Push me where I don't belong!
(And kick me out of where I don't want to be!)

Before I address the topic of whether I am a conservative, there's the threshold question of who gets to decide whether or not you're a member of a particular group. Seriously, now, I don't mean to be funny, even though I consider this whole thing ridiculous. And trust me, it's hard having to take the ridiculous seriously.

But seriously we go. And seriously, should it be you, the alleged member/joiner/belonger of or to a group, who gets to decide whether you're included within it?

Should it be the other members of the group to which you are said to belong?

Or should it be the opponents of the group?

According to this Daily Kos entry, I'm officially certified:

This conservative blogger stumbled upon an interesting phenomena: A series of quotes, strongly critical of the Bush Administration, attributed to one "George Harleigh" supposedly a member of the Nixon and Reagan Administrations.

The problem is--The man doesn't seem to exist, at least to Wikipedia and Google

Because Daily Kos is anything but conservative, shouldn't certification by them carry a lot of weight? I mean, there's that old expression "Know your enemy!" And who would know an enemy better than the enemy of the enemy? If they say I am a conservative, shouldn't I take it to heart and stop calling myself a "RINO," a "libertarian," a "classical liberal," or a "Goldwater liberal"?

This stuff is old ground for me, and I would have forgotten all about it had I not been sent (by the Conservative Book Club) a sort of summer reading list of the seven new conservative books I should read. Here's the list:

  • 1. State of Emergency
    by Pat Buchanan
  • 2. Conservatives Betrayed
    by Richard A Viguerie
  • 3. The Shadow Party
    by David Horowitz; Richard Poe
  • 4. The Politically Incorrect Guide to Darwinism and Intelligent Design
    by Jonathan Wells
  • 5. Bully Boy
    by Jim Powell
  • 6. Peace in the Promised Land
    by Serge Trifkovic
  • 7. Minutemen
    by Jim Gilchrist and Jerome Corsi
  • Being that I'm a war supporter, I might get something out of the Horowitz and Trifkovic books; maybe not. But to me, the Buchanan and Viguerie stuff is virulent culture war ideology, and the attack on evolution as "political correctness" simply strikes me as more than merely wrong; it guarantees defeat at the polls. As to the border, I support closing it right now, but I don't elevate that to war hysteria. I'm not quite sure how to evaluate "Bully Boy" ideologically, but it strikes me as an attempt to purge Theodore Roosevelt as a sort of conservative heretic. (Probably certain conservative ideologues are worried about Republicans who might like the guy.)

    If the above books represent conservatism, then I'm a miserable failure as a conservative, and I ought to label this post, "Why I am not a conservative." (I'm frankly wondering, if the above books define "conservatism" -- which I hope they don't for the sake of the party I was naive enough to join after years of wasting my time as a Democrat -- is that term becoming synonymous with "right wing kook"?)

    I'm certain that the authors of the above books would label me a liberal and a RINO, and say that I don't belong in their tent. I guess if I had a tent, I might feel the same way about them, but I also might think about larger goals. Like winning elections. (Of course, it's not up to me, is it?)

    Does anyone own the tent? Does it exist? Or did it exist and has it already been folded and packed up? It's amazing when I stop to consider that I'm having conceptual difficulties over its existence while at the same time people on the left would push me in, while people on the right would push me out, yet I can't be in "the middle," because I share so pitifully few of the beliefs of the right the left. It is a logical impossibility to be "between" two points of view that you mostly reject.

    Things are heating up.

    Do I really have to choose between the frying pan and the fire?

    AFTERTHOUGHT: In analyzing this with a view towards winning elections, an inevitable question occurs to me.

    Is it possible that there is a large and angry insurgency within the Republican Party that doesn't mind losing?

    posted by Eric on 08.02.06 at 07:44 AM





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    Comments

    I don't know, personally, if "The Politically Incorrect Guide to Darwinism and Intelligent Design" is right or not (not having read it myself). However, your assumption that it is wrong without having read it says more about your premise than it does about the book.

