Liberal Forum

Blackvegetable » 25 Jan 2025, 8:55 am » wrote: ↑

25 Jan 2025, 8:55 am

Donalds added, “Daddy’s back.” 


 

Cannonpointer » 13 Oct 2014, 1:02 am » wrote: ↑

13 Oct 2014, 1:02 am

Conservatism lost it's party in Watergate. Nixon was the last American president that conservatives voted into office. Conservatism had already taken some hard blows. There was Vietnam, an unfortunate tendency toward jingo-patriotism, civil rights, rock music and an energetic counter culture which gave two **** about the Conservatives' moral high ground - which ten years earlier had made conservatives unassailable: masters of the social killing fields.

But the kicker was fed notes. That's what brought them down - our getting off metal (and Bretton Woods) and on fiat as a currency - and the inflation that move precipitated. See, when Mama had to get her *** out there and win bread just like daddy, she wanted to be spoken to like a big girl, from that moment on. I mean to say, she stopped twirling her locks when she had a suggestion as quick as a Missouri cop stops his car when he spots an unarmed black man.

Me, I was a scoffer and a sneerer - not a BIG job, but there was a big group doing it. Conservatism had always had the authority to look everyone in the eye and make them take stock of just what it was that they were up to at THAT minute of THAT day. It was an on-the-spot arbiter of what was and was not ****. Conservatism and authority were virtual synonyms. When you got pegged, you looked at the floor.

In the late 1980's, a stage comic who made jokes on Christians was walking a dangerous line. You could lose a crowd like THAT! But then you had Swaggart and you had Jim and Tammy Faye and you had Swaggart Redux and you had Tilton - all in short order. And overnight, comics that spoofed religion went from edgy risk takers to cheerleaders and panderers. Audiences simply hit a water mark - and as a single entity, audience members decided that church-going Christians were fair game for humorists.

Conservatism in America had hit that same wall twelve to fifteen years earlier, when virtually EVERYONE, all in a trice and with no formal agreement, just stopped believing and stopped looking down. The day came that I did not break the gaze first. I gave conservatism the crazy eye, and conservatism broke contact. I was just another brick in the wall.

All these years later, I miss conservatism - very much. The nation misses it. I'm sad that it's gone and would be happy to see its shadow at our door. When we helped daddy pack his bags, we were not cognizant of all the good stuff that was leaving with him, which WASN'T in those bags. The loss is everywhere observed, now - everywhere felt. The thing about conservatism was that it was where we kept our manhood - something you cannot put into bags - but that you cannot have without a certain pair of bags.

The on/off switch that would have prevented the shameful atrocities of abu ghraib was not in conservatism's bag - but I believe that switch hopped the same train that conservatism hopped when we stopped talking to it and stopped listening to it and started sneering at it, and defying it - and failing to imagine a single good thing to say about it. When we told conservatism to take a hike, there were no winners, and the biggest loser was anyone on this planet whose interests are served by America being a just and lawful nation.

I am not suggesting that conservatism can be expected, if it ever comes home, to restore those things single-handedly. But I CAN promise this: We won't restore this land to justice, to lawfuness or to prosperity WITHOUT conservatism in the partnership that does the heavy lifting.

Daddy, we miss you. Please come home.