Conservatives You Like

"A lot of so-called conservatives today don't know what the word means," he told the Los Angeles Times in a 1994 interview. "They think I've turned liberal because I believe a woman has a right to an abortion. That's a decision that's up to the pregnant woman, not up to the pope or some do-gooders or the religious right. It's not a conservative issue at all."

During the 1990s, Mr. Goldwater spoke out in favor of allowing gays to serve in the military, and he worked in Phoenix to end job discrimination against gays. In 1994, he became honorary chairman of a drive to pass a federal law preventing job discrimination against gays.

and Johnny Ramone. =(

I used to repect Colin Powell. If he did the right thing a few months ago, we might not be mired in the mess we are in now. He needed to be loyal to the people, not George Bush and since he went along with this farce, he is just as guilty.

In 1982, he ran for governor a fourth time. In a watershed moment, he admitted that he had been wrong about "race" all along. He was elected by a coalition represented by blacks, organized labor and forces seeking to advance public education. In that race, he carried all 10 of the state's counties with a majority black population, nine of them by a better than two-to-one margin. He retired four years later, an increasingly remote and physically tormented man.

"We thought [segregation] was in the best interests of all concerned. We were mistaken," he told a black group in 1982. "The Old South is gone," but "the New South is still opposed to government regulation of our lives."

also: olympia snowe, lincoln chafee, dick lugar

i tend to prefer senate republicans to their rabid, and completely fucking insane house counterparts.

John Major coz he likes cricket.

George Wallace committed so many egregious sins that his later "conversion" don't count for shit.

GEORGE SCHULTZ
Former U.S. Secretary of State

"The law that prohibits drugs, is an emergency law that, despite having being enforced for three quarters of a century, has not been able to eliminate neither the abuse of substances nor their perverse effects. I believe that today Parliaments should reintegrate policies on drugs in the democratic process legalizing them in order to control them and prevent their unlucky consequences."

He's a bold man, our Nickalicious.

"How about now?" "No." "How about now?" "No." "How about now?" "No." "How about now?" "No." "How about now?" "No." ...

(Stolen from Fark.

Franco turned out to be a "benevolent dictator"! (as long as you weren't a pinko.)

xpost. O'Rourke generally thirded.

Amen to that. Nothing wrong with dissent - what I can't stand is shrill, overheated, purely ad hominem rhetoric from EITHER side of the fence.

I'd start a "Liberals You Like" thread but I can hardly think of any to start with. Oh wait, I do like Jimmy Carter.

that is about 180 degrees away from the Vince Bugliosi I had dinner with. Care to elaborate?

I'm probably as close to a libertarian as you get. But am I conservative as opposed to liberal? Positively, absolutely.

And fuck seatbelts and income tax.

I love how the meanings of things have changed. Arguably, libertarians are as close to the original liberals as anyone. Libéral in French refers to free traders as it did in the time when it was borrowed from the English.

As for 'conservatives', many of today's American cons are really radicals. They're not keen on conserving much if anything of America's traditions regarding individual rights, foreign policy, federalism, or the separation of church and state.

I never read much David Brooks in the Weekly Standard, but his columns thus far in the NYT have been a snooze. Until he pinches MoDo in the ass, I really don't have much use for him. Andrew Sullivan is confused, and while I think he is a lively writer, I don't consider him to be all that insightful. I don't have much use for John McCain--can't really figure out why some people are so enamored by the guy at all. Anne Coulter--not hot, even in a "hate-fuck" scenario. OTOH, Michelle Malkin is hot, and doesn't seem to be a Jesus Freak.

i hate andrew sullivan though, loathe him to peices, loathe is uncle tomming, his religous rhetoric, his assumption that all who dont want to climb onto the marriage truck are evil, and his boredom

But what do you really think...?

i like pj o'rourke, barry goldwater, and richard posner. though all 3 are prob. more libertarian than conservative.

i think that she's nasty, ignorant, and throws off an evil "i've got mine!" vibe -- i.e., i'm the daughter of (nice) immigrants (from a spanish-speaking country), but THOSE immigrants from spanish-speaking countries are wrecking the country. (what's tagalog for "uncle tom" or "tio taco"?) and that's what i could make out -- the rest of her written spiel is illegible ranting.

So Connerly et al. only got their jobs because of affirmative action? How ironic!

I am convinced that Dinesh D'Souza is the spawn of Satan.

Dee. that's it.

As far as his relation to Cochran is concerned - they both seem to be seeking to gratify their own tremendous egos via the court system

Well, I am also something of a libertarian, but I can identify w/liberals much more than conservatives and I tend to like them a lot better.

frank "i'm a practical conservative" zappa. (though unfortunately he's dead).

Have you been living under a rock?

Good for him.

Moderate/MOR Senate Republicans are fine. I like them. Too bad they deal with bozos like Trent Lott and kittyslayer Frist.

William Safire is a respectable conservative. Oddly, I don't mind Pat Buchanan nowadays. I like Col. David Hackworth too.

Pat Buchanan is entertaining on the Mclaughlin group, but cant say he is likeable.

http://www.fansoffieger.com/spence.jpg
Gerry Spence. Is he considered conservative? He's a great man.

I remember listening to this libertarian/populist/isolationist type on the radio named Chuck Harder. He was pretty cool. He had an unfortunate tendency to really deride the UN, but was anti-NAFTA, anti-GATT, pro-farmer, pro-factories in the U.S. borders, and he was kind of like a right-wing Ralph Nader. But he was ignorant in foreign affairs. Nevertheless, his radio show For the People was enjoyable.

http://robthurman.com/images/crouches.jpg
I adore Jan Crouch's delivery and showmanship. She is my favorite televangelist. Her husband Paul is funny too. They provide countless hours of religious entertainment. I don't know if I could forgive them for preying on the schizophrenic and disadvantaged though.

He looks like Frankenberries even in that old pic.

