Sunday, January 28, 2007

Conservatism defined

The instant gratification generation and change as the illusion of stability

I know of many young couples who, having been married only a few years, have bought houses. Many times it is the pressure from the wife to get out of apartment living and an older generation would have said wait a while, save some money before you become saddled with a mortgage but these are people who each have a car in their own name. The idea of taking public transportation to save and getting a new car down the road, in short the very idea of suffering and discomfort in the now for long-term gain, is alien to the age that wants it all and wants it today, pay now to save later is a relic from a wiser but extinct generation. We want to make love by the fireplace with the Barry White music pumping

NOW,

this hovel we call an apartment is cramping our STYLE.

You can pretend all you want the house is yours but job security ain't what it used to be, what with the New World Order and all, and one only look through your local Pennysaver to see so many romantic illusions shattered. Conservative values this ain't, things like forbearance, sacrifice, patience, financial prudence (this is the credit-card generation after all), in other words living within your means. We'd rather be in debt than go without. Me? I now pay cash on the barrelhead wherever I go even if it means people look at me like a fossil.

liberalism = change, conservatism = keeping traditions

Conservatives, in marked contrast to liberals, as a cardinal rule do not question government or its institutions, not in the general sense anyway, or law and order, in a word, authority. Social and political stability is this movement's highest value even at the expense that they should question things more from time to time. Liberals, by contrast, seem to be all about social unrest, an attitude that began in the '60s and continues today. Witness the Revs. Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson and the hundreds of their followers protesting last November's NYPD police shooting death of the 23 year old black man to be married that day, Sean Bell, who was unarmed but may have been trying to run a police officer over with his car. The conservative would say what was he doing at a crime-infested strip joint in a bad part of Queens at that time of night (or why hold a bachelor party at all for that matter) but all these elements of proper social order and living are irrelevant to the activists. The overriding need for political and social stability is why, to this day, conservatives can't bring themselves to question the Vietnam War and they have only now brought themselves around to accepting the historic rightness of the Civil Rights Movement of the '60s.

to be continued..... People who masturbate your mind

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