Captain Coo Coo Banana
It’s offical: 1/3rd of leanleft has gone nuts; drank the kool-aid; been Chomskied; or something. I mean, after all, there’s no crazy leftists, right?
Remember, I do this to entertain me, not you.
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July 22nd, 2006 at 9:33 pm
Certainly there are – but that’s the point: there are individual people on the left who say controversial or even irrational things, but conservatism itself, in today’s version at least, requires a blanket acceptance of beliefs, and entire ways of viewing the world, that do not allow for rational engagement. You can be a liberal and be nuts, but you can’t be a “movement conservative” without being nuts.
July 22nd, 2006 at 9:42 pm
Dude, you’re totally full of shit.
July 22nd, 2006 at 10:36 pm
KTK, you believe some pretty wild caricatures of conservatives. There are some conservatives who believe those things, but if you look at the majority of people who describe themselves as conservatives (which happens to be the majority of the country, FWIW) they don’t believe all those things.
Believing that your political opponents all subscribe to extreme views just might be displacement.
July 22nd, 2006 at 10:46 pm
No, les. You’re crazy. He’s the normal one.
July 22nd, 2006 at 10:49 pm
Conservatism was once an ideology – an unimaginative, reactionary, and cold-heartedly selfish ideology, but one that had articulable principles, at least. Contemporary conservativsm appears to be a cult – an organization of needy, weak-minded individuals who are willing to slavishly accept anything they are told without objection in return for approval or personal benefit, and who then form extensive psychological barriers to questioning the perspective that has been dictated to them, often to the point of delusion and deep-seated irrationality.
So KTK basically says that conservatism is a mental disorder? Hmm, who is it that says something like that? Except I thought it was about far left liberals.
Tell me KTK, what do you feel about the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights? I would be fascinated to learn how screwed up the founders were. With their cult like thoughts about freedom of religion and other ideas that were “truly irrational thinking”.
You have not made your case Sir. Try again.
July 23rd, 2006 at 12:00 am
I’m a libertarian politically but my personal social views are conservative. I’ve been called ultra-conservative even though my views different greatly from that of the stereotypical conservative- many of my political views are downright liberal.
And I am definitely part of the “conservative movement” to the extent that I support many conservative politicians. I find I disagree less with them than I do with the liberal kool-aid drinkers.
Please tell me where I fit into your conservative cult. Or is it possible that the world is made up of individuals who have their own unique views and make their own decisions?
July 23rd, 2006 at 12:00 am
Hm… KTK, you may really want to reconsider that opinion. Ask five conservatives a question on some issues, and you’ll easily get six or seven different opinions.
Gay Marriage? Some people, like the Instapundit and Gaypatriot/Gaypatriot West, are completely for it, others, like most libertarians, don’t give a damn, and yet others think it’s a stupid change.
Illegal Immigrants? True, a good many Malkinites are quite heavily opposed, but other conservatives are strongly against crap like the wall, which the find to be a waste of time and money compared to preventing immigrants from violating the laws once they get here.
Hell, even gun rights aren’t completely drenched across the Right. Romney and Rudi, for example, doesn’t seem to give a damn about them.
July 23rd, 2006 at 9:30 am
I know its not nice to call people names on blogs/comments, but your an f^&* idiot. Its almost pointless to even type out a dignified response to your idiotic thinking.
July 23rd, 2006 at 12:28 pm
This is the part that gets me:
I seem to remember a certain first lady and her Vast Right Wing Conspiracy. Would you be talking about an attitude like that?
July 24th, 2006 at 12:42 am
Flame on!
While I don’t know any conservatives who believe every one of the things KTK points out, most of the conservatives I know do believe at least some of them.
Do you really think KTK is just making up the stuff about evolution, stem cell research, ID, etc.? I’m sorry to report, he’s not. Although he caricatures them, there are a whole lot of people whose beliefs are essentially as he describes them, and the vast majority of them vote Republican.
And do you honestly deny that there are prominent conservatives out there, frequently complaining that the media is painting an unfair picture of what’s going on in Iraq? Christ, complaints that the media underreports the positive stuff are constantly coming from the right. (If anything, the “good news” in Iraq is over-reported!
As to global warming, it may not necessarily be a conspiracy concocted by the vast majority of climate scientists, not just in the US but in the entire world; it could be that the vast majority of scientists are idiots. But you essentially have to believe one of those two things to deny that there’s something there.
Slavish acceptance? Criticism of the current administration’s policies almost never comes from prominent conservatives, and in those infrequent cases when it does, the move to attack the messenger is swift.
And if you think his complaints of conservatives shifting the blame to those who oppose them are imagined, well, then you haven’t been paying attention.
This isn’t to say that I think there aren’t sane conservatives out there. In fact, I think there are plenty, even if I disagree with them. The problem is, these sane conservatives are way too tolerant of the aforementioned bat-shit-crazy groups, and allow them to have too much sway in the party.
So was KTK’s post shrill? You bet it was. Did he eat his hyperbol-O’s that morning? Looks to me like he did. But was it as far off the mark as you seem to think? I don’t think so.
