The Education of a Paleoconservative

[arisbe]

One of you has asked, and perhaps some of you have wondered, just what the hell is this neocon-paleocon thing. Isn't neocon just a word used by anti-Semites to smear everything good, clean, and decent

Comments

[fixnwrtr]

But my life, viewed from the outside, has not a great deal of biographical interest.

I think that depends on your perspective. As someone who is an avid viewer from outside, I've found that the people who consider themselves boring biographically are usually the most interesting.

[arisbe]

True. But for every reader of Autobiography of an Unknown Indian, The Seven Pillars of Wisdom had hundreds, who would be called intellectuals today.

[fixnwrtr]

Why is being called an intellectual so important? Is it not possible to learn as much from an unknown Indian as from T. E. Lawrence?

[arisbe]

Much more, I think. I will return to Nirad C. Chaudhuri, not Lawrence of Arabia. (Maybe the movie. And someday I shall read Doughty's Arabia Deserta, which Yeats, Pound and Tagore read aloud one summer in the English countryside.)

[rawmr]

well interesting though 'fraid the article lost me early when it compared the movement to Barry Goldwater. Wouldn't even want to begin getting into the dirth of rotting matter buried in that simplistic and deformed romantic's subconscious (something only ronnie could best), let alone liberatarian economics and environmental policy, though of course I see nothing very wrong in general with the latter's love of sex, drugs and rock'n roll, 'cept of course in the sheer gluttony of the movement's leaders, but they have lots of company here from the major parties.

I'm guessing perhaps the only way paleos can escape the odorous legacy of conservatives over the last 100+ years is by switching to the Dems. Plenty of racial tolerence, social equality, and narrowed down foreign policy there, even some economic sanity and fairness.

[arisbe]

I guess a whole lot of us never left the Dems, even for Reagan.

As for Barry, well, he says he had no idea what conservatism was until he read the book written for him by a fellow far to the right of Franco. (I do not exaggerate, the ghostwriter was a Carlist.)

But better Barry than LBJ. Or Nixon. And I think he would have liked Obama.

[rawmr]

Sad to say, but Barry would likely have done as good or every president since and including lbj, except everyone's favorite Bill of course.