Posted on 11/08/2008 11:40:01 PM PST by Nachum
Let us bend over and kiss our ass goodbye. Our 28-year conservative opportunity to fix the moral and practical boundaries of government is gone--gone with the bear market and the Bear Stearns and the bear that's headed off to do you-know-what in the woods on our philosophy.
An entire generation has been born, grown up, and had families of its own since Ronald Reagan was elected. And where is the world we promised these children of the Conservative Age? Where is this land of freedom and responsibility, knowledge, opportunity, accomplishment, honor, truth, trust, and one boring hour each week spent in itchy clothes at church, synagogue, or mosque? It lies in ruins at our feet, as well it might, since we ourselves kicked the shining city upon a hill into dust and rubble. The progeny of the Reagan Revolution will live instead in the universe that revolves around Hyde Park.
Mind you, they won't live in Hyde Park. Those leafy precincts will be reserved for the micromanagers and macro-apparatchiks of liberalism--for Secretary of the Department of Peace Bill Ayers and Secretary of the Department of Fairness Bernardine Dohrn. The formerly independent citizens of our previously self-governed nation will live, as I said, around Hyde Park. They will make what homes they can in the physical, ethical, and intellectual slums of the South Side of Chicago.
The South Side of Chicago is what everyplace in America will be once the Democratic administration and filibuster-resistant Democratic Congress have tackled global warming, sustainability, green alternatives to coal
and oil, subprime mortgage foreclosures, consumer protection, business oversight, financial regulation, health care reform, taxes on the "rich," and urban sprawl. The Democrats will have plenty of time to do all this because conservatism, if it is ever reborn, will not come again in the lifetime of anyone old enough to be rounded up by ACORN and shipped to the polling booths.
None of this is the fault of the left. After the events of the 20th century--national socialism, international socialism, inter-species socialism from Earth First--anyone who is still on the left is obviously insane and not responsible for his or her actions. No, we on the right did it. The financial crisis that is hoisting us on our own petard is only the latest (if the last) of the petard hoistings that have issued from the hindquarters of our movement. We've had nearly three decades to educate the electorate about freedom, responsibility, and the evils of collectivism, and we responded by creating a big-city-public-school-system of a learning environment.
Liberalism had been running wild in the nation since the Great Depression. At the end of the Carter administration we had it cornered in one of its dreadful low-income housing projects or smelly public parks or some such place, and we held the Taser gun in our hand, pointed it at the beast's swollen gut, and didn't pull the trigger. Liberalism wasn't zapped and rolled away on a gurney and confined somewhere until it expired from natural causes such as natural law or natural rights.
While I don’t agree with P.J. on everything he writes here, but I do admire the way he writes it!
Instead of leading, we still needed a bogey man as a focal point.
***No, we on the right did it.***
It’s not so much that we did it, but that we let it happen and we allowed ourselves to believe that some of our leaders were actually conservative.
ping
How will conservatives ever pull the voters away from the liberal feeding trough? Liberalism is a sickness for which there is no known cure.
Who’s this “we”, P.J.?
When they start to starve they may come around. Dear Leader won't be able to prevent this.
It sure as hell wasn't me. With due respect to PJ.
That is the $64 question right now and into the future. It’s never been done before. It will, literally, take a miracle. But I fear God has had it with us.
I agree that conservatism is almost dead-almost. When optimism by conservatives doesn’t actually become true, then it’s time to think about life outside of politics as much as humanly possible. I honestly don’t see any kind of serious and successful conservative comeback for, at least, sixty years, if ever. I should know, because I’m still stuck in Massachusetts, where both Republicanism and conservatism have been successfully suppressed for more than fifty years now and counting. Almost all elected Massachusetts Republicans at all levels are “leftist” Republicans anyways. And now, the majority of U.S. voters have made “Massachusetts politics” go national. This is really a profoundly bad thing to have done, and too many conservatives still don’t know the full extent of the political damage that’s really coming everybody’s way for a very long time.
Two words. Government cheese.
It is delusional to think you can stop the political pendulum from swinging back and forth.
However,
We DID blow it.
Yes there was historical precedence that we would lose much this election, even before the the market meltdown.
Here is the good news...
We own the failure, that means we have the power of success as well.
Even the mighty Obama Messiah cannot stop conservatism when it is running no all eight cylinders.
I figure we were running on 2.5 cylinders this time.
Time to take the engine back to the garage and fix it.
RINO mechanics need not apply.
“It’s not so much that we did it, but that we let it happen and we allowed ourselves to believe that some of our leaders were actually conservative.”
By we you mean conservatives then I believe you are incorrect. Not so long ago, 2006 to be exact, on this site many people were telling others to stay home and not vote to teach us a lesson. Now look who’s been taught the lesson? The Dems have just about a filabuster proof Senate a Marxist for president and tax increases on the horizon. We as a whole need to get our acts together and promote the conservative politicians. Promote the likes of a Duncan Hunter, Tom McClintock etc.
We as a group didn’t press our leaders the way the Left did and we are all going to pay.
End of semi-rant.
Aren’t poorer people even more succeptible to socialism? Venezuala comes to mind.
The real fun will begin when the Obama 'government' runs out of that pie his followers are so fond of.
Correction
no all eight cylinders.
Should be..
ON all eight cylinders.
When can we get a damn edit function on this forum!
Everywhere else does.
There is always a tomorrow.
I am Joe the American.
It seems you have me there. I just try to appeal to the better nature of man. I'm wasting my time.
We do. It’s called preview.
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