Mmm, Butt Paste, Yum
Christopher Buckley, perhaps America’s only intentionally funny conservative, has endorsed Obama. This, needless to say, has created a great deal of consternation and fork-banging over at the special needs shelter that Christopher’s father built. Jonah the Whale is all over it:
I am a great fan of Christopher’s. I am proud to call him my friend and I am grateful for his many kindnesses. None of that changes because of his decision to endorse Barack Obama. But I think he’s wrong.
I would very much like to leave it at that.
But, of course, Jonah won’t leave it at that
[Buckley] thinks McCain has lost it. I think that is unfair and untrue. His only real evidence stems from McCain’s recent political performance.
Grandma thinks Grandpa has lost it, but I think that is unfair and untrue. Her only real evidence stems from that recent incident where they found Gramps three miles from home, wandering in a parking lot in his boxer shorts screaming “Traitor!” each time he saw a Volkswagen, Porsche or Audi.
But even if you think McCain has run a less than honorable campaign …, it’s hard for me to take the complaint all that seriously from someone who worked for — and greatly admires — George HW Bush. Campaigns often require a certain tackiness, as was conspicuously the case with poppa Bush. But Bush pere was not a tacky president.
Yes, even though Bush 41 ran the Willie Horton ad, he refused to call that Negro Clarence Thomas “boy,” and once he even let Thomas eat some picnic leftovers in the White House kitchen with the staff.
Meanwhile, Christopher invokes Oliver Wendell Holmes’ famous line that FDR had a “first-class temperament” and so too Obama. Indeed, he suggests that Obama is a man of great character because he’s a man of great temperament. Conceding for the sake of argument that Obama’s temperament is first rate, are the two really the same thing? I don’t think so.
‘Cuz, you know, it’s no problem having a barking mad lunatic with his finger on the nuclear trigger as long as he believes in cutting taxes.
Buckley’s a pompous ass, but I do enjoy his latest contribution to the “watch the conservative pundits try to spin THIS one” marathon that this campaign has begun.
Say, you think Election 2008 is just some kind of elaborate reality show? Last Conservative Blowhard Standing?
Become, rather, not begun.
It’s too early.
How many people do you suppose Jonah Goldberg manages to convert to the fold with his incisive reasonings?
(Take it as a given, please, that “his incisive reasonings” is being conveyed in a tone of extreme sarcasm.)
“…a certain tackiness.” I like that image. The big bag of Cheetos, bottom up and down the throat. No chewing. Hmmmm. Cheetos.
[Buckley] thinks McCain has lost it. I think that is unfair and untrue. His only real evidence stems from McCain’s recent political performance.
That would be the evidence by which the whole of the country judges McCain, wouldn’t it?
My rooting interest is less about Obama himself than about how big a hurt he can put to the Republican Party. I don’t want the Republican Party simply defeated in November, I want to see it smashed beyond all recognition, in such wriggling, writhing, anguished disarray that it can barely reconstitute itself, so desperate for answers that it looks to Newt Gingrich for visionary guidance, his wisdom and insight providing the perfect cup of hemlock to finish off the conservative movement for good so that it can rot in the salted earth of memory unmissed and unmourned in toxic obscurity.
I really don’t think that’s too much to ask, even in these frugal times.
Amen, Mr. Wolcott.
~
The ‘Load is just self-parody now:
I’ve been meaning to do a book reccomendation post for a while.
Here’s what he says about his first two recommendations:
First, is a book I haven’t read it yet…
Second,… I’ve only been surfing through, but it seems like a great intro-survey of the subject.
The other two he hasn’t finished yet.
(Also, can ya believe he’s a senior editor over there?)
Hey, I coined Jonah the Whale ages ago. Thief!! Oh wait, that was under my other nick. Carry on.
I knew this endorsement would drive the wingnutscenti ’round the bend.
Senior editor is the new assistant vice president.
Last Conservative Blowhard Standing?
That was the Republican primary.
Also, for the kind of sheer empty-headed stupidity which Roy Edroso might depict as “faaaarrrrrrrt!” this short one is echt.
Jonah proves once again that his grasp of reality, logic, and evidence are nonexistent. He also confirms that the rightards are in full meltdown mode, with Buckley’s defection providing the coup de grace to whatever tenuois hold they had on sanity. I’m buying popcorn, this is going to be too good to miss. Love it when wingnut welfare babies eat their own.
Buckley] thinks McCain has lost it. I think that is unfair and untrue. His only real evidence stems from McCain’s recent political performance.
“Who you gonna believe?! Your lying eyes and the son of the esteemed William Buckley, father of the conservative movement and founder of the magazine or…me?”
This is priceless stuff.
Does this mean curtains for the great stand-up comedy of Goldburg, Buckley & Whomever that was going to play in Colorado Springs a few months ago? Would Martin & Lewis do this? Skiles & Henderson? Martin & Rossi? Burns & Schreiber? We were all eagerly awaiting the “Republican Airline Food vs. Democratic Airline Food” routine for which they are all so justly famous.
New Newsweek poll shows Obama leading even among people over age 60.
This is shaping up to be a rout of historic proportions. You can’t fault Buckley for being smart enough to jump on the train as it’s pulling out of the station. Jonah, meanwhile, remains on the platform, watching the future as it recedes into the distance.
it’s hard for me to take the complaint all that seriously from someone who worked for — and greatly admires — George HW Bush.
I really enjoy that he can’t help cheap smears on his pals when they disagree, like his swipes at Ledeen through the great Liberal Fascism poop out.
Well yeah, but aside from the aquaducts, what have the Romans ever done for us?
Indeed, Jonah doing an end-around of self snarkage is the most ingenius device I’ve seen him deploy on teh internets to head off a thread dedicated to making him look like an ass.
Ir’s like being mean to kitties.
Indeed, I no longer think Jonah’s a moron, simply because the only evidence I have is everything he’s ever said or written.
Indeed, I no longer think Jonah’s a moron, simply because the only evidence I have is everything he’s ever said or written.
He also looks like a moron.
I don’t know why Goldberg doesn’t just take the gloves off. I know that it’s hard for Jonah to turn on his dear friend, but it’s now blatantly obvious that Christopher has been a closet liberal, a virtual Manchurian Candidate who’s plan all along was to undermine the true right through infiltration and sabotage.
Can there really be any doubt that upon the doughy shoulders of Jonah, has fallen the true mantle of WFB’s intellectual conservatism? He should just state unequivocally that as genius always skips a generation, only he and K-Low and the rest of the deep-thinkers at NRO can possibly speak for the moldering corpse of WFB.
He is after all the prestigious author of Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of The American Left from George W. Bush to Christopher Buckley. He should use his bully pulpit to hammer Christopher for his embrace of known terrorist sympathizer Obama and call on his minions to give Buckley the full Parker traitor treatment.
It would also be helpful if he would point out that Palin is the new face of the Buckley legacy. The emotional yin to Goldberg’s intellectual yang. Buckley’s proclamations only sounded like glossolalia where as Palin does it for real. This new generation of conservative apologists will combine the long winded boring and fact free arguments of the Pantload and the Perpetual Virgin with the gut level, violence inciting rhetoric of their Pentecostal high priestess.
