The Elsa Kurt Show

The Strident Conservative: A Deep Dive into Political Shifts (Part 1)

• Elsa Kurt

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Are we witnessing the demise of conservatism as we know it? That's the provocative question we grapple with in our conversation with David Leach, the founder of Strident Conservative. Our deep-dive into the shifting political landscape unveils the compromising nature of both parties and their collective failure to protect our freedoms and liberties. David, with his unique journey from a Christian conference to creating a website scrutinizing politics and religion, challenges the status quo with his libertarian-leaning perspective.

We navigate through the murky waters of populism, replacing the essence of conservatism, a trend deeply embedded in the Republican Party and Trump's platforms. The influence of this trend on younger generations and the need to foster independent thinking forms a major part of our discourse. Moreover, we delve into the intricate history of the power struggle between politics and the Supreme Court, tracing its roots back to the Eisenhower administration. Prepare yourself for a riveting discussion that will challenge your beliefs and opinions on politics, liberty, and much more. This conversation promises a fresh perspective on the issues you thought you knew.
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Speaker 1:

Well, hello friends, Welcome to another episode. I'm very happy to have you here today and I am equally happy to have my guest on today. His name is David Leach and he's from the Strident Conservative, and we've got lots to talk about right after this. Alright, guys, welcome to the show. David, thank you for coming on. Welcome to the show.

Speaker 2:

Thank you for the invitation and thank you for having me on. It's a pleasure.

Speaker 1:

Absolutely. Thank you. Yeah, when you you know. So, for those of you who don't know, I had put out a little post on the Facebook about, you know, looking for some guests and seeing if anybody wanted to come on, and David was gracious enough to say yeah, come on, sure, why not?

Speaker 2:

So I'm sorry, I didn't mean to walk on you. There there's a. There's so few people want to listen to me these days, I figured I'd take the opportunity for it.

Speaker 1:

Well, you know what, david? It's not just you. Nobody wants to listen to anybody anymore right, that's true. We just want to talk at each other and and not listen, and so I find you very, very intriguing. I was perusing your website, which is the StrideandConservativecom, and you should definitely go check it out, and there's some things that are well. There's a lot of things that aren't used, but one your knowledge base is pretty incredible, so thank you, thank you.

Speaker 1:

You're. No, thank you, you're. You're so welcome, so let me, let's start there. So you're. So, for anybody who doesn't know yet, your website you and your page on Facebook covers a wide variety of topics religion, politics, the constitution, you name it. You're covering it and you're not just, you know, throwing some opinions out there, like like most of us are doing. You really have a lot of knowledge and information and facts to back up the things that you're saying. So where did all of this come from? Have you always had this interest and and you know, involvement with big topics here?

Speaker 2:

Wow, that's a. That's a big question. I guess the best way to answer that would be to kind of tell you how it actually got started, mid-2000s. I've always been very interested in politics and trying to, you know, keep up on what's going on in the world and and what's going on in America, and I was.

Speaker 2:

I attended this conference. I won't go into too much detail about it, but there was this one segment of this conference where we were instructed. It was a. It was a Christian conference and it was a conference where we were instructed to go out with some quiet time and ask God what name he had for us. This was after a session where we were taught about how life and the devil and other people will give us all kinds of names that really aren't us. You know that. Who are we really? And it was using the scripture in the book of Revelation about each one of us will be given a stone and on that stone is a name and only that person and God knows that name. So we were. I went out for my time and I'd read a book by the person giving the the conference and I went out wanting to hear that I was like William Wallace or from Braveheart or something like that, and I was given a name and I was a little bit disappointed because it wasn't really what I thought. In fact, I really thought I didn't hear from God at all.

Speaker 2:

Well, several weeks later, my wife and I we had kind of a routine we both worked from home and we kind of had a routine where I would go to the Starbucks, grab a coffee and bring it back and peruse the paper and you know, and just kind of get my day started. And I was reading a headline and I did one of my typical yeah, right, that's not true. And my wife is right there in the room, she's at her desk and she goes okay, what is it? And so I said, well, I read her the story.

Speaker 2:

And she says, okay, so what's that mean? And so I give her my impression or my interpretation of what those events will really mean eventually, and she says you should probably be on the radio. And I said, well, no, there's lots of people on the radio. There's Rush Limbaugh was still alive then. So there's Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck and all these people that have radio shows and who would want to listen to me. And she goes but you're a voice in the wilderness, and that's when I broke down crying, because the name got me in the conference was John the Baptist.

Speaker 1:

Oh, come on really.

Speaker 2:

I use that kind of as my launching pad. So I launched my website at that point that my very first article was on a topic of gay marriage. Our now governor back then he was just a local politician that Jared Polis had said makes a statement about the issue that I didn't agree with and so basically I said the name of the article was I pronounced you, man and dog because I figured if I should be able to marry anyone I want, I want to marry my dog.

Speaker 1:

I love it. Who wouldn't? Dogs are awesome.

Speaker 2:

So that was kind of how it all got started, but it's kind of grown into a. I did a lot of the politics stuff first, you know Republican versus Democrat that kind of thing. But over the years I've learned that really that's a distraction, that both parties are really kind of one party. They both run the same machine.

