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Future Clash (A 'South Park conservative'/libertarian counterculture emerges)
The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette ^ | June 23, 2005 | Bradley R. Gitz

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.


TOPICS: Constitution/Conservatism; Editorial; Philosophy
KEYWORDS: southpark; southparkrepublicans
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Comment #81 Removed by Moderator

To: LizardQueen
There's too many fruitcakes in the LP right now for it to be a viable party.

Sadly, you may be right. I still read the LP's publications from time to time, and sometimes I swear I'm reading Chomsky when the subject of the war is raised.

82 posted on 06/23/2005 11:44:35 AM PDT by bassmaner (Let's take the word "liberal" back from the commies!!)
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Comment #83 Removed by Moderator

To: quidnunc

Trey Parker and Matt Stone are conservatives. Actually, Trey is a staunch libertarian.


84 posted on 06/23/2005 11:47:54 AM PDT by snowrip ("Going to war without the French is like going hunting without your lawnmower.)
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To: bassmaner; All

Why I'll never vote for the LP is that it seems that they wanted Kerry to win... If the LP went after Bush and Kerry who knows...


85 posted on 06/23/2005 11:48:17 AM PDT by KevinDavis (the space/future belongs to the eagles, the earth/past to the groundhogs)
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To: lugsoul
Which part of that definition applies to those who don't have sex with persons of the same-sex, but also don't view it as 'perverted'?

That's the point I'm making. That group of people, as you defined above, doesn't exist. Simply, if you don't view the homosexual act as perverted then you are a homosexual. Whether or not you have actually engaged in the homosexual act is irrelevant.
86 posted on 06/23/2005 11:48:31 AM PDT by Mulch (tm)
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To: Mulch
That's the point I'm making. That group of people, as you defined above, doesn't exist. Simply, if you don't view the homosexual act as perverted then you are a homosexual. Whether or not you have actually engaged in the homosexual act is irrelevant.

So, if we ever do reach a society that has no concept or understanding of "homosexuality", every there would, by your definition (which I'd still like to see a link for, or for you to use another word than definition), be a homosexual?

A child, who has no concept of sex, yet alone homosexuality, and therefore does not view the homosexual act as perverted, is therefore homosexual?

By your "definition", every baby is therefore born into this world homosexual. I have to say, that concept disturbs me, and I reject your definition.

Please work harder at your definition ...

87 posted on 06/23/2005 11:51:56 AM PDT by bobhoskins (potentially deadly poster)
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To: Mulch
That's the point I'm making. That group of people, as you defined above, doesn't exist. Simply, if you don't view the homosexual act as perverted then you are a homosexual. Whether or not you have actually engaged in the homosexual act is irrelevant.

And someone engaged in homosexual acts, who thinks to himself "Gosh, this is perverted." is NOT a homosexual?

88 posted on 06/23/2005 11:53:13 AM PDT by bobhoskins (potentially deadly poster)
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To: Mulch
"That group of people, as you defined above, doesn't exist."

Well, you made your statement in an exchange with someone who fits exactly within the group you claim doesn't exist. Are you calling him a liar?

There are many people who neither engage in nor desire to engage in sexual activity with members of the same sex, but who also do not view same-sex activity as 'perverted.' By what contorted logic are those persons 'homosexuals?'

89 posted on 06/23/2005 11:53:18 AM PDT by lugsoul ("She talks and she laughs." - Tom DeLay)
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To: USAFJeeper
This is really starting to confuse me.

I *thought* that the Liberal v. Conservative thing was about 'collective', or govt, solutions v. 'individual' solutions.

I thought 'conservative' meant "for minimal govt intrustion".

If so, then 'Social Conservatives' aren't political conservatives.

Libertarians would actually be 'radical conservatives'.

What has happened to the meanings of these words?

90 posted on 06/23/2005 11:55:33 AM PDT by Dominic Harr
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To: Mulch
Hmmm:

And even so -- where does the idea that 'perversion' between consenting adults should be legislated against?

I believe that 'S & M' is perverted. But I don't think we should change the law to say that 'S & M' practitioners can't get married . . .

91 posted on 06/23/2005 11:59:12 AM PDT by Dominic Harr
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To: bobhoskins
Sexuality, in human development, is influenced both genetically and socially. Homosexuals are born with a curtain proclivities, similar to the way an alcoholic may have a weakness. But as a society, we don't encourage alcoholism and we shouldn't encourage homosexuality. Like alcoholism, homosexuality is a destructive behavior for the individual and society as a whole.
92 posted on 06/23/2005 12:02:24 PM PDT by Mulch (tm)
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To: Mulch

The question wasn't "Do you care..?". The question was "do you think the act is perverted..?"

You want to try to answer the question again?

When you put it that way, yes, it IS perverted. It is literally a perversion of the reproductive act. But, by the same standard, so is ANY sexual act that has no chance of resulting in pregnancy. or any sex for that matter. Sex with a condom is a perversion as well, though not on the same scale, but by the same definition.

And as others said, I think America has bigger problems to worry about than where a few Americans stick their dick at night, so long as all parties are consenting adults of sound mind.


93 posted on 06/23/2005 12:07:12 PM PDT by Alexander Rubin (You make my heart glad by building thus, as if Rome is to be eternal.)
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To: Mulch
Fantastic, that's more of the typpe argument you should stick with, rather than making up definitions out of whole cloth for words that have pretty clear definitions already.

However, now you equate homosexuality with alcoholism, and if you're willing to PUNISH one you must be willing to PUNISH another the same way.

So, you may want to revise a bit. I don't think the alcoholism comparison QUITE works.

94 posted on 06/23/2005 12:08:49 PM PDT by bobhoskins
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To: bpjam
Good afternoon.

You should be a pollster, bpjam.

Who says we only get two choices?

Michael Frazier
95 posted on 06/23/2005 12:08:58 PM PDT by brazzaville (No surrender,no retreat. Well, maybe retreat's ok)
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To: Mulch; All

So basically you want the Government to monitor people's behavior then??? You want the Government to go into people's bedrooms then??


96 posted on 06/23/2005 12:09:30 PM PDT by KevinDavis (the space/future belongs to the eagles, the earth/past to the groundhogs)
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To: Alexander Rubin
And as others said, I think America has bigger problems to worry about than where a few Americans stick their dick at night, so long as all parties are consenting adults of sound mind.

Sound mind?

No, I don't think we should worry about where Democrats stick theirs, either.

:-D

97 posted on 06/23/2005 12:09:45 PM PDT by Dominic Harr
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To: Alexander Rubin
But, by the same standard, so is ANY sexual act that has no chance of resulting in pregnancy. or any sex for that matter.

Old people sex is gross.

98 posted on 06/23/2005 12:09:48 PM PDT by bobhoskins
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To: Mulch
That group of people, as you defined above, doesn't exist.

You really couldn't be more wrong. I don't give a damn who is screwing whom in my neighbor's home. I myself am not a homosexual and I don't care about what homosexuals do in their bedrooms.

99 posted on 06/23/2005 12:11:06 PM PDT by Bella_Bru
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To: Bella_Bru; All

Basically I don't care what happends in the bedroom between conseting adults... Hell if there is an orgy going I don't care.. What I don't want is the Government monitoring our bedrooms period...


100 posted on 06/23/2005 12:17:59 PM PDT by KevinDavis (the space/future belongs to the eagles, the earth/past to the groundhogs)
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