July 24th, 2006 at 12:46 am
I would like to add, in all seriousness, that if anyone thinks the underpinnings of any of KTK’s gripes don’t accurately reflect Bush Administration policy, they should feel free to point them out. That is to say, if KTK misrepresented the Bush stance on ESCR, global warming, homosexuality, etc., by all means, correct it.
July 24th, 2006 at 10:39 am
tgirsch, even if they do reflect Bush Admin policies, then you’re making the mistake of assuming that this all necessarily reflects the views of every conservative. Most “conservatives” I know, including myself, voted for Bush and Co. simply because they represented the least horrible option at the polls. The most important issue for me during the last election was foreign policy, and neo-cons, however weakly, at least have the vague hope of recognizing the war fanatical Islam has declared on the rest of the world. As for other policies, some are good, many are bad — neo-cons frequently irritate and disappoint their voting base, but with no better option, we stick with them.
July 24th, 2006 at 10:54 am
“Criticism of the current administration’s policies almost never comes from prominent conservatives”
Pat Buchanan, James Webb(still a conservative, even if he’s a Dem. now),…. In fact, I have a hard time thinking of any prominent conservative that hasn’t criticized the Bush administration from time to time. Most conservatives are against the administration’s immigration policies and conservatives made Bush back down on Harriet Miers.
Actually, it may be hard for you to realize it, but many conservatives loathe Bush.
Conservatives are no more in lock step than liberals. Many conservative think that global warming is a bunch of BS, but no more than that most liberals agree that abortion on demand is a good thing.
Never assume your ideological enemies march in lock step.
July 24th, 2006 at 11:46 am
Here’s the dean of prominent conseratives criticizing Bush:
Buckley criticizes Bush
July 24th, 2006 at 3:37 pm
Sarah:
Well, note that KTK talks about “movement conservatives.” It’s certainly possible to be conservative and not accept all of these things, however this puts you at odds with both the administration and the party.
Sam:
Conservative criticism of Bush was virtually unheard of until Harriet Miers. There was a lot then, and not much since. And notice that most of the criticism Bush gets from conservative sectors isn’t of the “we were wrong” variety, but of the “Bush isn’t really a conservative” variety. And it virtually always comes posthumously. Which is to say, you almost never (until very, very recently) would see conservatives speak out against Bush policies before they were implemented, during the debate, when something meaningful could be done about them.
This is something I really need to blog about, but the problem isn’t so much that conservatives march in lockstep per se, but that they are too willing to let the more radical elements of their party/movement get their way. When was the last time a prominent conservative was meaningfully punished (by the party, or by the electorate) for being too radically pro-life, or too radically anti-science, or too hawkish, etc.?
July 24th, 2006 at 5:35 pm
Indeed, it was touching to hear all those right-wingers praising President Bush for supporting his non-amnesty amnesty proposal. Even better not-arguing with any of them in 2004 over whether it was even worthwhile showing up at the polls to re-elect a RINO like Bush.
Yeah, I hear the Dubai ports deal went through without a hitch. It was very thoughtful of Arlen Specter not to attack President Bush for failing to keep Congress “adequately” informed about SWIFT, where “adequately” means “don’t just tell the Congressmen you’re supposed to tell, tell me, too, dammit.” I think Hoekstra recently sent Bush another love note, which somehow got leaked to the press.
If the electorate doesn’t punish them for being too conservative, are they too conservative?
July 25th, 2006 at 12:39 am
Xrlq:
Gee, until you enumerated them for me like that, I guess I never really put together what it is that causes a Bush policy to get criticism from conservatives: it has to be monumentally stupid. (And incidentally, not one of them is among the things KTK listed as crazy-ass-shit you have to accept uncritically to be a movement conservative.)
I suspect, however, that we’ll start to see a lot more criticism of Bush now coming from conservative quarters, now that they don’t need to worry about re-electing him, but do need to worry about re-electing their own asses.
If the electorate doesn’t punish them for being too conservative, are they too conservative?
Fair question. Apparently not, at least not on the issues that people vote over. Despite being at odds with the American public on most issues, they keep winning elections. So that certainly says something.
And again, this is why I need to blog this. Americans are pro-choice and oppose overturning Roe by a two-to-one margin, but they don’t vote that way. Americans think balanced budgets are more important than tax cuts by a two-to-one margin, but they don’t vote that way. They overwhelmingly support environmental regulation, but they don’t vote that way. They oppose the Iraq war, but they don’t vote that way.
Frankly, I haven’t got a clue what causes the electorate to vote the way they do. It sure doesn’t seem to align in any meaningful way with how they feel about the issues. Maybe it really is as simple as the “have a beer” test. But sweet Jesus, I hope not.
July 25th, 2006 at 8:48 pm
I think a more likely explanation is that the polls are wrong. You can only have so many push-polls claiming that The American People think X, and only so many elections where The American People say Y, before things start to look fishy.
Setting aside the fact that you can’t go for a beer with a born-again teetotaler, there may be something to your “have a beer” test, at least as far as general elections are concerned. Primaries don’t seem to work that way, else the Democrat nominees should have been Bill Bradley in 2000, Al Sharpton in 2004, and just about anyone except Walter Mondale and Michael Dukakis in the 1980s. It may also explain why Arnold Schwarzenegger succeeded in 2003 where Bill “Who The Hell Is Bill Simon?” Simon failed in 2002. But I don’t think it explains everything.