Well yeah, but aside from vaccination, what has Pasteur ever done for us?
Et tu, Christopher?
I’m enjoying the new GOP strategy of endlessly explaining the difference between “temperament” and “character” to the ADD electorate. I predict that really turns the corner for them.
As opposed to everything else you’ve written, where only a full effort will suffice.
Christ, what a lazy asshole.
His only real evidence stems from McCain’s recent political performance.
Yeah, because when you’re asserting that someone’s in the process of “losing it”, it makes no sense at all to look at their recent behavior.
Honestly, Johah’s writings remind me of myself when I’m posting a comment and I’m not particularly motivated or interested enough to put much effort into it. Like right now, for instance, except that I spent at least two minutes on this post, I proof-read it, and I think it stands up to anything in Johah’s column. And nobody paid me for it.
Lazy? Unmotivated? I see Jonah as a consummate wordsmith. Feast your eyes on this.
Sheer genius!
McCain’s own mobs boo him. One conservative after another endorses the other guy. The media who he once fed grilled steaks to & bought sauna treatments & pedicures for seems to have abandoned him. His running-mate just go busted for political misconduct.
If he can do this to an election campaign, just imagine what he can do to America.
( I CAN HAZ MCCAIN TOTEBAG NAU? )
Campaigns often require a certain tackiness, as was conspicuously the case with poppa Bush. But Bush pere was not a tacky president.
Huh. Not a tacky president? Funny, ’cause voters sure tossed Daddy Bush out the first chance they got, much like they’d do with a thrift store floor lamp with a leopard-print shade that they bought when they were drunk thinking it’d be cutesy-ironic, but when they took it home quickly found out it was just old and obnoxious and the wiring was potentially dangerous. So out it went.
“West Coast Under Assistant Promo Man” by Jagger & Richards
Well I’m waiting at the bus stop in downtown L.A.
But I’d much rather be on a boardwalk on Broadway
Well I’m sitting here thinkin’ just how sharp I am
I’m an under assistant west coast promo man
Well I promo groups when they come into town
Well they laugh at my toupee, they’re sure to put me down
Yeah I’m sitting here thinking just how sharp I am
I’m a necessary talent behind every rock and roll band
Yeah, I’m sharp
I’m really, really sharp
I sure do earn my pay
Sitting on the beach every day, yeah
I’m real real sharp, yes I am
I got a Corvette and a seersucker suit
Yes I have
Here comes the bus, uh oh
I thought I had a dime
Where’s my dime
I know I have a dime somewhere
I’m pretty sure……..
….I have two clerks
I break my ass every day
Here comes the bus
I know I have a dime somewhere
I’m so sharp
You won’t believe how sharp I am
Don’t laugh at me!
Campaigns often require a certain tackiness, as was conspicuously the case with poppa Bush. But Bush pere was not a tacky president.
Puttin’ on the Ritz!
Campaigns often require a certain tackiness, as was conspicuously the case with poppa Bush.
I’d be curious to know what the ‘load considers “tacky”. Willie Horton? “Tacky” isn’t the right word for that; I’d consider it more like “evil”.
Or ‘The only real evidence that McCain has lost it is that McCain has lost it, which is no evidence at all.’
Damn, that is one mighty fine piece of sophistic jive.
Senior editor is the new assistant vice president.,
Hey, it’s safer than Chicago City Comptroller.
I’m sorry, but as a true conservative, I’m not sure I should trust anyone who uses lots of words, much less writing. Words strike me as putting you on a slippery slope to liberalism. We were doing much better as a country and as terror-fightin’ people when we restricted ourselves to grunts and horrified screeching. Will America ever be America again?
Second, while I am sure that there are plenty of people who are honestly and deeply disturbed by the Palin’s “abuse of power,” I doubt there are too many of them.
You see, by plenty of, J-Load obviously means not too many, in the sense that there may be many, but there aren’t too many, i.e., an uncomfortable overabundance. In other words, the number of people who are disturbed by Palin’s abuse of power is just right.
Harold Ford, Jr. reminds us of some details from that nasty, nasty 2006 senate race in Tennessee.
Op-ed in today’s Post.
In other words, the number of people who are disturbed by Palin’s abuse of power is just right.
And then Poppa Bear said “someone’s been abusing the power of her office too much!”
And then Momma Bear said “someone’s been abusing the power of her office too little!”
But then Baby Bear said “someone’s been abusing the power of her office just right!”
OT, but I can’t resist pointing out the latest column by that rhetorical trainwreck I love to hate, Camille Paglia. This has gotta be the most ridiculous thing she’s ever written:
http://www.salon.com/opinion/paglia/2008/10/08/palin/index1.html
As someone whose first seven years were spent among Italian-American immigrants (I never met an elderly person who spoke English until we moved from Endicott to rural Oxford, New York, when I was in first grade), I am very used to understanding meaning through what might seem to others to be outlandish or fractured variations on standard English. Furthermore, I have spent virtually my entire teaching career (nearly four decades) in arts colleges, where the expressiveness of highly talented students in dance, music and the visual arts takes a hundred different forms. Finally, as a lover of poetry (my last book was about that), I savor every kind of experimentation with standard English — beginning with Shakespeare, who was the greatest improviser of them all at a time when there were no grammar rules.
Many others listening to Sarah Palin at her debate went into conniptions about what they assailed as her incoherence or incompetence. But I was never in doubt about what she intended at any given moment. On the contrary, I was admiring not only her always shapely and syncopated syllables but the innate structures of her discourse — which did seem to fly by in fragments at times but are plainly ready to be filled with deeper policy knowledge, as she gains it (hopefully over the next eight years of the Obama presidencies). This is a tremendously talented politician whose moment has not yet come. That she holds views completely opposed to mine is irrelevant.
I don’t know about you, but I never get tired about hearing about her fucking oh-so-ethnic Italian family. Or about her need to kiss up to people who would gladly throw her on a fucking train.
Could Paglia please shut up and just go f*** Palin already?
Finally, as a lover of poetry (my last book was about that), I savor every kind of experimentation with standard English — beginning with Shakespeare, who was the greatest improviser of them all at a time when there were no grammar rules.
Many others listening to Sarah Palin at her debate…
Silly Camille. Everyone knows that Sarah Palin’s speeches were actually written by Francis Bacon.
My sister-in-law swears by Boudreaux’s.
“Go see George, he’s got a really good butt paste.”
I think Jonah never had it. That’s completely fair and true. My only real evidence stems from his lifelong performance, that being FAIL.
Pollster is a thing of beauty this morning. Not merely a 320–158 Dem electoral vote lead without including tossups, but for the first time the Big O just crossed 50% in the National Trend (50.2–42.0). Even Fixed Noose has him up 46–39, and they only manage to hold it that low by upping the undecideds. Weird King Zog has it at 48–44, but Rasmussen, Newsweek & the Dark Lord have O at 52; Gallup at 51 but we expect a new one soon.
But of course last night’s news from Alaska will make all the difference.
“It’s pretty heady stuff, but such a great example of how seriously conservatives take their intellectual tradition and how fiercely we argue over our dogma.” JoJo Goldberg
I think he means it, too. Seriously.
