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.
If you use the power of law to enforce the norms which are encouraged from the pulpit, the pulpit becomes superfluous, and the adherence to the norm becomes something far less than an act of faith.
I am actually quite heterosexual. Actually it isn't forcing my morality on others, because I am not denying or criminalizing, therby violating the rights of another American.
I do not support the war on drugs, and if there was an active war on alcohol, I would not support it either, this is not forcing my morality on others, it is allowing them freedom.
The government shouldn't bee endorcing homosexuality or heterosexuality, it does not need to be in a citizens private affairs, and a contract between adult individuals, is that a contract.
I don't care what consenting adults do behind closed doors on private property which they own. I have a problem with Pride Parades, for example, but not the homosexual act. And that doesn't make me gay, Mulch.
Saying "all homosexuals should be loved and no negative comments can be made" is enforcing morality on you. Saying that they have the right to screw behind closed doors in not enforcing MY morality on you. In a public place, they should be jailed, just like straight people. Because, really, who wants to see that when you're buying a new car...
Homosexulaity is perverse.
I for one would join that party..
When it's dudes, yes. When it's chicks, no.
yanno, as a "south park conservative" i think the biggest thing is that we SPCs are more interested in the BIG issues at hand. i'm sorry, when we have an entire culture trying to wipe ours out, it is not the time to talk about gay marriage, abortion, gays in the military, flag burning, giving cities the right to seize property, etc. we should be standing together, calling the citizens to arms, closing the borders and getting ready for war.
And, according to what I have been told by queers I have known, it's quite painful if you have a small mouth or a small, uh, small, hmm, well you get the idea.....
When it's more than two chicks, even better. You know, if they're hot. And maybe they'll let me join in. :)
I'm not sure what logic you are trying to use, but you don't have to find an act perverse, or not perverse. I am not a drug addict, however I don't care if someone wants to get high. It is not enforcing morality upon anyone, is someone forbidding you from entering a contract? No. No morality is being legislated, just equal rights. If you were forced to be gay, then that is enfocing morality.
Don't consider this me taking a side, please please post a link to this definition of homosexual.
Or clrify your statement to something other than "by definition", such as "by proxy", or something.
What I really don't want to see is a society endorsing the "anything goes" attitude that somehow sexual preference is a protected Civil right. I don't buy that there is an analogy with interracial marriage. What society has moved to the "progressive" position of free homosexual - transgender -- man boy -- Etc relationships? How can you be so sure you would like living in such a society here in this day and age? I don't doubt that society could give a license to any behavior they wish, including but not limited to PDAs, rape and murder. But we have a social need to have some rules. (This is really the origin of the Old Testament treatement of homosexual behavior.)
What bothers me is a small group of societies members raise a "freedom and civil rights issue" when one really does not exist and claims that the rest of us will really like the new society when they acheive it.
And as for marriage rights, the only right being sought is financial. The right to be declared a dependent and share in medical and pension benefits. All other aspects, like consulting in medical treatements can and have been covered by contracts. Give someone your Power of Attorney and you will see what I mean. That you don't see this is evidence of a lack of research, or worse (you have the same agenda and have not yet admitted it.)
Not thinking homosexuality is pervese makes one a homosexual? Wow. What an incredible leap in logic.
In regards to your last point. I dont see the homosexual marriage thing anywhere near the interracial thing. Regardless of race they were still heterosexual. Homosexual marriages cannot say that.
Set up the legal framework for gay couples, dont call it marriage. Marriage is a religious connotation. Call it whatever the heck you want but dont call it marriage. In that vein, states should get out of the business of issuing marriage licenses and instead issue a document showing legality of the "contract" Let the churches issue the marriage papers.
And thanks for the South Park ping!
excellent!
So is stupidity.
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