[fporretto]

While the article makes some good points, it shares a common characteristic of the material from the Rockwell site: shrill stridency.

I'm a libertarian (non-party: been there, done that, dressed the wounds and moved on), and I find that I'm much more conservative than most people, including most Freepers, who call themselves conservatives. Conservatism, of course, isn't a political posture but a high respect for that which has been proved to work, and a healthy skepticism toward panaceas presented in a flurry of hype. A panacea can be an idea, a process, a person or a party. Those who look to any of these for salvation from our political and social difficulties are accepting the short end of a big bet.

I'd thought I'd find some commonality of values here, including the traditional conservative emphasis on politeness, but much of what I see suggests that, as on the Left, a lot of folks on the Right aren't really interested in discussing anything with anyone. Either agree with them, or get out.

If I could wish for one thing for the coming year, it would be a nationwide restoration of civility: the determination to maintain high standards of courtesy even under conditions of disagreement, and to snub those who flout those standards. That wouldn't be a panacea either, but at least it would lower the volume enough that those of us who'd like to talk about our differences of opinion would have a chance to do so.

Freedom, Wealth, and Peace,
Francis W. Porretto
Visit the Palace Of Reason: http://palaceofreason.com

[serinde]

I'd thought I'd find some commonality of values here, including the traditional conservative emphasis on politeness, but much of what I see suggests that, as on the Left, a lot of folks on the Right aren't really interested in discussing anything with anyone. Either agree with them, or get out.

This is also why I joined, and I've noticed this same trend, esp. after 9-11. I don't always agree with others, but I like hearing their opinions. I don't like being called stupid or foolish just because I don't agree with something. Name calling and rudeness simply aren't necessary or called for, not toward article authors, nor posters.

[BluesDuke]

I'm a libertarian (non-party: been there, done that, dressed the wounds and moved on)...

Welcome to the club. I have dissociated myself from the LP, though it leaves me a kind of political orphan, inasmuch as I should sooner be caught at a football game than a registered Democrat and I, like Larry Elder, cannot suffer a Republican Party which talks the talk but cannot and almost willfully refuses to walk the walk.

I'd thought I'd find some commonality of values here, including the traditional conservative emphasis on politeness, but much of what I see suggests that, as on the Left, a lot of folks on the Right aren't really interested in discussing anything with anyone. Either agree with them, or get out.

Which provokes me to think that, perhaps, conservatives here (and elsewhere, for that matter) could use a republication of Frank S. Meyer's The Conservative Mainstream - particularised references of time and place aside, this gathering of a motherlode of Meyer columns and essays from National Review and Modern Age, among other publications, is a splendid overview of the man who did such yeoman's work in trying to uphold and remind conservatives of the very real libertarian strain and bindery of conservative thought and politics. Even better would be Mr. Meyer's In Defense of Freedom, which is still in print. As a kind of proof that one can and often enough does arise from intellectual hell (he was once a Marxist), Meyer should stand with Albert Jay Nock, Frank Chodorov, H.L. Mencken, Rose Wilder Lane, Isabel Patterson, and John T. Flynn as a titan of the libertarian right.