KD's Response To DT...

This exchange started...here.

Continued...here.

Was followed up...here.

Now KD responds, I hope you're enjoying this exchange as much as I am!


I think perhaps I painted Conservatives as too much a monolith,
probably because I was so ticked off about Farah carrying forth the false meme
that our revolution was in the same vein as the French Revolution. It
is just what the left wants the ignorant masses to go on believing,
while remaining perpetually unable to discern between pure a democracy and
a republic.

As to your points and queries:

I said they (conservatives) will not fight. I say this
because they have not done so. Period. I believe the success of the
left in the last three decades to be ample proof of my statement.

I stated a number of issues, mostly cultural, in which the left has
been virtually unstoppable in imposing its beliefs and ideology upon
us.

As much as I hate to say it, Conservatives always give too much ground
before they are compelled to act. Human curiosity, coupled with human
ignorance, I think, moves the fulcrum continually and slowly to the
left. Sometimes I think that as Conservatives we can only drag our heels,
holding the leash of society as if it were attached to a pack of
puppies in a field of fire hydrants.

In my re-reading of Russell Kirk's The Conservative Mind, I
just read a quote from Brooks Adams, John Quincy's sardonic and perhaps
Marxist grandson, who wrote sometime around the turn of the last
century:

"Hardly had Washington gone to his grave when the levelling work of the
system of averages, on which Democracy rests, began..."

"Levelling" was Burke's term for the leftist insistence on abandoning
American presumption of "equality at the outset" in favor of the French
desire for "equality in results." Brooks Adams surely started life as a
Conservative, as the Adamses were by birth, but eventually he became
anti-Capitalist. From what I can discern, he grew to loathe the
treachery he saw in those who were "userers;" that is, those who were
conservative only when it came to the affairs of money. He saw them as stupid
in their attachment to the present with no concern for what they left in
their lives' wakes and surely no sense of obligation to carry forward
the vital cultural artifacts that allowed them the freedom to become
successful while remaining both ignorant and greedy. Sometimes I
sympathize with why Brooks threw in the towel and gave up on Conservatism...and
on capitalism. I mean, why bother being "Conservative" when so many
are so stupid as to gut the goose laying the golden eggs to get at the
few inside?

Our concern about Conservatives not fighting is much older than thirty
years.

I refer specifically to conservative leadership, which
is highly visible whenever an election comes around: those whom we have
entrusted to ensure the future of the distinctly American nation,
people and culture. Politicians and policy makers if you
will.

We've slid so far back from the edge of having true Conservatives in
leadership; it was only ten years ago, but seems much farther away.
Today the Republican leadership is, to carry the theme forward, just a pack
of puppies sniffing and peeing on fire hydrants. They might call
themselves "Conservative," but the practitioners of usery and their enablers
usually do (wrongly) think of themselves as Conservative. The few true
Conservatives we have (Tancredo...Hunter...Paul...Gingrich...the list
is short) are mostly consigned to dog-walker status.

As for conservatism not being an ideology or political
in origin but coming from, as you state, “…somewhere deeper within the
soul…” well, I don’t see those two dynamics as being mutually
exclusive.

You're right, they're not. But there are so many who stake a claim to
being "Conservative" when they surely are not, I find myself going back
to the definition of "Conservative" outside of politics to begin my
search for politicians who are "Conservatives."

You say conservatives will fight, but the fight must be
stirred within them, as they are not prone to flights of fancy.

Define flights of fancy please.

I think that somewhere Burke used the term to denote the tendency of
those enamored by innovation to be blind to consequences, and Answers.com
does indicate the idiom originated in Burke's time. The problem with
Conservatives being stirred to fight, I think, is partly related to our
need to be sure our position aligns the prescriptions of the past with
our hopes for the future. If a Conservative sets off to fight unsure,
he'll keep poking his head up to see in all directions to keep his
bearings. That's not a good thing to do when engaged in a a firefight,
whether it is literal or figurative.

Another problem with getting Conservatives to fight is that so many
want to have faith in their fellow man to do the right thing. If Ronald
Reagan had a major failing, it is that he inspired too many to believe
that goodness is innate. Nothing could be further from the truth.

You seem to be saying that until those intellectual
conservatives you refer to suffer at the hands of criminals, drunk drivers
and such, they cannot be roused from their introspection.

That being the case, that would make them no different than the
majority of other Americans would it?

I'll have to use my sister and her kids as an example. She's a lot
older than I, and she lives in a very rural part of the midwest. Her kids
have been on their own for about 15 years. Until very recently, her
daily life rarely brought her in contact with anyone whose ancestors had
not been here for at least several generations. She instinctively tuned
out TV shows and media that was "multicultural" without thinking about
why that was. She did travel quite a bit, but it's amazing how people
can compartmentalize things that happen away from home as not having an
effect on them; I didn't start to "get" that there could be "too many
immigrants" until after I actually tried living in Miami after having
worked there for five years.

After my enlightenment regarding the mass-immigration nightmare in
1990, I'm sure that Sis thought I had gone batty. She didn't see any
threat to culture or tradition. She was dismissive of my concerns. Then one
day about five years ago she checked into a hotel and it dawned on
her that nobody aside from the front desk help could speak english.
The light came on. Then she started noticing that truck in traffic
loaded with the day laborers. Had they been there before? Yes. But
previously, she had not been cognitively connecting what I had been saying
with her reality. Today, she faithfully calls and faxes on every
numbersusa.com request. In her travels, she tells people to speak english or
to not expect a tip.

Her kids are another story. Her youngest son gets it; he now lives in
a larger college town and his kids are in public school. He's
constantly having to de-program them. In business, he's seeing competitors hire
illegals to undercut him. Her eldest daughter, while probably
"Conservative," has yet to have her epiphany. A stay-at-home mom, her kids
attend private Christian school. She actually believes what Bush says
about immigration, thinks I need to "get over it" and learn to speak
spanish so I can take advantage of the new order. Right now, she's livid
that her mother is siding with me regarding immigration.

I believe she'll eventually reach her own tipping point, but for now
she's insulated, hooked on the Kool Aid and sees nothing wrong with
following sniffing and pissing puppies, even if they go off a cliff. And I
think that's where most American Conservatives are today.

How do we get Conservatives to stand up? That's a very old question
still begging an answer. And perhaps the problem is with the question
itself. Maybe we'd be better off asking: How do we get Conservatives to
realize they are Conservative and that there are certain obligations
they must not ignore any longer?

If we can do that, I think the fight will come.

(Thanks KD! -- ed)

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