My personal experience has been that conservatives loved their families, and feel that the experience they grew up with has been worthy of safeguarding, and conserving.
Meanwhile, progressives or radicals hated their families, and feel that their own experience was hogwash, and they hope to change that experience for their own children.
I was satisfied with my own upbringing, hence I'm a conservative.
If someone was dissatisfied, they'd be a radical.
But this was my own generation. Back in 1776, the radicals wanted to overthrow the King. Today, the radicals listen to BB King, and for them Monday (a work day) is a bad day, but Tuesday, is just as bad.
The Obamanobles want to create a whole new world, an America that they can be proud of because it's one in which there will be no more work. All work will be sent overseas. Michelle Obama hated the America in which she was raised because her dad had to work. Hers is a new America that her husband is building for her, in which she won't have to work any more. She and he can have beer picnics, and settle policy between stints of playing amongst the geraniums. It's an America based on redistribution of wealth, in which everyone has insurance, and in which there are no more foreign interventions, and most of all, in which there will be no more work. Domestic interventions by the government will be far more intensive. Everything from insurance to what we eat will be overseen by a nanny state, or in this case, by Michelle Obama herself, who will be certain that everyone eats, and not only vegetable burgers and beer, but lobsters and caviar, while smoking pot would become an intoxicating after-dinner option.
Against this are the new notions of the Tea Party, with an austere bare bones government, in which free enterprise is more robust, and taxation is minimal, and work is far more prominent. Jobs will return to America. People will work, and work ethic will be paramount. On days off, people will hunt for their food. Crime will be more severely punished, and freeloaders will be repaid with buckshot.
The Tea Party is patriarchal and looks back to the Founding Fathers and God.
The Obamanobles are matriarchal and look to Mother Jones and worship Gaia.
23 comments:
Kirby,
TEA PARTY SWEEPS OBAMANATION
Last night, the tea party didn't run against Obama or the Democrats. Last night was a primary, so tea party candidates were running on a general anti-incumbent platform against other Republicans. (And no, I don't buy the line that the Tea Party cuts across party boundries -- there were precisely zero tea party candidates running in Democratic primaries, after all.) It is possible that an anti-incumbent theme will work in November too, but it's hard to sustain political power if your mantra consists of "throw the bums out," since electoral success just makes you the next bum.
My personal experience has been that conservatives loved their families, and feel that the experience they grew up with has been worthy of safeguarding, and conserving.
Meanwhile, progressives or radicals hated their families, and feel that their own experience was hogwash, and they hope to change that experience for their own children to something completely different.
Each of us can only speak for ourselves, of course, but I certainly grew up loving my family, and the environment that I provided for my children was similar to the environment that I grew up in. And the families I know (mostly through Church or work) are generally the same, although a very broad political spectrum is represented.
stu
you make it sound like kirby is getting a little too excited too early or something
i think it will be important for his general political self esteem to simply allow him to get excited and let him convince himself that he has a better day ahead when the tea is really poured into the harbor and one more nail placed in the coffin of american unconscious marxism
this republican populism stuff is really interesting
it's like watching popeye read socrates out loud to brutus and olive oile just sits there with batting eyes
hoping soon that glen beck comes on the tv again
so popey can have soemone his own calibre with which to speak
iyamwhatiyam
ne'er a sounder political dictum was e'er uttered on any medium
well
the democrats are rubbing their knuckles today and rubbing their knuckles on their heads and in general just being knuckleheads about how threatened they are with all these drunken republican spiked tea addicts
i wouldn't be surpirsed if they go around putting the ten commandments on every available lawn in america
just to get the points across
i don't hate america but i do want to support those mentally disturbed democrats who do
for it is only in them that i see any hope for some sort of resolution to the fetid stalemate
only in they being completely off the board communist totalitarian marxist terrorists for convoluted justice will there ever be any peace here
i want rahm emanuel to run for president
we would be more civilized if at 3pm every day everyone was compelled to take an hourlong tea break
and only tea
nothing else
just twinings and cream and a crumpett or two
where's the billboard
here's to a wittier america
we need some more bonafide goofballs like jesse ventura in the mix
otherwise
i find it all rather difficult to take with any amount of seriousness
just another media distraction with commercials
just another zippy tv reality show
a surreality show
hey
now that could be something
jh
Kirby's new theories - that somehow Obama is less work-ethicy by history than was silverspoony fundrunkfratboy Northeasterner Bush, that Democrats are all about maintaining the power of the Wealthy elite (at least the Intellectual elite snarkiness from the right has Some truth to it), and that liberals hate their families
(this would seem to be unlikely, since liberals are more likely to come from stable backgrounds...[divorce rates and level of education are inversely proportional, and those with graduate degrees are much more likely to be liberal...And divorce rates are higher in red states)...
