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elfsYou have to feel the love from former Concerned "Woman" for America and modern-day Christian Culture Warrior Matt Barber, who objects to the group GOProud (a more activist flavor of the Log Cabin Republicans) being invited to the 2010 Conservative Political Action Conferencence:
Kirk seems to be his bludgeon, so let's look closely. Kirk was a conservative intellectual, and a brilliant one, and one of his best works, and one of his last, was The Politics of Prudence, published in 1993. (Note, it's the Politics of Prudence, not Prudery.)
Kirk's "Ten Principles of Conservatism" are worth reading, especially if you're a liberal, because they are supposedly the principles upon which modern conservatism is based. If they are, then Barber and his ilk are no conservatives.
Barber would dearly love to use the government to allow his passions to run freely: the passion to punish others for their private activities. Kirk says, "The conservative perceives the need for prudent restraints upon power and upon human passions." Kirk fears human passions when coupled with power; Barber embraces his passions backed by power.
Barber would love to stamp out one kind of diversity. Kirk says, "Conservatives pay attention to the principle of variety. They feel affection for the proliferating intricacy of long-established social institutions and modes of life, as distinguished from the narrowing uniformity and deadening egalitarianism of radical systems." When Barber and his ilk write that homosexuals have the same rights as heterosexuals, to marry someone of the opposite six, they are engaging in a narrowing uniformity and deadening egalitarianism.
Barber appeals to Kirk's call for "an enduring moral order," and "adherence to custom, convention, and continuity." You know, I can understand that appeal. What I can't understand is how homosexuality per se, which has always existed, threatens these things. A moral order is not one which denigrates and abuses our fellow man for their private activities, nor confuses a personal distaste for custom and continuity.
Barber would be well to recall Kirk's final say:
It boils down to this: there is nothing "conservative" about one man violently cramming his penis into another man's lower intestine and calling it 'love.' Or two women awkwardly mimicking natural procreative relations or raising a child together in an intentionally fatherless home. This does not mean that people practicing those and other immoral (and changeable) behaviors cannot think and act conservatively on other issues like lowering taxes, cutting government spending, ending abortion, etc. But let's be honest: the "proud" in GOProud is not about pride in opposing the death tax, or defending the right to bear arms; it's about proudly embracing sinful homosexual behavior – and that is hardly a conservative value.He then goes on to quote Russel Kirk's famous (if you're a conservative) quote that society must be governed by men and women with a strong sense of right and wrong, by personal convictions of justice an honor.
Kirk seems to be his bludgeon, so let's look closely. Kirk was a conservative intellectual, and a brilliant one, and one of his best works, and one of his last, was The Politics of Prudence, published in 1993. (Note, it's the Politics of Prudence, not Prudery.)
Kirk's "Ten Principles of Conservatism" are worth reading, especially if you're a liberal, because they are supposedly the principles upon which modern conservatism is based. If they are, then Barber and his ilk are no conservatives.
Barber would dearly love to use the government to allow his passions to run freely: the passion to punish others for their private activities. Kirk says, "The conservative perceives the need for prudent restraints upon power and upon human passions." Kirk fears human passions when coupled with power; Barber embraces his passions backed by power.
Barber would love to stamp out one kind of diversity. Kirk says, "Conservatives pay attention to the principle of variety. They feel affection for the proliferating intricacy of long-established social institutions and modes of life, as distinguished from the narrowing uniformity and deadening egalitarianism of radical systems." When Barber and his ilk write that homosexuals have the same rights as heterosexuals, to marry someone of the opposite six, they are engaging in a narrowing uniformity and deadening egalitarianism.
Barber appeals to Kirk's call for "an enduring moral order," and "adherence to custom, convention, and continuity." You know, I can understand that appeal. What I can't understand is how homosexuality per se, which has always existed, threatens these things. A moral order is not one which denigrates and abuses our fellow man for their private activities, nor confuses a personal distaste for custom and continuity.
Barber would be well to recall Kirk's final say:
There exists no Model Conservative, and conservatism is the negation of ideology: it is a state of mind, a type of character, a way of looking at the civil social order. The attitude we call conservatism is sustained by a body of sentiments, rather than by a system of ideological dogmata. The conservative person is simply one who finds the permanent things more pleasing than Chaos and Old Night. (Yet conservatives know, with Burke, that healthy "change is the means of our preservation.")Kirk understood that communities, like individuals, like organisms, must adapt or die to the ever-changing landscape around it. Our fundamental humanity demands that we recognize that homosexuals exist, and there isn't much we can do about that that wouldn't be henious and self-defeating. It is a conservative value to find ways to live together, respectful of our private needs and public faces. Barber, by putting forth only a violent description of what can be and often is a loving act, betrays his conservative values in favor of older and darker impulses.
...
The thinking conservative understands that permanence and change must be recognized and reconciled in a vigorous society. The conservative is not opposed to social improvement, although he doubts whether there is any such force as a mystical Progress, with a Roman P, at work in the world. When a society is progressing in some respects, usually it is declining in other respects.
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Date: 2009-12-21 10:00 am (UTC)That works great. *As a philosophy*. But Politics, especially in America, is not about philosophy, it's about gaining power through mass support. And as American politics has demonstrated, the masses don't think as much as they feel. Noone ever waves a sign at a rally saying "Be reasonable!" (except in Canadian politics... that's another story) and politicians don't get elected because they seem like nice people. People show up at rallies because they're *mad* at something. Politicians get elected because the people are mad at the last idiot who ran the city/state/country into the ground. The more passionate a politician is about something - *anything* - the more votes they get.
This is why you see idiots like James Inhofe in office. The next guy had a philosophy. He had a moral conviction.
no subject
Date: 2009-12-22 03:47 pm (UTC)He pointed out that the conservative movement won … heck, even gays want to participate in marriage!
He continued to explain that the self-proclaimed "conservatives" of the past decade are nothing more than insane sociopaths. Oh, alright &emdash; the "insane sociopaths" phrase are my words. But he voiced something close.
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Date: 2009-12-22 03:54 pm (UTC)Why are these Fundies so obsessed with Buttsex?
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Date: 2009-12-23 09:08 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-12-23 09:10 am (UTC)'awkwardly mimicking natural procreative relations' is what you get when your porn is full of straight women faking it instead of real dykes. On Our Backs represent!