A Conservative Blog? Humbug!

One of the really neat things about Blogger is that Google has provided the writer with a cool bunch of fairly basic, but often interesting, analytic tools which can be used to track certain aspects of your blogs’ audience.

One of these is the “Traffic Sources” tool that gives you some information about how people managed to find you. There is a subsection of this analytic which is called “search terms” which details how many readers were directed your way by using various search terms within their web browser. Very often, people will enter a rather vague or strange search term, for example, the ever popular “Leslie Marshall Tits”, and lo and behold! They wind up finding the Lunatic’s Asylum!

Now, I have never written about Leslie’s hooters in a real sense, except in response to the apparently mammary-obsessed idiot who keeps coming here in the hopes, one would think, of seeing an image or perhaps reading a fascinating description of Leslie’s Sweatermeat, only to leave woefully disappointed.


At least one seriously sick individual enters this term and finds himself (I should hope it’s a him) deposited here at the Asylum at least once a week.

Sometimes the search terms are rather funny, like in the case of “Pakistani Donkey Sex” (is there any other kind of Pakistani sex?), or just reflect general truths like “Louis Farrakhan is an idiot”. I’m certain that some point in the last nine years of this diseased commentary I have referred to Pakistani Donkey coitus or the relative ding-dong factor of a racist separatist. Fair enough.

But this week there was a search term that stuck out on the list like a Mormon at an orgy.

The term was “Conservative Blog Lunatic’s Asylum”.

Now, the context in which these things are entered is completely unknowable. Was someone under the impression that this was a conservative blog? Was someone accusing me of being a Conservative? It’s impossible to tell, but I will say this: if you’re coming here to read a conservative viewpoint, you might get what you’re looking for, and very often, you might be leaving this page with a feeling of having been cheated.

Unless all you want is mindless Obama Bashing? I can do that in my sleep.

My own political views would, I guess, be considered more Libertarian than Conservative (and I reject this label, as most of the Libertarians I know are simply tight-wad cheapskates who seek to avoid inconvenience, and taxes, while getting their freak on, unhindered), but that is a matter of both opinion and subject to the ever-amorphous nature of our modern political lexicon. The terms “Liberal”, “Conservative”, “Libertarian”, “Republican” and “Democrat” no longer mean very much for the ideology and methodology they were once founded upon has changed.

In many cases, these terms are simply meaningless: you can’t call yourself a “Liberal” (in the Classically Liberal sense) and then stand for government control of the health care system, or forced integration, or the concept of Affirmative Action, as each policy stems from a most un-Liberal mindset of deliberate coercion. Neither can you call yourself a “Conservative” when you stop to consider that the last “Conservative” President and Congress expanded both the scope and power of government exponentially, and then totally abandoned the concept of fiscal responsibility.

As for my own personal views, I’m NOT a Conservative. I used to think I was one, but I was corrected by exposure to various other Conservatives (they consider themselves to be THE REAL CONSERVATVES) on a handful of websites and other cyber-opinion exchanges. Here I was told, repeatedly, that my viewpoints were often incompatible with the Conservative Ideal, mainly because:

a. I’m a godless heathen who doesn’t wish to see the “problem” of homosexuality solved, in accordance with God’s Will, of course, by a carefully-planned program of street executions. I do not believe the Bible to be literal truth, and feel that the Rapture is a bunch of superstitious claptrap invented to crowbar money out of weak-minded people. I don’t think we should be setting up concentration camps in the hinterlands where the abortionists shall be housed, and harranged 24/7 by some Bible-thumbing douchebag until they repent. I take the view that organized religion (of all kinds) has served little purpose beyond deliberately keeping people ignorant, frightened, and separate, and thus, easy to manipulate.

b. I have had the audacity on occasion to question the policies of the sainted Ronald Reagan. While I am a Ronbo fan, I am also not one of those who remembers him as this infallible, all-powerful figure who saved the world. I have, on occasion, vociferously supported politicians the REAL conservative finds objectionable, often because they happen to fall far short of the often Jesus-like moral standing Conservatives seem to demand from “their guys”: Rudy Guiliani, Condoleeza Rice, Newt Gingrich, and others, while criticizing those who profess, shall we say, a more godly viewpoint: Rick Santorum, Tim Pawlenty, Jerry Falwell, come to mind.

I was actually banned from one popular conservative website for daring to point out that, on some issues, Guiliani was actually more Conservative than Reagan! And by "banned" I mean I could still go there and read what people were saying, even seven years later, but I'm not allowed to actually post anything, or engage in debate. So much for the spirited Conservative Defense of the 1st Amendment!

c. I do not believe it is the inalienable right of every American to own an RPG, a machine gun, an Abrams Tank and an atomic bomb, nor that the Second Amendment should be blindly obeyed without a minimum of critical thinking skills being engaged. The fact is that most people in this country have the same level of intelligence one might expect from a retarded garden slug (after all, they go to church, don’t they?), and it is rather detrimental to a civilized society to have those people running around armed to the teeth.

I believe in the Right to Self-Defense, and the belief that your guns have probably killed fewer people than Ted Kennedy;s car, but I am not convinced that most of you 2nd Amendment boosters are either playing with a full deck, or exercise much responsibility. You just believe that guns are neat – and the bigger the gun, the better – and since you have permission in the Consitution, you should have the biggest guns possible. Excuse me if I have a problem with some of you demented assholes running around with high-powered automatic weapons and armor-piercing ammo. 

