Tuesday, April 26, 2011

Birthers

According to CNN, more than 4 in 10 Republicans don't think Obama was born in the US.

The constant refrain is that Obama could end this in a minute; assuming he could, why would he as this will be a huge asset to his campaign.  What a terrible distraction. 

Monday, April 11, 2011

What are the philosophical underpinnings of the conservative movement.

A short muse about conservatism....

For those that label Obama as a Socialist/Marxists; do they know the (a)theological underpinnings of the current conservative movement? I am a "conservative" insomuch as I believe there must be a proper balance between the tyranny of individualism and the tyranny of authoritarianism; I am also a conservative because I have a very pessimistic view of human nature.  This is fairly consistent with classical conservatism and those such as Edmund Burke. But, from what I can see, the modern conservative movement has totally abandoned the sensible political and moral moderation of Burks philosophy and exchanged it for some weird amalgamation of Ayn Rand (libertarians and uber-individualist) and Leo Strauss (semi-authoritarian; Neocon);  both of these people atheist by the way.  What is even weirder is how the Christian right can swallow both of these contradictory pills and come out with something resembling a cohesive political theory (i.e. Sarah Palin).  Conservatism after all was in many ways an 18th century reaction to the governance of pure ideology and the overreaching of the liberalism of the day (i.e. Rousseau).  Unfortunately, many have made something they think is "conservative" into their own ideology.  All things in moderation, especially political ideology as each one will fail in its own good time.

More on this later; I just wanted to get my thoughts started on this topic.