As Jonah sniffs the winds of change, what he smells is a hurricane of irrelevance. He knows that very soon he and his ilk will be doomed to the opposition, and what he fears most of all is not simply an Obama election — or even an Obama landslide — but an Obama realignment. What has stroked Jonah’s ego more than anything is the fact that the nincompoops associated with this administration actually took him and Victor Davis Hanson and the lot *seriously*. And he knows that this will soon not be the case.
Soon, very soon, the weekly gab-fests at AEI and the NRO cruises and the special invitations to the White House will cease. Oh, sure, there’ll be a few months of post-mortems on Hugh Hewitt’s show, but by the summer of 2009 Goldberg will be reduced to third-star billing at College Republicans conferences and giving half-assed talks at such collections of wingnuttery as “Liberty University,” where his young acolytes will gaze at him in admiration and wonder whether or not they, too, have what it takes to consume that many Cheetos in one sitting.
It’ll be effing sweet.
“It’s pretty heady stuff, but such a great example of how seriously conservatives take their intellectual tradition and how fiercely we argue over our dogma.” JoJo Goldberg
I can just imagine the arguments.
“Liberals are bad.” “Nuh-uhhh! Liberals are really bad.” etc.
It’ll be effing sweet.
I dunno – the Pantload’s mom made her bones as an opposition attack dog. But a realignment might make that more difficult. It’ll be interesting to see.
Talking Pants Memo:
I get from his expression a sense of a man that is, in addition to all the other things he’s angry about, is frustrated or angry at the situation he’s gotten himself into. But he has sown the wind and now he’s reaping the whirlwind. “Even,” says TPM Reader RB, “as he says ‘You don’t have to be scared of an Obama presidency’ to a handful of followers (and, more importantly, of national reporters), he is spending millions to bombard as many people as he can with the ad named “Dangerous”. The small hand giveth, and the large hand taketh away.”
~
“Now, check this out, K-Lo. Notice how when I lean on my left cheek, the tone and timbre are completely different! Left cheek… right cheek… left cheek… right cheek… See? I think I’ll write a column on this.
Man, I love Ding Dongs!”
Goldberg puts as much effort into his editorials as Janeane Garalfalo puts into her stand-up act.
As to next year, I agree with Sam but more so. Even though McCain tried to dial back some of the racist aggression yesterday, the prospect of a
recession/depressionbanana (old Carter-era joke) combined with that one in the house reserved for whites may well drive some people completely over the edge. There could be very scary times ahead — and Jonah is just the fellow to exploit them.Goldberg’s thoughtful analysis of the Branchflower report.
Take a load off, Jonah. You’ve done good.
mobster
Please, save us. He does things to us that should never happen to a snack food.
We beg of you. Save us!
His only real evidence stems from McCain’s recent political performance.
I totally agree with Jonah on this: for McCain to have “lost it,” he would had to have “had it” at one time, and there’s not much evidence he ever did. That was the point Jo’berg was making, right?
I won’t link to it for obvious reasons but freeperville is a hoot these last few days. Latest meme: When Obama wins the interior states will secede, Canada will join them and the together, with the military (which of course they think will be 100%behind them) and THEN THEY’LL SHOW THOSE LATTE SIPPING ARUGULA MUNCHING COASTAL STATES WHAT FOR!
[Buckley] thinks McCain has lost it. I think that is unfair and untrue. His only real evidence stems from McCain’s recent political performance.
As a logical statement, this ranks up there with Marion Barry’s glowing description of DC: “Apart from the killings, we have one of the lowest crime rates in the country.” What other evidence do you need?
This sounds right to me, but I need to take a look at the actual report.
Once again, the doughy one
analyses the reportdrops a runny mess in his shorts without reading the text.Yeah, right. Just as soon as they run out of beer.
Est-ce qu’ils pensent vraiment que je voudrais faire une alliance avec l’Utah ou l’Arkansas? Mon Dieu, ils sont stupides.
This sounds right to me, but I need to take a look at the actual report.
Actually, he’s here, eating lunch, drinking a pitcher of Miller Lite, and staring at his waitress’s breasts.
and THEN THEY’LL SHOW THOSE LATTE SIPPING ARUGULA MUNCHING COASTAL STATES WHAT FOR!
WOLVERINES!1!!
We regret to inform the public that due to shrinking membership*, we no longer can maintain our alliance. Thank you for your participation.
*2006–3
2007–1
2008–0
We wouldn’t be caught dead with Jonah Goldberg. Maybe we’d play with his entrails for a while, but that’s it.
When Obama wins the interior states will secede, Canada will join them and the together…
So they were against the North American Union before they were for it, I see.
I don’t suppose they’re planning to include Mexico, tho.
::shudders::
Griacia, no.
“gracias”
impulso
“The Man In The High Castle” by Philip K Dick already covered this “interior states nation”. The freepers don’t seem to understand that the citizen/voters (of heartland South Dakota) already voted down the ban-all-abortions referendum, but if the freepers can lie more convincingly (!) this time (!) the voters will vote their true feelings (!) and ban abortion. Another topic, I did watch the bloggerinterupted and what struck me was the younger people didn’t want to say why they thought Obama was a terrorist, but were adamant that he was. At least the older ones knew that Ayers was a Weather Underground. Could it be that the younger ones have no idea what the SDS and the Weather Underground and the other active anti-VNwar groups are? Could it be that the younger are certain because Obama is a ******, but they know they can’t say that? (that’s at least a degree of self-awareness.) And I disagree about trying to hide your own predilections, that’s where wingtards get sympathy from the mainstream, is if they are too obviously being suckered. Be a straight up Obama supporter and straight out your questions. You’ll get plenty of honest reactions.
I think this whalelike person will cover sloth and gluttony for me, and I can take the afternoon off.
Sit in the park, listen to the birds, feed the squirrels.
Yeah.
I know, it’s so easy but it’s the weekend so I’m being lazy.
From the freepers
Wow! Don’t want to mess with those bad ass mofos, no way! Erm, I wonder what the battle was?
ZING! Take THAT LIEBRULS!1!ELEVEN1!ONE1!
Now I will go
home to my familyupstairs to take out the garbage, knowing that we again made a difference.Well, High Castle wasn’t quite the same thing but it’s an interesting reference anyway. For my money, a better one might be Thomas Disch’s On Wings of Song. In Disch’s dystopia, the heartland is taken over by the “Undergodders.”
Gosh, just sitting here, I have made a difference.
Don’t want to strain anything.
The merriment contiinues:
Submitted without comment by your humble reporter. Because, it’s impossible to make them appear stoopider than they are.
He calls freeping a poll a battle from which they emerge victorious? What a fun household his must be… “I’m off to ruthlessley slaughter the encroaching hordes of enviro-fascio-liberalism!” “That’s nice, dear- the grass has gotten a bit ragged-looking.”
R. Porrofatto said,
October 11, 2008 at 16:53
The ‘Load is just self-parody now:
I’ve been meaning to do a book reccomendation post for a while.
how about the book he says he’s been reading for a while now, and everytime he picks it up he “can’t put it down”.
until, I suppose, the time that he does actually put it down, since he hasn’t finished it.
he, literally, cannot be any lazier.
another Jonah Special.
