Conservatism vs. Liberalism

Sorry there hasn't been much blogging lately. My dog ate my posts.

There has been something of an ongoing feud between Joe Klein, of Time magazine, and conservative pundits that started with this article, where Klein said:

This is a chronic disease among Democrats, who tend to talk more about what's wrong with America than what's right. When Ronald Reagan touted "Morning in America" in the 1980s, Dick Gephardt famously countered that it was near midnight "and getting darker all the time." This is ironic and weirdly self-defeating, since the liberal message of national improvement is profoundly more optimistic, and patriotic, than the innate conservative pessimism about the perfectibility of human nature. Obama's hopemongering is about as American as a message can get — although, in the end, it is mostly about our ability to transcend our imperfections rather than the effortless brilliance of our diversity, informality and freedom-propelled creativity.

Gasp! Part two:

Conservative skepticism has its place; it can be a valuable corrective when government goes flabby and corrupt or engages in wild neo-colonialist fantasies abroad[...]But, historically, those who believed in the perfectability of our nation[...]have been right far more often than they've been wrong. Those who have stood in the path of progress have been wrong far more often than they've been right. And those who spent the past seven years as propagandists for the one of the worst, and needlessly blood-soaked, presidencies in American history, have such a fabulous record of self-righteous wrong-headedness that they needn't be taken seriously at all.

You have to admire the phrase 'self-righteous wrong-headedness,' even if you disagree with its implication here. Part Three:

In our lives, we have seen conservatives use racism as a political tool, war as a witless quest for domination, patriotism as a scourge, government as an instrument of greed, religion and "morality" as camouflage for spreading fear, ignorance and bigotry.

The latest installment:

It is, as I said, very sad that the Clinton campaign would have anything to do with spreading this sort of innuendo [Yes, some Clinton supporters are still trying to make an issue out of Reverend Jeremiah Wright, even though Barack Obama addressed it in the best speech a politician has given in my lifetime.]...and entirely predictable that the Republican Party would. When I talked about "spreading the poison" that's what I meant: a purposeful distraction from what should be real issues in this campaign--two wars, serious economic problems, the need to shift to alternative energy sources for national security and environmental reasons. On his radio show last week, Hugh Hewitt disagreed with me that those were the real issues. He made his agenda clear: Obama's positions on Jeremiah Wright, gun control and homosexuality were what mattered to "real" Americans. Now that's cynicism, of the rankest sort. Let's hope it's not the election we get.

So the problem is two-fold:

1. Republicans have abandoned the decent purpose of conservatism--to counter the liberal tendency to fix everything through government intervention--as George W. Bush has presided over the largest expansion of government, especially executive, power since the Nixon administration.
2. Conservative pundits are hopelessly out of touch with mainstream America. I may be ensconced in the liberal, ivory tower of academia, but homosexuality and a few comments a candidate's pastor made this one time are more important than war, national security, and energy independence? Give me a break.