    IOW, you are not making a logical evaluation of the facts and arguments presented by the book.

    I believe that I'll treat your opinion on this subject differently than on those subjects where you have done your research.

    Natrium   ·  August 2, 2006 11:55 AM

    URGGH. Maybe I should follow your links before I post. My Bad. I thought you were objecting to the premise of the book itself, not the title.

    Again, my sincere apologies. I should have know better than to believe that you would slam a book without at least first perusing it. As a matter of fact, I thought I did, which is why I gave you that undeserved slam in my last post.

    Natrium   ·  August 2, 2006 12:03 PM

    A label is accurate if it describes what you are. You can't work it backwards; if you are "conservative" it doesn't prove anything about what you may believe about a particular point.

    (Technically it does affect the probability, but given how people screw this point up it's better to argue the absolutist position that a "conservative" or "liberal" can still have any position on any topic, such as "abortion". "Liberal anti-abortionist" or "conservative pro-lifer" are not oxymorons.)

    Given the wide variety of meanings of Conservative and Liberal (and I wouldn't even call that a complete accounting), those terms and the corresponding labels are especially meaningless.

    Jeremy Bowers   ·  August 2, 2006 12:40 PM

    There is a large and angry insurgency in each party that doesn't mind losing. Such an insurgency has controlled the LP for decades, and the LP has never won a major election. Such an insurgency is gaining power in the Democratic Party, and they are making no gains. The GOP has such an insurgency, and has been successfully marginalizing it for the last 10 years so.

    I don't think thier gains have been a coincindence.

    Phelps   ·  August 2, 2006 01:06 PM

    I seem to be in the same bucket as you -- less than thrilled with the rise of the hardline isolationist wing that wants to impose litmus tests on people in their own tent and is so suspicious of "RINOs" that they're about ready to see President Bush impeached (particularly over immigration).

    I blame this bunch for the hysteria over Harriet Miers -- you'd think she would have destroyed the Supreme Court from the way people carried on.

    I also blame this bunch for the screaming over Dubai Ports World -- you'd think that a worldwide shipping company just has to be a conduit for terrorists if it comes from the UAE, and in fact many of the anti-Dubai people went further and wanted all non-American companies kicked out of our ports because no foreign entity should ever be allowed to operate in U.S. areas as vulnerable as a shipping port (and never mind that the U.S. shipping companies just don't have the capacity to run all U.S. ports).

    Then we discovered that our colleagues on the right were flying off the handle over large numbers of people committing the misdemeanor of simply being on U.S. soil illegally. They screamed especially loudly about "amnesty" -- that is, ANY path to citizenship, no matter how long or how onerous, for ANYONE here illegally, no matter how decently he'd behaved while here in the country.

    Now we're at the point where "name" conservatives -- not only Pat Buchanan but also George Will and William Buckley -- are declaring our efforts in Iraq to be a failure. Getting rid of Saddam Hussein's thugocracy and freeing 26 million people and setting them on the path to a real democratic government? Killing terrorists by the thousands? Enticing terrorists to fight Americans in Iraq instead of on U.S. soil? And all this at a cost, over three years, of the lives of fewer soldiers than the number of civilians who died in the World Trade Center on ONE DAY in 2001? Sorry, these do not add up to success in Iraq.

    Sigh.

    I have no idea what's come over these people, but I'm spending less and less time on conservative forums these days.

    Aitch748   ·  August 2, 2006 01:43 PM

    I used to consider myself conservative. Back before the first Gulf War I found someone who seemed to be speaking for me, Rush Limbaugh. But slowly I realized he was speaking not for me but for the people Barry Goldwater referred to as the "kooks" taking over the GOP, the religious or social conservatives. The concept of "limited" government has been replaced with lip service to "smaller" liberal government. Nothing illustrates this definition of conservatism more than this phone call to Rush's show on May 25, 2001.

    Alan   ·  August 2, 2006 04:44 PM

    There's an mp3 version of that phone call too.

    Alan   ·  August 2, 2006 05:06 PM


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