1970s and 1980s: Financial crisis

Financial crisis hit the city in the mid-1970s, when it briefly appeared that the city might have to declare bankruptcy (see John Lindsay). The fiscal crisis resulted largely from the combination of generous welfare spending by the city government in the 1960s and the stock market and economic stagnation of the 1970s. President Gerald R. Ford earned the enmity of many New Yorkers when he refused to use federal money to "bail out" the city. The New York Daily News famously summarized Ford's decision in a headline: "Ford to City: Drop Dead".

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0465013996
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0393038912

William Hague strikes me as an able politician and a decent and honest fellow.

http://www.rferl.org/specials/50years/images/kissinger-large.jpg

http://www.leary.com/archives/photo/gems/GGordonLiddyLAdebate.gif

Can someone point me to this article?

John McCain is a raving lunatic. I know he speaks his mind and stuff, but it is the mind of a mentalist. Let's not forget this.

Most of the conservative ideals - keeping marijuana illegal, opposing a woman's right to choose, expanding the military (I'd add tax breaks to the rich, but I don't think a conservative would admit that) seem pretty fucking far from libertarianism to me.

In fact, the only republican who actually truely believe the stated conservative goal of "less government" is John McCain who gets shit for being too liberal.

And, unrelated, but why would you ever proudly assert the label "conservative" on yourself; it seems like such an insult -- it implies a fear of change and longing for the past that doesn't seem positive at all to me.

a : tending or disposed to maintain existing views, conditions, or institutions : TRADITIONAL b : marked by moderation or caution < a conservative estimate > c : marked by or relating to traditional norms of taste, elegance, style, or manners

The idea that you would be proud that you want to "maintain existing views, conditions, or institutions" or "traditional norms" especially considering that "norms" at one point included slavery and segregation, seems pretty irrational to me.

I admit to liking Tucker Carlson more than I should. I hate myself for finding Liddy amusing, and appreciating his being less nuts than many of these guys. I wouldn't say I like John McCain, but I (mostly, and comparatively) respect and appreciate him. I feel similarly about Lugar, and also Hagel, though (a lot?) less so. I don't agree with Dole on most things, but I would find him inoffensive if he were less of a sellout (and the war wound and he's funny). I didn't mind the Hatfield/Packwood types much, but I wonder if they would have lost my respect if they had been around when the Gingrich revolution came. Colin Powell has completely lost whatever respect I had for him. I dislike PJ O'Rourke and loathe David Brooks the hack (I have some gruding respect for David Brooks the occasional journalist). I find Stanley Crouch occasionally interesting, but typically pompous and in other ways annoying. I like Trent Lott at least twice as much as Bill Frickin Frist.

I think there was an ILM thread about it. If you want to know my feelings about it, I could link you to my long and incoherent blog post about it.

He seems like a good bloke despite being what he would call a "natural conservative" and his autobiography is very entertaining.

lol

I now like David Brooks and dislike everyone else I big-upped

Jay, http://www.city-journal.org/html/13_3_how_hip_hop.html

I think there was an ILM thread about it. If you want to know my feelings about it, I could link you to my long and incoherent blog post about it.

-- Symplistic (shmuel), Friday, June 18, 2004 12:19 AM (3 years ago) Bookmark Link

Ha, I never saw this response.

i like ross douthat, most of the 'american scene' crew (tho they're all a bit indie-nerdy, esp. reihan salam)

but yeah i like 'em batshit too: mark steyn, ledeen (i'd read the corner but their rss feed doesn't include author info, so fuck it, life is too short to weed thru tons of kathryn jean teasdale lopez or whoever the fuck). it's amazing to read dudes like that and know that every single assertion is flat out wrong

SPENGLER, fuck it i love spengler 4lyfe. he's just bizarre. and openly genocidal, it's...refreshing?

i had a minor crush on nicole gelinas of city journal for a little bit.

kathryn jean teasdale lopez

Best damn nickname for her ever.

haha ned i knew you'd like that

It's perfectly accurate.

Cato Institute

Admit it - you really hate modern art
By Spengler

There are esthetes who appreciate the cross-eyed cartoons of Pablo Picasso, the random dribbles of Jackson Pollock, and even the pickled pigs of Damien Hirst. Some of my best friends are modern artists. You, however, hate and detest the 20th century's entire output in the plastic arts, as do I.

"I don't know much about art," you aver, "but I know what I like." Actually you don't. You have been browbeaten into feigning pleasure at the sight of so-called art that actually makes your skin crawl, and you are afraid to admit it for fear of seeming dull. This has gone on for so long that you have forgotten your own mind. Do not fear: in a few minutes' reading I can break the spell and liberate you from this unseemly condition.

this one... just flabbergasting:

Jimmy Carter's heart of dorkiness
By Spengler

After Iran let the diplomats go, the provincial peanut farmer who stumbled into the presidency flew to the US air force base in Germany to meet them. He asked the Central Intelligence Agency psychiatrists who were debriefing the hostages, "Didn't the Iranians know what they were doing was wrong?" Call it the heart of dorkiness: Carter was so horrified by the Iranians' capacity for evil that he could not absorb the information, even when it grabbed him by the scruff of his neck and threw him out of the White House.

...

The Palestinians are not an oppressed people, but rather the irreconcilable remnants of a once-victorious but now defeated empire, living in an irredentist dream world in which a new Salahuddin will drive the new Crusaders into the sea. Pour a few bourbons into the average white citizen of the US state of Georgia, and the same irredentist fantasy will bubble up: "The south shall rise again!"

As I argued in another location, the poor whites of the US south fought for a dream of an empire in which they, too, would have land and slaves. [3] The Scottish and Irish poor of the Confederacy saw themselves as an oppressed people fighting for their rights against Anglo-Saxon oppression. Their battle flag displayed the Scots' Cross of St Andrew. In defeat, they did not even have the consolation of fighters for a lost but noble cause, only the self-reproach of the frustrated freebooter who got what he deserved.

