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.
