George Will- idiot:
Conservatism’s recovery of its intellectual equilibrium requires a confident explanation of why America has two parties and why the conservative one is preferable. Today’s political argument involves perennial themes that give it more seriousness than many participants understand. The argument, like Western political philosophy generally, is about the meaning of, and the proper adjustment of the tension between, two important political goals — freedom and equality.
Today conservatives tend to favor freedom, and consequently are inclined to be somewhat sanguine about inequalities of outcomes. Liberals are more concerned with equality, understood, they insist, primarily as equality of opportunity, not of outcome.
Today conservatives tend not to favor freedom. They favor illegal warrantless wiretaps, FBI National Security letters, the suspension of habeas corpus, kangaroo courts, torture facilities, voter suppression, limitations on free speech, abuse of eminent domain, restrictions on women’s health alternatives, restrictions on permissible scientific enquiry, government intrusion into personal medical decisions, mandatory sentencing, the war on drugs, de facto conscription thru stop-loss programs, and more.
Liberals oppose almost all of this. What George Will is missing is that the conservatives turned out to be frauds.
Translated: I already got my shit by hook or crook, so screw you.
Liberals believe in justice. And all that “men are created equal” shit in all those musty documents written by those dead guys from a couple hundred years ago.
George Will-Arrogant, Pompous Ass.
Excellent, BooMan. Especially this:
“Today conservatives tend not to favor freedom. They favor illegal warrantless wiretaps, FBI National Security letters, the suspension of habeas corpus, kangaroo courts, torture facilities, voter suppression, limitations on free speech, abuse of eminent domain, restrictions on women’s health alternatives, restrictions on permissible scientific enquiry, government intrusion into personal medical decisions, mandatory sentencing, the war on drugs, de facto conscription thru stop-loss programs, and more.”
Emphasis on the “and more….” Whole books….tons of them….have already been written about the OUTRAGE of all of this.
IMPEACH BUSH/CHENEY!!!
Will misses the fact that conservatives are frauds because he himself is a fraud of the highest order.
I think the term is “distancing”. As in, the right wing is distancing itself from the lunatics running the show.
Sorry ‘Publicans. Not on my watch. This is what you stand for. The Do Nothing Congress and the radical regime in the Executive are doing just exactly what you preached for lo these many years.
As you sow, so shall you reap.
So called conservatives stand for nothing more than the acquisition of assets. They will do/say anything to protect what they see as their hard-earned rewards, hence the continuing popularity of idiots such as George Will.
George Bush is not a conservative. He’s an authoritarian.
so, what’s that make Tom DeLay?
an overrated exterminator
A kleptocrat, at best. Of course, what we have now is a kakistrocracy — one of two words from this year’s Bee I’ll be using for months now. (The other: sardoodledom, which can be used to describe half the episodes of LOST.)
DeLay is a nasty dry drunk.
Booman, Booman, Booman.
I would have called George Will a poopy head!
So there.
Could Will possibly be anymore pompous? Really and truly, that prose is so dense you could cut it with a knife.
To the editor:
I read “The Case for Conservatism,” George Will’s deeply mendacious little screed, with amazement. Mr. Will is either a pathological liar or an idiot. In the last 6 years, we have seen the face of conservatism. Conservatism, in the last 6 years, has been shown to believe not in individual liberties, but in tapping telephones without warrants in direct contravention of the 4th Amendment. Conservatism, in the last 6 years, has been shown to not have a humble, sensible foreign policy, but to invade other states without provocation and with lying to the American people. Conservatism, in the last 6 years, has been shown to believe in torture and in extraordinary rendition. In the last 6 years, conservatism has been shown to be fascism. That’s the true face of modern conservatism. In a recent Republican debate, all save McCain endorsed this fascist view as well, in that all supported torture. The United States is not yet a fascist dictatorship. Another Republican president will make it one, however. Mr. Will, in his East coast elitist pulpit, seems to believe that we real Americans are idiots. Sorry, George, you are wrong about conservatism.
dataguy
Belleville, IL
618-mylocal#
uh, with appologies to limbaughnauts, i’d like to give a fat fragging ditto to dataguy. booman, i have a policy of not logging in to websites and just reading them, occaisionally posting. i felt a need to post on this one.
adam b made the point that g. will is not a conservative so much as an authoritarian. i agree.
unfortunately the unquestioned acquiescence to suspension of constitutional rights seems to be the mod du jour or the “conservative” movement. it’s shameful.
americans all, we will fight and defeat this elite-aggrandizing philosophy of eco-social belittlement practised by the monied hordes.
oh, and screw you, george will.
stick to talking about baseball, george, you’re okay when you do that.
Will very rarely argues for his positions, so one shouldn’t be surprised to see him overlook the obvious silliness of his view. The thing of it is that Will only argues against views he imputes to others (but they don’t actually hold). So, in this piece on conservatism, he argues against some kind of fantasy liberal. Sure he’ll tell you that those views are held by someone. But they’re not. His strategy is simply dishonest.
In the early 1980’s, early in the Reagan years, social programs were being slashed while the unemployment rate in my town (Buffalo) was over 20%. The lines at the soup kitchens indeed looked like The Great Depression. George Will wrote many columns praising the new policies, and scolding those of us who were not on board. “It may be tough right now, but it’s necessary”. Then one day appeared a column about a program for families of kids with Down’s Syndrome. According to Will, this was somehow the only thing the federal government was doing socially that had merit. This program, among the many, should not be cut. Turns out Will has (or had) a kid with Down’s. How can such morally repugnant people be allowed a national soapbox?
Booman, I’d use the word slimeball.