I’ve quoted Greg Gutfeld before, but I don’t keep track of him (or anyone else) as I should. But I know his name so I clicked on Glenn Reynolds’ link to his latest piece which discusses why conservatives aren’t cool:
Why aren’t conservatives cool? Why are they perceived as intolerant when it’s the other side who are truly the hateful ones? It’s a fair question.
We have the cool message. It’s “Step off.” Or, for you old schoolers, “don’t tread on me,” which applies domestically and internationally. It’s not cool to have a government intrude into every aspect of your life, under the guise of “help.” The new electorate must learn this, or we are doomed.
I agree. However, I am hardly the arbiter of cool (after all, I cut my long hair off in 1972 once I realized that everyone had long hair). However, I have long believed that real coolness means letting people do their own thing* and leaving them the fuck alone unless they fuck with you or other people.
Today such an attitude is not cool. Today it is cool to fuck with people and tell them what to do — to micromanage their lives in the crassest and most heavy-handed manner imaginable.
Cool is not cool. I’m not cool with that.
So what do I do?
*Libertarians like yours truly complain a lot about the war on drugs, but that has nothing to do with cool, if for no other reason than both mainstream liberals and mainstream conservatives support it. (If anyone can explain to me what is “cool” about a massive war on our constitutional freedoms that both “sides” support, let me know, as I’m all ears.)
Comments
17 responses to ““It’s not cool to have a government intrude into every aspect of your life””
Why aren’t conservatives cool? Why are they perceived as intolerant when it’s the other side who are truly the hateful ones?
Josh, I can’t imagine. Maybe an example from a conservative thread or two will provide an answer?
Personally, I’m a bit sick of faggotry. Once upon a time, faggots weren’t continually sticking their junk in our collective faces, and normal folks pretended not to notice what they did out of the sight of polite society. A reckoning is coming.
Posted by Casca at May 10, 2012 2:44 AM…
Casca has a point, fucking don’t tell me about the balls you had across your nose and I wont tell you that pussy tastes like milk w/coins in it!
Just keep your window blinds shut and get your freak on because I don’t give a shit faggot.…I also hate my neighbor that keeps showing me her halfbreed kid and telling me that the father is black.
Dumb fuckers inhabit my world.
Posted by JohnB at May 10, 2012 5:08 AM
Velociworld, May 10, 2012
Cool, real cool. Fuckers.
after all, I cut my long hair off in 1972 once I realized that everyone had long hair
Mine got cut in ’70 or ’71 by a woman. Shaved to the scalp. I continued doing that every equinox and solstice for about 15 years.
I hang out at various sites and I can’t tell you how often and how hard socons work to reduce their vote totals.
Their motto is, “We don’t need your kind.”
Well OK. Since I’m gonna get screwed any way I might as well hang with those who want me for 6 months every four years.
The people on food stamps, section 8, Obamaphones, getting donated school supplies and coats, etc are opposed to gov’t interference in their lives? Really? They voted for Al Gore and John Kerry because of their pursuit of coolness? Really? You might as well argue Obama won because of the late time change.
Yeah, those damn moochers.
If they’re so hot why aren’t they rich?
http://news.yahoo.com/ron-paul-departs-constitution-failed-230217615–abc-news-politics.html
To Paul, this is the fault of Americans who no longer prioritize liberty, and it will lead to the unraveling of orderly society unless people change.
“Restraining aggressive behavior is one thing, but legalizing a government monopoly for initiating aggression can only lead to exhausting liberty associated with chaos, anger and the breakdown of civil society,” Paul said. “We now have a standing army of armed bureaucrats in the TSA, CIA, FBI, Fish and Wildlife, FEMA, IRS, Corp of Engineers, etc., numbering over 100,000 civil society.”
More than coercive, to Paul the government is also corrupt: “All branches of our government today are controlled by individuals who use their power to undermine liberty and enhance the welfare/warfare state-and frequently their own wealth and power,” he said.
More Paul:
“The number one responsibility for each of us is to change ourselves with hope that others will follow,” Paul said, urging an end to two motives that have hindered U.S. society: envy and intolerance.
A mashup of Ron Paul and libertarian news items, videos, and images:
http://news.yahoo.com/ron-paul-departs-constitution-failed-230217615–abc-news-politics.html
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/11/04/florida-early-voting_n_2073119.html
You’d think the “liberty” libertarians would care about people being allowed to exercise their right to vote properly. Still waiting.