And that Democrats want to send jobs oversees (keeping jobs in America and having stricter trade arrangements, are very uniony, Democraty type of thing) and that somehow low tax rates have historically led to the prominence of America's economy (our steady build up of power came with very high tax rates, and the Clinton years of abundance came with increased taxes...Reagan's slashing of taxes for the rich worked once, but 'cutting taxes' is a stance relative to current poitical realities, not a principle... Equating, in any way, Obama's allowing the Bush tax cuts for the rich to expire, so that their tax levels are at late-90s levels, with Socialism, is stupid...not sure if you're doing that, but others have.)
It's no wonder you're a Republican - you have no idea what's going in the world!
And like it or not, Obama's takeover of the auto industry (I'm even using your hyperbolic language!) saved it. It worked...Though, again, this is one of those topics that rarely seems to get covered, so I don't know what's going on with it these days, except that they're makin' profits again.
(the conspiracy theorist in me finds it a bit of a coincidence that as soon as the government gains a huge interest in our automakers, Toyota gets all sort of safety recalls..)
I'm cool with people hunting for food on days off - more possible now, perhaps, that Obama has laxed gun laws.
Most all of your criticisms these days have come in the form of vague cultural/worldview-based denouncements of Democrats that are, as a matter of fact, not in line with reality.
It's almost like the news source you trust is pushing a very poorly-framed but consistent agenda...
That couldn't be true, riiight?
I think what we're going to find as the current 20-somethings get older, that the real "rebellion" is going to be against their stupid hippie parents and in favor of more conservative values.
I think there are probably a lot of young people who grew up in a house with a new "daddy" every couple of years who want family stability.
These young people have seen what parents, like Mrs. Stanley Obama, who think it's more important to "self-actualize" than to raise their kids, can do to a family.
I mean, look at Obama! He still craves constant attention and adulation, and has no idea how to deal with criticism! He's 49, and he still hasn't gotten over her neglect and abuse.
I hope, though I can't predict, that within my lifetime we'll see the divorce rate drop, the illegitimacy rate drop, the use of ilicit drugs curtail slightly, and possibly even the rates of alcohol abuse drop from today's levels.
I don't see how a generation of kids who grew up with stupid hippie parents (note that hippie is qualified) wouldn't become adults and decide to do better for their children than theirs did for them.
So, I think maybe there's another way to look at this. Liberalism isn't necessarily rebellion stemming from an irresponsible Matriarchal childhood or the like. Conservatism isn't necessarily a natural consequence of a good old-fashioned Partriarchal rearing. If today's young adults weren't satisfied with their hippie momma's drug use and neglect and the endless string of "baby daddies' paraded through their home, they MAY choose to rebel through traditional values.
If today's young adults weren't satisfied with their over-demanding rule-book-toting, individuality squashing fascist of a father, they might prefer to grow armpit hair and live in a yurt.
Seems sensible enough to me, anyway.
Just so happens, though, that individuality squashing fascist daddies have been in short supply in recent decades, so conservative rebellion has the edge.
Em, this makes sense to me. My own parents were quite conservative in terms of their lifestyle. They met at Northern Iowa University, married, never drank, never smoked, worked their whole lives until retirement, and were together for more than sixty years until my dad passed April 18, 2009.
My mom would never even think of remarriage.
That said, my mom was a Democrat (she sees the Republicans as oligarchs who are trying to hold on to their money), while my dad was a Republican, although liberal on social matters (he thought OJ was framed).
We never talked about politics in our house. My dad voted for Goldwater. My mom voted for Mondale. It's just how things went, but there were no arguments about it.
I think what turned me off to the liberal agenda was watching how far it was going to go in grad school. Feminist classes in which the ethics of lesbian fist-fucking were discussed replaced the study of literature.
Then when I went back to the church after Finland and marrying a Lutheran, I began to reexplore a deeper strata of sensibility, but am still trying to understand what conservatism is, or could be (I think in the lifestyle sense, though, my parents were very conservative -- work ethic, never swore, never fought, never drank, never smoked, never injected needles, didn't run around, and didn't make any problems for us kids ever). My dad was my Little League coach, soccer coach, fishing buddy, and was always there.
I'm reading a book called 10 Books Every Conservative Must Read, by Benjamin Wiker (Regnery 2010).
The first book is Aristotle's Politics. It has a few amazing paragraphs in the first chapter, and I might blog it either later this afternoon or tomorrow at some point.
I think the 60s left tried to conceal all the conservative writers, and to lead us all over the cliff with sex, drugs, and rock and roll.
