At Least He Knows Something’s Wrong

11 Comments

1. 

   BooMan on August 2, 2010 at 9:37 am

   The beatings will continue until morale improves:

   These days it’s getting increasingly embarrassing to publicly identify oneself as a conservative. It was bad enough when George Bush 43, the K Street Gang, and the neo-cons were running up spending, fighting an unnecessary war of choice in Iraq, incurring massive deficits, expanding entitlements, and all the rest of the nonsense I cataloged over the years in posts like Bush 43 has been a disaster for conservatives.

   These days, however, the most prominent so-called conservatives are increasingly fit only to be cast for the next Dumb and Dumber sequel. They’re dumb and crazy.

2. 

   Snarki child of Loki on August 2, 2010 at 10:01 am

   If you can’t even save “conservatism” from the onslaught of crazy morons, how can you expect to save civilization?

   F-ing conservawankers would rather ride the crazy-train for a while, in the hope that it actually goes somewhere useful to them, while getting ready to jump off “just in case”.

   Disingenuous, fickle, opportunistic bastards. Their whining should be severely mocked.

   • 

     BooMan on August 2, 2010 at 11:28 am

     see my more recent post on that subject.

3. 

   boran2 on August 2, 2010 at 12:08 pm

   The idea of purpose in the cosmos was central to the conservative vision. Another icon on the right, Whittaker Chambers, described in his 1952 memoir, “Witness,” the moment he awoke from his earlier communism: It was upon looking closely one day at his young daughter’s ear. Noting the exquisite beauty, the evidence of “immense design” shook him. He could never again subscribe to the secular, materialist dream.

   It remains unclear exactly why nature’s beauty should be attributed some underlying plan.  Sadly, this is not a new notion.  Is there some fear that things just happened, without purpose? (always a possibility)

   When I became a conservative, that is what I signed up for: a profound vision granting transcendent significance to public life and hope in private life. The goal wasn’t to defeat Democratic officeholders or humiliate left-wing activists. It was, and still is, with those who remember, to save civilization.

   From what?

   • 

     BooMan on August 2, 2010 at 12:13 pm

     From what?

     From atheism. From a scientific worldview.

     Defining conservatism is notoriously difficult. But no one did it better than philosopher Richard M. Weaver in a book that, more than any other, launched the modern conservative movement. Published in 1948, the book was “Ideas Have Consequences.”

     Weaver compared his role to a doctor diagnosing an illness. It is not enough to want to treat the symptoms — in this case, of our demoralized, dispirited culture. You must understand the genesis of the disease.

     Weaver describes the course of the revolution in thought that led from a seemingly obscure philosophical debate in the Middle Ages through Darwinian evolutionary theory to class-based determinist theories in economics and onward to contemporary liberal relativism.

     In the process of disintegration was an ancient, shared picture of the world and our place in it. Once, Western culture was blessed by a “metaphysical dream” that meaningfully explained man to himself as, in the phrase from Psalms, “a little lower than the angels.” Now humans were reduced to mere animals.

     • 

       boran2 on August 2, 2010 at 12:26 pm

       And here I was thinking that atheism and science were freeing forces and religion the cause of demoralizing/dispiriting, being that it was invented to subdue impressionable minds.  Silly me.

     • 

       Errol on August 2, 2010 at 2:09 pm

       unfortunately for his delusion inquiry goes back as far as the ancient civilizations he is trying to “recover”. Cicero’s On the Nature of the God’s and On Divination are great reads full of funny examples. Couched as debates, they don’t reveal explicitly what Cicero himself thought, though last I looked into it ppl thought he didn’t believe in the gods themselves but thought it was important to preserve the illusion because the rituals were important to the Roman State.

   • 

     Errol on August 2, 2010 at 2:01 pm

     From complexity

4. 

   kuvasz on August 2, 2010 at 1:12 pm

   Odd, based upon keen observation of the Klinghoffer type, I was of the opinion that the purpose of conservativism was to ensure for its advocates  securing their place in line for the bounties of civilization.

   They don’t give a rat’s ass about anything but their own bellies, and while there is little wrong with that since we all do, the problem is their hypocrisy in denying it.

5. 

   Brendan Skwire on August 2, 2010 at 1:53 pm

   the comments are awesome.

6. 

   priscianus jr on August 3, 2010 at 9:45 am

   I don’t give a rat’s as about recovering “ancient civilizations,” whatever that means, but I am very much in favor of recovering ancient wisdom. Wisdom of any kind seems to be in short supply these days. However, Conservatism as it is known today in America has no more to do with ancient wisdom than Mickey Mouse does. The very fact that this guy thinks it does proves his lack of intelligence and attraction to shiny objects and simulacra.