Thursday, July 22, 2004

Now, I'm a libertarian, not a conservative

so don't get sucked in by my rhetoric, but I think Ann Coulter's right [heh] today when she says:  "This is what Republicans are like today. They swear up and down not to trust the liberal media, but as soon as that very media demonize some Republican, half our party is ready to dump him. Currently the Republican liberals would most like to see gone is Dick Cheney. There's a basketful of Republicans I'd be very pleased to see removed from office. Dick Cheney ain't one of them."

Now, I might consider it a good idea to flip Cheney and Powell, but on the other hand, that might only encourage assassination attempts.  Whereas, if you kill Bush today, you get Cheney.  The assassins of the world aren't looking for that possibility.

In polls of the Democratic and Republican National Committees taken by U.S. News and World Report in early 1980, Democrats overwhelmingly claimed to believe George Herbert Walker Bush was a more formidable candidate than Reagan. "We HOPE they'll run Reagan," liberals said.

Taking their cue on "electability" from the Democrats – always a great idea! – a majority of
Republican committeemen also thought future one-termer Bush was more "electable."

I actually was more impressed with Bush I than I expected to be, but I became a Libertarian because of his impurity as...  Well, all right, I was pretty much born with libertarian beliefs.  My uncle apparently read Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal when he was staying with us and working on the boats with Dad, so lurking in the background were these ideas I would rediscover in my mid-thirties.

Conservatives in the mold of Ronald Reagan, judging him by what he said and what he did and gauging therefrom his intentions as well as the consequences of his policies (Sound complicated?  Welcome to reality.), are much closer to a correct understanding of the laws of nature than are relativists of any stripe.  Relativism requires that you dismiss ancient wisdom and the experience of any of your peers, and find out by trial and error what works for you.  Acknowledgement of the possibility that somebody who came before you might have some good advice about how to avoid unhappiness and pursue happiness is anathema to them.  They think that there are no principles, only experience, which can't be passed on to the next generation.

And you wondered why education was in such a sorry state..


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