... of a deeply deluded but articulate conservative. I don't endorse P.J.'s opinions; I mention the article because I find his schizophrenia absolutely fascinating.
On the one hand, he seems to grasp, at least dimly, that conservatism failed not just on an effective level, but on a deeply moral level. And yet he still insists that the fundamental message of conservatism is moral.
Just as schizophrenic Christians justify human value by an appeal to the absolute, inherent human depravity, schizophrenic conservatives try to justify social cooperation by an appeal to every man for himself, and the devil take the hindmost. The doublethink really is spectacular.
A true conservative, I think, should be proud of the Bush regime: It's allowed the best of us (i.e. the richest) to accumulate their due, and left the liberals to herd the hoi polloi into compliance.
Tuesday, November 11, 2008
6 comments:
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Jeez, man, don't you ever sleep? PJ O'Rourke came late to conservatism. I attended a talk he gave in 2000 at UC Davis where he said, "I wasn't a Republican until I started making real money." He's a deeply funny man. However, I'm not so sure he's the best deep political thinker; for example, his book on Adam Smith wasn't very good.
ReplyDeleteI said he was articulate, not deep.
ReplyDeleteThe nice thing about PJ is that he pretty much says what he thinks; he doesn't make a lot of effort to obfuscate his delusions and contradictions.
I've never understood the whole lot of money = Republican thing. If I had a shitload of money, I just couldn't think of anything better to spend it on than financing radical politics.
once u dedicated ure life to religion u gave into schizo stuff, i mean what could be more schizo than telling about love and mercy, while promising hell fire?
ReplyDeleteAfter that, politically, anything is possible.
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ReplyDeleteI can't tell when PJ is trying to be Colbert style funny and when he is serious... but Colbert could easily steal a lot of that material and you wouldn't notice it wasn't Colbert's character.
ReplyDeleteBut if you want to see real delusionality, check out Power Line's Hinderaker:
http://normdoering.blogspot.com/2008/11/yet-more-evidence-that-right-wing.html
Hinderaker's delusion (fixed link)
ReplyDelete