Kimball On the Alaska Report [Jonah Goldberg]
This sounds right to me, but I need to take a look at the actual report.
it must be hard for an educated, intelligent man like Buckley to be friends with a moron like Goldberg. Do you suppose he walks way ahead of him when they are together in public, or lags behind pretending to tie a shoelace, trying not to be ‘seen’ with Goldberg? At restaurants I imagine him looking embarrassedly out the window while Johan “eats”. I’m writing as one who’s been-there-done -hat.
““It’s pretty heady stuff, but such a great example of how seriously conservatives take their intellectual tradition and how fiercely we argue over our dogma.” – Load Pants
Now watch this drive.
FOX News has been soliciting email on the topic: “Do you think the upcoming elections will be free and fair?” They just read some of the mails they received on the air. Some guy with email from Missouri, for example, was “furious that his vote may not count”, a problem that he claimed could easily be solved by having “a national ID card”.
First I didn’t understand what the hell he was talking about, until I realized it’s like gay marriage undermining “traditional” marriage: his vote “doesn’t count” as long as poor and/or black people have a vote, too. At least some wingers are consistent!
Synopsis of the Week (Courtesy of the good Roger Ailes).
Dear Chris Buckley
You might want to stay away from the railings on that National Review post-election cruise. You’ve got a small child to not raise, after all.
Regards, Roger
Michael J. Nelson.
he, literally, cannot be any lazier.
Well he could, but it would take too much effort.
The interior states will secede? Start a war with the coastal states which will have all the ports and supply lines and, from the get go, will have them pincered?
Fucking brilliant! A triumph for the strategists of the 101st Fighting Keyboardists! And their lead strategist, Peter Griffin!
¡Viva Los Estados Centrales!
¡Viva Presidente Pantalones Llenos!
¡Viva La Revolucion Esquina!
¡Hasta La Victroria Siempre!
¡Tristemente No!
Southern-strategy Republican campaigns often require a certain tackiness,
Edited for clarity.
Dear S,N! community,
I saw Gail Collins mention this in her column today, and had to do some research. I present you with an exclusive look at the guaranteed bet on the next wingnut freakout topic: The Mommy Cuddles ‘n’ Coo doll that sounds like it might be saying “Islam is the Light.”
Local Fox affiliates are on it, so the wingnuggets have gotten their first whiff of outrage pheromones.
Anti-Islam blogs think that Mattel may be rife with people who might know someone who might have met a Muslimist: “I think it’s time to see who is on the board of directors of this company and what ties they might have to persons of Middle Eastern descent.”
<a href=”http://www.zwire.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=20156048&BRD=2754&PAG=461&dept_id=597380&rfi=6″<Wal-Mart shoppers in Owasso are worried they might get indoctrinated by a doll.
$10 says they’ll be claiming it is a conspiracy set up by Bill Ayers by the end of the week.
As Jonah sniffs the winds of change, what he smells is a hurricane of irrelevance….What has stroked Jonah’s ego more than anything is the fact that the nincompoops associated with this administration actually took him and Victor Davis Hanson and the lot *seriously*. And he knows that this will soon not be the case.
I tend to find that political commentators are nearly indestructible, even (perhaps especially) when their party is in the minority. In this case, however, I agree, because of the following:
it must be hard for an educated, intelligent man like Buckley to be friends with a moron like Goldberg.
For the last eight years or so, conservatives have made almost a fetish of folksy ignorance. I suppose in a way it really began with Reagan, but Reagan was at least able to combine the aw-shucks wink-and-a-smile demeanor with a certain eloquence and a strong adherence to conservative principles.
Conservatives spent the years that followed searching for the next Reagan, but they did so in a peculiar way. Instead of using a candidate’s experience or conservatism as their metric, they relied instead on his speaking style. Weirder still, they didn’t look for someone with Reagan’s skills; they sought refuge in someone who *couldn’t* speak well and thereby somehow seemed like an everyday guy. Consider the progression: Bush the First was certainly an experienced conservative and, though comically ineloquent, he still charmed people by using words like “Gosh” or “Gee whillikers.” Then you had W; he’s less eloquent and less experienced, but still manages to speak in a way that endears him to the base. Now we have Palin, who has nothing to recommend her *besides* her linguistic incompetence (and perhaps her childbearing habits); she’s profoundly ignorant and has negligible experience. But hey, with that wink and that smile, she’s almost Reaganesque!
Well, the educated conservatives have had 8 years to learn the consequences of selecting such a candidate, and they’ve finally had enough. They would like a candidate who actually *knows* something, and who can blame them? Can it really be so hard for a truly conservative candidate to name a bunch of Supreme Court cases with which she disagrees? Any reasonably knowledgeable conservative can rattle them off: Roe. Casey. Kelo. Most of the recent death penalty cases. Boumedine. There are probably a dozen more. Is it really a “gotcha” to ask that she know more than one of these?
This change in attitude does not bode well for the Goldbergs of the world. At some point, the rest of the conservatives are going to get sick of him. This is someone who knows nothing about anything, yet doesn’t care enough to do any real research; instead he hedges his writings with so many caveats that they are devoid of any real meaning. His work always reads as though it were written by a lazy undergraduate who had to pull an all-nighter to get it done; even though he realized his thesis was falling apart halfway through, he didn’t have time to fix it and had to hope for the best and BS his way to the end. The people who actually *do their homework* get pissed when someone like this succeeds.
The conservatives are going to have to remake their party after the next election. From what I’ve seen so far, they’re going to have to repeat what Buckley did at the start of the movement: purge the idiots, disown the nutcases, and start afresh. With any luck, Jonah’s fat ass will be first against the wall when the revolution hits next year.
tl;dr? Jonah’s an idiot, his colleagues know it, and they’re gonna get sick of it really soon. Ledeen’s review of Jonah’s book is a sign of what’s to come, or so I hope.
“now”?
Well, the educated conservatives have had 8 years to learn the consequences of selecting such a candidate, and they’ve finally had enough. They would like a candidate who actually *knows* something, and who can blame them?
I don’t want smarter conservatives. Antonin Scalia, for instance, is a vicious prick.
I want extinct conservatives. So I’ll endorse Wolcott again.
Newt is the One!
“When Obama wins the interior states will secede, Canada will join them and the together, with the military (which of course they think will be 100%behind them) and THEN THEY’LL SHOW THOSE LATTE SIPPING ARUGULA MUNCHING COASTAL STATES WHAT FOR!”
If only ! Think what the more productive coastal states could do if we didn’t have to carry all the corn fed red state dead weight around with us.
Let the fuckers secede , than we can all sit back and laugh as their “nation” , turns into a third world shit hole would make even Mexico look like an economic powerhouse
ifthethunderdontgetya™³²®© said: I don’t want smarter conservatives. Antonin Scalia, for instance, is a vicious prick….I want extinct conservatives.
Well, sure, but that presumably isn’t what the conservatives want. The flight to idiocy didn’t work for them; they ended up with a VP candidate who can’t even regurgitate talking points coherently.
