Δαφνη Ευτυχια Αρθουρος

L. Todd Masco posted, to what some folks here refer to as That Mailing List, a response to a message pointing out Bob Barr's criticism of Bush for not being a conservative. I wanted to share Todd's message with a wider audience (yes, I got permission):

It really gets under my skin that some of the people who I've had the most disgust for in the last decade or so, like Bob Barr and Pat Buchanan, are making some of the most sensible analyses of Bush's shortcomings.

It might be because where they have plenty of beefs with Bush, they don't feel compelled to pile the pro-Kerry bullshit on - and by that I mean the disingenuous, hysterical paranoid fantasies and the visions that ignore anything about Kerry's history in the congress. Kerry is by no means their hamster, but Bush has done the unthinkable by betraying the conservative values that were always the best part of the Republican Party.

Of all people the *John Birch Society* published this dead-on brief history of the rise of the "neocon" vs. "paleocon" fight, though I would argue that their "paleoconservatism" is aptly named and distinct from "real" conservative thought:

     http://www.thenewamerican.com/tna/1996/vo12no16/vo12no16_invasion.htm

(But then, what do you want from people who can't say "William F Buckley" without preceeding it with "Trotskyist?")

Buchanan has even started an anti-neocon conservative publication, the American Conservative:

     http://www.amconmag.com/

Who would have dreamed that Buchanan would have been one of the strongest voices against the cryptofascists?

All of this leaves me in a very difficult place when it comes to trying to describe my politics: I respect many "Conservative" values, and support the ACLU. I can't stand the nuttiness of the Libertarian Party, and think that government has a strong place in regulating and monitoring the commons and no place in regulating the home and the self - for example, I'm all in favor of cameras in public places, but think that it should be very difficult for police to enter the home. I believe in a maximal level of freedom for people, but approve of much stronger limits on actions performed under the corporate veil.

The state must be internally anti-religion, because it is impossible to be friendly to one set of religious values without being antagonistic towards another set.

I don't think that embryos have rights, and am pretty sure that breeding should not be a right - but don't trust anybody to have the power to remove the right to breed. Civil marriage laws should not be entangled by any religious concerns, and such marriage should be available to any arrangement of adult humans who care to claim it - and it should be very difficult to dissolve if any children are involved. Drugs should be cheap, legal, and heavily taxed, and the only pharmaceuticals that should be restricted by prescription are antibiotics (because of the public health threat of antibiotic-resistant strains of diseases).

So because I don't have an ideological political "home," it really, really bugs the hell out of me when the traditional lunatic right fringe starts making the most sense. When they get their shit together and decide to put their best thoughts into coherent thoughts, they can really shine - but all you need to do to fear them is to look at their less coherent thoughts and the kinds of bigotries and paranoids that they arise from, and it's clear that they're no solution.

Yeesh. Maybe this is the inevitable result of what you get when you start a country led by some of the most advanced intellectuals of their time and populate it with the craziest, most hysterical religious rejects of the rest of the world. Severe cognitive dissonance is a way of political life in America, and I fear the results as the traditional barriers, that have kept the whole pot from boiling over, dissolve.

While a couple of sections struck me as quote-of-the-day material (especially the final paragraph), I've decided not to save it for the next "hole" in my QotD-queue (read: try to shoehorn it in before the election by picking something else to move to February); and while I don't agree with Todd 100%, I agree enough on the important points to want to put the entire essay out there.

Also, one of the "lurking in the back of my head until I have time to figure out how to write it" entries I plan to write concerns that "I don't have an ideological political 'home'" idea. Lately I've been surprised to discover I have more in common with traditional conservatism than I'd realized, and I'm not sure where I fit in. (My closest fit seems to be libertarianism, but I don't quite feel I fit in there either -- I don't trust my own species enough.) Todd's post reminds me that I need to organize those thoughts and write them down.

No, I'm not attending Capclave this weekend. This afternoon I'll be at a memorial picnic for John Gorozdos, a musician I've performed with as part of The Beltway Early Music Band, in Ellicot City. He worked with a lot of different groups, and in addition to BEMB, seven other groups he'd been a part of will perform half-hour sets.

So I've been running through bits of the BEMB repertoire to prepare, with the expected result that "Douce Dame Jolie", the stickiest melody I know, is stuck in my head.

I'd planned to have everything organized and ready to throw into the car come morning, but I crashed around 20:30 last night ... just suddenly realized I felt cold and my eyelids were drooping, and decided to "lie down for just a minute", and suddenly it was the wee hours. Still, this weekend should, as a whole, take a lot less out of me than last weekend did, so with any luck it wont take me as much of the week to recover.

I'm grateful to the organizers of this picnic. Musicians should honour a fallen musician with music. This way I get to do my part and to hear others do theirs.

From the Quotation of the day mailing list, 2004-07-03:

"The presence of a copy editor in an author's consciousness while working through a long manuscript is an unusual human relationship - the copy editor is, in a way, a combination of shaman (who possesses arcane secrets, like when to use an en dash), trusted friend (whose wise advice keeps you out of trouble), and dominatrix (whose demands are both painful and satisfying)." -- Stephen Pinker

(submitted to the mailing list by Jeannette Cezanne)

Went to event. Played. Good event despite sad reason for it. Now home. Tried four stores seeking Prilosec. One store evacuated (gasoline smell throughout). Universe saying no tummy-meds today? Huh. Back hurts much. Longer review (complete sentences (and articles!)) later. Lie down now. Television.

BTW: Bluegrass better live than on radio. (Unsurprising.)