re: #175 stabby

If you have a brain and you’re at PJ then you’re a socialist troll!

I used to say that the tea party wasn’t really right wing, that it was a revolt by stupid people who feel exploited (but can’t figure out by who) against all ideas that came from people smarter than themselves.

I was half right.

They are all breathtakingly stupid.

But they’ve succeeded in defining “right” to be the Bircher right not the William F. Buckley right. It turns out that the difference between the two was more cosmetic than you’d think anyway. There is no intelligent right in the United States, period. None. Unless you’re going to call Andrew Sullivan a conservative, and he’s the only person who calls him that, there’s not a single member.

And they’re not feeling exploited, they’re feeling offended by the existence of most of the population. And they’re paranoid, and they’re more full of hatred than twinkies were full of fat.

American ‘Conservatives’ are, simply put, not conservative.

Conservatism implies restraint and, most importantly, a profound scepticism. It implies that you are slow to endorse the fad of the week until the facts are in, that you are cautious about accepting new ideas at face value. There is nothing at all about American Conservatives that is sceptical. These people are wild-eyed conspiracy theorists who accept anything as long as it matches their prejudgements, and base opinions not on facts, but on their emotional attachments. They are nothing more than radicals.