There’s something worse now. Many movement conservatives are driven, if implicitly, by a terrifying intellectual foundation not even present in Goldwater’s day: the Christian Reconstructionist view that, since the family is the basic unit of God’s covenant, the secular humanist state is a false idol held up by minions like Obama (and you) in order to mock all that is godly—a well-nigh Satanic rival for the redemption of the world. Though there is also, if you’re not a particularly theological conservative (or if you believe theology, Leo Strauss–ishly, is bread and circuses for the rubes), a pragmatic motivation to draw from as well. Consider William Kristol, in his infamous 1993 memo “Defeating President Clinton’s Healthcare Proposal.” As I wrote a couple of years ago, for Kristol “the notion of government-guaranteed health care had to be defeated, he said, rather than compromised with, or else: ‘It will revive the reputation of the party that spends and regulates, the Democrats, as the generous protector of middle-class interests. And it will at the same time strike a punishing blow against Republican claims to defend the middle class by restraining government.’ Kristol wrote on behalf of an organization called the Project for a Republican Future. The mortal fear is that if government delivers the goods, the Republicans have no future.” Even their pragmatists are nuts. thenation/blog/176426/thinking-conservative-part-three-shutting-down-government
Posted on: Wed, 06 Nov 2013 23:13:44 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015