Center of Right: The Fashionable Conservative

THE FASHIONABLE CONSERVATIVE

R. Kirk: The Conservative "Forest Gump" of the Reagan Devolution? Conservative is what conservatives do? Kirk was a decent man, by most accounts. Forrest was too.

Well, Stephen Bainbridge sure knows how to clear a room, eh? I mean, he starts out dismissing Andrew and his readers as "a bunch". If that's not bad enough, he goes on to say, "a bunch of lefties".

This is wrong on so many levels. Of course, "Center of Right" could be on the Left. Or else, it is just "Center", so why attach the giddy amelioration? Still, it's better than "right-of-center", which could be off the tarmac. I guess a "bunch of lefties" aren't part of the ... what was it, "enduring moral order", or are they? Of course, our little explication du text goes a little further. How does bunching up a lot lefties square with equality before the law, except that the fashionable conservative always has something on the back of his mind that's not on the tip of his 'principled' tongue?

That Kirk isn't "serious" is perhaps sent up by the notice that his "principles" fit neatly into ten, no more or less. Russell the law-giver? Honestly.

Even ruggers have to worry about elevating "prudence" to principle and then pretending that folks have no creed, to speak of.

In the end, you have a disorganized and uncomfortably matched set of "principles" that can justify your doing just about anything, depending on which you are focusing on today as a matter of "character" or "state of mind". Does that sound "center" of anything? Or, does it sound more like a casual radicalism?

No, there is no intellectual champion in Kirk, based on this, and it's to AS's credit that he sticks with Oakshott and doesn't try to stand on the fashion-padded shoulders of an R. Kirk.

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oh, while I'm in a gruff mood, here's a stylized homage to the fashionable "Compassionate Conservatism".

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One Gov't That Won't Be Benchmarked Issues a Report That Another Gov't Hasn't Met Its Benchmarks

It's not everyday that 'real life' is an Onion headline, but with GOP Senators lauding 'stay the course', if you don't laugh, you cry.

Meanwhile, many months late, the press starts to put dollars and effort into getting a chart-room of Iraqi progress measures, rather than continue to condemn the public to a "classified" stabilization effort. (here-the surge, here-Baghdad violence and here-various, including sectarian violence).

Note to man-in-the-wind, Senator Joe Lieberman: If you got Bush's base (the "have mores", as he once called them) to pay $12 billion a month in taxes until you are ready to withdraw, you might get someone to listen. A simple wealth-tax would do it, yes?

Note to Senator Judd Gregg, R-ubberstamp, NH: It's not cynical for you to vote your continuing support for Bush-Cheney and their strategy. If you honestly think more of the same is your best judgment, keep voting it and we'll see you in 2010! If you don't want to have your career judged by your views of the Iraqi Stabilization effort, the so-called phase-three, then I don't have the time of day for you. Sorry. Life and death and all that, you see.

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