White southerners who dwell on the subject of forgiveness and reconciliation can evince a unique sort of self-serving hypocrisy. They cannot come to terms with the evil of the ancestors whom they portray as gallant, aristocratic warriors. It is not the descendants of African slaves whom they pity as an oppressed class, but rather themselves.

Think of Frodo Baggins in Lord of the Rings explaining to Samwise why he cannot give up hope for Gollum's redemption from the curse of Sauron's ring, because that would weaken Frodo's hope for his own redemption. This form of obsessive self-pity produces the unctuous forms of expression that make it so painful to listen to a Jimmy Carter or a Bill Clinton talk about political morality, with a lip-sucking, voice-throbbing, eye-tearing, fixed-staring, self-pitying, and downright creepy form of bathos that is painful to watch. The difference, of course, is that Bill Clinton is an utter hypocrite, while Jimmy Carter is quite sincere - which makes him all the more nauseating.

It is easy to ridicule the fixation of white US southerners. But it is the Americans of the north who embraced the legend of the gallant south and the Lost Cause, in the form of travesties like Gone With the Wind, with its cloying faux aristocratic masquerade of the brutal world of the slave plantation. Americans invented the war of extermination in the modern world - the total war that only can be won killing so many of the enemy that not enough young men are left to be put into the line. The US south chafes in anger and shame at its defeat, and the north recoils in horror from its own victory. Americans, in their amnesia and denial, blot out the idea that other peoples also must fight until they have exterminated the recalcitrant among their own populations.

The Palestinian and Iraqi civil wars, in the deepest sense of the term, are the true American solution, that is, the solution consonant with America's actual history. It took exactly 100 years between the end of the Civil War and the Voting Rights Act of 1865 for one-man, one-vote democracy to arrive in the US south. The Middle East, in the time-honored expression, has not begun to fight. More killing, please!

I actually don't mind Jonah Goldberg when he spars with Peter Beinart in those "What's Your Problem?" skits, in which he comes across as erudite, self-deprecating, and at least willing to accept differences.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/59/Rudman.jpg

Geir Hongroe.

Sometimes I feel like David Brooks is more of an ideologue than he lets on to be and that gives him a mildly sinister quality.

However, I give him props for coming up with Bobo

Bill Buckley is a man with some flash to 'im. The rest of these chumps can go waterboard themselves.

most republicans aren't actually "conservative" in any way - you could make a strong case that carter (modest foreign policy, decent 'everyman' image, lack of ambitious 'vision' for america) was more genuinely conservative than reagan (radical crackpot economics, belligerent interventionism, secretive and corrupt ruling style).

i like christopher caldwell's writing a lot. andrew ferguson, who writes for the weekly standard, is also good.

Some of my best friends are modern artists.

this is still making me lol

Geir Hongroe.

-- Noodle Vague, Friday, 25 January 2008 22:39 (Yesterday) Bookmark Link

^^^this

"conservative" pundits and politicians are douchebags and hypocrites, I can't stand any of them. but I've got a couple misguided friends who vote republican. they're really great people, we just avoid discussing politics.

Mark Corrigan

William Buckley, Jr. is a writer of considerabl elegance, and certainly worth reading.

I enjoy reading most of the writers for the American Conservative but then they spend most of their time attacking The Weekly Standard and Commentary.

my dad ;_;

I got the joke but isn't Geir a social democrat?

I abhor their economic views but I genuinely enjoy reading hardcore libertarians sometimes. AFAICT they all used to be socialists or Marxists and it shows in the combination of hyper-rationalism and utopianism, the effort to ground every view on policy in an all-encompassing philosophy grounded in values of reason and individual liberty. Their criticisms of the far left are actually worthwhile sometimes. (The problem, of course, is that they're too uncritical of private property ownership and its relationship to the individual in capitalism.) Anarcho-capitalists are pretty classic, albeit somewhat frightening, in how they take this to the insane extreme. P. J. O'Rourke would be OK if he were too committed to libertarianism to be a Republican.

Robert Stanfield and Joe Clark aren't bad but I don't know if they even really count as "conservatives." (I'm assuming Jean Charest doesn't.) I seriously kind of think of Bill Clinton as a conservative and he wasn't terrible.

Lincoln??

Obv I'm not counting everyday conservative individuals, who can be great to have a beer with.

(Part of the problem is I'm not sure which definition of "conservative" to use.)

this guy, maybe, although he's more libertarian than "conservative."

william buckley might be a good stylist but he's also an arrogant blowhard who penned a preposterous apology for mccarthy and once declared that we'd be better off having a nuclear war with the soviet union than let communism go on existing.

lincoln, like a lot of pre-1933 people, doesn't fit the "conservative" or "liberal" label too well. probably the only definition of american liberalism/conservatism that makes sense is "would support or oppose the new deal."

sundar OTM, i've always thought libertarians were just kind of inverted marxists (not least in their reduction of all life to economics).

I'll give props to my high school alum Jack Danforth.

I grow appreciative of douthat's ludicrous optimism and selectively applied blinders as displayed here:

If anything, I think the way the McCain campaign has finished up - and the way the media has covered it - works to Jindal's advantage in 2012: Conservatives are going to be extremely eager to prove that they only hate Obama because he's a radical, not because they're racist, and what better way to demonstrate that than to nominate a dark-skinned conservative with a funny-sounding name? Indeed, much of the current affection for Jindal among movement conservatives - and especially in talk-radio land - can be traced to precisely such a yearning for a conservative Obama: A multicultural prince who channels Ronald Reagan, and whose nomination would at least reduce the taint of racism that clings to the American Right.

