House of Eratosthenes

By “The Davids” what I mean in this case is Frum, although there are others. People who sell themselves as reformed or repentant conservatives, to other people who have no idea what a conservative really is and are never going to know. Conservatives who are “social moderates,” long to reach “across the aisle” — who voted for Barack Obama, not as a protest against the George W. Bush free-spending (heh!), but because “There’s Just Something About Him!”

It’s becoming a protracted back-and-forth. Miss out on this, and you miss a lot.

The conservatism I know is not a movement at all, nor is it a resistance. It is the ability to store and recall memories over the longer term, with a willingness to use it. It is the decent attention paid to history, when it tells us:

Charismatic people can make shitty bosses.

The people who live in a country don’t become wonderful people because of the laws passed in that country.

That government governs best which governs least.

An economy thrives when the conditions in which it operates involve certainty, and it withers in the face of excessive risk.

Decent wonderful people have stupid ideas pretty often.

In fact, it isn’t that rare an occurrence that a raging idiot has a unique idea that turns out to be the right one. (Therefore, when you hear of a new idea, discussing the attributes of the person who came up with it is a complete waste of time.)

When you raise taxes to fix a shitty economy, it doesn’t work.

People really need to experience success and failure as individuals. If consequences are equalized across a society, the passion dissipates, and work without passion is always an inferior effort.

There aren’t that many paychecks being signed by poor people.

People become naturally fractured and balkanized from each other when they speak different languages, profit from different advantages, or labor under unique burdens.

People don’t work hard to maintain assets that were given to them.

With apologies to our current President — or maybe, without ’em — there really isn’t any particular point at which you’ve made enough money.

Anyway. Brock, Brooks, Frum, Weigel — there’s just something about that name “David.” They get a business opportunity and suddenly, there’s an awakening. (Not with Weigel of course, he was busted in a scandal; not that he was fooling anybody.) Oh my! We have to do this one thing — elect Obama, pass ObamaCare, whatever. I’m still a conservative mind you! Although I’m ashamed at some of my fellow conservatives, because it’s true we’re all a bunch of bigots. Except me! But I’m still a conservative. Just a moderate one.

If conservatism was a movement, some of this would make sense…or might possibly make some sense.

But it isn’t. Conservatism, boiled down to its essentials, is an insistence that weighty decisions need to be based on reality, because reality is not relative. It rests on a certain foundation, and that foundation is a constant thing, laid from the cement of the laws of the universe. You don’t get to opt-out of it. So-and-so is funny, such-and-such is boring, this guy has a Nobel Prize, this guy is charismatic-or-whatever, he’s black, he’s gay, she’s a chick — these are distractions, and that is all they are.

They don’t change the outcome. Or maybe they do, but if they do then a wrong is being done. And it’s probably a great wrong, greater than other wrong it seeks to remedy.

I see the same thing all the time with Catholicism. People like, say, Andrew Sullivan, who keep insisting that they are good Catholics despite their support for:

-married clergy
-female clergy
-open homosexuality
-abortion on demand
-etc. etc.

And who knows? Maybe the Catholic Church needs all that stuff (I hasten to add that I am not a Catholic myself). But the point is, there’s simply no freakin’ way you’re a Catholic if you believe that. This is akin to me insisting, at great length and in every public outlet that will have me, that even though I’m in pads and spikes and a three-point stance and it’s third and five, I’m actually playing golf.

Not coincidentally, these same folks often insist that they’re the best Catholics, or conservatives, or whatever. Even though, you know, they seem to hate everything conservatives — real conservatives, WF Buckley-type, even-Kos-agrees-he’s-a-conservative conservatives — stand for. Which is like me saying I’m the leftest leftist around, even though I kinda dig capitalism and would vote for the rotting corpse of William Howard Taft over Dear Leader.

Is this just self-loathing played out in the most public possible way? That is, the self-label “catholic” or “conservative” is so important to them not in spite of the fact that they hate everything about it, but because of it?

Any thoughts? (apologies for the long post btw; I didn’t have time to make it shorter).
- Severian | 07/01/2010 @ 08:51
All advances in civilization have been made through experience and happenstance in the face of our instincts, which are of course primitive and socialist. So it is more natural to repeat our mistakes, which is why we keep doing it, than to understand our successes.

Although it’s hard to defend the Invisible Hand, because it’s invisible, when we no longer can do so we get Barry’s hand, or some other.

The problem with neoconservatives is not that they are newly conservative, but partially conservative. They track more radioactive dirt inside than the revolutionary left outside.
- jamzw | 07/01/2010 @ 09:24
[…] Freeberg performs an operation known in Biblical terms as ‘rightly dividing the word of truth’. By “The Davids” what I mean in this case is Frum, although there are others. People who sell themselves as reformed or repentant conservatives, to other people who have no idea what a conservative really is and are never going to know. Conservatives who are “social moderates,” long to reach “across the aisle” — who voted for Barack Obama, not as a protest against the George W. Bush free-spending (heh!), but because “There’s Just Something About Him!” […]
- DYSPEPSIA GENERATION » Blog Archive » Right Wing News vs. The Davids | 07/01/2010 @ 10:31
With apologies to our current President — or maybe, without ‘em — there really isn’t any particular point at which you’ve made enough money.

Either way, what do you wanna bet that by his definitiion, he hasn’t reached that point yet, while others who have made far less … have?

Re: Severian … I grew up Catholic. And yeah, that’s about the size of it. These people want the “Catholic” badge without the Catholic beliefs [Nancy Pelosi]. I love it when liberals tell us what Catholics SHOULD believe …. it’s like hey, woah! This is a club. If you wanna belong, you believe these things. If you don’t believe these things, then you’re welcomed to leave. They won’t kill you for leaving.

It’s not like, oh, say … Islam. 🙂
- philmon | 07/04/2010 @ 13:52

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Right Wing News vs. The DavidsThursday, July 1st, 2010

Right Wing News vs. The Davids
Thursday, July 1st, 2010