Speaker 2:

It's just whether there's gonna be, an R at the top or a D at the top at any given time, but they're all still working together and they're not really doing things to protect liberty and to protect the constitution and to protect our freedoms. And so I've kind of evolved over the past oh, I'd say five, six years more into the subjects of kind of libertarian leaning. I'm not a libertarian, but kind of a libertarian leaning towards. You know, it's like hey, like, for example, my article today on the Stride and Conservatives about how 9-11 ended up costing us a lot of our liberty. I don't get a lot of great feedback from that.

Speaker 2:

People are saying I'm insensitive about the people who died and stuff like that, and I'm very empathetic and my heart goes out to the. You know, I mean still. I mean you know, here we are decades later and it's still very painful to remember that day it is. And we we lost a lot more than a few lives on 9-11, you know, with the Patriot Act and how that eventually evolved into all kinds of other things, I think we felt victim to what Benjamin Franklin once warned us about. He says those who had said actually it's debatable as one that he really said it, but it's credited to him that those who would sacrifice a little safety for or a little liberty for a little safety deserve neither.

Speaker 2:

And I've often paraphrased that to say those who would sacrifice a little liberty for a little safety will get neither. You won't get safety and you won't get liberty, and that's kind of where I think we are today.

Speaker 1:

You know, I don't disagree with you at all on that. But the funny thing is, I absolutely understand why you get backlash. Because we're in such a reactive kind of thoughtless society now where we react to everything emotionally and we don't think about what we're hearing or reading and really taking time to sit with it, and you know so everything is based on feelings and not fact, right that's, we're in the feelings, not fact world and you hit people with a lot of facts and I have no doubt that they bristle. And, as a matter of fact, I was kind of glancing through your Facebook page in the comments section and I was like, oh yeah, he's here and from him, and I would imagine one of the biggest groups that you hear from is probably not necessarily the liberals, but the Trump supporters. Do you get a lot of like the, you know, fanatical Trump fans?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I do hear a lot from Trump people.

Speaker 1:

And I say that I'm sorry. I should preface that for everybody. I say that because you're not a Trump fan.

Speaker 2:

You're not a Trump fan. Never have been.

Speaker 2:

Never have been. Yeah, a lot of people have always kind of criticized me as becoming never Trump after the fact, but if you go back to my articles, I wrote a lot of articles during the primaries leading up to the 2016 election, and I laid out my case very clearly, why he would be a very bad leader for the country. At the time, I was kind of a Ted Cruz fan, but that ended up being a mistake too, unfortunately. But anyhow, I'm just saying, though, that, yeah, I hear a lot from them. I'm called a Rhino, which, you know, that word doesn't really have the meaning it used to have. For that matter, I've had people tell me I should maybe change my name, because the word conservative really doesn't have the meaning it used to have. I want to fight for conservatism. I'm going to keep it. I'll still be the striding conservative, because it's our conservative principles. When you look at the word conservative, it has to do with conserving, and what is it that we want to conserve? Well, what I want to conserve is I want to conserve the Constitution, I want to conserve the principles that found in our country, I want to conserve liberty, I want to conserve freedom, and so, yeah, I'm going to still, I'm going to stick with conservatism, although, like I said, it's kind of watered down.

Speaker 2:

These days it's being replaced by populism, which is very dangerous. America's first populism is a big talking point of Donald Trump's and now the Republican Party. And we now have Republicans saying things like well, maybe government should reign in big businesses, because they really aren't looking out for the people. And it's like, if it's okay to say this, tucker Carlson one time he appeared at a nationalist, the National Conservatism Conference, the first one a couple of years ago and he said I'm paraphrasing it because I don't have the exact quote in front of me but he said, basically he said government is no longer your enemy, the free enterprise system is. And it's like, oh my freaking gosh, what in the heck, where did that come from? And that's a conservative Republican saying that. So yeah, I kind of have to even watch being called the conservative. But I do hear a lot. Back to our original point. I do hear a lot from Trumpists. I have fun with it. Actually, it really doesn't bother me all that much.

Speaker 1:

If you're gonna be doing this stuff, you have to have that thick skin and you have to.

Speaker 2:

Oh, yeah, yeah yeah, yeah, I don't. My wife often comments. She says I don't know how you can take some of the things these people say about you. It's like, well, you know, they're actually kind of a badge of honor, because people don't react that way unless you struck a cord. You know that's really the reason they do it. I mean truth.

Speaker 2:

Truth is accepted one of two ways. George Orwell once said that, in fact, you know, it's truth is either accepted as truth or it's going to be accepted as an attack. Again, that's a paraphrase, but and that's basically what it is. So all I try to do is always speak the truth you mentioned. I appreciate you mentioning that.

Speaker 2:

I'm very well documented because I do a lot of research when I write an article and and so I don't I do give an opinion sometimes, but I back my opinion with lots and lots of facts, and that's what I always try to do, and I just, I just want to speak the truth, and the truth is in this day and age, liberty isn't serious, serious danger, and neither Republicans nor Democrats are really too concerned about that. All they really want to do is make sure that their party is in the White House next election. That's, that's what, everything, everything they do, every talking point, every issue they claim to address, it's only for one purpose, and that's to try to win in 2024. And then that's, and again that's. It's the same playbook. That's what it was in 2020. That's what it was in 2016. That's what it was in 20. I mean, it's it's the same thing over and over and over, and now over time. And you were talking about how kids are, how that we're kind of led by our feelings more now.