Likewise, the idea that Jindal, if nominated, would invite a right-wing third party challenge aimed at peeling off racist Southern whites strikes me as fanciful in the extreme. Maybe the usual sad-sack Libertarian nominee would do slightly better in a Jindal-Obama race than in, say, a Pawlenty-Obama race because of some sort of racist peel-off ... but I'm pretty doubtful on that score as well. If Bobby Jindal can win the Republican nomination and then the governorship in Louisiana, he isn't going to have any race-based trouble as a GOP candidate on the national stage.

Multicultural prince!

This makes it sound like racists are selective in who they are racist against - that they only dislike non-White Democrats. And if you don't think about it too hard, that could make sense. After all, they only hate government spending when it's a Democrat. Or adultery when it's a Democrat. So maybe they're only racist when it's a Democrat too.

Except that racism isn't a logical position. It's not a selective political position (like spending) or a selective/hypocritical morality. It's this insane, illogical, batshit crazy thing. And I can't imagine that racists would suddenly give up being racist just because Jindal is a Republican.

I am so not interested in discussing the intellectual dishonesty of ross douthat.

Fair enough. For what it's worth, I don't think he was being intellectual dishonest. I think he just overestimates the Republican constituency.

willful ignorance in the service of your own bias is a form of intellectual dishonesty, isn't it?

I think this vastly, vastly overestimates the extent to which the attempt to "Otherize" Obama has been about race qua race (and racism qua racism), and vastly underestimates the extent to which it's been about the way Obama's name, ancestry and skin color have dovetailed with other aspects of his background - from his liberation-theology church to the academic-lefty and urban-machine milieu in which he spent much of his early political career - that the GOP would have tried to play up against any Democratic candidate (and especially in a year when the party didn't have much else going for it).

this is how he starts the argument.
nevermind, I posted this to the wrong thread.
this guy sucks.

Did Jindal just hire a publicist or something? Someone was big-upping him on MSNBC on Tuesday afternoon.

I liked Christopher Buckley even before his recent Obama endorsement. He's very funny and seems willing to skewer even his side's sacred cows.

Yeah. In context, his argument is even shittier. I'm gonna try to figure out more things to add to the NRO thread.

Except that racism isn't a logical position. It's not a selective political position (like spending) or a selective/hypocritical morality. It's this insane, illogical, batshit crazy thing. And I can't imagine that racists would suddenly give up being racist just because Jindal is a Republican.

I dunno about this, check out all the quotes on 538, etc. from voters who'll say shit like "we're voting for the n****r." Contemporary racism seems to be broad, not deep.

I believe that they'll vote for a black man despite being racist, but I won't believe that they'll stop being racist for the right non-white person.

In the sense of Jindal being a viable candidate, though, what's the difference?

Or perhaps I'm missing your point, I'm not the soberest of internet intellectuals on this fine night.

i regret my dismissal of buckley upthread, a bit.

Ironically, I haven't found most of the Conservatives who have repudiated the McCain campaign to be the least bit sympathetic. The vast majority of them (esp ones like Noonan, Parker, or Frum) seem like they're jumping on the bandwagon. Only people who are generally iconoclastic - like Sullivan and Hitchens - have really struck me as sincere with their Obama endorsements.

(what's tagalog for "uncle tom" or "tio taco"?)

― Eisbär (llamasfur), Wednesday, June 16, 2004 9:46 PM (4 years ago) Bookmark

Chuck Hagel
The McCain 2000
Mark Pryor

and Dan Lacey.

Only people who are generally iconoclastic - like Sullivan and Hitchens - have really struck me as sincere with their Obama endorsements.

well, Hitchens is not a conservative.

What don't you like about Malkin?

i think that she's nasty, ignorant, and throws off an evil "i've got mine!" vibe -- i.e., i'm the daughter of (nice) immigrants (from a spanish-speaking country), but THOSE immigrants from spanish-speaking countries are wrecking the country. (what's tagalog for "uncle tom" or "tio taco"?) and that's what i could make out -- the rest of her written spiel is illegible ranting.

― Eisbär (llamasfur), Thursday, June 17, 2004 1:46 AM (4 years ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

Mmm. I disagree, but I can see where you'er coming from re: her arrogance, sometimes. The "I Got Mine" tag is apt, too, but I don't find her ignorant at all. A lot of what she's saying - and being the daughter of immigrants you have to admit it takes balls for her to say it - is right on.

― roger adultery (roger adultery), Thursday, June 17, 2004 1:49 AM (4 years ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

^^^ classic exchange

nyer article about hagel made him out to be the nicest/smartest guy in washington which im not sure if i believe

then again, anyone who cheney hates is a-ok with me

Conservatives I like: Burke, Macaulay, Cardinal Newman, Eliot, Hayek. Sullivan and Douthat are batshit, their most admirable qualities. Douthat's a better David Brooks than David Brooks.

haha lol at this: Hagel has a tradition of wearing costumes to work on Halloween, usually masquerading as colleagues or other notable political figures. He has arrived at work dressed as Joe Biden, John McCain, Colin Powell, and Pat Roberts in past years.[9]

http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2007/10/31/will-the-real-joe-biden-please-stand-up/

pics of Hagel as Sarah Palin, plz.

I believe that they'll vote for a black man despite being racist, but I won't believe that they'll stop being racist for the right non-white person.

What does the second statement have to do with the first? People are perfectly capable of voting for minorities while being racist; it ties into the whole "you're not like the rest, you're special" rationalization.

A lot of what she's saying - and being the daughter of immigrants you have to admit it takes balls for her to say it - is right on.

wau

In Canada: Bill Davis and Joe Clark.

In the US: John McCain circa 2000. This most recent incarnation is a desperate, creepy lying dick.

Is David Gergen a conservative? Because I like him.