I think it's refreshing to have Fox News, and to find another whole ballgame altogether in the mainstream churches (those that haven't been infiltrated and turned into another aspect of the socialist revolution to destroy all Judeo-Christian values).
I'm excited to see the new counterrevolution that the Tea Party represents. I'm excited to see the uprising of the moms, like Sarah Palin and this woman O'Donnell from Delaware, and to see that Kennedy's seat was taken by Scott Murphy, someone with a brain, and a pick-up truck. It's about time the middle class had some representation.
The left screams that Sarah Palin only went to a community college, and didn't attend Harvard, like our idiotic prez.
But that's exactly why normal middle-class people like Palin, and think she represents us.
She's a normal middle-class person. It's time for the middle-class conservatives.
Your remarks about Stanley Obama, too, Em, are crucial. She just seems like a complete flake, and it's no wonder that her son is so confused, and confusing, and sneaky.
We should go back to her at some point, and investigate just who and what she was.
This is from the Political Spectrum Quiz.
Compass:
You are a centrist moderate social authoritarian.
Left: 0.6, Authoritarian: 2.46
Kirby,
You are a centrist moderate social authoritarian.
Left: 0.6, Authoritarian: 2.46
Interesting! Here's the URL for any who want to play along: Political Spectrum Quiz.
I came up as:
You are a left moderate social libertarian.
Left: 5.39, Libertarian: 1.77
I'd be interested in the your subscores, if you have them, on foreign policy vs. culture. I was (-0.5, -4.16) respectively. This (the choice of origin notwithstanding) makes me a touch more conservative than the average quiz taker on foreign policy, and a fair bit more liberal on cultural issues.
In short, there were no real surprises.
Foreign Policy:
On the left side are pacifists and anti-war activists. On the right side are those who want a strong military that intervenes around the world. You scored: 2.95
Culture:
Where are you in the culture war? On the liberal side, or the conservative side? This scale may apply more to the US than other countries. You scored: 3.91
I didn't understand this part because they didn't show it on a graphic. In the graphic picture, I was right in the center, just one small square up to the right.
I am pretty much a centrist.
Kirby,
I am pretty much a centrist.
Color me doubtful. It's hard to separate the issue of taking the quiz from posting the results here. What we are, and how we choose to present ourselves, are not necessarily the same, and it certain suits each of our rhetorical purposes to present ourselves as more centrist than we really are. The question as to what extent we succumb to temptation is difficult to answer, and so these assessments have to be taken with rather large grains of salt.
And you're not even considering your authoritarian score.
But I did find the subscores interesting. (Note that there is are plots -- they're just one dimensional). So you're far more interventionist, whereas I'm very close to that rhetorically ideal "center" position, whereas, on cultural issues, we're more-or-less mirror images left vs. right.
I'd be interested in knowing who the funders are for the Tea Party "movement"--there have been rumors that some big Conservative corporate industrialists have been pumping big bucks in the back door.
I refuse to believe that this is a "spontaneous" "grass roots" groundswell of protest. The slogans and platforms sound too familiar for it to be accidental.
Stu, I just did the test as truthfully as possible and ended up dead center. I am honestly as surprised by this as you might be to find yourself way out in left field among the loony tunes (who often see ME of all people as the loony tunes).
I am the exact center of America, like Iowa, where I was born. One could even say I AM AMERICA. But that would be as corny as Iowa!
Btw., I enjoyed your quotation from Matthew which is another evidence of Two Kingdoms thought. Thank goodness you and I share at least that, kookamunga!
to the right of the graph
after i was pegged as a left
social moderate i saw a
advertisement with a vampire fanged baby which promised i could mate with the celebrity of my choice
i held off
i didn't go there
but i was wondering what lindsay lohan and i might bring about as far as beautiful children in the world -- maybe i could be a reforming influence for her
since i'm a left social moderate
right on the line going west
3 point something left and zerozero 3 authoritarian
we must mistrust government
it's a social obligation
we must uphold the possibiltiy
of gracious freedom for people
we must mistrust the values of high industry
we must let people make their way
we must ignore the protestant imperative to work work work
i call for a dignified laziness
there's just too much being done these days
not enough people wasting time with any sort of serious creativity
here
the electric koolaid acid test
meets the 21st century
how's the garden doing
after the cyberblitzkrieg
whatthephuqelse
we'll all be zombies
jh
"You are a centrist moderate social libertarian.
Left: 0.87, Libertarian: 2.7."
foreign policy: -2.45
Culture: -1.79
My initial understanding as that the 'centrist moderate social libertarian' talks about the role of government in our lives, but the 'foreign policy' and 'culture' ones talk about how conservative you are in Those matters...