Newt is the One!
He’s actually capable of intermittent sanity on the subject of science policy. Unfortunately, he still believes that one can best convince one’s opponents by insulting them.
“It’s pretty heady stuff, but such a great example of how seriously conservatives take their intellectual tradition and how fiercely we argue over our dogma.”
You can’t argue over dogma; dogma is what your Fearless Leaders have determined to be inarguable. Once again Jonah proves that being a native speaker of English gives him exactly as much command of the language as (say) Balki on Perfect Strangers. Actually, less.
There is NOTHING “conservative” about these idiots who call their movement and themselves “conservative”. They have stripped the word of all meaning and raped it until it laid down and died. They are right-wing extremists, who’s every action is to defecate on everything a true conservative stands for.
There is nothing wrong with having a conservative political voice in Washington, especially if they are in the minority. My politics may be liberal, but history has taught us that even the most-well meaning liberal agendas can run off the tracks.
Just one example. In a true conservative political ideology, the LAST thing you do is go running around the world starting or getting involved in wars. Military is only for defense, and any dime not absolutely required for honest defense is not spent.
mikey
‘Cuz, you know, it’s no problem having a barking mad lunatic with his finger on the nuclear trigger as long as he believes in cutting taxes.
After Armageddon, there will be no taxes. Plus, Jesus returns! Ponies, or at least Horsemen, for everyone!
*Let the fuckers secede , than we can all sit back and laugh as their “nation” , turns into a third world shit hole would make even Mexico look like an economic powerhouse*
Ah, I can picture it now. They’ll all come crawling on their bellies under the fences, across the waters, to sneak back into “our” country after discovering the hard way just how well “Prez-dent Palin” ( having had ‘The Todd’ arrange for Mr. Magoo’s ‘sledding accident’) rules with her dainty iron (no such thing as too much facsist-y goodness, wink wink!) fists.
We’ll allow them, of course. “Oh, yes, we just hired a new maid and another nanny. You know, it’s just so hard to control those republicans. Why, just last week I had to fire the gardener-caught him in the act of trying to ‘wide-stance’ the dog!”
It would be only just, given that the rabid hordes that make up Mr. Magoo’s and Queen Frostine’s minions are amped up on pure, distilled racism. Fingers crossed!
Let the fuckers secede , than we can all sit back and laugh as their “nation” , turns into a third world shit hole would make even Mexico look like an economic powerhouse…
They’d have a lot of the good farmland, though. I suppose they’d be eager to sell food to the heathens to have some kind of income, but I’d want it inspected reaaaally well.
The definitions of “liberal” and “conservative” are entirely subjective. There has never been any such thing as “teh one true conservative ideology”.
Conservatives, are simply people who’s attitudes and policies are out of date. Conservatives are people who fetishise the past, and try to bring society back to some kind of imagined utopia that never was.
If conservatism were a person, it would be an old, angry man, stubbornly ignorant, and confused and threatened by anything new.
Describes Mcain perfectly. He is a genuine conservative, have no doubt.
a certain tackiness, as was conspicuously the case with poppa Bush.
I like the comparison between Bush 41 and drying paint.
Before this election got nasty, my primary reason for voting and agitating for Obama is that he’s the right end of what I see as reasonable – a conservative not in the crass American sense but the purer sense you usually encounter in political science. When you have problems like a slumping economy, a horribly unbalanced tax system, and a ridiculous lack of educational or other human capital, there are liberal answers and conservative answers; just because we’re in the habit of taking ‘conservative’ to mean ‘ignore the problem, demand a million dollars, call your opponents Communists’ doesn’t mean that’s what it goddamn means.
Obama is the right wing I want to coexist with; I can pretty well trust him not to pare away basic human liberties, suck the budget dry for his cronies, or shit all over long-term allies for short-term gains. In an ideal America I wouldn’t be voting with half of the Democrats, and neither would they. I look forward to the day (fast approaching – note that the Senate is a seat’s swing away from being filibuster-proof and the House is just getting bluer and bluer by the year) when American politics will actually resemble the remainder of the first world’s instead of being some manner of sick eternal pantomime of the 2002 French election – rightists against Nazis.
I don’t think Buckley would agree with this, but there’s hope for him. It isn’t a coincidence that whenever any Republican gets this close to the national seat, he gradually becomes a shrieking monster; he’s just in a unique position to observe a man who was formerly a more or less normal conservative with a slight temper become a maniacal race-baiting bully. I like to think people like him – people with actual principles instead of phobias and hang-ups – will learn to hold their noses for the Dems the way we have been since Carter.
You’re describing political reaction, not conservatism. It’s only because America is so fucking warped that ‘reactionary’ passes for ‘conservative’ so easily. While there are certainly social differences, it isn’t exactly a coincidence that throughout Europe you’ll consistently find a mainstream political spectrum ranging approximately from Clinton to Kucinich. People like McCain are within the ranks of the National Front or Liberal Democrats or whichever extremist anti-society party.
Conservatism involves looking at the problems of society and finding whatever answers will fully suffice without radically changing society. I’m not for that either – I don’t think America’s applecart is worth leaving unupturned – but it’s at least something you can coexist with. Conservatives in Europe don’t typically pick fights with foreign countries every couple of weeks, turn massive parts of the society they inherited into graft-distribution machines, or roll back civil rights and liberties to the prior century. That’s unique to the US, and our fixation on that as “conservative” no more makes it so than the diligent dogwhistling of the hard right makes Obama a Muslim.
I like the comparison between Bush 41 and drying paint.
Hehindeed. There was a good reason he chose Quayle as VP – he needed someone who wouldn’t outshine him.
Quayle is probably happy these days that Palin will replace him as lamest VP pick in a generation. I’d say lamest EVAR but my knowledge of political history isn’t so great.
Conservatives, are simply people who’s attitudes and policies are out of date. Conservatives are people who fetishise the past, and try to bring society back to some kind of imagined utopia that never was.
If that’s your attitude, Mr. Commie LIE-brul, I’ll go back to trolling at Media Whores Online!
Alec:
First of all, the lib dems are a mainstream liberal party, not a reactionary rightwing party such as the BNP. I vote lib dem myself fairly often.
“Conservative” taken literally, means to conserve things. Keep them as they are. The trouble is, in most democracies, liberalism has changed things. A lot.
Conservatives don’t want to keep things as they are.. they want to return things to how they WERE before those damned liberals interfered.
The only difference between all the different stripes of conservative, is how far back they consider that to be. In very liberal countries, it will be a desire to have things back how they were the last time the conservative party was in power. In the USA, they want to go all the way back to before those liberal scum messed everything up by making slavery illegal.
Jonah Goldberg at his computer. (because only a composite will do.)
First McUgly stirs up death threats, and then he threatens to ass rape Obama.
Wadda leader.
Conservatives are people who fetishise the past
Yes, but have they been banned from museums and archaeological sites for lewd behaviour? Mere beginners.
If this is the case, then we need someone to introduce a strain of such “conservatives” into this country, because in this country, people who call themselves conservatives just spent the last 7.5 years trying to restore the monarchy and call it a “unitary executive,” and even believed the VP was some sort of magical 5th dimension super-official who could be stopped by no one.
