Because I can be simplistic and shrill, too.

by John

When Kathy G. used Matt Yglesias's corner of the blogosphere as a forum to impugn the possibility of a real revival of conservative thought and sum up conservatism as the view that should money "be concentrated in the hands of the corporations and the rich", I was as insulted as Helen was, and pretty sure that this took the cake for crude, reductionistic demonizing of the Other Side. Now the man himself is back, quoting himself no less, and determined to reclaim dessert for himself:

... some of these folks' ideas are bad, whereas the ones that are good will never be implemented by conservatives. Why? Because, as I've said before, "the problem is actually much worse -- the problem with the conservative movement is that it's fundamentally malign." If we're lucky, liberals will steal the right's better ideas only to see the conservative movement eventually turn on them (see, e.g., EITC, Section 8 vouchers, cap-and-trade) in the interests of greater evil.

Liberals, meanwhile, and in case you hadn't heard, are a bunch of atheist, elitist, latte-sipping baby-killing pussy-footing socialists who want to take all your money and give it to the crack heads and welfare queens, outlaw religion and private property, and do away with gender, family, and pretty much everything else noble about the heritage of the West.

I mean, come on now - is this really the best we can do by way of political discourse? Really? For a member of a party whose presumptive nominee's most recent examples of change we can believe in include (1) compromising with blatantly selling out to the Bush Administration in its evisceration of the Fourth Amendment and its support of big-donor telecoms' capitulation in illegal government spying and (2) donating his soul to big agriculture and going in for the worst energy policy idea EVER to go off like this on the possibility of a non-ignoble conservatism seems a bit over the top, in any case.

Comments

[hoi polloi]

I think you mistake conservative movement for conserative. Unfortunately, the latter have been too coy of late in allowing the former to sport their mantle while making sport of their realm.