Category Archives: Conservatism

UPDATED (8/13/018): Liberals View Wild Life As Worthy Only As Part Of A ‘Species,’ A Herd

Conservatism, Environmentalism & Animal Rights, Fascism, Individualism Vs. Collectivism, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Paleoconservatism, The West

In trying to console a friend on the passing of his long-time canine companion, the following occurred to me:

Sentimentality about animals is one of the things that separates us from the barbaric civilizations. I include The Left’s world view as part of the “barbaric civilizations.” These sees animals, certainly wild life, as comprising species to sustain, not as individual creatures of God, for which we humans must care.

As related in “Texas Vs. The Pacific Coast: Explaining The Yankee Mindset”:

A helmeted cyclist once chased me down along a suburban running trail. My sin? I had fed the poor juncos in the dead of winter. (Still do. Bite me, you bully.)

Having caught up with me, SS Cyclist got on his soap box and in my face about my unforgivable, rule-bending. Wasn’t I familiar with the laws governing his pristine environmental utopia?

Didn’t I know that only the fittest deserved to survive? That’s the natural world, according to these ruthless, radical progressive puritans.

Yes, mea culpa for having an exceedingly soft spot for God’s plucky little creatures.

To the extent conservatives behave this way, culling and killing for no reason other than that the individual animal doesn’t conform to a so-called scientific theory—they are behaving like liberals.

Professor Clyde Wilson, a paleoconservative, says about my bird-feeding encounter: “Telling other people not to feed God’s creatures according to some supposed scientific official plan is simply fascism.”

UPDATE (8/13/018):

Liberals equivocate about feeding a distressed, grieving whale, from a dying population.

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Leftists Are Convulsing Over A Conservative Court. It Doesn’t Get Better. OK, Maybe It Will.

Conservatism, Constitution, Law, Republicans, The Courts

Quite correct: Republicans have had the chance to consolidate a conservative majority on the Supreme Court and … FAILED, REFUSED, or chose to break bread with the opposition, rather than keep the faith with the base and the original Constitution. As the author of this New York Times Review of Books essay suggests, the “mishaps” of previous republican presidents in appointing justices to the SCOTUS suggest “something less than full-throated judicial conservatism on their part.”

… In retrospect, it is remarkable that a strong conservative majority on the Court has not emerged before now. Since 1980, Republicans have held the presidency for twenty-two years and Democrats for sixteen. Ronald Reagan, who campaigned on the platform of choosing conservative judges, appointed three justices—Antonin Scalia, Sandra Day O’Connor, and Kennedy—and elevated William Rehnquist to the chief justiceship. That should have established conservative control. Yet O’Connor turned out to be a centrist, controlling the Court for a quarter-century by casting the decisive fifth vote in controversial cases. When she retired in 2006, Kennedy assumed her position as the swing justice and unexpectedly emerged as a liberal hero, voting, for example, to extend constitutional rights to detainees in Guantánamo Bay and marriage rights to same-sex couples.

George H.W. Bush also had the chance to consolidate a conservative majority. He appointed Thomas to replace Thurgood Marshall but also replaced William Brennan with David Souter, who underwent a subtle yet significant evolution from Burkean conservative to Burkean liberal. Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama each got two justices confirmed, which maintained the Court’s balance. That conservative control has been so long in coming reflects either miscalculation by Reagan and George H.W. Bush or (more likely) something less than full-throated judicial conservatism on their part. …

… THE REST IN “Tipping the Scales by Noah Feldman.”

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Neoconservative Charles Krauthammer Came To Define American Conservatism

Classical Liberalism, Conservatism, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Neoconservatism, Political Philosophy

Charles Krauthammer was the quintessential neoconservative. As the scholar of American conservatism, Paul Gottfried, puts it, Mr. Krauthammer “worked to reconstruct the American Right as an extension of the Left.”

It’s rather telling, then, that a former leftist, who was hardly distinguished by his hard-right positions, has come to define the American Right.

Inadvertently (or not), Rich Lowry brought the conservative canonization of Mr. Krauthammer somewhat under control by comparing him to William F. Buckley and Irving Kristol. (Although they seemed to have been far more prolific on the book-writing front and had taken tough positions on thorny issues.) But, mercifully, NOT TO intellectual giants like Russell Kirk and James Burnham.

Whether he meant to or not, Mr. Lowry provided a slightly more sobering reality check, although Lowry still sold Mr. Krauthammer’s philosophical predecessors short.

A consummate neoconservative, the late Charles Krauthammer, nevertheless, came to define American Conservatism.

6/27:

Mainstream Conservatism Is A “Big Con,” If You Care To Sweat The Philosophical Details

Classical Liberalism, Conservatism, Free Speech, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Private Property

I quit reading this article, sent by a friend, when I reached this “conservative’s'” typical leftist outrage over thought crimes, as in, “One racist is two racists too many.”

This is a thought no classical conservative or classical liberal would ever utter, much less entertain. We don’t care what’s in your head.

The article is mostly guff.

As a libertarian, I don’t give a tinker’s toss who people hate, so long as they don’t hit them. As a strict propertarian, I support your right not to serve me if you don’t like Jews.

Now that’s freedom. Now that’s a society based on private property rights. And that’s why Barry Goldwater opposed the Civil Rights Act.

The “Big Con,” as my friend Jack Kerwick calls e-conservatives.