It's Official: Conservatives are CRAZY!

[BabylonHoruv]

Unfortunately, to a Republican, that sounded like

SHOULD WE TEACH OUR CHILDREN TO BE CHRISTIANS, OR LET THEM BE GODLESS ATHEISTIC NAZI EVOLUTIONISTS?  OR WORSE, JOIN OTHER RELIGIONS???

What is interesting is there is at least 7% response in each question which disagrees with the typical Republican response.  I wonder if those are the same people answering most questions against the party grain, and if they are, why the hell are they still members?

Well, a lot of muslims do identify as conservative.....

[Jenne]

It is wholly ironic that Muslims identify with the very party that would bomb them from the earth with little to no provocation.

[Cain]

You have to be a kind of interbred cross between UKIP and the BNP, basically.

[Iason Ouabache]

BUMPED for a new poll:

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2010/3/23/849763/-Confirmed!-GOP-batshit-insane

Conservatives were outraged at our January poll suggesting that Republicans were batshit insane. But it wasn't so much the results which they challenged, but the veracity of the pollster and of us. Rather than argue that Republicans weren't birthers (they are), they tried to discredit the organization commissioning the poll (us).

Well, another non-partisan pollster, Harris, has reported similar results:

* 67 percent of Republicans (and 40 percent of Americans overall) believe that Obama is a socialist.

* 57 percent of Republicans (32 percent overall) believe that Obama is a Muslim

* 45 percent of Republicans (25 percent overall) agree with the Birthers in their belief that Obama was "not born in the United States and so is not eligible to be president"

* 38 percent of Republicans (20 percent overall) say that Obama is "doing many of the things that Hitler did"

* Scariest of all, 24 percent of Republicans (14 percent overall) say that Obama "may be the Antichrist."

The GOP base is full of all-out lunatics, motivated and fueled by Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Sarah Palin, and the rest of the neo-Birchers of the conservative movement. As long as they hold sway with the Republican Party, compromise will be impossible. They won't allow it.

[Cain]

BANKERS ARE THE JEWS FOR THE KENYAN MUSLIM SOCIALIST ANTICHRIST'S OVENS!

[Kai]

Conservatives /are/ essentially insane, in some way or form. Especially if you use the definition "doing the same things over and over believing you will get a different result" for insanity. People who wish for static reality or the reactionaries who wish to actually /go back/ in time to an earlier "perfect" age, are crazy. They are nuts, bonkers.

[LMNO]

I WISH THINGS TODAY WERE THE WAY I REMEMBERED THEM AS A CHILD WHEN I DIDN'T UNDERSTAND WHAT WAS GOING ON!
     \

[Cain]

Conservatives /are/ essentially insane, in some way or form. Especially if you use the definition "doing the same things over and over believing you will get a different result" for insanity. People who wish for static reality or the reactionaries who wish to actually /go back/ in time to an earlier "perfect" age, are crazy. They are nuts, bonkers.

Well, the thing that used to define conservatism (aside from "fiscal responsibility") wasn't so much being reactionary as being suspicious of large changes.  For example, Edmund Burke, who a lot of Americans who haven't read Edmund Burke supposedly look up to, wrote a damning book about the revolution in France and the terror it unleashed.  At the same time, he was a supporter of the American revolution against the Crown (a surprisingly large number of Parlimentarians in England were sympathetic to the American revolution, if you do some reading on the period).  That was because the French revolution sought to create an entirely new and radically egalitarian society - one which totally abolished the feudal system France had suffered under and destroyed the power of the Church - within the space of a couple of years.  The American revolutionaries, on the other hand, kept much of the trappings of the English constitution, including seperation of powers, recognition of the traditional liberties accorded to the English and an artisocratic (in reality if not in name) overclass who kept everything under control.  Burke's pragmatic conservatism was hugely influential on English and thus American society.

Then, by contrast, you have Joseph de Maistre, a Savoyard diplomat and philosopher.  de Maistre, as opposed to Burke, was a true reactionary, decrying all sorts of attempts of progress as attacks on the throne of the king and the altar of god.  He blamed the Terror on atheism, for example.  Constitutions and rulers, for him, were appointed by God and not man, and hierarchical society was the highest good.  de Maistre was briefly zeitgeisty in the early 19th century, but faded quickly, forgotten for everything except his (deserved) reputation as a viciously brilliant writer.  Isiah Berlin, the British political philosopher, thinks de Maistre gave the first possible voicing to a fascist worldview.  It is therefore unsurprising that Pat Buchanan praised him as a "great conservative" in 2006.

The problem with de Maistre's reactionary tendencies, other than their obvious lunacy, is that they're not even based on how France really worked.  While he extolled the virtues of the hierarchical state and the authoritarian King...well, read Machiavelli's description of France.  The feudal lords had a lot of leeway and, at times, so did several other groups.  The King was a powerful figure, but power in the country had always, in a sense, been decentralized from the capital, at least until the Revolution itself.

Much like that, most American conservatives want to return to an imaginary past, which never actually existed.  That is why they are doomed to constant failure.  They're trying to build something which not only never happened, but in many cases never could happen.  Free market capitalism along with pious Christianity, for example.  Good luck with that.  When you decide which of your two conflicting principles will eventually apply to pornographers, get back to me.  Until then, STFU.

[LMNO]

When you decide which of your two conflicting principles will eventually apply to pornographers, get back to me. 

Great line.

[Elder Iptuous]

this merely highlights the inadequacy of the terminology that we use, and insistence of summarizing the whole of politics into a one dimensional 'spectrum'.

[Cramulus]

from
:

"Together, the two parties function like giant down comforters, allowing the candidates to disappear into the enveloping softness, protecting them from exposure to the harsh weather of independent thought...Each party has a platform, a prix fixe menu of beliefs making up its worldview. The candidate can choos one of two platforms, but remember - no substitutions. For example, do you support universal health care? Then you must also want a ban on assult weapons. Pro-limited government? Congratulations, you are also anti-abortion. Luckily, all human opinion falls neatly nto one of the two clearly defined camps. Thus, the two-party system elegently relflects the bichromatic rainbow that is American political thought."