Oct 09 2008
Why I Am A Conservative Independent
Want to know why I am proud to be a conservative independent and happy to remain outside the cult of a national party? David Brooks illustrates the fact that the rot in the Political Industrial Complex of Pols, Pundits, Media and Power Brokers cuts across party lines:
David Brooks spoke frankly about the presidential and vice presidential candidates Monday afternoon, calling Sarah Palin a “fatal cancer to the Republican party” but describing John McCain and Barack Obama as “the two best candidates we’ve had in a long time.”
Got that? The uppity woman from Main Street is a Cancer the the life long community activist and political insider from Chicago one of the two best candidates we have seen in a long time???? Â Seems another of the High Priests Of The Beltway have their Holy Robes all in a ruffle over the commoner in their midst. What kind of cancer would that be your grace – ovarian or breast cancer?
Brooks has always come off as an arrogant ass with nothing much to say. Now we have proof positive that, no matter what ‘conservative’ role he acts on PBS, he is just another one of those people in DC who should retire for the good of the country. Dave, you are the one rotting in place, not Sarah Palin. Â Brooks is now blacklisted from my reading lists and blog.
Brooks is a conservative in name only. He mouths comments on family and america and the problems they have, and his solution, use liberal ideas since we americans cannot handle the modern world. As for Palin, well of the 4 people running on both tickets she is the only one who actualy reformed the government she rose up in. Obama’s state and city became more corrupt and as for Biden and McCain, lets not get started. You know a cancer is something evil and horrible, cancers are to be destroyed, what does it say about Brooks to use that word against a woman who has by all accounts been a reformer. Is this the level of intelect that shines at the paper of record?
I saw her yesterday on Fox – the campaign speech in Pennsylvania
and she was awesome. Ms. Palin is a phenomenon.
And McCain! I thought where ya been?
If they go at it hard, like they did last night, they have a chance.
On another forum that I visit, some are convinced that if only Mitt Romney
had gotten the nod, he’d be miles ahead by now.
I just don’t get that. Seems to me the country was going to move
towards the center and a guy like Mitt wouldn’t have caught enough
independents to win.
Brooks is a horses ass who values his invitations to elite cocktail parties and his status as the “house ‘pubbie” above whatever principles he may have been exposed to (I won’t say he actually had any).
I have extremely mixed feelings about Republican and some conservative populism – as an historian, I know that populism in America has generally been a Democratic phenomenon and that the popular spirit it embodies is only one leg of what has made this country so successful. The other leg, of course, being the high culture of which the Founders were a part, and the Anglo-American intellectual tradition of liberty. Whiggery, which is what it was, was not a populist movement. The elites in this country have, under the influence of Marxists, Freudeans and their epigoni, both open and Gramascian, moved our high culture in directions which the founders would not recognize and would abhor, which leaves us with populism.
Anti-intellectualism is dangerous; we must be careful to distinguish opposition to post-Modern thought and neo-Marxism from hostility to ideas and the high culture generally.
The deeper question, which I think we need to address, is whether the Palin phenomenon is in fact anti-intellectual or merely anti-anti-American radicalism. I love Sarah Palin and the honest feminism and honest American exceptionalism she represents, but I think it’s important that we don’t let it be conflated with anti-intellectualism generaly.
good grief
CatoRenasci,
When populism is directed at people who work the system to enrich themselves at taxpayer expense it can be a good thing. Lets be clear, Mozzilo, Raines, Jim Johnson, these guys wrecked part of the economy to enrich and empower themselves and their alles. I wish McCain had come out swinging against those fat cats instead of some empty notion of the wall street villain.
I have no problem with, and fully share, righteous anger directed at Barney Frank, Raines, Mozzilo, Jim Johnson, Jimmy Carter, and their ilk. And I have no problem with, and frequently share in, mockery of the pretensions of members of the left-wing cultural effete ‘elite’. But, that’s not the same thing as generally encouraging a populism that is fundamentally anti-intellectual and hostile to the high culture.
CatoRenasci,
A central reason people support Palin is that elites who did not her acted and act in a disguting way to her. But look at what put Palin over the top in Alaska, it wasn’t her social positions, it was her overturning of a crooked elite bi-partisan system. As far as I can tell, I have not seen Palin enourage the populism you are leery of, certainly media and political elites have shown more anti-thinking hate filled views then the Palin.
I agree that I have not seen Palin do that, but I detect a fair amount of it among the conservative faithful.
Cato,
Any large group is going to have signifcant amounts of thinking or the lack of. Anyway, I am sure there are plenty of people on the right who make errors, but what is that compared to the anti-thinking of an elite and the left who actualy made Palins dow syndrome baby an issue. I understand your concern to keep unthinking away from a conservative movement as a way to keep it healthy and viable for the future, but I think you are worrying a little too much about populism driving out the intelectual elements. Hell is it rational to burn 1/5th of our feed crop to make a marginal amount fuel? And what was the root belief that drove this madness, why none other then global warming, the ultimate litmus test for the left, intelectuals, and the elites in this country.
I actually am detecting another concern.
I have the time and read a whole lot across the spectrum and what is most disturbing is the sudden change of methods with well established regression lines of expected places people will go even in times of difficulty.
For many pundits and others I am seeing departures so vast from their historic trends that I can’t believe it is simply politics or getting their panties temporarily in a bunch over something is enough of a reason to explain, much less give any justification to, such departures.
That is when you start digging behind the curtain and try to connect the dots.
Cato,
What in the world are you talking about? I have not heard anyone associated with McCain/Palin support anti-intellectualism. This is a straw-man argument.
MerlinOS2,
Yes, there is something deeper going on here. The elite who think themselves to be smarter and wiser than everyone else got fooled by Barak Obama. They are beginning to realize that they just projected their own hopes, aspirations, and dreams on this “empty suit”. The psychological strain is beginning to show as evidenced by their deranged hatred of Sarah Palin. By being who she is, a woman of actual accomplishment whose wisdom and integrity far outshines “the One’s”, the truth about how badly they have been duped is beginning to bubble up into the consciousness of the elites. They will do just about anything to salvage their fragile psyches by denying the truth that is daily staring them in the face.
Merlin,
I believe there is a whole media/entertainment class that is generaly in line with the status quo of washington. A status quo that consists of spending trillions, then spreading the pain among all of us as a way to prevent any one group from really fighting back. They loot, cover up, move on to the next shell game. I also believe that one of the reasons they so despise, hate, and want to destroy Palin is that she clearly is a threat to their entrenched power.