As far as I can tell, there has never, ever existed such “conservatives” in this country.
All the right wingers we’ve ever had are lawless, America-hating authoritarian freaks.
I used to enjoy tweaking people by calling myself a conservative, not only on the grounds that I wanted to conserve the planet but also because I favored Eisenhower’s tax rates:
I guess it’s now been so long I have go back to calling myself a radical.
I’m buying popcorn, this is going to be too good to miss. Love it when wingnut welfare babies eat their own.
This is real? I thought I was watching a dramatic presentation of “The Lord of the Flies”.
I call fake Troof.
He didn’t even imply that everyone who disagrees with him is a traitor.
I mean, that’s one of the most endearing traits of modern conservatism.
Typo fixed.
Sorry about that.
I call fake toof, too.
It is no good to point out to me that Bush is not the ideal conservative – I am well aware of that – but putting in someone even more statist would make matters even worse.
Because this one just said he isn’t voting for McCain.
I have to concur. There was no chortling.
Statist? Is that actually a word? I thought it was spelled ‘statest’.
They weren’t who I meant – I meant in the more classical sense (like in Germany or Japan). The British Lib Dems are just fine, but that’s partially because out of an odd historical coincidence the word ‘liberal’ usually seems to mean the same thing in BrE as in AmE.
In fact, if faced with a choice between New Labour and the Tories, I think I’d go Lib Dem as well. Fucking two-party system.
If you insist upon accepting THEIR entirely faulty definition of “conservative”, wouldn’t you then be required, logically, to accept THEIR entirely faulty definition of “liberal”?
Honestly, words DO have meanings. And even though the mass media allows savvy marketers to change the way these words are popularly understood, I thought those of us who self-identified as the “reality based community” had a strong tendency to stick with the actual dictionary definitions of words when we used them.
Political conservatism is a genuine, identifiable set of positions that form an ideology. It does not endorse bigotry, tends to be pro-civil liberties, pro-constitution, and against foreign adventures. It is neither good nor evil. You may or may not agree with it, that is as it should be. But it seems to me we could use a little bit of it right about now.
Most importantly, again, it is NOT what it is described as being by the likes of cheney, goldberg, addington, Bolton, et al. These men are right wing EXTREMISTS. Not conservative in any way….
mikey
My favorite is when they try and project their historical fetishes backwards in time, like that one fake NYT cover chiding the Warsaw Uprising. In reality, of course, it was the Republicans (especially the Taftoid conservatives) who were angry about us meddling around in Europe for the lie-beral joos. They don’t really like to talk about that any more – it’s gone efficiently enough down the memory hole that people like Jonah can call FDR a fascist without being fed his own testicles – but it’s who they were then and it’s who they are now.
We’re dealing with a movement that has effectively gone back in time and declared war on the Republic of China and the USSR. You know – fighting the real enemy.
And I barely knew John McCain.
No, really.
Yeah, and I only met Sarah Palin a bunch of times.
Really.
Hey, what about me?
I represent all blacks and all liberals.
Am I only represented in ‘etc.’?
You’re losing your touch, Troof.
Hey, what about me?
Mikey: How do you think the people writing the dictionaries get their definitions for words?
They rely on the subjective definitions current in society. They add new ones and remove old ones as the use of words change. They do admittedly avoid any definition too controversial, and tend to lag behind by a few decades, but still. They are just recording the definitions given by society.
The people who identify as “conservative” have a lot of power to influence the meaning of the word. If 95% of all people over the last 30 years who identify as “conservative” are neocon nutjobs, then any older definition of “conservative” is obsolete, and when used, needs to be accompanied by copious footnotes.
Your definition of political conservatism was dead and buried long ago. The word itself is so tainted that I expect those who really do subscribe to the ideology you describe, would pick another word to describe themselves.
Wait.. anti-bigotry, pro civil liberties, anti-interventionist foreign policy, pro-constitution.. Sounds a lot like the people now identifying as Libertarian! Granted, libertarianism is a label polluted by nutjobs already, but I would not be surprised if many pre-regan conservatives have chosen to use the label.
Not one person on this site ever heard of Kanau Kambon before Troof got his panties in a twist over that obscure event.
Is this the best conservatism can do?
If conservatives have anything positive, constructive, intelligent, cogent, honest or decent to say, now is the time to bring it on.
THAT would be the October Surprise.
It’s a tiny American Tragedy! Lucianne spent long years on her knees, literally sucking cock, as she toiled up the Rethuglican Ratfucker ladder. As a reward, her little Pantload was able to start his career at a much higher level, and he’s never had to do more than a little light *rhetorical* knob-gobbling for his Robber Baron/fReichtard/Talibangelical masters. But with the unexpected resurgence of the reality-based community, poor aging P-Dough fears that his cushy career may evaporate like Ken Lay’s golden parachute, and he’s not sure he has the stamina to match that of his momma’s greatest (grating-est) generation. Sure, Jonah can shotgun an entire ‘family-sized’ box of Yodels(tm), but can his pantload-burdened knees hold up in competition with the newer and hungrier generation of Rethuglican Jeff-Gannon-wannabes?…
Troof, what it is.
can his pantload-burdened knees hold up in competition with the newer and hungrier generation of Rethuglican Jeff-Gannon-wannabes?…
My guess is yes.
Goddamn, Willy.
I am teh suck at Photoshop, but could somebody find a way to work some fried chicken in there?
Or maybe some watermelon? A watermelon is fine too…
I’m surprised they left out mandatory gay abortions, Edo.
Here’s the blog post this came from.
Goddamn, Willy.
Yeah.
Was it the Pantload who said that there’s been no racism in the U.S. since 1968, or is that a universal rightard trope?
Your definition of political conservatism was dead and buried long ago. The word itself is so tainted that I expect those who really do subscribe to the ideology you describe, would pick another word to describe themselves.
Then so is political libralism. Nothing matters, if you don’t like it, it can be something else, everything is whatever anybody wants it to be.
Maybe. I dunno. I do know this. We’re going to lose in that world. If you can’t drive a stake in the ground and say “this is real” then you will always lose to the propagandists, the manipulators and the thugs.
If we accept a world that works this way, we accept a world where we, our beliefs and ideology are irrelevant. We accept a playing field where we cannot win, for everything we believe can be corrupted and altered and changed and redefined and we have nothing to say about it.
Is that the world we’re inheriting?
mikey
She’s America’s #1 Hockey Mom. They’ll love her in Philly!
After that resounding success, maybe Palin should throw out the first pitch at Dodger Stadium on Sunday. They’ll love her there too.
Honestly, words DO have meanings
Heh. Yes, they do have meanings. They certainly do.
Of course you cant “drive a stake in the ground”!
Political ideology ISN’T REAL. It is a social construct. Just like language. And just like language, it changes.
If beliefs and ideology do not change.. Then they are not politics, they become religion.
Personally, I fucking HATE religion. One major reason is because it ignores the changing world, and keeps banging its fucking stupid pointy little head against the wall, insisting that blatantly false things are facts.
