"The Tories should stop worrying about whether their view of the world works in theory and concentrate more on generating ideas that work in practice. They can live without ideology; what they urgently need is balls." --------------- Are Freeper conservatives more focused on ideology or results? What say you?
It wasn’t conservatism that failed. What failed were people who pretended to be conservative, but were nothing of the sort.
Mr. Tanenhaus is full of excrement.
Conservatism was never dead, in fact the failure of Bush and Obama just reinforce that true conservatism has always been the answer. Militant global socialism, by any name, will always fail. At least more and more Americans are realizing it.
This is more an apt description of the Democrats. This is horse sh!t pure and simple.
I basically see this as someone saying “Do as I say, not as I do.” In other words, get rid of all opposition, no matter if it is right or wrong.
Wishful thinking on their part.
Oh, almost forgot the question. Ideology or results?
Well, it takes both I think, but right now, Conservatives are DEMANDING results...
Conservative ideology is like a “test tube” and the “demand” is bubbling out of it like one of those high school experiments in which fire and smoke belch from the test tube while everyone in class is standing way back.
Now, we just have to point the test tube in the right direction...and keep the test tube supplied with the materials needed to continue the flame and smoke!
“Is Bill O’Reilly conservatism’s mortician?”
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he sure ain’t doin it no good!
YEAH YEAH....this is the same BS that the idiot class tried to sell after NIXON..... Didn’t hold true then and it CERTAINLY is not going to hold true now.
I’m sure we will get 100’s of these fake obits before the 2010 elections.
So when was this written?? 1948???
Not for Conservatives, anyway.
In “practice,” every Conservative compromise since Teddy Roosevelt has moved America further to the Left.
Compromise by Democrats simply means Democrats agree to postpone the Leftward movement for a year or two.
American Conservatism has never been defeated, just demoralized.
We have had no national political leadership since Newt began to move to the political Center in 1996.
We have had no national intellectual leadership since William F. Buckley retired from National Review.
Our politically and economically insane immigration policies, which are supported by much of the GOP leadership, have added almost 30 million voters to the Democratic Party since 1980.
I think much of the grassroots anger and passion we have seen at the Town Hall meetings can be traced directly to that lack of leadership.
I know many Freeper Conservatives passionately support Sarah Palin and Huckabee, but many other Conservatives, like me, worry that they do not have the gravitas to become national leaders.
This is a dark time for Conservatives.
But the strength and endurance of our movement is based on timeless principles and on looking reality straight in the eye.
I will never back down from those principles, even if the best I can do is post comments at Free Republic.
More than any other reason, Conservatism is in trouble because it got outflanked. It abdicated the culture (Hollywood), MSM, and the education system to the Left. Then, for good measure, it allowed the military industrial complex to be dismantled. After that, it was just a matter of time. Now, as we see with the ECLA, the Left is also going after religion. Bottom line — the Left has been very good at infiltration and Conservatives have been lousy at countering it. This is because Conservatives are fundamentally fair while Liberals (despite what they say) are fundamentally unfair.
A book on conservatism by the Book Review Editor of the New York Times is kind of like a book on the evils of mice written by a cat.
The author confuses Republicans with Conservatives. Pubs are just less liberal. The expansion of gov’t, spending, & debt by both Bushes was only marginally less than Clinton, Carter, & LBJ.
Conservatives have been reluctantly supporting Pubs because they SEEM to be the lesser of 2 evils.
I personally have abandoned that false choice. I'd rather an open liberal like Obama destroy this country than have a closet liberal like McCain do so in the name of conservatism.
Like the Carter years, we need to get a good bellyful of big, greedy, wasteful gov’t, hopefully to realize just how bad it really is, & be willing to do something about it.
Namely, vote them ALL out - Pubs & Rats, and replace them with representatives pledged to repeal & abolish the welfare & nanny state; pledged to stop deficit spending immediately & payoff the debt ASAP; and pledged to outlaw pork barrel spending. (That's just my short list)
Fascinating question that I have been wrestling around with for awhile. The fact that I couldn't decide what I would do in Hank's position really made the book enjoyable for me.
I'd say the balance has tipped for me, and I'm heading down the ideological path. The Constitution is, IMO, little more than wallpaper these days, and while that fact both bothered and disappointed me, I was willing to live with the system we had. But lately, the more the left pushes, the more I push back. Actually, I think they may have pushed me from conservative to libertarian, but I'm still working out for myself just what those labels mean.
I've been neutral on the question of supporting the Republicans (stopping the Democrats) while allowing the party to slide left. We've got to stop the slide, and it's gonna hurt but this time around we had to protect the SCOTUS, and last time it was, well, "there's always an Arquillian battle cruiser". I THINK I would have voted for McCain, but there was a chance I would not have -- but then Palin came along and I was able to avoid the question. (I really wish we could vote either for OR AGAINST a candidate, I'd have been happy to vote against Obama but not for McCain -- but then we could have someone win with negative votes).
TEMPORARY tax relief which kept the economy from crashing.
a ban on stem-cell research for the evangelicals;
Repeating Leftist talking points. There was never any "ban". Since when does a rufusal to commit tax dollars constitute a ban?
war with Iraq for the neoconservatives.
The war was to be proactive against Islamic terror. (Actually, a credible case could be made against the war on conservative grounds.)