Speaker 2:

Right, even that is is part of the gradual Evolving or evolution away from Liberty in our public schools, I mean, kids aren't taught about the Constitution, they aren't taught about what, what was really at stake when America was founded. I mean, you know, we you know, and instead now we're being told that all these white European men who's found that America were oppressors and and they abused. You know, it's like come on, yeah, it's like it's so crazy, isn't it?

Speaker 1:

It's a crazy message, and yeah, it is.

Speaker 1:

No, that's okay, it's hard not to, isn't it? It's really hard not to because this is it's such a broad topic and it affects every facet, in every area of Our lives, of society. So it's huge and it's, you know, and as far as the, the kids in school now, and that goes all the way up through college probably, maybe even especially college, you know we're, our kids, are being taught what to think, not how to think, and that's exactly, very, very apparent, is very clear. I mean, I don't really understand how anybody could argue that. It's obvious, it's very clear that they're just, you know, they're really just puppets with, you know, these ulterior-motivated people making their mouths move and all they speak in sound bites, and that's all that people look for these days. They don't look for deeper meeting and I don't mean to generalize, because I don't think that's true of everyone. That's a faction of society that just want, they want sound bites, they want what just echoes what they're already thinking, not anything that contradicts it, and I think that's why what you're doing is really important, and I'm sure the more I look through yourself, I might find stuff that I disagree with in there, and I think that's okay.

Speaker 1:

I think you could probably beat me up with the facts, you know, because I don't wanna be perfectly honest, and you know, and I'm not calling myself a dummy or any of those things, but I consider my, I call myself a baby Christian and I call myself maybe, like, if you're the Strident conservative, I guess maybe I'd call myself the casual conservative, you know, because I don't, I'm not an authority on either of those things. I know where my heart leads me, and you know. And then I like to get all the facts to back up what my heart is already telling me, and I just wish more people would do that, and even to the point where it's something you don't wanna hear, that you don't like, because I think it's important to know. You know all of the facts. It's okay if you don't like them, they can make you feel bad, but you still need to know them, and that's a lost thing now and I like that you stand your ground on it and you don't back away from any of them, that's for sure.

Speaker 2:

I try to do. I do my best to be that kind of person. I've even written articles. I wrote an article recently. I actually I reposted an article recently based about escaping the Washington matrix of the Republican and Democrat Party, and I used the matrix movie for a lot of my proof.

Speaker 2:

And there's a scene in the third matrix movie where it looks like Agent Smith has finally defeated Neo and Neo gets back up and then Smith is just confused. He's like why do you keep doing this? What's your motivation? Is it love? Is it this or is it that he lists all these kinds of things and Neo, with his last breath, just says because I choose to. I mean, then that's it. It's like I don't care what the odds are, I don't care if it looks like you're about to beat me. I'm gonna continue to choose to stand for freedom and liberty and getting as many people out of the two-party matrix as I possibly can. I'm a big believer in the need for I was gonna say a third party, but we actually we need a new second party because the Republican Democrat Party is one party. So it's like we need a new party, we need new direction, we need to break up the matrix in Washington. We've got to destroy the machine world out there, and that's what I'm gonna try to do as long as I have breath.

Speaker 1:

I love it. I love it, I love the passion. I will say anybody who is sitting there wanting to dispute this or argue this, I guess that the things that you've just said, I would say. I would back you up and say that, listen, I think most of us can sit here and say and I consider myself middle America, average American middle class, if that even exists anymore and what I can say and people that I've spoken to say is all the same thing, which is nobody, nobody in charge, is working for us, nobody has our best interests at heart here and is actually-.

Speaker 2:

You won't hear me disagree with you.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, yeah. So and that, of course, leads to well, why do we keep voting the same people in over and over and over again? I mean, have we really forgotten that we're in charge, we are America, they work for us, and that has been really completely forgotten, or maybe not forgotten, but disregarded, and we've allowed it. And I don't you probably have more ideas of how to do that, how to make that happen? I don't we say the same things over and over again. We'll vote different people in, get involved, do the things. I mean, are those the answers? What would you say? The? If there's an answer, what would you say?

Speaker 2:

Well, it's a big, it's a monster. It's a big, big big thing. You know it's. It isn't just since 9-11 that it came into existence, it's just that 9-11 kind of really got put it on steroids. I mean, you know, it's been going on for decades and decades. I mean we had these. You can read your history. I know that that's not something a lot of people like to do anymore. Can you find the actual history? We were, yeah, real life history and we were having these same discussions when Eisenhower was president. I mean, there was the same battle going on then. He was trying to expand the Supreme Court so he could get a lot of socialist ideals. Basically, he couldn't get it done in Congress, so he was gonna try to manipulate the court system, which is now what we have going on today again. Right, so you answer your question.