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Date Posted: 06:27:29 06/21/07 Thu
Author: conservative?
Subject: Can there be such an animal as an honest, intelligent

Tom Tomorrow tackles this question and the answer will probably not surprise you:

Tom Tomorrow:
An old question answered

I’ve grappled many times with the question of whether conservatives are stupid or lying. Brad DeLong redefines the question, and in doing so provides the most plausible answer I’ve come across so far.

We want an “honest conservative”–a conservative intellectual adversary we can respect, who is also intelligent. But their first move is to define a “conservative” as a public supporter of the Bush regime and its deeds. That means, I think, that they are searching the empty set.

Slavoj Zizek applied this to the puppet regimes of Eastern Europe under the iron curtain:

The Trilemma: Of the three features—-personal honesty, sincere support of the regime, and intelligence—-it was possible to combine only two, never all three. If one was honest and supportive, one was not very bright; if one was bright and supportive, one was not honest; if one was honest and bright, one was not supportive…

But it applies just as well to the Bush regime. Sincere conservative supporters are not bright. Bright conservative supporters are not honest. Bright and honest conservatives are not supporters–and so are ruled out, and we are left with Larry Kudlow and Ramesh Ponnuru.


Comment: For years, conservative supporters of Reagan made the claim that Reagan was just not aware of all the corruption (Iran-Contra) and atrocities (see Central America/Iran-Contra) done on his behalf. Their main defense seems to be one of ignorance. We see the same, lame excuses now about Bush. It wasn't HIS fault that he was given (read: cherry picked) bad intelligence to justify his bogus war. He didn't LIE, he was just ignorant!! Some defense.

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