Posted on 06/23/2005 9:51:17 AM PDT by quidnunc
The central theme of Brian Anderson’s "South Park Conservatives" is that a new kind of anti-liberal counterculture is emerging comparable in tone, if not substance, to the 1960s New Left.
Like the nasty and funny TV show from which the label comes, South Park conservatives are characterized by skepticism and irreverence, with a special animosity reserved for the doctrinaire political correctness and limp-wristed liberalism that pervade Hollywood, the media and academe.
South Park conservatives make fun of everything and everyone, but especially those they see as hippies, tree-huggers, feminist dykes and fruity multiculturalists. Conservative on matters of economy and foreign policy but socially liberal, they can probably be best characterized as particularly cheeky libertarians dedicated to lampooning leftist dogmas and shibboleths.
That contemporary liberalism has become so easy to ridicule testifies to both its intellectual sclerosis and the broader shift in the political balance of power in recent decades toward conservatism. As New Republic editor Martin Peretz recently bemoaned, the left is increasingly "bookless" and brain-dead.
But the emergence of a powerful libertarian strain within an increasingly triumphant conservative movement also suggests an almost impossible to avoid future clash between those libertarians and the social conservatives who have provided so many of the foot soldiers and so much of the energy in the rise of the right.
Liberals claim, of course, that the religious right dominates the Republican Party to such an extent as to threaten the separation between church and state upon which the nation’s liberties rests. While such a characterization is almost certainly more a byproduct of liberal hysteria and further evidence of liberalism’s intellectual demise than an accurate description of the Bush administration’s intentions, there is no denying that "South Park" and evangelicalism represent extreme ends of the cultural continuum.
The source of the problem is not just that libertarians often tend to be closer to leftists on questions of abortion, gay rights, drug use, etc., but that they also tend to view social conservatism, with its ecclesiastical foundation, as every bit as doctrinaire, intolerant and generally oppressive to the human spirit as leftism.
For many libertarians, the left wishes to silence freedom of expression and association, confiscate the fruits of our labor and leave our nation defenseless in the face of its ugly enemies. But the right is suspected of seeking to rule from the pulpit in an effort to ban drinking, drugs, fornication and just about anything else that smacks of fun.
As the old cliché suggests, the left seeks to pick our pocket while the religious right tries to look under our beds. Each represents, with its respective orthodoxies and dogma, an assault upon the individual freedom and choice that South Park conservatives value most highly.
Because they have already decided how everyone should live and tend toward absolutism, both religious right and humanist left feel justified in imposing their values on others by force at the expense of individual liberty.
When Republicans last week voted overwhelmingly in the House of Representatives to uphold the federal government’s power to prosecute those who use marijuana for medicinal purposes, they were providing a perfect example of precisely such coercive intolerance. It was the kind of political performance in which the mind was shut down, reason took a vacation and moralistic breastbeating took center stage in the worst holier-than-thou fashion.
Libertarians don’t have a vision of the good society, except to the extent that they wish for everyone to be able to live as they please so long as they respect the right of others to do the same. Rather than dispensing with morality, as often claimed by their critics, they have such great reverence for it that they don’t feel entitled or qualified to determine it for anyone other than themselves.
How strange, then, that a misguided moralism masquerading under the phony rubric of the "war on drugs" could lead Republicans to do such an immoral thing as denying a harmless substance like marijuana to people in pain.
James Dobson undoubtedly approved, but the growing number of conservatives who watch "South Park" almost certainly didn’t.
Exactly. Government profiting off of human stupidity and misery. And actively encouraging destructive behaviour. I find that immoral. And as you said, it mixes the feelings of perverse amusement and disgust.
Ah, but anything is okay as long as the government pulls in their cut, right?
Did I say that?
I am personally socially conservative, as I said before, with strong Judeo-Christian values. In fact, we mgiht have fairly similiar positions on many issues, I would guess (anything from gun control to abortion to taxes to foreign policy to states rights etc.). I just don't want to thrust that my personal values on to anyone else, because if I do that, then someone else could do that to me. And I love my freedoms and rights too much to let anyone do that to me, so if I can avert it by not enforcing my morality, I personally try. I think the government should privatize more, do less and worry about bigger picture issues more. That's just me.
