Con Wonking

I sparred all weekend with Wade, the squirrel-haired dealer in anime inaction figures, mostly ones featuring pronounced hemispheres in their sculpting. He sells posters, the little cell-phone charms designed to fall off and make one cry at the loss, and body pillows (the oversized pillows you lie alongside in bed, imprinted with anime babes posed languorously thereon. When you see a guy with one or two of those newly-purchased, he may as well be wearing a sandwich-board: "I will never, ever get a date.".) To be fair, they also have guys printed on some of them. I don't look at those.

Wade is a talk-show Conservative. He makes me look like Alan Colmes.

Selah.

I finally learned that there is conservatism, and then there are Conservatives. The two are not necessarily congruent. Then there is the Constitutional, which is often incongruent with the other two.( I am amusing myself thinking of an SNL sketch starring Christopher Walken "The Constitutional". Just not on a body pillow.)

Conservatives, the crowd championed by the likes of Limbaugh and the Hannitoad, have as doctrine that the YouEssofAY is the policeman of the world, that we must have tight drug laws, so that apparently it is illegal to feel good beyond what well-taxed libations can supply, and the Constitution is trumped by The Way We have Been Doing It. I suspect that this is not really what Buckley and Goldwater had in mind at all.

"We must conserve the way we've been doing it all along!" Because we are The Right! I find far less of a Constitutional bent in Radio Conservatism than I do in the tinfoil hat brigade with the likes of Alex Jones. Even FOX News, the alleged Right-wing mouthpiece, can barely acknowledge the mere existence of a Constitutionalist like Ron Paul, at least without rolling their eyes like a twelve-year-old given a curfew.

Wade likes Paul's fiscal policy, but "his foreign policy scares me" sez himself. We must be The World Police. Sometimes Limbaugh surrogate Roger Hedgecock was dismissing Paul in doctrinaire fashion, horrified that if there was a war in Rwanda (What? Really?) Ron Paul would not immediately dispatch our olive drab pizza delivery and security detail to the fray.

Entangling alliances? I realise that "entangling" has four syllables, but the Jefferson's inaugural intent should not be that hard to divine. Oh, wait.

Washington's thoughts (and they are more commercial than military) are reasoned and clear:

So likewise, a passionate attachment of one nation for another produces a variety of evils. Sympathy for the favorite nation, facilitating the illusion of an imaginary common interest in cases where no real common interest exists, and infusing into one the enmities of the other, betrays the former into a participation in the quarrels and wars of the latter without adequate inducement or justification. It leads also to concessions to the favorite nation of privileges denied to others which is apt doubly to injure the nation making the concessions; by unnecessarily parting with what ought to have been retained, and by exciting jealousy, ill-will, and a disposition to retaliate, in the parties from whom equal privileges are withheld. And it gives to ambitious, corrupted, or deluded citizens (who devote themselves to the favorite nation), facility to betray or sacrifice the interests of their own country, without odium, sometimes even with popularity; gilding, with the appearances of a virtuous sense of obligation, a commendable deference for public opinion, or a laudable zeal for public good, the base or foolish compliances of ambition, corruption, or infatuation.  

If the Alex Jones brigade have connected the dots properly, "Fast and Furious" has revealed the most egregious betrayal of the Founders' intentions by linking gun-running (our people actually making deliveries!),  cocaine importation, and our Government. Iran-Contra 2.0!

Ron Paul may be the most dangerous man in politics, but if The Powers That Be have their ineffable way, he will become the most invisible.

Herman Cain is the one that makes me nervous. The single Liberal bone in my body thrills at the thought of being able to vote for a black man (that he is ostensibly conservative apparently matters little to the Liberal bone. It is, after all, quite small. I think it resides in my ear, that or my left wrist.) His Fed connections worry me. His assertion that internal vulpine Fed audits are sufficient to secure the Federal Reserve henhouse appalls me. His 9-9-9 plan annoys me (though I quite liked the movies). He used to be a FairTAX man. Now he's a pragmatist with a trademark.

Not happy with the Cain.
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Whilst away at TsubasaCon in Huntington WV (an amazingly well-run anime convention!) politics marched on, and the Babelisation of the Repuglican hopefuls continued apace. A Texas Baptist preacher with a 10, 000-member flock introduced Rick Perry as a Christian, as opposed to Romney who is a cultist. "

“Do we want a candidate who is a good, moral person — or one who is a born-again follower of the lord Jesus Christ?”

We are not amused. I am no Romneyite. Captain Underoos (c) Vox Day holds no charms for me, but neither do the piaculative pretentions of professional politicians. My thoughts on pols who run "as Christians" are to be found elsewhere on the blog; suffice to say that EVERY time I have drunk the grape juice offered by candidates touting their faith - or allowing it to be touted by others - I have been bitten well and hard on the keister, from Jimmuh Cahter on.

I would vote for a cannibalistic Cargo Cultist IF he swore or affirmed to adhere to the Constitution, and did it.