Gergen is Jodie Foster in The Inside Man.

alfred, if you haven't already read garry wills's "confessions of a conservative" i highly recommend it -- equal parts hilarious stories about working at national review in the '50s (wills was unnerved by the fact that everyone there talked like WFB) and interesting musings about what it means to be so old-school conservative you find yourself disagreeing with virtually everything in the modern GOP platform.

pat buchanan is right about american foreign policy, but regarding everything else he can go eat a dick.

http://www.amconmag.com/article/2008/sep/22/00006/

^^^ this is pretty much otm, too.

isn't buchanan a staunch apologist for the vietnam war?

current american foreign policy, i mean...

Nancy Pfotenhauer <3

thanks for the recommendation, J.D.

Except that racism isn't a logical position. It's not a selective political position (like spending) or a selective/hypocritical morality. It's this insane, illogical, batshit crazy thing. And I can't imagine that racists would suddenly give up being racist just because Jindal is a Republican.

this is an interesting topic and probably deserves its own thread, but i actually sorta disagree with this. Douthat makes the (in my mind accurate) point that many republicans are eager to somehow prove that they arent racists. (contrary to douthat, i think it probably stops there). However, I think that a candidate like jindal would get suppot from the more insidious forms of racism within the USA, the kind that tends to deny racism on a personal level while ignoring more ingrained institutional racial problems. in that sense, a candidate like jindal would get support for the same reason people say "some of my friends are black!"

NBA analyst and former player Greg Anthony

shockah! turn in yr soul patch, soldier

they've all been downhill since edmund burke

I like the more intellectual ones, because all of the "conservatives" I don't like also don't read very much.

i recently discovered (via facebook) that a former coworker is...if not a conservative, a libertarian, or something equally inane. his political opinions are naive and bizarre, but I still really like him, he was funnier than shit and never talked about this stuff in the office.

He's the only conservative you know?

Well, AKM *does* live in SF.

i enjoy reading ross douthat, and was pretty happy w/ the times replacing kristol w/ him. will result in columns x10000 times better and actually worth reading.

same goes for douthat's buddy reihan salam. i like him, too. andrew sullivan's good but i hardly think of him as a conservative in many ways. i enjoy reading david brooks, david frum, too.

i like emund burke, ts eliot and heidegger

I like my parents and most of my family.

he is the only conservative I know that I like.

Vincent Gallo, Ted Nugent and my immediate family...

Alice Cooper, too...

The amount of intellectual dishonesty among public conservatives is simply breathtaking. Almost all the people who are presented as conservatives in the public media confine themselves to finding arguments that bolster their foregone conclusions.

For all these folks it is ideology that tells them what is true and facts are things which must be made to conform to and serve their ideology, in precisely the same way that medieval scholastics took the Bible and catholic doctrine as their unquestioned starting point and constructed the whole world around these. Whatever did not conform was argued away, based on doctrinal arguments that could not be supported apart from divine revelation.

At least the batshit libertarians try to think for themselves.

OK this was 4 years ago, but how did no one condemn Andy (still posts here, right?) for naming FRANCISCO FRANCO? I suppose he was the least of 3 evils when compared to his pals Mussolini and Hitler, but LIKEABLE? "Benevolent"?

iirc, I was washing my hair at the time. Sorry. If it makes you feel better, I condemn that Andy fellow for his utterly laughable contentions about Franco. Who knows what he was smoking at the time?

I caught the Log Cabin Republican Nat'l convention on C-Span this morning and I'm thinking I might like Christine Todd Whitman. I vaguely remember her locking horns with the Bush Admin when she served at the EPA, but had kind of forgotten about her until today. Any Jerseyites around here have any strong opinions on her one way or the other?

O_O

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christine_Todd_Whitman#Racial_profiling_controversy

i own her biography (and have never read it)

i have a very clear memory of a car w/ an "impeach florio" bumpersticker on it (likely a whitman supporter) but was too young then to know what was up

as republicans go not too bad but a shitty gov even by nj standards

Right now on CNN the anchor is interviewing a Log Cabin Republican. The LCR dude is being reasonable and articulate, the anchor is being a real asshole. It's kind of lol but mostly sad.

I really dig Meghan McCain, mostly because she's stone cold liberal re: social issues and not politically ambitious enough to ever run for office and exercise her conservative views on other things.

I can't stand Meghan McCain as she reminds me of my country club Republican relatives. They, too, tend to be fashionably liberal with social issues but when it comes to their money and the right to be a boring, rich snob they hide behind right-wing rhetoric and will FIGHT for it. Spending any significant amount of leisure time with people like that is enough to bring out the spirit of '68 in anybody - trust me.

megan mccain got some big titties

― and what, Tuesday, September 2, 2008 3:19 PM (7 months ago)

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/0/0f/HankHill.jpg/250px-HankHill.jpg

parents of my son's best friend. they're great people, we've become good friends too, endless booze-soaked dinners where we discuss everything under the sun EXCEPT politics.

people on this thread like
John McCain
and
Boris Johnson

I don't like them

parents of my son's best friend. they're great people, we've become good friends too, endless booze-soaked dinners where we discuss everything under the sun EXCEPT politics.

― m coleman, Monday, April 20, 2009 9:38 AM (3 hours ago

When my kid was in a 1 through 8 private school I met folks like this. Now he's in 9th grade at a public high school, and I'm out of touch with those folks.

People on this thread liked John McCain 5 years ago before he rather publicly shat on all of his public goodwill with the worst Presidential campaign I remember seeing in my lifetime.

http://twitter.com/mileycyrus/status/1523053446

(oh wait, I'm supposed to like her? nevermind)

^^^

How awesome is that message against a backdrop of John Lennon fan art?

http://www.nydailynews.com/gossip/2009/05/11/2009-05-11_meghan_mccain_a_real_pain_at_dc_dinner.html

The security guard sent her to talk to someone to sort out the situation, but Meghan got bratty and nastily told him, ‘We’ll just stand here then,’ like an insolent child,” our source said, adding that after dealing with the guard, “She muttered to her friends, ‘Does he even know who the f--- I am?’ ”

I'm feeling so self-righteous and justified right now for criticizing her a few weeks back. She's from the same young rich Republican club that houses people like Spencer Pratt and Heidi Montag. DO NOT WANT.