All political ideology is based around reactions to the way the world is. As the stimulus changes, the reaction changes too. Even ideology based on human givens is flexible, as human societies change, and humans change even at an individual, physical level.
Even at its least subjective, truth is still temporary. Only mathematics is permanent.
There is no winning in politics. As soon as you achieve something you worked for, another challenge comes to social prominence. Even if we got our entire political wishlist granted overnight, there would still be problems left in the world.. All those ones we wern’t even aware of, or had pushed off the bottom of our list of priorities.
The world changes fast enough for a progressive political view developed as a youth, can be utterly reactionary and counter-productive by the time you die. How many people fought for equality for blacks, but turned their nose up at the gays?
I don’t even KNOW what liberalism will look like when I am an old man.
Ok, so how do I define my political belief set?
How do you?
What am I? How do I call myself?
How do I find like-minded people and form a grass roots movement?
If words and labels and definitions can’t hold any meaning, how am I to present my beliefs and ask people to follow me?
It seems to me that you MUST be wrong, or all we have is anarchy.
And while anarchy is an option, it is not ALL we have…
mikey
The AP article said the booing “quickly turned to polite applause” but it’s hard to tell with this clip. The booing does sound pretty loud at least at the beginning.
Hmm.
Lemme try it this way.
I call myself a Liberal.
Jonah Goldberg says I am a Fascist.
Do you agree that my description of my political ideology and Goldberg’s description of my political ideology are equivalently accurate?
Because he is changing the definition of both “liberal” and “fascist”, and according to how I read your post that’s well within reason.
I say you can drive a stake in the ground and define both…
mikey
If I’m painting a house yellow and I run out of paint and go to the local big box and find an awesome deal on purple paint and continue the job with purple but call it yellow because, after all, this is supposed to be a yellow house, then what do we now call the original yellow?
I’m sorry, but I’m going to have to go ahead and score this one to Holden.
Mikey & Sockpuppet:
Personally, I kinda stop right there, being as how I find the “Creator” to be a metaphor that gets in the way more than it helps. But I tend to think that the implications of my version are good enough to build a philosophy on, not to mention a viable, functioning state. The rest, as they say, is commentary.
Mind you, Phil Ochs had a lot of stuff nailed way back when. in his classic “Love Me, I’m a Liberal” …
Troofie: The civil rights movement, where American political discourse is still stuck, is the liberal example of that power being used for good. I understand and to certain extent sympathize with this impulse, but unfortunately history teaches that power corrupts even people with good intentions.
So … your solution to the problem of entrenched racism with police power, used against anyone who thought that dark skin shouldn’t make a difference in how people were treated, would have been … what? Even doing nothing was a positive vote for continuing to allow racism to reign supreme — and in actual fact, “conservatives” like you did much more than nothing; you actively supported the racists (cf. William B. Fuckley’s famous essay about “uncivilized” Negroes, not to mention the entire fucking “Southern strategy” of riling up the rednecks). Ergo, your pearl-clutching about power corrupting “even people with good intentions” is — not to put too fine a point on it — complete and utter bullshit.
Best comment on the GOS “Philly boos Palin” thread,
And really, what were they thinking. Philly booed Santa, for crying out loud.
And really, what were they thinking. Philly booed Santa, for crying out loud.
Yeah? Well maybe that fat fuck will think twice before his next own goal.
Don’t get me wrong. Words have meanings. But those meanings don’t last forever.
Just as you have to keep giving your ideology a reality check now and then, you have to give your vocabulary a reality check too. Otherwise you end up like a pensioner who keeps on saying “gay” without realising it doesn’t mean happy anymore.
Words are not anyone’s exclusive property. If you identify with a word, you don’t own it. Everyone else who identifies with it owns it too. If they go changing the definition, hard cheese.
Propaganda campaigns can change words, but not with the same kind of authority that its identifiers can.
That is why I am comfortable with the new definition of “conservative”. It wasn’t some DFH conspiracy that changed it. It wasn’t the MSM. The definition was changed by the very people who call themselves conservatives.
Yeah, I know you are going to say the word was hijacked. But yet, there are ideological links between the two groups, and for a time, they co-existed in relative peace. It wasn’t so much a hijack, as the old guard dying off or fading away, and the new blood taking over.. As new blood always does.
After all.. Isn’t communication the whole point of definitions? It doesn’t matter in the least how we match words to definitions, as long as we match them up the same. If we cling to obsolete definitions, we just make communication harder. The same applies if we are too early with adopting a new definition. Depending on our audience, it can hinder communication.
I’m sorry, but I’m going to have to go ahead and score this one to Holden.
Now goddamit, THAT made me smile…
Well, yes. Depending on what day it is and who it benefits, Martin Luther King is either a boy-fucking Communist, a misguided idealist, or a good man corrupted by power.
I think he can simultaneously believe all of these things at once; as someone who doesn’t regard the world as an extension of pro wrestling I have to say the storylining of the human experience weirds me out a little, but hey, me and close to 60% of the electorate are just unhinged radical extremists.
Yeah, I know you are going to say the word was hijacked.
Nope. Actually, I agree with you here.
I just want to know how you describe what the word meant BEFORE it was changed.
If you’re going to change it, fine, you can do that.
But that doesn’t make the previous meaning disappear. There is STILL a political ideology that holds to that old set of beliefs and structures.
You’ve effectively taken away the words they used to describe that ideology. What are you offering them to replace it?
mikey
mikey,
How about ‘progressive’?
It’d be like:
Hi. Nice to meet you.
Likewise. What’s your politics?
Me? Oh, I’m a Fizzesp.
A what now?
A Fizzesp. How ’bout you?
What the HELL is a Fizzesp?
Oh. Sorry. See, I was a conservative before they became bigoted, war crazed corporatist thugs. They co-opted the term “conservative” so we needed a new descriptor. We chose “Fizzesp”.
But… But that’s CRAZY! You can’t just make up a word and say it describes your politics…
Sorry, pal, but I heard otherwise…
mikey
How about ‘300 light years to the left of the Alaska Independence Party’?
Well, what we do depends on the context. If we are discussing it in a historical context, rather than as a current ideology, then we need to add a qualifier of some kind. “goldwater republican” gets used a lot.
Another example, is the connotations of “democrat”. Sometimes we have to use “blue dog” “DINO” “southern democrat” or “dixiecrat” to convey the fact that we are talking about someone who is mentally, a member of the democratic party circa 1955.
The oldschool conservative ideology has not really survived totally unchanged. If nothing else, it now has to react to the coming of the neo-cons. Some may have moved on to the “libertarian” label.. Others.. I don’t know.
The thing is.. What if these people ARE without a clear label? This merely reflects how little social relevance they have. If they want a label badly enough.. Then they can take back “conservative” from the neocons, or they can go find another word.
But it ISN’T my job to do that! Any label I give them, will peel off easily. It would just be a provisional shorthand, relevant only to a couple of people. If they want a solid identifier, they are going to have to fight for it themselves. If they want society to recognise their label, they are going to have to fight for recognition of their ideology along with it.
The language just reflects the reality of the situation. Those people are loosing their definition, and are without recognition.
