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.
Are anarchists actually capable of having a convention?
< ]B^)
They've tried, but every time someone tries to call the convention to order, everyone else screams "FASCIST!" and leaves. :)
If we stick with what the Constitution says (not what a court wishes it says) and follow the princpals of our Founders, everyone will be happy (except the left).
But what about our freedoms? By giving the government power to legislate morality, you are destroying the concept of freedom. Absolute power corrupts absolutely, unless you are God (which the government certainly is not). At what point do we stop voting because the government knows better? American conception and protection of freedoms and rights are critical to America's success, prosperity and power. And that of its people.
Furthermore, there are many theological and philosophical and logical arguments against legislating morality. Without freedom, there is no good and evil. You can't help but choose good, so its meaningless, because someone else chose for you. Where's the value in your action? Where's free will? I like Judeo-Christian morality. That is the code I personally fllow, and I value it for what it does for me and for others who choose to follow it, and for making the world a better place (as I see it). People can have the same values and different priorities, right? So who is to say whose priorities are higher? You? I am sure there is someone who is just as religious as you, within your sect of Christianity (as I presume you are Christian), who would vehemently disagree with you over what are priorities. Which of you should legislate?
Socialism is a set of morality too (and I would hazard to say a religion, even though pinkos hate me for saying that). They shouldn't legislate their religion. We shouldn't legislate ours. We must legislate universal goods, like freedom, tolerance (though not love), rights and duties. Not individual codes of morality. Because I won't live in a Muslim or socialist morality in America (if I wanted either, I'd go to Saudi Arabia or Sweden respectively), so why should they live in mine?
Amen, Tribune7. I believe in God, but you don't have to. But either believe in the Constitution and the principles of our founders, shut up and live with it or get out.
Great post to which I give a simple THANK YOU.
Granted, the WOT and the border are huge issues and should be front and center, but if we just ignore the rest of it, what kind of a country are we saving? Part of what makes America worth fighting for is WHAT we are as a country. Reverence for the flag, our nation's symbol is no small thing. There's a reason Islamic extremists burn our flag when protesting...they're symbolically burning us. There's nothing wrong with a society holding some things sacred, even if it's only out of tradition because it's part of the cement that holds us together.
I know abortion is one of those hot button issues and I know the arguments about "it's her body" blah, blah, blah. But by accepting that argument, we are failing to protect the least among us. "My body, my choice" is selfish and self-centered. Whether at the time it can live on its own is irrelevant. One of my sisters would die without being hooked up to a dialysis machine...she can't live on her own either.
I don't care what people do in the privacy of their bedrooms and I don't have a problem with civil unions. Being openly gay in the military is an issue, though less so for women than men, I think. Look, you've got 18, 19, 20 year old boys loaded with testosterone and spit charged with defending our nation. I raised 2 sons, and I know what boys are like at that age (my youngest is 20). In the abstract I understand the argument that it doesn't matter, but reality is entirely different. Because to the majority of these young soldiers it WOULD be an issue (even Colin Powell for all his RINO ways understood that). These young men have enough to worry about without having to worry about the guy in the bunk next to them...even if that guy had NO intention of doing anything. As they are out there putting their lives on the line every day, they don't need the added burden.
Cindie
"And really is who is screwing whom really the biggest problem we face in the USA??
You would be shocked to find out how many people around here think it is a problem worthy of reams of legislative hoo-hah."
I never understood that. The idea of a guy with a guy is gross to me, too. That's why I steer clear. But I get the feeling there are some people around who know that gays exist and just cannot deal with it for some reaosn. WHo knows. I guess it has never intruded on my life in any way, and it's things that intrude on my life that I have a major problem with.
Well said BUMP!
Welcome to FR!
Nero fiddling.
There is an active political lobby that is trying to say homosexuality is "normal", while all types of statistics show that a homosexual "lifestyle" is basically a "deathstyle" and yet you say no big deal as you fiddle away.
Is drug addiction "normal". Should drug addiction be pushed in schools.
That's my problem with Libertarians. They are so strung up in their ideology like liberals, they can't see common sense or curse it.
Don't count on it.
and republicans split into two groups: religious conservatives and secular conservatives...
Nah, the conservatives will remain. The secular liberals will join the Liberts or form another party or not vote at all.
Well you should care, there was a time in the 70's and 80's when the blood supply was tainted by AIDS, by this "innocent" behavior.
Many hemophiliacs were the actual innocent victims.
And the definition of insanity is repeating itself as the homosexual "lifestyle" of excessive drug use and multiple sex partners is again in vogue.
Oh that's right it just an "innocent" behavior and they aren't hurting anybody.
Are you going to start a organization called PAFD?
(Posters Against Fat Drivers)
How about "Bella's Law"?
Convict repeat Fat Drivers!
Do you believe sodomy is a constitutional right?
"This will tear apart the Republican Party."
It hasn't yet. The GOP's solution, one that's worked so far, seems to be avoiding doing much of anything for social conservatives or libertarians and getting them both mad at government instead of the porkbarrel RINO-run GOP. Constitutionalist judges seem to be the only solution to the problem, because God knows no elected official cares enough to even try to fix the issues conservatives and libertarians agree upon. PBS, or pork, or government bloat...the government hasn't shrunk since Reagan.
Never happened in a libertarians world.
Your post brought to mind the fact that it is impossible to be conservative when one is socially liberal.
Are you going to start a organization called PAFD?
(Posters Against Fat Drivers)
How about "Bella's Law"?
Convict repeat Fat Drivers!
That's what kills me about Libertarians such as Bella. They use the same moral relativism arguement as the liberals do.
Some guy who is stuffing his face, who is actually only hurting himself is the same as a homosexual who has multiple partners and maybe spreading disease to his partners and society as a whole, are the same.
"Drinking, drugs, and fornication" just about sums up the South Park libertarian definition and ideal of "fun." Liberals may be intellectually impoverished but libertarians are just as impoverished in terms of how to find and experience fun and joy. Both groups are cretins in things that matter.
I still think most Liberts are liberals, the only difference being Liberts pretend to be more protective of their moolah.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.