At least Ann Coulter is funny and makes for consistent entertainment.

At least Ann Coulter is funny and makes for consistent entertainment.

you know, i really don't understand people who think coulter is entertaining in the slightest.

At least one member of the GOP had fun. Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin couldn’t make the festivities due to tending to her state’s flooding problem, so she sent hubby, Todd, who had a whale of a time.

Todd happily lapped up the attention from his tablemates and rarely left the side of his date for the evening, Fox News anchor Greta van Susteren.

The two became so close that we caught them hanging out together well past midnight at Capitol File magazine’s annual after-dinner bash.

oooh this is how rumors start

he two became so close that we caught them bhanging out together well past midnight at Capitol File magazine’s annual after-dinner bash.

no, this is how rumors start

Politico reporting van Susteren / Palin affair; photos on the way

You know old Todd wet his wick in some Greta pudding last Saturday night!

Posted By: what's good for the goose... | May 11, 2009 at 04:49 PM

you know, i really don't understand people who think coulter is entertaining in the slightest.

She's entertaining in the classic adversary intellectual sense. She knows the exact thing to say to cause her political opponents to anger, and she's usually witty about it on top of that. (Her improvised reply to Joy Behar on Larry King Live last week was great television)

In that sense she's in the Tucholsky and Mencken (perhaps German?) tradition of being, if being nothing else, a great hater. To say you don't like her or her opinions, or that you think she's hateful, is to miss the point entirely.

i think shes ugly

I agree w/stevie, that she is not entertaining, and it is bcz I do not enjoy the sort of humor that is 'riling people up for the lulz' from anyone of any stripe.

Tempted to start a "who is ILX's Ann Coulter" thread but that would just be a bad bad bad idea

You wld have to ban yourself.

Ann Coulter was entertaining in a "is this person for real?" sense, but it's pretty damn tired these days. Meghan McCain has always been pretty annoying and I don't understand why people really give a damn about what she has to say post-campaign. I guess she's become the voice of the young, modern, "moderate" republican or something, but... fucking gag.

Cunga on the shortlist xxp

"They, too, tend to be fashionably liberal with social issues but when it comes to their money and the right to be a boring, rich snob they hide behind right-wing rhetoric and will FIGHT for it."

this seems otm

There's a continuum. "Bitchslap you with [his or her] brain" at one end, mindless chopbusting at the other. Coulter is clever, but I have never, ever, seen her definitively son anyone. She is either insufficiently ruthless (unlikely) or insufficiently bright.

coulter's dull as fuck, deathly predictable, and if i actually believed that she believed half the shit that she spouts then i would wish her ill (and maybe whether she believes it or not doesn't matter). if you are entertained by coulter then you have huge buttons that are easy to push, mang.

i don't really think she is clever, tbh. opportunist and quick to talk, but she talks bullshit. i do love to watch her get riled and lose the plot though.

full disclosure: i await her eventual and inevitable downfall with a hunger i reserve for rush, glenn beck and hannity

I wish everyone wld say Rush Limbaugh or Limbaugh bcz I keep getting distressed at all these ill-wishes of a perfectly harmless Canadian band.

if i cut geddy lee, does he bleed like an ordinary guy?

Well, Coulter is a bit like Bill Maher. Maher can be funny sometimes but even when he's not he still plays the role of "100%-willing-to-offend" villain tremendously. Some people don't tolerate that type, quite understandably, but they can be fun to watch in small doses. At least that's what I think.

http://gone-hollywood.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2008/03/meghan-mccain.jpg

most of the film was rather pointless and knee-jerky, but one of my favorite Bill Maher moments is in Religilous. He hits up one of those de-homo-ification camps, run by wouldn't you know it a "formerly gay" dude. Bill kind of starts flirting with the guy, and the guy gets totally flustered and blushy.

yeah gay people who don't want to be gay any more are so funny

sorry OT, but the post above had me thinking about the relative worth of Bill Maher

yeah gay people who don't want to be gay any more are so funny

When I see them trying to walk macho, I point at them and laugh.

Ted Nugent.

he might annoy me even more than ann coulter, but i haven't actively chosen to watch much ann coulter so

x-post true, or when they start talking

bill maher that is

yeah gay people who don't want to be gay any more are so funny

yeah you know it was actually pretty fucking funny

guess i'll have to take your word for it!

Mel Gibson

Not really him or his politics or his alcoholic anti-Jew rants. Just his badass performances as Mad Max.

yeah you know it was actually pretty fucking funny

whoa ^^^ sounds snide & wasn't my intention : /

more like it probably doesn't read funny, but i certainly chuckled at the time

is mcwhorter really conservative? does that rest mostly on his not liking hip-hop and his belittling coolio on TV?

"Coolio, why haven't you made another 'Fantastic Voyage'? Did your nuts die?"

"Seriously, Coolio, you encourage people to murder...amazing songs such as 'Pastime Paradise."'

In that sense she's in the Tucholsky and Mencken (perhaps German?) tradition of being, if being nothing else, a great hater.

comparing mencken to coulter is like comparing a fresh breakfast of buttered toast, sausage, eggs and orange juice to, like, week-old cereal sludge with flies buzzing around it.

Not comparing quality as much as the genre.

I do not enjoy the sort of humor that is 'riling people up for the lulz' from anyone of any stripe.

I would be a total hypocrite if I even tried to claim this.

i know he had his faults (mccarthy sympathizer being one) but parts of Barry G's wikipedia entry make him sound like a total bro.

^^ 4 genuine lols for me in the "political views" section

I used to enjoy reading Ross Douthat until his move to the NYT, wherein he seems to have ingested whatever Bill Kristol drinks.

Ramesh Ponnoru is pretty good.

