Also need to disenfranchise investors in the Military-Industrial Complex (4.00 / 3)

I mean, how can we let executives at Lockheed-Martin vote themselves a new weapons boondoggle?

And think about all those industries that are regulated:  can we let people in the gaming industry vote themselves the right to establish a sportsbook?  How corrupt would that be?  Or how about people who own t.v. stations and other media -- are we going to let them vote themselves favorable licensing rules, or a shield law for reporters?

You know what, just to be sure no one's voting corruptly -- we should just let the rest of the world elect our leaders for us.  Of course, they'd probably just vote for someone who would try to stop the polar icecaps from melting, and who wouldn't send a bunch of Americans overseas to kill 'em.

So fuck it.  Let's just let the editorial board of the National Review run the country.

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by: Pesto @ Sat Nov 01, 2008 at 13:03:44 PM CDT

I bet they wish that Blacks only counted for 3/5ths also. (4.00 / 1)

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by: steviez314 @ Sat Nov 01, 2008 at 13:30:38 PM CDT

well (0.00 / 0)

They did get mad this week when they found that clip of Obama discussing that particular part of the constitution critically, trying to make it into "Obama hates the constitution"

Disingenuity and support of slavery, packed into one talking point.  

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by: Daniel De Groot @ Sat Nov 01, 2008 at 14:04:14 PM CDT

[ Parent ]

What about Social Security recipients? (4.00 / 3)

Clearly they will vote for sustaining or increasing their benefits and they many are dependent on government largess.  

They should probably deny the vote to anyone who receives government benefits.  

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by: richgreer @ Sat Nov 01, 2008 at 13:40:57 PM CDT

A Couple Of Points (4.00 / 4)

First off, as an historical note.  Back in 1995, after the GOP took over Congress, one of their high-priority items was to destroy public broadcasting.  This was, needless to say, not a very popular proposition, and so they placed a high priority on keeping it quiet.  Rather hard to do, of course, since we're talking about a broadcasting outfit with millions and millions of viewers.

But they had a clever plan, at least some of them.  When the New Orleans PBS station ran a crawl telling its viewers what was going on, and that they should contact Congress to prevent it, Louisiana Representative Bob Livingston took this same sort of position--that a recipient of federal funds should not be able to lobby the public.  (Even though the station was not using federal funds to pay for the crawl.)  Having never heard this sort of argument made against the military industrial complex, I wrote an op-ed about the obvious contradiction, and managed to get it published in the Christian Science Monitor.

This is not, of course, an example of a double-standard.  Conservatives have a single standard: we can do whatever we want, and you can do whatever we want, too!

Second,

However, to be clear, it's not because I think every individual conservative is as despicable this (or despicable at all), but because this is the inevitable end-state of conservative politics, regardless of the intentions of the well-intentioned among the movement.

It's not the end-state.  It's where conservatism starts from.  Conservatism have always been about maintaining power over others.  That is it's core historical meaning and purpose.

Now, it's true that lots of people come to conservatism in total ignorance of it's history, knowing only the most recent version of its propaganda, and for them, perhaps it's accurate to refer to this as the "end-state" when conservatism really heads back to its roots (where conservatives always say we should be in the first place, right?)

But I think we can overcome this little bit of confusion by eschewing the whole temporal framework, and instead adopting an energy-state model, ala particle physics.  Instead of referring to this sort of naked powergrab as the "end-state" of conservatism, we should call it the "ground state" of conservatism.

I realize that this locution, too, has it's own sort of inherent contradiction in it, since conservatives like Derbyshire are all the more likely to return to the ground state of conservatism when they are particularly agitated, peturbed or excited.  And, of course, when an electron, or other particle is not in its ground state, it is said to be in an excited stated.

I hereby come to Rosenberg's Postulate:  Conservatism is so deeply and complexly irrational that it is impossible to talk about conservatism in a rational manner.  This is directly parallel to Goedel's Incompleteness Theorem.  Whatever rational discourse one comes up with to talk about conservatism with, there will always be some contradictory statement that stands outside the rational framework, sticking its tounge out at you.

"You know what they say -- those of us who fail history... doomed to repeat it in summer school." -- Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Season 6, Episode 3

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by: Paul Rosenberg @ Sat Nov 01, 2008 at 13:41:43 PM CDT

diary this, dude (0.00 / 0)

You're on fire:

This is not, of course, an example of a double-standard.  Conservatives have a single standard: we can do whatever we want, and you can do whatever we want, too!

Who's been posting lately that they have killed hypocrisy?  I think it's Digby.  

I hereby come to Rosenberg's Postulate:  Conservatism is so deeply and complexly irrational that it is impossible to talk about conservatism in a rational manner.  This is directly parallel to Goedel's Incompleteness Theorem.  Whatever rational discourse one comes up with to talk about conservatism with, there will always be some contradictory statement that stands outside the rational framework, sticking its tounge out at you.

Yes, this is outstanding and something I struggle with when trying to write about conservativism.  I guess we are left trying to find the square roots of negative numbers.

Finally, a quibble/correction:

It's not the end-state.  It's where conservatism starts from.  Conservatism have always been about maintaining power over others.  That is it's core historical meaning and purpose.

Yes, I do agree.  If my phrasing wasn't clear, I only mean that even if you pick the "ideal" (mythical) "good" conservative, say George Will and clone him 1,000,000 times to make a movement out of that person's views, you will still quickly end up where conservativism is today.  It might take a generation, but much like a compressed gas expanding to fill the available space, conservativism will return to its natural state.  The liberal stuff the well-intentioned ones believe in gets washed away eventually.

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by: Daniel De Groot @ Sat Nov 01, 2008 at 14:01:07 PM CDT

[ Parent ]

Another Way To Put This... (4.00 / 1)

"There are no 'principled conservatives.'  Only vice-principled ones."