I get the general impression that a significant proportion of the 2nd AMENDMENT IS THE BESTEST THING EVAH! Crowd are arming themselves in order to defend their lives and property should they not be Raptured on Judgement Day (see a.), or perhaps to kill everyone else in revenge for God having let them down after taking all their money for all those years.

d. I do not ascribe to the idea that it is government’s job to tell you how to live or think. One of the biggest complaints one hears from REAL Conservatives about so-called Liberals is that the latter has a streak of tyranny in it that is obsessed with controlling all human activity and thought. This is demonstrably true; but it’s also true of the modern Conservative, excepting that the activities and thoughts they wish to control are often diametrically opposed to that of their counterparts.

I don’t believe the government has the right, or should be empowered, to advance only the Christian point-of-view. Nor only the White point-of-view, nor the tax dodgers’, nor the businessman’s. Mostly because, to paraphrase Kathy Shaidle, the majority of people we elect to our organs of government aren’t smart enough to tell us how to live. If they were smart, they’d be working on Wall Street or at Bell Labs, making a fortune and maybe something useful.

For example, I found it a complete waste of time back in 2005 for Congress and the Supreme Court to expend much breath, or resources, to trample upon the concept or marital rights in order to prevent the removal of Terry Schiavo’s feeding tube. While that was red meat to the Right to Life crowd, it ultimately wasn’t within the scope of the constitution, the law, or custom for the government at such high levels to be involved in the decision. 

And whatever you think of Terry's ex-husband, it was still his right to make a medical decision on behalf of his wife. I thought the Defense of Marriage -- even it's more terrible aspects -- was a Conservative staple?

While I personally find abortion abominable, and questions of end-of-life care or a Right to Die With Dignity thorny, I don’t think it should be left to politicians of any stripe to make the rules up as they go along, and as they find it politically expedient. Which is what, naturally, politicians do as a matter of course.

Government’s proper role in society is to continue to preserve the conditions under which we, as citizens, can continue to enjoy our rights. Not dictate when those rights are and aren’t operable, according to their need to mollify a certain segment of the electorate, or to prise money out of a special interest group, nor to get their faces on the evening news, and it should, whenever possible, all be done with a modicum of thoughtfulness without regards to ideology or a campaign contribution.

Right is still Right, and Wrong is still Wrong, and neither depends upon the voting bloc involved.

e. No, I don’t think Sarah Palin is the greatest thing since pennicillin, and no, I don’t consider her an accurate representation of Conservative American Womanhood. Sarah Palin went from being an interesting personality to being an overly mass-marketed pain in the ass, very quickly. Which makes her the Conservative counterpart to Barack Obama.

I have real issues with this seeming need for a “Conservative Messiah" that arises every few years, and which manifests itself in the Cult of Personality in a way in which Liberals are regularly accused of attaching deity-like powers upon their own. 

Every few years when, inevitably, there is a political setback for the Republican Party (mostly because they, like the Libtards, get stupid and drunk with power when they are in the ascendant, too), the hue and cry is all about how we need a “A REAL Conservative” to turn this country around, and that magical quality suddenly gets bestowed by the Conservative peanut gallery upon a true non-entity.

I can name a few, just in the last couple of years: Duncan Hunter, Tim Pawlenty, Sam Brownback, Michelle Bachmann, Scott Brown, Mike Pence, Mitch Daniels, Chris Christie. On one level or another, most of these people wouldn’t pass Conservative Muster if we applied the same characteristics to them: Christie doesn’t strike me as much of a church going clod; Bachmann may have the small-government-low-taxes-invoke-deity-and-country-every-five-seconds chops, but other than opposition to ObamaCare, where’s the meat? Scott Brown was mystically imparted with the power to Save the Republic, only to see his anti-ObamaCare vote nullified by parliamentary manuever, and then he crawled into bed with Chris Dodd and Barney frank on banking regulations that are in part being blamed for some of our economic malaise.

Of course this continuing need to impart the title of “Savior” onto whatever politician catches the Conservative eye at any given minute is an extension of the Religious belief in a Savior, or something suitably psychiatric-sounding like that. All I know is that who is a REAL Conservative changes on a daily basis, depending on who the media darling is this week (that is to say, who Ann Coulter designates as Conservative Champion this week), and who, ultimately, fails to measure up to ever-changing. almost-impossible to meet standards.

And much like the Muslims who respond to every defeat with a call for a return to even more restrictive, fundamental religious practice and ever more stricter standards of piety, so the REAL Conservative in the wake of each catastrophe calls for greater ideological purity until it makes the process of selecting the right people for the right job an impossible task. If this were not true, then John McCain would not have been your nominee in 2008, and Rick Santorum and Mike Huckabee would hardly have been taken seriously.

In summation, this is hardly a “Conservative Blog”, in the conventional sense, because I am hardly a Conservative. I'm more like a traditional Republican who holds some conservative views. I happen to agree with Conservatives – even the dingbats in the God, Guns and Gays coalition – on many issues, but I am hardly “one of them”. I believe in limited government, lower taxes, law-and-order, a strong national defense, and true free markets. However, I disagree, often strongly, with the REAL conservative on most moral and social issues. This is where they lose me because it's not their business to inject their stupidity into anyone's life.

George Orwell once wrote (in the Lion and the Unicorn), and this seems especially prescient, vis-à-vis the Conservative movement in this day-and-age:

“An Army of unemployed led by millionaires preaching the Sermon on the Mount – that is our danger”.

Now, if that doesn’t sound much like some species of Modern Conservative, then I don’t know what does. I’m not all too keen on the alternatives, but at some point our politics has to be less about labels and ideology and more about workable solutions, or we’re doomed. The Tea Party, despite the fact that I wouldn’t freely associate with many Tea Partiers by choice, have it right; get the stupidity out of the political process, cool it with the religious undertones and prudery, chuck the Cult of Personality, and get down to the task of finding the most competent people, rather than the least-objectionable, best-marketed ideologues.

What could be more Conservative than that?