[…] "It's not cool to have a government intrude into every aspect of your life" In the end, more than freedom, they wanted security. They wanted a comfortable life, and they lost it all – security, comfort, and freedom. When the Athenians finally wanted not to give to society but for society to give to them, when the freedom they wished for most was freedom from responsibility then Athens ceased to be free and was never free again. — Edward Gibbon […]
Frank, as you know I totally agree that hurling sexual insults and anti-gay invective is not cool. However, the problem is that it is only considered uncool when done by people ostensibly on the right. Leftists and Islamists almost always get a pass.
As you may remember, Ann Coulter and Andrew Sullivan were treated quite differently for using the f-word as a slur.
http://classicalvalues.com/2007/03/andrew_coulter/
And I guess Amanda Marcotte’s readers were being “cool” when they hurled sexual insults my way.
http://classicalvalues.com/2007/09/post_469/
I think there’s a double standard. Moreover, I don’t think the comments you quoted typify conservatives.
“I think there’s a double standard. Moreover, I don’t think the comments you quoted typify conservatives.”
Well not all of them. But there are still more than a few out there like that.
“I think there’s a double standard. Moreover, I don’t think the comments you quoted typify conservatives.”
The comments don’t necessarily, but Republican dominated legislatures have been acting in a manner consistent with the comments so they can hardly be dismissed as a complete anomaly.
I’d actually argue that being anything resembling an actual conservative is a disadvantage if one is going to run for office as a Republican, as theocracy seems the rule of the day there and American Conservatism should place the Constitution above any member’s religion.
If the Republican Party can’t do a David Duke on that part of its base that is homophobic, then it’s systemic.
It was no accident that they could nominate, and end up fully supporting a liberal governor who wrote the outline for Obamacare. His redeeming feature was that he was totally against gay marriage and had shown it by contributing $10,000 out of pocket to the Yes On 8 campaign in California. He was “one of us.”
If you missed Rush Limbaugh today you missed a sickening example of doubling down. He used Ron Paul’s farewell speech out of context to support the conservative push for legislating morality. The gist of his social conservative defense is that the younger generation is immoral and deserving of what is ahead since they voted for gay marriage and to legalize pot.
And this is their leader?
As M.Simon wrote, elections are won at the margins. This one had a winning margin of 2.3%. If 3% of the voting population is gay, and they vote almost 80% for Obama, you figure out who put him in office.
So yeah, gays are fags & queers. And poor women who have an abortion are murderers. And pot smokers are useless dopers. And retired veterans who get a pension are part of the 47% of moochers living off the government. Just keep on excluding people and pretty soon you’ll have a nice exclusive party of perennial losers, if you don’t already.
They sure told the Ron Paul delegation to “step off”. I wonder if the old GOP types still think that’s a good idea?
The pot smokers aren’t pushing to end welfare, I wonder why? If you don’t support pot smokers you are “attacking” pot smokers. This is the morally scrupulous habit Jesse Jackson uses as well.
Ditto for gay “marriage.” The typical dishonest method is to accuse any and all that aren’t pushing for gay “marriage” as attacking gays.
If Libertarians didn’t spend 99.99% of their efforts trying to push increased drug use down the throats of people that are rapidly approaching the moment they tell all moochers to eff off, they might get more respect from non-libertarians. Either legalizing drug use is the single most important issue in the L World, or they have an unhealthy obsession. The L crowd never voices condemnation for people sending money to the drug cartels, yet they never fail to issue overheated condemnation for people that don’t want more drug users operating even more openly in society.
Are the L crowd implementing their version of the Cloward-Piven Bankrupt America plan: first we make it easier for more durg addicts and then someday, centuries from now, we’ll think about curtailing welfare payments and unlimited rehab paid for by sucker, I mean taxpayers, but we love America, no really. Why the decades long effort to increase drug use, and little or no effort to prevent non-drug users from having to pay for the addled moochers? Is L just an excuse for drugs users to pretend to be responsible, do they have any topic they value 1/10th as much as legalizing dope?
They remind me as much of bred teenagers as anything else. They don’t work for their issue so much as tell others they should work toward their pet issue. And they find a way to blame all of the world’s problems on people who won’t drop everything and fully implement their experiment right this damn minute.
There is a reason why Ron Paul has a long and distinguished career of being virtually without influence. Just standing around carping doesn’t work, not even if you make it a lifelong habit. You need a workable plan, be able to explain the plan, be able to modify the plan as needed, and most important you need to convince people.