My own opinion is this, I am very liberal but I like to watch Fox a lot. I'd feel bored and contrarian if I had to watch "liberal" viewpoints on tv all the time. I find most of the people on it entertaining and / or personable. The talk radio people less so. If any conservatives drive me nuts, they are politicians.

i think a good majority of the far right media's audience is liberals who enjoy being outraged or having their worst suspicions confirmed. at best it's a symbiotic relationship.

ugh, replace "majority" with "portion"--of course it's not the majority of the audience.

reihan salam!

http://agenda.nationalreview.com/

ugh, replace "majority" with "portion"--of course it's not the majority of the audience.

― ryan, Wednesday, August 5, 2009 5:35 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

I'd put it at about 1 percent.

It's not so much that liberals sit and listen to Rush, but his pronouncements and their perceived effects on his audience definitely feed into liberal discourse. And vice versa--it's like they feed off the extremism of their opposite because it reinforces their beliefs.

Robert Guillaime-tv's beloved Benson.

Like I said, talk radio is different, I listen to it, Michael Savage, I know you all hate him but at least he has a personality and is easy to listen to. Same with Medved. Some of the others are less about personality and substance and more about reacting and callers etc. But the tv shows are different, they cover actual news, Fox does crime news stories that I don't see on CNN. So you're getting a perspective you don't agree with, but at least there is some news attached to it. Frankly I find CNN monotonous in comparison.

Kelefa Sanneh interviewed Savage for The New Yorker last week (members only, alas).

oh fuckin hell robert guillaume are you sure? when were you going to tell Stephanie?

"So I began a Boycott List, nobody on my list will ever get my money again. I hope that you will join me in boycotting these Propagandists. WHY CAN'T THEY JUST DO THEIR JOB AND ENTERTAIN US. Don't they realize no one cares what they have to say."

my how intellectual of you...

Michael Savage, I know you all hate him but at least he has a personality and is easy to listen to

No, he's extremely difficult to listen to. I'd rather sit through 3 hours of Limbaugh on his highest soapbox.

Savage is all "calm voice, calm voice, RAGE RAGE RAGE about unrelated item"

Eazy-E

Watch the video on the right:

http://www.conservativetours.com/index.html

You know why I like Savage, because one time I listened to him and he was going on ranting and raving about child predators like he really cared about something and he got my respect for that.

What.

xpost

You're obviously being satirical. Sorry, it was too dry for me to notice right away.

i used to listen to him on long drives but it became impossible, i felt like i wanted to crash into a tree

I like O'Reilly because he really cares about the state of our country.

is this medved the same mustacioed Medved that inherited Siskel & Ebert's PBS show and ran it into the ground?

yeah! he's one of those conservative "film critics"

that guy was pretty terrible! let's find one of his film reviews and make fun of it, or rather find one that is particularly awful and just collectively gasp.

http://img329.imageshack.us/img329/3366/annieduane.jpg
"Sometimes when I'm driving . . . on the road at night . . . I see two headlights coming toward me. Fast. I have this sudden impulse to turn the wheel quickly, head-on into the oncoming car. I can anticipate the explosion. The sound of shattering glass. The . . . flames rising out of the flowing gasoline."

haha i was thinking about in tommy boy: "every time i drive down the road i wanna jerk the wheel and drive into a goddamn bridge abutment"

lol at "bridge abutment"

the one time I listened to Savage was on a delivery job at an old job, and the driver insisted on listening to him. He had Edmund Teller on and were seriously discussing winnable nuclear war. I wanted to jump out of the truck.

Mom-el told me that her little sister is now a fan of Michael Savage. At first I thought she listened to him the way I once watched Limbaugh as a teenager - as cultural tourism - until my dad forbid the practice in his presence. But apparently, my aunt agrees with him, which is scary. Our family is pretty liberal: my grandma made my mom promise that she would not become a registered Republican until after her death, and that if my mom voted for one of "them," she didn't want to know. But even my mom thinks Savage (and now her sister) have batshit views.

reihan salam!

I liked Salam a lot more before I read this:

http://agenda.nationalreview.com/post/?q=ZjFjODRlZGU5MTQ3NTc5YjhlMmQ0NWU5YmNjNWRlOTA=

The best book I've read on the origins of social democracy is Sheri Berman's The Primacy of Politics: Social Democracy and the Making of Europe's Twentieth Century, a sympathetic account that describes the movement as an outgrowth of the various revisionist movements that emerged in tension with and in opposition to Marxist orthodoxy. Another movement that emerged from the intellectual ferment of revisionism is, of course, fascism, and Jonah Golderg has vividly described the awkward relationship between these traditions at great length. Though it should go without saying that egalitarian social democracy and racial fascism are deeply different, both see the creation and cultivation of social solidarity as vitally important.

man, what a thread.

daniel larison

mario vargas llosa

i like emund burke, ts eliot and heidegger

― rip dom passantino 3/5/09 never forget (max), Friday, March 20, 2009 11:59 AM (1 year ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

haha i was going to start a thread yesterday, about this, with these three names

Bruce Bartlett!

the dude calls the nu GOP on their fiscal hoodoo bullshit pretty consistently.

Richard Posner, Larison, Ramesh Ponnuru (he actually goes through the motions of considering liberal positions).

love it when larison gets all jesus-y

haha i do too. happy easter!!

or whatever that is in greek

yeah larison is pretty cool

A typically lucid pot.

er, post

speaking of jesus-y stuff, k-lo is poppin off on twitter using the #goodfriday tag

i tend to prefer senate republicans to their rabid, and completely fucking insane house counterparts.

