The main hurdle to more widespread of RP’s views or Libertarian views more broadly is they tend to be predicated on “first principles” (_a priori_, if you prefer Kant in your morning coffee) and worked forward. Although this approach is rational and consistent, it is unfamiliar and probably repugnant to the general public. I am vaguely reminded of Camille Paglia’s discussion of the dichotomy of dry Protestant literacy and RC visually-stimulated luxuriance. This was in _Sexual Personae_, maybe? Or Nietzshe’s Apollonian v. Dionysian.

Also see:
http://www.house.gov/apps/list/press/tx14_paul/MRESurplus.shtml
if you haven’t already. This is more in line with Washington/Cinncinattus (sp?) model I expect from elected servants.

If we aimed the stimulus at struggling homeowners* the Wall Street tranchemongers would be in better shape but not vice versa.

* and, say a solar, wind, or hydrogen infrastructure. Don’t get me started!

I have chronic back pain from degenerative disc disease and arthritis in the spine. Also a bit protrusion into the spinal cord by a bulging disc.

I used to enjoy long backpacking trips in southern Appalachians, mostly along the venerable Appalachian Trail. I was something of a trail rat in my 30s, taking 100+ mile walks with a 40 lb. pack over rough mountainous terrain in 7 or 8 days. I very much enjoyed the physical challenge, the scenery and the long periods of isolation. Me, my pack and a good trial dog alone in best natural beauty east of the Mississippi, that was my idea of a good time.

The first taste of the back problem happened on a weekend trip in 1999. I had a sharp pain the right hip shooting down the leg on the last day. It was 8 miles of agony with each footfall. It went away with some rest. No worries for for 5 or 6 years. It did make the clear point that backpacking wasn’t a good idea. In any case I moved back to Florida and backpacking just wasn’t as fun, too hot and too flat. In about 2005 the pain came back to stay.

I’m looking at surgery, disc replacement. I put it off for as long as possible because the outcomes from the older laminectomy procedures sucked. Hopefully this will work better.

I hope you get your fastball back my friend.

Sixteenth century monks and eighties alt rock go together, don’t they?

Sorry to hear about your struggles with pain. That’s a difficult and wearing road.

My father warned me that 40 was when he no longer felt like superman and became aware of his own slide into decreptitude. I’m definitely feeling it now. Parts get hurt from normal usage. Parts ache for no apparent reason.

I was just at the VA hospital last week getting my shoulder inspected. At this juncture it looks like rotator cuff damage but won’t know for sure until the orthopedic consult gets approved and the MRI gets done. I’ve mostly stopped using that side in the interim.

BTW, if your scenario is related to injury that occurred during service, it might be productive to let the local VA know. The MDs there have been after me to apply for benefits related to the vertebrae-crushing hijinx that occurred at CAS. I haven’t done anything about it yet, but I haven’t ruled it out. They offered me a medical discharge at the time but I was still Gung Ho and all that. Ahhh, youth.

BTW, leave it to you to make allusions to both Rabelais and The Cure in the same post. Well done, sir.

I am not a Democrat or Liberal (or even “progressive”) but I did vote for Obama in the general election. The issue above is *so* frustrating.

Obama gets *played* by the right over and over. He’s simply NOT going to get any support from the Right side of the aisle no matter what they say. So I say make a perfunctory formal attempt then release yourself from the compulsion to find common ground. As Kant pointed out, a rational actor has no duty to perform the impossible.

What is the difference between these two things:
A bill your base wants which garners 0 votes from the opposition.
A bill you watered down which garners 0 votes from the opposition.

The difference is you got less and angered your base. Yay!

The right is already frothingly, rabidly, irrationally anti-Obama. One must ram legislation down their throats; it’s the only thing they understand, and it’s what they’d do in that position. The Right groks political aggression and force. Give it to them and let the re-election fall where it may. Pres. Obama has said he’d rather be a good one-termer than a crappy two-termer[0] and I think it’s time to walk the walk. Bring it.

fratermus
[0] not saying his performance is crappy so far, just saying he needs to step up his game with the opposition. Remember when the kid charged Nolan Ryan on the mound? That’s what I’m talking about. Headlock + face punches. Politically speaking, of course.

Largely unenforceable and meaningless, but it’s red meat for the Good Old Boys and makes the locals feel like they can stave off the Reconquista for a while longer.

Then stir in the unpleasant fact that it’s a very short list when you count up the countries that have actually nuked other countries…

I thought the work of Michael Oakeshott captures a lot of the basis of conservatism in his work with this quote:

“To be conservative, then, is to prefer the familiar to the unknown, to prefer the tried to the untried, fact to mystery, the actual to the possible, the limited to the unbounded, the near to the distant, the sufficient to the superabundant, the convenient to the perfect, present laughter to utopian bliss.” – (cribbed from his Wikipedia page)

Liberal and progressives are more or less utopian in outlook and temperament. If there was just the right law coercing the “correct” behavior all would be well and we’d all march arm in arm towards human perfection. It’s impractical, but it does tend to drive society forward, dragging the Oakeshotts of the world along with them, kicking and screaming.

In the modern American political scene, conservatism has devolved into a sort of willful ignorance, a modern “no nothing” nihilism that’s profoundly anti-intellectual and disturbingly ugly. The Tea Partiers and clowns like Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh typify it. It’s noting new, it’s all happened before and will again. They’ll have their populist anger co-opted and become a part of that which they hated at the onset.

Listened through the commercial break to see who this clown was, and they came back with “You’ve been listening to the Glenn Beck show.” Holy crap. /This/ guy is a national media figure?

From the conservative POV (how I was raised), if you’re right you know what’s right, and whatever you do to get the right outcome is, de facto, right. I suspect there is more than a little Calvinism-style Elect personality at play here.

The wild anger is probably best explained by
Hofstadter:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Paranoid_Style_in_American_Politics

The gentlest and most perceptive description of the differences between liberal and conservative moral systems is described by Haidt. He suggests that conservative “morality is not just about how we treat each other (as most liberals think); it is also about binding groups together, supporting essential institutions, and living in a sanctified and noble way. ”
http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/haidt08/haidt08_index.html

While I regard those three additional values to be primitive, chauvinistic, superstitious caveman stuff it goes a long way to helping me understand conservative approaches to problems.

Sorry to spew a bunch of barely connected stuff. This stuff has been on my mind and I thought it might be grist for your readership.

Remember when you couldn’t move a “laptop” at all while it was spinning? MCC drives or something?

My prefered mp3 player is solid state also. When the iPod drive dies I’ll throw a CF card in there instead.

I miss thoughtful, civil conservatives like Buckley. Come out, come out, wherever you are…

http://preview.tinyurl.com/yev3h6d