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.
But the Supreme Court justices (young & liberal) he will appoint will be doing damage long after Obama is gone.
Maybe the route is to separate “Government” and its functions and “Society/Culture” and its functions. Government really should not be in private lives-sex, toilets, light bulbs, rewards and punishments via taxes for buying houses, having kids, or whatever. Societal norms, on the other hand, are what the culture gets to decide. Things like marriage are really a function of current social norms.
If we can thread this needle we will be able to get a lot of the younger people back because they are really libertarian at heart.
Many, many very good points.
Even the best of things don't work out well in a fallen world.
It wasn't the leadership. They used the tactics they did because it played with that vocal faction of conservatives that place personal destruction of one's opponent above any kind of principles. There is a certain kind of 'conservative' that does not seem to know what he really believes. He only knows what he hates.
Even within what is loosely termed 'conservatism', there are differing agenda. Should everyone adhere to their particular 'principles', there would never be enough agreement to maintain any party.
Good point but I still think the Republican Revolution ended with Clinton's impeachment
The "moderates" have been spinning this lie in an effort to blame conservatives for the RINO-led disasters of the last two years.
It didn't happen. We lost the middle in 2006 because they got tired of hearing about an unwinnable war (which became completely winnable three months later), Jack Abramoff, Mark Foley's text messages, and preachers smoking speed with gay escorts. Not because a handful of pissed off Freepers sat on their hands.
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