Via Glenn Greenwald, conservative and National Review contributor Rod Dreher's commentary on NPR is a must-hear (oral essay) on his disillusionment under the Bush Administration. Regarding Dave's hippie-bashing bashing lately, this part is especially relevant:
As I sat in my office last night watching President Bush deliver his big speech, I seethed over the waste, the folly, the stupidity of this war.
I had a heretical thought for a conservative -- that I have got to teach my kids that they must never, ever take Presidents and Generals at their word -- that their government will send them to kill and die for noble-sounding rot -- that they have to question authority.
On the walk to the parking garage, it hit me. Hadn't the hippies tried to tell my generation that? Why had we scorned them so blithely?
Why indeed.
The thing that always astonishes me about what Dave aptly calls GOP "lizard-brain" hippie-bashing is the positions it leads them to take. Hippies don't like nuclear power? Nuclear power must be the solution to global warming! Never mind that it's the iconic example of big government and corporate welfare -- things conservatives were against, last I checked.
Dreher's example is even more tragic, of course: Because hippies were against the war in Iraq, Dreher disregarded even other conservatives who warned against it.
I think greens in general start from a more skeptical place when it comes to government and business, but the lesson is clear for us too. Truth doesn't lie in the "center", it lies in facts, evidence, and reasoned (though perhaps not always polite!) debate.
Comments
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David Roberts Posted 7:18 am
13 Jan 2007
It's worth noting that Dreher is hardly a "typical" conservative. He's always had some sympathy for the hippies, and even wrote a book called Crunchy Cons about "Birkenstocked Burkeans." So while I'm happy to see him blinking in the new light of sanity, I doubt it's an indicator of any broad change on the right.
www.grist.org
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jjwfmme Posted 12:22 pm
13 Jan 2007
I think there's evidence of something changing on the right. Maybe they're not ready to embrace the dirty hippies, but some are starting to have respect for the "reality based community" anyway:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jay-rosen/situation-grave-a...
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bookerly Posted 6:45 pm
13 Jan 2007
Where a number of leading Republicans left the party and ran as Democrats. And not just because they thought they could win, they were tired of the social/evangelical right demands on them.
The increasing tendency of the far right to be anti-science will not only align them against scientists, but, (ta-da!) against companies that use science. This includes any companies involved in medicine, for example.
How this plays out is not clear.
As for hippies, when they weren't trying to beat us up, the conservative buys were always trying to score some pot to help loosen the morals of conservatives girls. So, many of them had mixed feelings (grin).
patrick
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ebaerren Posted 7:47 pm
13 Jan 2007
And, yet, perhaps the most telling insight from his book was the woman who he interviewed who opposed the war, didn't think too highly of the president's environmental policies, objected to globalization, but still voted for George Bush because he's against abortion.
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dlunn Posted 3:40 am
18 Jan 2007
You can read it here --
http://neweconomist.blogs.com/new_economist/2006/01/happi...
(not my blog)
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