Also, from Professor Bainbridge I got a link this debate between two conservatives on what went wrong for conservatives under Bush. I think they both miss the point that much of what concerns the "conservatives" does not find a warm cozy home in the hearts and minds of mainstream America. That they cannot understand this is understandable. First, because they have come to believe their own messianic propaganda - that they are anointed from on high to show us belonging to the great unwashed masses the errors of our ways. Secondly, the got suckered by their own redefining of conservative. I would consider myself a financial conservative - as would most Indiana Democrats - waste not, want not. I certainly do not count tax cuts during wartime as financial reasonable. However, where common sense and reasonableness were once the hallmarks of a conservative, today's conservatives are reactionaries hiding as conservatives. Reasonableness and commonsense lost to a rabid ideology to rebuild the world in an image conducive to their theories.
Reading over the article, I thought there is just too much bullshit here too separate, too much nonsense to worry over, but then I came to this paragraph:
Things at home were little better. For conservatives, the 1970s stand as the nadir of American social history-the “decade of nightmares,” in Philip Jenkins’ phrase. This was the era that installed the media culture of suspicion, surrendered the nation’s cities to crime zones, suffered double-digit inflation, nationalized the sexual revolution, and gave us Roe v. Wade. Direct cause and effect for such things are always difficult to decide, but, in one way after another, we were demoralized for a decade after America’s defeat in Vietnam.The writer glosses over the one great glaring episode that demoralized America during the 1970's. He follows other Republicans in this. Bush I talking about the Vietnam malaise as we liberated Kuwait. Even Ronald Reagan had to find some other fault for the ugly 1970's. None ever want to mention Richard Nixon's resignation as grounds for demoralizing the country. Nixon who ran as the law and order candidate, Nixon who talked about honorable withdrawals, Nixon who talked about the silent majority of hard, working middle class Americans, Nixon who was shown to be a crook and put lies to all of his sanctimonious bs. he crushed the hopes of those who believed him and shocked some who had no use for him. Until these people recognize the harm Nixon did to all of us, I will find their dissertations into what went wrong with America intellectually dishonest regardless of their academic credentials.
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