I just love Stirling’s eloquence…. and his deep understanding on so many things at so many levels ….
The Troll of a Conservative | TPMCafe
The right might want to run and hide from the reality that they are, in fact, a bunch of conservative inflationists who have a wide streak of political sadism in them, but it does not take long wandering in the wilderness of right wing ranting to realize that what unifies the right wing is not a love of small government, nor a love of rights, nor any particular economic theory, but a personal belief that other people’s right to a face stops at your fist, and that problems are best solved by beating the guts out of whoever crosses you – whether in the foreign or domestic environment.
This attitude can be seen in the area of education – a worship of “the Western Canon” by a host of academics who then procede to violate just about every tenet of humanism contained in it. People who thump Adam Smith as if Wealth of Nations were a bible, and biblical literalists who scowl and spit out truisms contained in the 30 verses they bother to memorize. It is a narrow, nasty, creed, and one that gets narrower all the time. It is also what unified the Thatcher, Reagan, Gingrich and Bushite revolutions. Not reason, nor conservatism, nor libertarianism, but a basic faith in the triumph of the will.
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