This is not a Ron Paul rant, although he appears as a guest star.
In 1988 a friend from Charleston, SC called me and asked if I had heard of Rush Limbaugh. (A key point of the conversation was his saying "Rush reminds me of you.".) I found the local talk station and was instantly hooked. The humor, the pugnacity, the conservative line...it was great (this same station, WVNN, also launched the career of one Sean Hannity, known here as "The Hannitoad". That was not so great. I applied to be Hannity's replacement when he left for Atlanta, but was the silver medalist. The program director was concerned that I might be the Poet Laureate of talk radio. They did not want that. Note to self: words of one syl...dang!)
Anyway, conservatism had A Voice, and a fun one, 24 years ago. Now, there has been a shift, neo-connery abounds, and Conservatism, which rightly maintained a Constitutional bent, has now abandoned it, and merely "conserves" The Way We've Been Doing It, giving passes to the likes of George the W, who 'splained that he had to do non-free-market things (TARP) in order to save the free market, ignoring that we have not had a free market in the US for decades. Congress is supposed to Declare War, but Georgie went ahead and bombed scary brown people across the Big Water, and so it goes, except now we have a scary brown President bombing scary brown people. 'Course, how can Congress declare a war if there is no Enemy, beyond a concept like Terrorism? (War on Drugs? Silly me.) Our endless mucking about in other people's muck is unconstitutional, or at least un-Founderish.
Conservatism has become, like Limbaugh, a hollow shade of itself.
Which brings me to The Point. Conservatives, as much as liberals, do not wish to be Free. They merely want Free Stuff (or as free as a bloated tax structure can make it). If Conservatives Really Were, they would be backing Dr. Congressman Paul but because they want the things and services and wars brought to us by Big Government, they must support them wot supports that Government. Ron Paul got a whopping 5% of the Limestone County vote today. A "conservative" who I have known and done pro-life work with years ago, did not even bother to list Dr. Paul in his official tally of final votes.
Dr. Paul wants to free us from the government that should not be, and take us back to the Land of the Free. That "conservatives" stumble over the fact of their pet Thing being targeted by Paul (War on Drugs, Foreign Entanglements) and eschew freedom for the conserved status quo defines what they really are: not freedom-lovers, not constitutional, and in the historical document sense, un-American.
Again, I would vote for an anthrophagous Neo-Zoroastrian if he would serve Constitutionally.
9 comments:
Fred Allen was right about you ;)
THANKS!
Wow, Weatherly knew Fred Allen?
In considering the ongoing "conversatives vs. liberals" cross-country rally, I keep finding myself dwelling on some lyrics from Billy Bragg's "Ideology":
"Outside the patient millions
Who put them into power
Expect a little more back for their taxes.
Like school books, beds in hospitals
And peace in our bloody times,
All they get is old men grinding axes."
Thanks, G-I-D-B! I was, mmmmmmm, righteously indignant last night after the primary election.
Oh, and Galt, PONIES!
@Michael- Fred Allen is a demi-hero of mine. When I read the quote that now resides in the upper right corner of the Plumbline, I ganked it as his review of my blog, FROM BEYOND THE GRAVE! "All they get is old men grinding axes." Excellent.
Fred Allen's pretty much up there for me as well (along with Oscar Levant and Fran Lebowicz).
If you haven't yet read Jon Winokur's THE PORTABLE CURDMUGEON then you need to, if only for the story he tells in the prologue about meeting Allen.
And that should've been CURMUDGEON, rather that CURDMUGEON (which is what I have for breakfast most mornings),
Liberals: LOUD, in your face, immature little children making mental mudpies out of their intellectual feces.
Conservatives: Little old ladies of both sexes who want their tomorrows to be like their yesterdays only more so.
May they both rot!
See ya at Revoluticon.
America is cooked.
Of course, what do you expect from a nation that builds its presidential palace on the bottom point of a pentagram?
Vidad, I have apparently never read all of Dread's links over t' Vox's. I was not aware of that positioning.
Should have kept up with Point of View, too.
NOT fun-making. it is a fascinating bit of lore. You know that before Joseph Smith was a prophet (dum-dum-dumdumdum) he built Masonic Lodges in the Ohio Valley? Seems God liked the layout a lot, 'cos many Masonic things are included in the Temples.
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