i could add a few names that we've been called: whackos, malcontents, disrupters, tinfoilers, conspiracy theorists, bushbashers, blame america firsters....
I've been called most of those names, but based on your profile page, I'd say that that puts me in good company.
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Bump
Now you've gone and done it, you rebel rouser.
Specifically, I don't think that slowing the destruction of our society is always a bad thing. If we can't turn the tide in the right direction, slowing the descent is not a bad thing. The typical mindless argument against it is the boiling frog analogy, but this argument is silly. People are not frogs. Their political choices are not based on reflex but on evaluation of their situation. The problem we have is that they are evaluating the situation wrongly. I expand this idea at We Are Not Frogs.
An example of a great American president who typified this approach was Abe Lincoln and his approach to slavery. President Lincoln was a full-fledged moderate on slavery. He thought that it would be better to buy the slaves and free them than to go to war over the issue. He promised that slavery would not be hindered in the South in any way while he was president. His only action against slavery was that he wouldn't let it expand into the territories.
As a result of this stance, Mr. Lincoln was disliked by most of the anti-slavery movement. They thought that he wasn't sufficiently committed to the cause. They thought he was weak and indecisive. However, John Brown didn't free any slaves, and most people have never heard of most of the other members of this movement. In fact, neither Brown nor most of the others could have held the country together and ended slavery as well as Mr. Lincoln did.
I'm the first to criticize President Bush when he says or does something stupid. There's nothing wrong with criticizing an idea or action because it is the wrong action to take. However, the generalization that he (or anyone else) won't accomplish good things because he is "conservative" in the sense of not being radical enough is wrong.
WFTR
Bill
redrock--Radical Constitutionalist
How true that is, Joseph Farah hit it on the head. That's why I call myself a "Constitutionalist" not a conservative.
He hits on the paralyzing paradox of today's conservatives. Revolutionaries, yes. Reluctant ones. But at the same time conservative, abhoring revolutionary change. The end effect is the paralysis and the absurdity he notes of wanting to preserve something that's already lost. Time to wake up and smell the latte FReepers. We are all, or most of us, old fashioned dissidents longing for truly revolutionary change.
The political sides in this conflict have long assumed comfortable positions, the Left are the revolutionaries and the Right are the guardians of the old. Except that as Farah notes there is no old to guard and the reveolution is now the Establishment. Note the poses of the Clintonites when in power. They were the establishment and yet they were posing, quite successfully at that, as dissidents. And we, many of us, played along. It's time to subvert the dominant paradigm, I say.