But it ISN’T my job to do that! Any label I give them, will peel off easily
EXACTLY, young man. We do NOT get to define the words. We get to argue the concepts.
Arguing the concepts is IMPOSSIBLE if we don’t know, or can’t agree on what the words mean.
We can’t have a rational discussion about political ideology unless we can define the various derivative versions thereof with commonly used english language words.
If you take the meaning out of the words, you eliminate the possibility of discussing the concepts behind the ideologies. And if you do that, it seems to me you have done nothing more or less than support the propagandists, the liars and the manipulators. You’ve given them a place to stand, and to say that they are like me, and like you. And they are not. They are thugs.
And we need to be able to compare and contrast their ideology and ours and make some kind of case as to why we believe our positions are superior to theirs.
If we can’t even agree upon a set of terminology that describes our belief system and worldview, how can we hope to do something like that?
mikey
If they took a rigorously applied consensus definition of an American conservative circa 1955 and then made a reality show with the idea of finding the current politician who hews closest to this line, what would they call it?
Here is the problem. We CAN’T define the various ideologies and their derivatives with commonly used words. Simply because many ideologies are not common enough to have a widely agreed descriptor, or the fragment we want to identify is so specific.
We can still discuss issues and policies without defining ideologies at all. Ideologies are just shortcuts. Labels that describe loose affiliations. If anything, they are counter productive in discussing the issues.
For example, if we were discussing the Iraq war, do we talk of the “liberal” and “conservative” takes on the issue? No, because neither label represents a particular stance towards that issue. Instead, we talk of interventionists, imperialists, and isolationists. Even “pro war” and “anti war” are more specific than nailing a certain ideology to a certain policy.
Policy driven language tends to get us further than ideology driven, because it avoids “true scotsman” type arguments. If I speak of “the libertarian policy on X” whilst arguing with a staunch libertarian, we could end up going round in circles for hours, simply because they, personally, have disowned the policy I am talking about, and don’t equate it with the libertarian ideology. This has happened to me before.
Ideological groups are loosely defined by their very nature. Only cults have an official dogma which can be associated with every member. For this reason, I am happy for ideologies to remain poorly defined in language.
If they took a rigorously applied consensus definition of an American conservative circa 1955 and then made a reality show with the idea of finding the current politician who hews closest to this line, what would they call it?
“Calling Dennis Kucinich”?
But Bush pere was not a tacky president.
Using the expression “Bush pere” gets ‘Load 20 wanker points
Using the expression ‘tacky’ is only worth 5 wanker points.
Using both in the same sentence – double score
Total score – 50 wanker points.
Strangly, that makes sense.
I blame the hippies.
Lost.
Canada has a heartland too. Here’s a quote from one of our own responding to someone who ridiculed Palin:
He’s voting for Harper. Surprise!
I dunno: the phrase ‘Bush fils‘ is a pretty good way of reminding people he’s an aristocratic jackass who considers speaking to us a form of slumming it. People dislike being condescended to, and yet the media is pretty violently insistent that only the Dems do that.
If Obama wins and Dion loses, is there any possibility we can invade? You know – for the oil.
It was looking pretty dark for a while there, but as of today I’m officially banking on Joe Biden (D-DE) beating Snoop D. Dogg (R-NY) in ’12.
Checking in a little late on the Paglia thing but, “I was admiring not only her always shapely and syncopated syllables but the innate structures of her discourse — which did seem to fly by in fragments at times but are plainly ready to be filled with deeper policy knowledge” – well, frankly that just got me all horny. All Sarah’s got to do is a feather dance at her next Nuremburg rally and I’m right on board!
P.S. The horrid Philadelphis Flyers fans booed so loudly when she tossed out the first puck tonight, they had to turn up the music to mega decibel level to drown out the beasts.
This thread sucks. Let’s have a new one.
Oh God. I didn’t think it was possible for the nuts to get any nuttier. They are now creating flow charts indicating precisely how Obama intends to overthrow capitalism. Go here, if you dare:
http://democratsforrealchange.info/
Paglia has made a career of being wrong in unique and offensive ways; it is in fact one of the more challenging tasks in gender studies to browbeat her former admirers into admitting to themselves that her tweaking the nose of the big bad Feminazis is part and parcel with her slobbery dick-sucking of Reagan and the Cowboy. That Paglia would find the most violent political insult to American women in living memory so exciting – and that she would proceed to try and pass this jack-ass off as intelligent or well-organized – is just pink shit icing on the vanilla shit cake.
I dunno: anyone who gets that loud booing AMERICAS FAVORITE HOCKEY MOM (as what appeared to be a frumpy underling lied to the public through her sweater) is OK by me.
READ! A! BOOK!
Amen. Harper is sinking in the polls again. News that he perjured himself during his own law suit came out and since then he’s cut off the media from any interviews prior to the election. He also says he’ll resign if he loses. (boo hoo, he’s having a pity party already.) There’s still hope for Canuckistan.
Here is the simplified version:
Let Republicans stay in power for 8 years —> Global capitalism now nearly dead.
See? That fiend Obama. He did ALL of this.
Yeah, making a public appearance at a Philadelphia sports game is a brilliant move. What could go wrong there?
It’s too bad ECW got bought by the WWF, I’d pay good money to see John McCain get hit with a Singapore cane in the ECW Arena.
I hate debates about word meanings. I guess that makes me anti-semantic.
Apparently none of you here has had infants and babies to take care of! I have, and I resent the disparagement of a wonderful product- Boudreaux’s Butt Paste- which has saved many a young hiney from certain decent into red rash hell. This is important, and something that Jonah, unlike all of you, understands instinctively. He only needs to be reminded which end to apply the wonderful balm to, and he’ll be all set.
I hate debates about word meanings. I guess that makes me anti-semantic.
I enjoy them. I guess that makes me a pedantophile.
Wow CK. That’s a real find
But that doesn’t make the previous meaning disappear. There is STILL a political ideology that holds to that old set of beliefs and structures.
You’ve effectively taken away the words they used to describe that ideology. What are you offering them to replace it?
mikey
Exactly what I’ve been saying to self-styled ‘New Atheists’ for quite some time. I know y’all find the word ‘atheist’ satisfying in some anarcho-capitalist way, but sorry, there’s already a word for you folks – agnostics. But to your point, what of actual atheists? Like, real ones? Until NA reach a quorum on new terminology for the word they’ve hijacked, and disseminate this word for public consumption, well, tough shit. Get your own word if you think ‘agnostic’ has too much baggage. Atheist is willful, directed disbelief, not some placeholder in lieu of convincing evidence of a Creator. Deal with it.
Holy crap, there really is such a thing as butt paste, and you can even order a sample. I wonder if Alfred could use it for my next rubdown?
The GOP Outlook: The bad news is that everything has been incinerated by nuclear holocaust, and all life on Earth has been extinguished. The good news is that there will be no more capital gains taxes.
This phrase most resembles what kind of baggery?
a) Gas.
b) Douche.
c) Weasel.
d) Colostomy.
e) _________?
I’d just like to point out that arguing about what words mean is the lowest form of discussion on the entire internet.