The government has thousands upon thousands of laws that have to do with your personal finances and also they limit what you can and can and cannot do with your money.
Of course not. Nor can they prevent you from insulting people.
Plenty of hate speech rules. Go to any college campus. Go to any town hall meeting and see if you can say anything you want.
You have to give people freedom, and trust they will do the right thing. Most of them will. A few won't. That's life.,
No having laws that limit your idea of freedoms would lead to total anarchy. Just look at alcohol, the problems it advances in our society is unmeasurable. The cost to our society is tremendous. To have no laws governing it, so someone can per sue their idea of happiness is silly!
Didn't mean to put words in your mouth, sorry. Just trying to point out that the government seems to worry about morality only when they can make some money out of it. Whether that's a good thing by keeping them out of non-profitable issues, a bad thing by getting them involved in profitable issues, or both, is a whole nother bag of beans.
I'm in Canada, sausageseller, so I'm in even worse off in that respect. Hate crime laws, HUGE taxes, etc. I have a beer at a BBQ now and then, and sometimes wine with dinner. I am not going to stop drinking in moderation because there is a wino on the street who can't control himself. Would you?
If you revise freedom based on what some moron is willing to do or say, then you are creating a society custom tailored to the lowest common denominator: a seemingly benevolent tyrannical society built around the stupidest, most immoral, most perverse, most irrational, most illogical, most shortsighted, most sensitive member.
I am in college, right now, so I may very well be tending towards more idealist extremes than pragmatic. Nor do I think the situation on college campuses and town halls is anywhere close to good. That is a culture war we're losing. We should be educating people to do things in moderation and within reason, not banning them from doing so. I hope someone else agrees with me or I will be very scared for the future of American freedoms and rights.
And I'm saying I hear you. I even agree with you, sadly. Doesn't mean we shouldn't try to change the government. THat's why we're all here, isn't it?
Agreed.
You would be shocked to find out how many people around here think it is a problem worthy of reams of legislative hoo-hah.
>>
skepticism and irreverence
Now THERE's a winning political formula (/sarc). Another term for it is "political nihilism."
<<
I think the author is wrong about simplifying everything to irreverance. I think South Park demonstrates pure reverance in the morals of their fables: personal responsibility; truth; respect for others; freedom of choice.
Too much caffeine, fat, sugar, etc are destructive. Fatties cost this country lots in lost productivity time and health care. Stop the fatties before they destory America!
Yeah. Just wait until the next terrorist attack. Or for Chairman Mo (Maurice Strong) and Buttonwoo and all those cool cats to pull the rug from under the US banks and cause a moderate depression. Serious catastrophes always call a reordering of priorities.
On the whole, though, I think people on this board (and Free Dominion of course) are the best people in the world. Honestly. I'm glad to have these men and woman by my side and behind me. Especially since many of us have guns. So long as we remember what freedom is and how much it costs, we won't lose it. Even if we get no thanks from the left as a result.
Damn straight, noblejones.
and the Libertarian Party goes after both the Republicans and the Democrats, then I would consider to vote for them..
bump
This bears repeating.
It does bear repeating. The others are all important issues/debates, though.
absolutely. they are important, but moot issues if we don't win the war first is the point i'm making. now if we can only get some politicians to agree..
Many do. But they have to please lefty constituents too. The bastards.
Exactly. Every legislator--every human being--operates from a belief system, be it Christian, Jewish, atheist, nihilist, environmentalist, etc. But I've never heard a general call for atheists to leave their beliefs at home and stop mucking up the political process.
There's a fundamental dishonesty here, and I suspect some people just plain don't like Christian morality. Which is fine. But don't pretend that when you take Christian morality out you're left with something neutral and pure. You're left with someone's morality--not the Christian's, but someone's.
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