So culturally and in terms of foreign policy, you are very much not a centrist, Kirby -
In terms of government's role in our lives outside of those two issues, you are...
Or something? It is a confusing distinction that the test doesn't make well...
My results for the "Political Spectrum Quiz" stu linked to his post: "You are a right social moderate" Right: 4.41; Authoritarian: 0.07; Foreign Policy: 4.03; Culture: 2.56
I realise that this spectrum quiz only reveals attitudes, not specific (or in some cases general) policies or laws.
I think the key for visualization is to tell us how many squares you were from the center (Ground Zero), otherwise it's difficult for us to visualize.
I was only one square away, which means perhaps that I'm a square, but it could also mean that I'm with the majority (I assume the majority is in the exact center?).
James, Stu, Brett, could you tell us how many squares you were from the center?
I am very close to the actual 'average' of all those who took the test... So I AM the majority:-), though "majority" is a hard term here, since it's not exactly a scientific poll. I was like one block left and 3 blocks down...though I was much more centrist than you on the foreign policy/culture scale.
I'm still confused as to the distinction between those two graphs and what they mean...maybe there's a methodology somewhere on the website that Stu could find/parse for us:-)
Kirby: On taking the quiz for a second time, I came out five spaces on the right (a middling rightist) and one space down, or a "right moderate social libertarian."
If we didn't occupy different places in the spectrum, we couldn't have a conversation. But since we started talking, has anybody moved at all? I doubt it, so all we can do is explain our position, and how we got there, and listen to the others.
It's not as if someone occupies the one point of moral superiority just because they believe one thing or another, right?
Even I, the ultimate centrist, am just another point on the grid. Being a centrist is no more valid than being an outlier. Let a thousand flowers bloom.
Wait, where have I heard that before?
I'm the most radical of everyone here, apparently!
Like J.A.'s scores, but more so!
I'm Right: 6.76
Libertarian: 2.45
Foreign Policy: 4.47
and
Culture: 1.11
Though culture is one area where I'm willing to "give" a little. I don't mind "liberal" art, just so long as it isn't socialist propaganda posters with enormous men with bulging muscles and overalls working in the sun. Well, ok, maybe sometimes, as a personal indulgence.
I like representational art, and my appreciation generally stops after the surrealists. Splatters of paint, blocks of color in primary colors aren't my cup of tea. Giant rusting erections in steel and bolts on library lawns make me nauseated.
I'm always up for a "transgressive" play or musical, though.
Kirby:
I think exchanges between political opposites is a very healthy thing.
I'm always heartened when I can find common ground with otherwise alien counterparts.
One must guard against the complacency of self-congratulation and smarmy solidarity with friends. Complete agreement smacks of authoritarianism, and regimentation.
For instance, I keep trying to believe in the absolute sanctity of life, but my conscience won't let me impose that on all women. It's a pragmatic position, against a purely doctrinaire defense.
Kirby, you're always skirting the edge of just cheerleading, instead of argument.
The great problem of bigotry is something that too many on theleft now unconsciously face. This blog exists to help bring an awareness of left bigotry to the fore. Many believe that because they are on the left, they are free of bigotry. This however, is the worst kind of bigotry: to believe that one is free of it because of a position one takes.
Every position is bigoted against all other positions.
Only those who can listen respectfully to all positions can be said to be free of bigotry.
Obama is a bigot when he accuses the voters of Pennsylvania of "clinging to God and guns."
Sotomayor is a bigot when she says that she is a "wise Latina," which indicates that because of her demographics, she is wise. This is stupid, not wise.
Obama was a bigot when he prejudged the situation in Cambridge, and came up with the solution that the "police were acting stupidly."
Richard Rorty is a bigot when he argues that he doesn't need to listen to his students, and his positions were superior simply because he was a crusty old atheist, and they had arrived at their positions via the Good Book.
Islamofascists are bigots when they screech that their deity is unassailable, and all others are demons, and must be killed.
Feminists are virtually Genghis Khans in pantsuits when they argue, as Sotomayor did, that they are wiser, on account of their gender.
The left loves to screech that the Judeo-Christian tradition is fraught with bigotry, and must be deconstructed, so that their own positions can reign supreme, and go free of criticism.
Centrists are bigots if they don't listen to the marginals, and marginals are bigots if they won't listen to the centrists.
Everyone is bigoted, but some are more bigoted than others.
That said, tolerance is NOT the answer.
That said, I don't know what is.
Kirby, you are extremely bigoted...
Bigotry is not about political position...You could be at the very center of that graph and at the same time think that women are not human enough to be citizens...
Or that all Wiccans eat children.
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