I believe I have said this before, but it bears repeating: the principal way you know I'm a liberal is not that I believe that we need to stop calling it "gay marriage" ("the right to not have the government pick your spouse" seems more to the point), or that "taxes are the price we pay for a civilized society" (wait! that was a Republican Supreme Court nominee/Justice; time's arrow man....weird). No, you know I'm a liberal because I don't actually believe anything until either Jon Stewart or Ira Glass whispers it soothingly into my ear.
This week's "This American Life" is fascinating (yes: I keep that sentence on hand and cut and paste it to this blog every other entry). It tells two stories of people fed up with their political parties. It should come as no surprise that the "Democrats are stupid" story is much more forgiving than the "Republicans are stupid" story. Democrats are stupid because they don't know how to run campaigns. Republicans are stupid because... I wonder.
The Republican half of the episode focuses on Tea Partiers in Michigan and their quest to restore "conservative values" (the theme of this post is that I don't know what those are) to the GOP. I've never really taken the Tea Party seriously. That may actually be a trenchant piece of self-reflection, since it was barely 3 years ago that I could be seen waving a sign accusing the President of the United States of being a fascist. I like to think that I've grown since then. Listening to the interviewed Tea Partiers (I will resist the urge to abbreviate that TPers for the rest of the post, though it would be pretty high-larious), one contradictory idea slowly became clear in my mind. These are people who are as mad at George W. Bush as I am, but have reacted exactly opposite. We both agree (I think) that the end result of the Bush Presidency was somewhat less than desirable. We disagree why. The Tea Partiers claim that the Republican party drove this country into a ditch because they "broke with conservative values" and that the party, therefore, needs a quick shot of new blood. I claim that the Republican party drove this country into a ditch because they exemplified conservative values and that conservatism, therefore, needs to be tarred, feathered, and run out of Washington, D.C. on a rail.
My question for all you Tea Partiers out there (yeah, right; Tea Partiers read my blog) is this: in what way were the Bush years not a conservative wet-dream?
Judeo-Christian ethics were codified (remember stem cells and the aforementioned marriage rights?).
Environmental concerns had to ride in the back middle seat of the free market's station wagon.
Taxes were slashed (as we marched into not one, but two wars; I'm going to break with my half-assed attempt to remain civil here and state my belief that our grandparents, who went without stockings because nylon was needed to send paratroopers into Nazi-occupied France, are particularly ashamed of us on this front).
Missile Defense installations were funded.
Boom! Recession!
Am I missing something? How is the reaction to this that we need more conservatism in American politics?
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I do so like the analysis in the second half of your post. I have a critique, though. What you fail to see, Scott is that free market can only work if we turn away from the greed that satan puts in our hearts. The government just doesn't have enough faithful members for that to work at the moment. Hate is ok, though, as long as you hate the right stuff.
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