― bill stevens (bscrubbins), Wednesday, June 16, 2004 10:42 AM Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

2004, huh?

second post on the thread:

"The obvious: John McCain"...

god it does seem like forever ago when he was an obvious conservative to like. what a difference six years makes!

i didnt know that larison had converted!

yah he's one of the few I can read these days

Long before I began moving towards Orthodoxy, I was being introduced to an Orthodox view of the world through Dostoevsky and through my eclectic religious reading, which included the translation of The Philokalia, which I only barely comprehended when I first encountered it. It wasn’t until that I started grounding my understanding of the faith in its historical context when I was in college that I began to appreciate what I was discovering. That was what started me on the path to studying Byzantine history at the same time. It also deepened my interest in the history of the Orthodox Church and the Church’s teachings, which eventually led to my baptism in 2003. In fact, it was originally a very academic inquiry into the history of the 14th-century Hesychastic controversy in Byzantium that started me on my academic interest in both Byzantine theology and history, which would only later lead me to understand how insufficient an academic and intellectual approach to Orthodoxy was.

how can you not love this guy

Kurt Russel is libertarian, but it's kind of impossible to dislike that dude.

bruce willis is a republican too, got much love for bruce willis.

Kurt Russell was a busy child/young adult actor. He never had time to let his politics evolve, so as an old man he just chose to be a libertarian because it requires the least amount of thought.

Long before I began moving towards Orthodoxy, I was being introduced to an Orthodox view of the world through Dostoevsky and through my eclectic religious reading

hmmm ... so was it Dostoyevsky's hatred of all things non-Russian in general, or Dostoyevsky's anti-Semitism in particular, that so warmed Larison's cold reactionary heart?!?

You cynic.

is there a single writer/thinker in the US right now that is non-libertarian right-wing and is not just terrible?

no

http://melaniekillingervowell.files.wordpress.com/2012/04/romney-dog-pissing-on-sign-via-thirdwaymattb-on-twitter.png

Not sure if Larison counts as libertarian exactly but, no, I don't think he's terrible, not in the least. He's a good bullshit detector. Is Garry Wills still a conservative?

idk where wills stands on obama but he's certainly not in lockstep with political conservatives on the catholic church

"All the Conservatives I Like Are Those That Are Dead" - Felt

wills does not seem (modern american politically) conservative at all in the nyrb

i like larison, probably because i've only seen him call bullshit rather than say what he really wants

Hollywood Republican dudes fall under two categories 1) Action Stars or Tough Guys (i.e. The cast of "The Expendables") 2) former child stars or actors who grew up in Hollywood, with family in the business, who are, for whatever reason, reacting against growing up in an atmosphere of limousine liberalism.

Kurt Russell is both. Robert Downey Jr. is the latter but as he's made more action movies his heart has probably hardened against the poor and downtrodden ("Iron Man")

according to RDJ it's his prison stint that made him a Republican

“I have a really interesting political point of view, and it’s not always something I say too loud at dinner tables here, but you can’t go from a $2,000-a-night suite at La Mirage to a penitentiary and really understand it and come out a liberal. You can’t. I wouldn’t wish that experience on anyone else, but it was very, very, very educational for me and has informed my proclivities and politics ever since.”

which is a really interesting quote - I can't tell if he's referring to being in prison, or the transition from playboy-to-convict itself that "enlightened" him...? what is there to "understand" about that particular journey that renders conservatism inevitable?

It's easy, Shakes. Prison made him loathe anal sex.

lol

I wonder how he feels about people who were radicalized by being in prison

daniel larison's pretty smart except when he's not:

The defeat of the Confederacy, though the Confederate political experiment does not exhaust the richness of Southern culture and identity, was a defining moment when the United States took its steps towards the abyss of the monstrous centralised state, rootless society and decadent culture that we have today. In sum, the Confederacy represented much of the Old America that was swept away, and with it went everything meaningful about the constitutional republican system, and the degeneration of that system in the next hundred years was the logical and ultimately unstoppable result of Lincoln’s victory. All of this is in recognition that we are beholden to our ancestors for who we are, and we honour and remember their struggles and accomplishments not only because they can be established as reasonable, good and true but because they are the struggles and accomplishments of our people, who have made this land ours and sanctified it with their blood in defense against the wanton aggression of a barbarous tyranny.

i haven't seen expendables, but would like to see one with kelsey grammar, dwight schultz, norm mcdonald, and adam sandler.

billy madison or punch drunk love sandler only though.

did larison really say 'honour' and 'centralised'

smdh

btw that is also some fucked up shit

Larison and Edmund Wilson aren't so far apart.

American "liberals you like" would be about as tough for me.

I just reviewed a box o' Robert Downey Sr films, and w/ those budgets he wasn't exactly a "limousine" archetype for Jr to rebel against.

TS: The Expendables v.s. this 1994 Kelsey Grammar-hosted episode of SNL (Sandler, Spade, Norm, Lovitz, Jay Mohr)

xpost -- Morbs, even bigger axe to grind if it was his friend's parents who were "socially liberal, financially conservative"

good lord

http://larison.org/2005/03/01/the-hegemonists-thomas-woods-and-the-league-of-the-south

American "liberals you like" would be about as tough for me.

at least you're willing to have beers with us

I didn't know you had a column! Talking about pols mostly, not sure I read any actual libs anymore... Krugman, I guess.

i don't know whether Matt Taibbi qualifies as a liberal, or he only appears that way b/c he hates Goldman Sachs.

surely downey jr is partly rebelling against the countercultural radicalism of his dad?

i'd say matt taibbi is to the left of a liberal, where he should be.

I like listening to Michael Savage, he has a pleasant voice and at least makes time for real creeps like pedophiles and anti-Semites.

whoa that larison post is grim. i knew he was an old right kind of guy but damn.

http://i45.tinypic.com/s5ycnd.jpg

http://i45.tinypic.com/2re3xwg.jpg

http://i47.tinypic.com/2elxbt0.jpg

Whiney?

you like that site?

or do you "like" it

I just discovered the Caiden Cowger program

rootless society

??? The whole history of non-natives in N. America is largely rootless.