tectonics
Doctor Zero hits another home run. Notable excerpts:
Many of the GOP’s boneheaded mistakes come from exactly the same source as the Democrats’ boneheaded mistakes: the tendency to believe the media action line about themselves. This produces arrogance in the Democrats, while the Republicans are like awkward, lovestruck teenagers – terrified the slightest bit of confident self-expression will blow their chances with the cute moderate in the pink sweater seated beside them in homeroom class. They suffer beneath the same irony that crushes every awkward teenager, since confident self-expression is exactly what is needed to connect with the object of their affections… assuming they’re not obsessing over someone they never had a chance with anyway.
and
A moderate Republican is someone who lives in a state of perpetual surprise as he ponders the monthly bills for nanny-state government. What’s the point of electing people who are guaranteed to spend the rest of their political careers complaining about how they’ve been played for fools?
He ends with:
A successful Republican Party doesn’t have to be ideologically rigid, but it should insist on candidates who possess an intellectual foundation of conservative theory, and the ability to explain it at least as well as the thousands of people posting comments on conservative blogs.
Absolutely true. Diane and I discuss this regularly: We’re baffled by the resistance of some conservatives to educating themselves about not only the political but also the philsophical foundations of their worldview. It’s an implicit denial that there can be rational and intellectual consistency, integrity in one’s worldview. Kant’s epistemological divisions have made such profound inroads in our thinking. That’s a subject for another time, though—for now, it’d be enough if more elected conservatives could articulate their principles with lucidity, and stand by them.