Posted on 09/17/2008 5:04:53 PM PDT by goldstategop
THE MORE I LISTEN TO AND READ ABOUT “the most liberal member of the U.S. Senate,” the more I like him. Barack Obama strikes a chord with me like no political figure since Ronald Reagan. To explain why, I need to explain why I am a conservative and what it means to me.
In 1964, at the age of 16, I organized the Dallas County Youth for Goldwater. My senior thesis at the University of Texas was on the conservative intellectual revival in America. Twenty years later, I was invited by William F. Buckley Jr. to join the board of National Review. I later became its publisher.
Conservatism to me is less a political philosophy than a stance, a recognition of the fallibility of man and of man’s institutions. Conservatives respect the past not for its antiquity but because it represents, as G.K. Chesterton said, the democracy of the dead; it gives the benefit of the doubt to customs and laws tried and tested in the crucible of time. Conservatives are skeptical of abstract theories and utopian schemes, doubtful that government is wiser than its citizens, and always ready to test any political program against actual results.
Liberalism always seemed to me to be a system of “oughts.” We ought to do this or that because it’s the right thing to do, regardless of whether it works or not. It is a doctrine based on intentions, not results, on feeling good rather than doing good.
But today it is so-called conservatives who are cemented to political programs when they clearly don’t work. The Bush tax cuts—a solution for which there was no real problem and which he refused to end even when the nation went to war—led to huge deficit spending and a $3 trillion growth in the federal debt. Facing this, John McCain pumps his “conservative” credentials by proposing even bigger tax cuts. Meanwhile, a movement that once fought for limited government has presided over the greatest growth of government in our history. That is not conservatism; it is profligacy using conservatism as a mask.
Today it is conservatives, not liberals, who talk with alarming bellicosity about making the world “safe for democracy.” It is John McCain who says America’s job is to “defeat evil,” a theological expansion of the nation’s mission that would make George Washington cough out his wooden teeth.
This kind of conservatism, which is not conservative at all, has produced financial mismanagement, the waste of human lives, the loss of moral authority, and the wreckage of our economy that McCain now threatens to make worse.
Barack Obama is not my ideal candidate for president. (In fact, I made the maximum donation to John McCain during the primaries, when there was still hope he might come to his senses.) But I now see that Obama is almost the ideal candidate for this moment in American history. I disagree with him on many issues. But those don’t matter as much as what Obama offers, which is a deeply conservative view of the world. Nobody can read Obama’s books (which, it is worth noting, he wrote himself) or listen to him speak without realizing that this is a thoughtful, pragmatic, and prudent man. It gives me comfort just to think that after eight years of George W. Bush we will have a president who has actually read the Federalist Papers.
Most important, Obama will be a realist. I doubt he will taunt Russia, as McCain has, at the very moment when our national interest requires it as an ally. The crucial distinction in my mind is that, unlike John McCain, I am convinced he will not impulsively take us into another war unless American national interests are directly threatened.
“Every great cause,” Eric Hoffer wrote, “begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket.” As a cause, conservatism may be dead. But as a stance, as a way of making judgments in a complex and difficult world, I believe it is very much alive in the instincts and predispositions of a liberal named Barack Obama.
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus
Why report it?
He uses an old tack of starting off with vaild points then jumps off the bridge with “The bush tax cuts”, this writer is no Conservative.
No way now how.
Weird article....Allison made some good points (esp “safe for democracy”...which is truly not a conservative idea), but, decides to support Obama...who is left of the leftist McCain.
I guess he never heard of Chuck Baldwin...
Gone totally off the rails...
This statement is pure leftist trash.
“As a cause, conservatism may be dead”
Maybe a conservative could get away with fearing libertarian economics back in the nineteentch century, before it was tested. I can understand concern over Rothbardian extremism. Libertarians are much like socialists in many ways, not least of which is their rationalism.
But I defy this guy to tell me that opposing the state is not born out by history. I defy him to tell me supporting a socialist is wiser than supporting someone who isn’t even close to being a free marketeer. Ordered liberty now! Socialism never!
Just another liberal trying to pass himself off as something else. Typical seminar caller stuff.
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus
He’s a flaming liberal. He just never knew it. They do tend to have very confused minds. How you doing?
There’s no time for reincarnation!
>> Why report it?
target practice
Wick Allison is just another gay agenda pusher in love with Obama.
http://search.yahoo.com/search?ei=utf-8&fr=slv8-hptb5&p=Wick%20Allison%20%20%2b%20gay&type=
He and Jason Blair would be a good dating game match.
The tax cuts produced greater government revenue and he was suppose to end them because we were at war?
*sigh*
Never mind.
bump for later
>> target practice
politically speaking of course
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus
Mr. Allison, please be patient. the Nurse with your MEDS will be here shortly. Then, the Orderlies will remove your straitjacket.
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If you wanted to have 0bama act as a “voice of reason” or “goodwill ambassador” or some such fluffy, meaningless and above all harmless position where I wasn’t paying his salary nor the salaries of his cronies, didn’t have to live under his harebrained policies, didn’t have to pay taxes to enforce or support his redistributionist and anti-capitalist ideas, then I’d be fine with 0bama. In other words, if he was just a community organizer, that would be OK, as long as he worked in some location that was at least 1000 miles away from me. But to put this marxist low grade huckster thief in charge of anything more important than say carrying a stack of brochures to a printer somewhere is “out of his pay grade” as far as I’m concerned.
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