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.
Not true at all. See this post.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1428997/posts
Even if you remove military from the equation, W is less fiscally conservative than Bill Clinton. By a lot.
I am not sure what you mean by this statement, but I agree maybe I was a little tough on the Mormans and the Jehovas Wittnesses. What I really don't like about "some" religious people is when they get in my face and tell me I have to believe like them to be "saved".
I'm heterosexual and I've had more partners than most gay dudes. Then again, I am really friggin good looking.
Ewww...
I really do believe we Republicans and Libertarians need to start campaigning for a smaller, more fiscally responsible government again.
I find the "in your face, 'Repent And Be Saved!'" types few and far between, and more amusing than annoying. I do understand why many people are bothered by them, I just don't happen to be one who is annoyed by this sort of thing.
When I referred to the "command economy zealots", I was specifically talking about political activists who advocate for socialist economic policies. They are far more numerous than religious evangelicals and they are more "in your face" and screaming at people about the moral obligation to legislate "progressive" tax policies and more "generous" welfare and entitlement programs. When their faith based Marxist beliefs are enacted into law, then it affects me far more than some door to door preacher could ever hope to.
They, of course, have a constitutional right to advocate for these ideas, but many of them become vitriolic with hate when anyone suggests that their ideas might be unwise or less than practical. The Democratic Party holds many of these zealots and Ted Kennedy is a perfect example of one.
Same problem, magnified 15x, since I live in Canada. People up here believes the government main function is a provider of social services. It's sad, really.
Same problem, magnified 15x, since I live in Canada. People up here believes the government main function is a provider of social services. It's sad, really.
We libertarians are just looking for the moment to stab the "bible thumpers" in the back. We are growing and our day will come as the older Pre-Baby Boomer collectivist friendly generation dies off anf.
Don't forget, the libertarian leaning states such as Nevada are the fastest growing states in the USA.
I'm eagerly waiting for the baby boom generation to start dying off too, and I'm one of them.
In the political arena, too often the evangelicals join and bolster the "command economy zealots" in the pursuit of their agenda. Many were all too happy to see the USSC decide in favor of the Bush administration in upholding Wickard v Filburn and the New Deal Commerce Clause.
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