"You know what they say -- those of us who fail history... doomed to repeat it in summer school." -- Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Season 6, Episode 3

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by: Paul Rosenberg @ Sat Nov 01, 2008 at 14:16:58 PM CDT

[ Parent ]

Just to play devil's advocate here... (0.00 / 0)

I think we need to distinguish between conservatism as a political philosophy, and conservatism as a political movement.  "Conservatism" is written on the flag that flies over a political movement that encompasses groups with contradictory policy proposals, world views, and politics -- most obviously the Christian Right and the "libertarian" Right.

This is an extreme example of strange bedfellows, but a lot of what constitutes conservative hypocrisy comes down to this.

Conservatism is also the name of a number of political philosophies, none of which I'm an expert on, but at least some of which might be internally consistent (even if one person's conservatism contradicts another's).

Last point:  a political movement exists to win power for its adherents, and also to advance their world view.  The movement doesn't need to be internally consistent in order to do that -- it just needs to be successful at building power and satisfying the demands of enough of the adherents.

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by: Pesto @ Sat Nov 01, 2008 at 15:08:04 PM CDT

[ Parent ]

Yeah, Yeah! (0.00 / 0)

Conservatism cannot fail, it can only be failed.

How many times have we heard that one?

"You know what they say -- those of us who fail history... doomed to repeat it in summer school." -- Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Season 6, Episode 3

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by: Paul Rosenberg @ Sat Nov 01, 2008 at 17:37:51 PM CDT

[ Parent ]

So am I to assume (0.00 / 0)

that no one in the government has voted Republican these last 8 years? Oh, wait, I forgot that the Bush Regime has been a huge expander of government.

Jeff Wegerson

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by: wegerje @ Sat Nov 01, 2008 at 14:09:30 PM CDT

All the more reason to more heavily tax the very rich (4.00 / 2)

on whom the "think tanks" and "publications" that these asshats "write" and "theorize" for depend upon for their financing. The right-wing noise machine is almost entirely funded by generous donations from rich far-right hateful racist nutjobs like Scaife and Coors and their "foundations", and de-funding them through heavy taxation would be a very effective means of draining that noxious swamp. Let them compete in the "free market" of both ideas and business if they want to keep spewing forth their anti-democratic and racist drivel.

To invoke Neibhur, that's the irony of conservative history--to do what they do and "succeed" at it, they've had to violate their own core tenets, like financial self-reliance. Which is part of why modern American conservatism is inherently and fatally flawed. It is a lie, and simply does not, and cannot, survive on its own, depending as it does on private welfare, and serving the interests of only a select few, namely the idle rich and faux intellectuals who would never make it in the real intellectual world. And, of course, of racist imbeciles like "Joe the Plummer" (sorry, I prefer the misspelled version that I saw on a wingnut sign), who refuse to live in the modern, real world.

Fitting that they'd accuse others of having unfair advantages that should be taken away, seeing as that is precisely how they've survived as a movement, and as public "thinkers". All that they really do is project onto others their own failings and prerogatives, while propping up their own Potemkin world. Modern conservatism is itself the socialist welfare state hell that they so often accuse others of trying to impose on them. It really does need to be put out of its misery. Tax the shit out of them and drain that fetid swamp already.

"Those who stand for nothing fall for anything...Mankind are forever destined to be the dupes of bold & cunning imposture" -- Alexander Hamilton

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by: kovie @ Sat Nov 01, 2008 at 14:12:30 PM CDT

Nothing New Here (4.00 / 1)

To invoke Neibhur, that's the irony of conservative history--to do what they do and "succeed" at it, they've had to violate their own core tenets, like financial self-reliance. Which is part of why modern American conservatism is inherently and fatally flawed.

Conservatism has always been a con.  It's an attempt to use "reason" to subdue people, in order to obviate the need for brute force.

The elites have always been parasitical on everyone else, and always blamed everyone else for being parasitical on them.

That is the essence of conservative philosophy.

"You know what they say -- those of us who fail history... doomed to repeat it in summer school." -- Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Season 6, Episode 3

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by: Paul Rosenberg @ Sat Nov 01, 2008 at 14:20:33 PM CDT

[ Parent ]

Specifically, monied and power elites (4.00 / 1)

Intellectual and cultural elites are a different matter. But conservatism is, always has been and always will be the pseudo-intellectual cover by which monied and power elites attempt to justify their money and power, win over the rubes, placate the masses, and subdue anyone who stands in their way. It is the bully's philosophy, a merely more sophisticated version of the mindfuck by which any street corner thug keeps their posse in tow. There is literally not a dumber kind of person on the face of the earth than a conservative groupie.

(I'm thinking specifically of oxygen-deprived YAF pitbull asshats like Tucker Carlson, Nicole Wallace, and that moron Monica Crowley who's the new Tony Blankely on the McLaughlin Pony-Worshipping Group--at least she's better-looking.)

"Those who stand for nothing fall for anything...Mankind are forever destined to be the dupes of bold & cunning imposture" -- Alexander Hamilton

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by: kovie @ Sat Nov 01, 2008 at 14:39:51 PM CDT

[ Parent ]

Paperpushers. (4.00 / 3)

Funny how paperpushers at Goldman, AIG, Merrill and all the rest pushed America into the toilet. But they weren't making 70 grand a year working for the government, they were making 70 million working the magic of the market, so it's OK.

Oh, and Sammy Swindler and Theo Thief did just get themselves enough of a payraise to pay off the deficits of most US states, but thank GOD they only did it with lies and bribes and not actual voting. That would be bad for democracy as we know it.

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by: DaveW @ Sat Nov 01, 2008 at 15:16:49 PM CDT