservative media to fracture GOP unity. FARA filings reveal $180,000 monthly to Carlson via lobbyists for “access” (that March 2025 PM interview? Six million views of soft-pedaled Hamas ties). Heritage took $1 million in 2023 for “Mideast research,” aligning with Doha’s “restraint” line.  That is a small contribution for Heritage.  But they still took the money.

Paleocons decry AIPAC as outsized, but ignore Qatar’s lobbying blitz (seven times AIPAC’s direct spend) or Tides/Ford’s billions funding anti-Israel NGOs. It’s hypocrisy: Follow the money, they say… or is it just the “Jewish” money?

Worse is the warfare double standard, a symptom of that victim-ruler paradox. Israel’s response—ground ops against 30,000 embedded fighters in Gaza’s 6,000-per-square-km density—was morally necessary after invasion and endless rockets. John Spencer, an expert in urban warfare, documents the unprecedented restraint by Israel: 1.5 million warnings, 99% precision munitions, a 1:1 civilian-to-combatant ratio despite Hamas’s explicit shields (hospitals, schools). Yet global headlines scream “genocide,” with U.S. sympathy for Israel dipping to 32% (Gallup, July 2025).

Stack Israel’s retaliatory war against any urban conflict in history: U.S. in Fallujah (2004)? 1:2 ratio, minimal warnings, 600-800 civilians dead—no frenzy. Manila (1945)? 10:1, 100,000+ shelled—WWII heroism. Yes, we killed 10 largely friendly Filipinos for every one dead Japanese soldier taking that city. Hue (1968)? 3:1, 2,000-5,800 caught in airstrikes—Vietnam fog.  These victors got grace; Israel, the defender with tech demanding perfection, gets the Inquisition. Why? Antisemitism’s long shadow: Tiny Israel (0.2% world population) as both fragile and omnipotent, yet its restraint is somehow”proof” of malice.

Military historian Victor Davis Hanson put the Israeli/Hamas conflict in its proper light.  He has described the Gaza conflict as “the most humane urban war in history,” noting: “No army has ever fought in such density—6,000 people per square kilometer—with such care for civilians, using warnings and roof-knocks while the enemy hides in hospitals.” He credits this to Israel’s “Western ethics,” echoing John Spencer’s analysis of the 1:1 civilian-combatant ratio.  But for those less informed, or maybe informed and just malicious, they prefer to toss around terms like “genocide.”