tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6951127.post109262710051727578..comments2023-09-11T02:14:11.641-05:00Comments on Almost Empty Musings: What Is Conservatism and What Is Wrong with It?Jeffrey Davidsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07720257431246890523noreply@blogger.comBlogger3125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6951127.post-1092726002783964402004-08-17T02:00:00.000-05:002004-08-17T02:00:00.000-05:00Amazingly, I'll have to agree with Tony on this. ...Amazingly, I'll have to agree with Tony on this. Even as a dirty, smelly, tree-hugging hippie pothead, I couldn't get past the first several paragraphs of this article. Tony, your comments are dead-on in this respect. However, I did find a slightly more interesting essay on approximately the same topic:<br /><br /><A HREF="http://www.blogger.com/r?http%3A%2F%2Fwww.d-n-i.net%2Ffcs%2Fcomments%2Fc507.htm">The Howling Wilderness of Pseudoconservatism</A>.<br /><br />While I'm not a big fan of the ridiculous and unnecessarily philosophically ponderous language and styling, there are some genuinely good points to be extracted from this article. It's less a critique of solid conservative values than a critique of the current conservative movement, which I see as two very distinct things. Enjoy!Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6951127.post-1092684938580261232004-08-16T14:35:00.000-05:002004-08-16T14:35:00.000-05:00Honestly, just skimming the article made me cringe...Honestly, just skimming the article made me cringe. YUCK!<br /><br />I think his partisanship has certainly deepened over the years and if wasn't for the goodwill he built with me based on his work of a decade ago, I would have never have read this crap.Jeffrey Davidsonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07720257431246890523noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6951127.post-1092680364909123932004-08-16T13:19:00.000-05:002004-08-16T13:19:00.000-05:00I had forgotten how far off the deep end Mr. Agre ...I had forgotten how far off the deep end Mr. Agre is. Your excerpts show that he has some intelligent and useful stuff to say, but there's no way I can get through the cruft to find any more of it.<br /><br />He starts off by building a straw man made of non sequiturs. How inane are the following statements:<br /><br />"Conservatism is the domination of society by an aristocracy."<br /><br />"[T]he most central feature of conservatism is deference."<br /><br />Even if he is historically correct, he's ignoring that institutions and ideologies change over time. Hence the vast difference between modern day 'liberals' of the left and 'classic liberals' most closely typified by today's libertarians. This is all the more ironic considering that (pre-Iraq anyway) libertarians largely identified with conservatives far more than they did with liberals (which, admittedly, isn't all that far).<br /><br />Anyway, I'm not sure that this sort of hostile partisan hackery masked by intellectual civility is any better than the shrillness of Michael Moore or Ann Coulter.Userhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16814644891922788549noreply@blogger.com