Dang It! Kleinheider Is Right!

Stacey Campfield is most assuredly NOT a paleoconservative.  My bad.

It’s hard to keep everybody straight, considering the right is in turmoil right now.  For now, till he tells me differently himself, I’ll consider Campy a “cultural conservative with fiscal conservative leanings”. 

I’ll bet, if I tried, I could come up with at least 50 different classifications of the political views of those who consider themselves “conservative”.  Maybe a hundred.  I know this sounds strange to those of you who think we all look alike.  Of course, this shows a profound ignorance of the internal struggles currently going on in the Republican party, and the right in general.

We have small “l” libertarians, social conservatives, fiscal conservatives, country-club Republicans, neos, paleos, isolationists, bleeding-hearts, and I’m sure many others that you could add.  What’s more, there are degrees.  There are Kemp types whose focus is almost entirely fiscal; they are embarrassed by the “fundies”.  There are religious conservatives who have populist leanings and disagree vehemently with the Kemp types.  Then you have the liberal (yes, we have them, too!) Olympia  Snow types who are embarrassed by all the rest of us.  And there are many (myself included) who have views that slip in and out of every major “conservative” category, depending on the issue.

We are currently having a most profound disagreement on immigration; some say it’s splitting the party apart.  We don’t all agree on the war.  We don’t agree about the place of religion in society.  And if you want to get righties fighting, bring up the war on drugs.

What holds us together?  If you think it’s an unspoken hatred of racial minorities, women, and homosexuals, you are greatly mistaken.  This is a slander that has gone on for far too long. 

The thing that holds us together, and has since before Ronald Reagan, is a common belief in smaller government in general (although cultural conservatives sometimes forget this) and a belief in a very strong military, coupled with a dislike for international institutions telling us what to do.  Everything else is debated vigorously (including hot button issues).

Me?  I’m a bleeding-heart with libertarian leanings (but a populist upbringing), who favors wholesale immigration reform.  I’m culturally quite conservative, though I’m more of a “salt and light” kind of guy and don’t think it’s a good idea to compel others to act as I do through force of government.  But I WILL use the bully pulpit to shine the light, so many people who have no discernment might mistake that for my wanting to establish a theocracy.  I favor relaxing the war on drugs.

I try as hard as I can to be color blind.  And I’m tired of people calling me a liar, or insulting me by telling me that my color blindedness doesn’t count because of some ridiculous concept of “white privilege”.  Before you who do not know me embarrass yourself, when you accuse me of such, you have to know that my family is interracial.  Fit that into your little paradigm.

I believe in treating each other with the utmost respect.  The fact that I try to be universal about this, and refuse to get myopic in regard to respecting a gender, means that I do not call myself a feminist.  It matters not that my views mirror that of the feminist movement to a degree of about 90%, the fact that I won’t take my “respect” rule, politicise it, and concentrate on a very narrow set of issues means that I am considered “anti-woman”.  OK.  Whatever.

Anyway, there is a REASON why courts of law do not allow a second person to testify the motivations of another (without a direct quote).  It’s extremely unreliable.  It’s just as wrong for someone to say “Liberals support such-and-such policy because they hate America” as it would to say “Conservatives support such-and-such policy because they hate women and minorities”. 

Plus, it’s downright rude to assign motivation to others’ actions.  You have no idea what’s in someone’s head.

I’ve gone far afield (again).  I just wanted to apologise to Campfield for calling him a paleoconservative. 

And now, I think I’ll drop politics for a while.  It’s time to talk about housekeeping, sports, and boobs again.