House of Eratosthenes

Right Wing News has put up a list of unliked conservatives, as voted-upon by “right of center” blogs such as this one. First, a minor quibble — this is not quite consistent with the way we see things here. What other folks call “conservative” is something we would call centrist. We see it as a personal practice of replying “Let’s Not Do It And Say We Did” to…you know…dumbass ideas that have already been tried lots of times before. Gun grabbing, pulling manufactured “rights” for special interest groups out of your rear end, eugenics, bloated welfare state, making atheism the official state religion, spreading the wealth, et al.

Opposing that is not right of center. It is the center. Most if it is written right into the U.S. Constitution. We just pretend it isn’t, by throwing around the word “constitution” as a figure of speech, and allowing it to be used by people who haven’t even glanced at that document, let alone studied the history and meaning of it.

I wouldn’t even bother with this quibble — except it has to do with what follows.

I found the list of despised conservatives, that I submitted, had only a small overlap with the “popular” list that was published in the end. I did not include, for example, Ann Coulter, George Bush or Peggy Noonan. I do not think you become “bad” at anything dealing with an exchange of ideas, when you simply become popular. That would imply conservative figureheads have a duty to stay popular. And if conservative figureheads have a duty to stay popular, we might as well call ’em liberals because that’s how you get popular and stay popular; by being a liberal.

I also didn’t include congressmen who’d cast pro-choice votes, unless they’d cast a vote on some other issue to call their credentials into serious question. I’ll not fault someone for applying their personal druthers, even when they represent hundreds of thousands of others, to an issue that is deeply personal to some, complex as all get-out, and cannot have an outcome that is completely fair to everyone. Not unless they’re pretending to be thoughtful and really following in lockstep to someone else.

On the other hand — I did include one or two “conservatives” who voted for gun control. To me, there is absolutely no logical reason to support gun control. It isn’t that I have a huge gun collection, or even that I like guns that much. It’s that, if you favor even “common sense” gun restrictions, you’ve missed an important point about what it means to be an American. You’ve revealed a sympathy for centrist authority that is quite incompatible with the intended spiritual underpinnings of our nation.

Ditto for tax increases. I don’t favor tax increases when governments are out of money. I’ve heard the argument before…”it’s a serious shortfall, and we aren’t gonna get it from anywhere else.” Eh, no. You raise taxes, people and businesses leave, next year the problem is worse. I’ve not yet seen it fail. On this point, conservatism is nothing radical — nothing over & above common sense. It is, simply, having a functional memory. Nothing more than that.

I have mixed feelings about what Mr. Hawkins is trying to do here, I must say. On the one hand, it is valuable for conservatives to inspect the list of individuals who have shouldered the responsibility for getting the message across, and what kind of job they’re doing. You’d have to be nuts to think everything is ship-shape in this department right about now.

On the other hand, whatever you might call us — tighty-righties, common-sensers, Great Americans — we do not worship popular people just because they’re popular. As I’m often fond of saying: An excellent product can be sold by an adequate salesman just as well as it can be sold by an excellent salesman; you don’t need the excellent salesman, unless you’re selling a substandard product that people really shouldn’t be buying. Since the conservatism I know is simply the possession of a decent memory, common sense, and the will to act upon those…it doesn’t have much use for excellent salesmen. Or it shouldn’t. If it does, something’s bollywonkers & gunnybags.

One other interesting point: John McCain is #1.

I can’t help but wonder what’s going on in a parallel universe in which Fred Thompson secured the nomination. And then lost. And then the Mirror-Universe John Hawkins gathers together his list of repellant conservatives. Think the former Senator from Tennessee would be Numero Uno? Think he’d even be on the list?

Hah!

This has a lot to do with another thing I’m often fond of saying. When people invite you refute something unflattering about you, it’s a mistake for you to think, by the energies you’re about to channel into doing this, you’ll get ’em to do what you want. That’s the mistake conservatives made this year. The talking point got trotted out that conservatism was a consistent and unwavering excercise of bad ideas…so John McCain became the nominee, so that Republicans could show off how adept they were at wavering. See? Look at us. We can waver.

And the electorate patted the Republicans on the head, said “that’s nice,” then toddled off to vote for the other guy.

And muttered a few words as they toddled, here & there, about what in the hell it was the Republicans were trying to say.

Life is like that. That’s the way people react when you dilute yourself, and your message. Whatever reservations people had about you before, remain; all you really dissipate by doing this, is the confidence that was there before.

Mazel Tov on your 4 years from a non-reader(til now).
- Richard Diamond | 11/13/2008 @ 19:14

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Least Favorite ConservativesThursday, November 13th, 2008

Least Favorite Conservatives
Thursday, November 13th, 2008