My Last Post of the Day
[Caleb Stegall  03/01 12:31 PM]

Jonah's latest fit has a lot to do with the old divide between "conservatism" understood primarily as party discipline and "conservatism" understood as a philosophy that says something true about man, God, and reality. Only a party conservative thinks something as dumb as "because I am a conservative and I think X, X must be conservative." Crack the whip and let the blood flow. This is otherwise known as Stalinism. Useful and necessary — hopefully in bloodless form — in puting together political coalitions that can actually rule. But a real hinderance to the search for truth at the intellectual level. A crunchy must still be a realist, which is why, for whatever it's worth, I have always voted straight GOP tickets. However, there are more important things than winning elections. The whole of Rod's book is in fact a refutation of the party conservative. He says, in essence, "self-described conservatives think/act X, and X is decidedly not a conservative thought/act, so they ought to be reminded of their first love."

It's too bad when every fruitful avenue of discussion is hijacked by a crack of the party whip.