Obama's Notre Dame speech

Actually said something I agreed with which is unusual, said about abortion "in some sense the two sides are fundamentally irreconciliable." This was clever on his part, it had the subtle effect of making Obama look like a kind of disinterested observer of the issue, above it all looking at the debate from the outside, a professorial air being intellectually open to both sides despite his 100% rating from NARAL. Of course they all say they want to reduce the ole abortion rate and it's such a heart-wrenching decision for the woman. Of the second point I personally know of stories where the parties involved were unusually casual about it all and as to the first your average pro-choicer opposes such modest measures as informed-consent legislation so really it's just more pro-forma statements from a liberal president. Despite Clinton's safe, legal and rare it's not really about Choice at all but Abortion and the right to get one freely and without judgement from parents or other parties and to be fully subsidized by the American taxpayer if need be. Pro-forma statements are important though, it shows you have a heart and have properly wrestled with the issue even though your own views just accidentally, ever so coincidentally coincide with those of Kate Michaelman.

Saw bits and pieces of the Farrah Fawcett special

very mixed reviews. Controversial, macabre, morbid were just some of the adjectives used. Will say this though, here is the rare celeb who never really bothered me, never saw her on some political soapbox and no matter who it is, unless it's Osama bin Laden or Fidel Castro I always throw a prayer or two their way. Started a thread once over at Big Blue Wave, a Canadian forum for conservatives and I may have outHoused House on that one:

http://bluewave.yuku.com/topic/1752/t/The-cancer-cell-is-not-powerful-but-weak-amp-confused.html

bit and pieces I gleaned from a Dummy's Guide to Cancer once, hope it's interesting. So there was Farrah clutching her rosary beads, probably made our old friend Hitch wince but I missed the vomiting, I'm a real channel-surfer you know. So let's say we "reform" health-care however you define that term, of what good is that if there's no Cure yet? The limitations of modern medicine imo far outweigh its advances, are any cures for any of the major big ones even on the horizon? Anyway what are your thoughts on the Farrah Fawcett special?

This gospel of moderation

Do moderates have any convictions to call their own besides moderation that is?

File this one under a false issue

According to last Thursday's PageSix Christopher Hitchens has written in his intro to the new book Certitude by Adam Begley and Edward Sorel:

"In my own lifetime I have seen a series of popes make public apologies to Jews (for the false charge of deicide and its consequences), to Protestants (for the Counter-Reformation), to Galileo to forcibly converted and exterminated South American Indians, to Eastern Orthodox Christians (for the massacres in the Balkans) and to Muslims (for the Crusades). One day if - just suppose - it is discovered that AIDS was a worse affliction than the condom, rather than the other way around, the necessary admission will have to be delayed for years by the fact there was once a sacred dogma involved."

Now I realize Hitch is a hard-drinking man and some of the hardcore stuff he is regulary accustomed to really make the grievances come out, about a week ago I had a couple of Rum and Pepsis and sank into some kind of weird depression and pretty much went over my shitlist and then some, hardly the mood to be in to waft off to a peaceful slumber but last I checked the Roman Catholic Church cannot by force of law forbid you from buying a Trojan or a Ramses. The thought occured if people don't listen to the Pope on the matter of abortion why would they over a piece of latex or lambskin? If one is going to cruise down the ole Hershey Highway with different males every week it's pretty much a given you haven't been following much of Church teaching lately anyway. As Oscar Wilde once said to be witty without being charming is an unpardonable mannerism of style. Hitch is from the Ann Coulter school of thought though from the other side, everyone you disagree with even the mailman who once casually threw your mail on the porch, nuke everything in sight, it's a psychic massacre and he's wallowing, going down the hallway and opening up the next door to the next poor shmuck who has pissed the guy off ("hey you [insert insulting witticism of choice]"). H-Block and his scorched earth policy, you accidentally bump into him one day and you know how someone's eyes are always darting up and down when they're first talking to you? they have an opinion, it ain't very relaxful to be around such people which finally brings me to the conclusion you can totally disagree with the Church on condoms and everything else under the sun and still think Hitchens is a dick:)

The real motive behind censorship and suppression

OR confronting people with an uncomfortable truth becomes a threat

To kind of cap things off then - some of my themes of late, the control issue and what's really behind it. The human urge to censor is a powerful one and really applies across the board, Right and Left have been equally guilty thoughout history but lately the Left have been the bad guys and the Right comes across now as more and more the champions of what liberals used to be about, freedom of thought and expression. No matter, people who practice censorship and suppression and it could be an individual, a group of individuals, a political group or movement or at its most pervasive and dangerous a government or the State, be it Right or Left they are threatened by something. People who tell you how to think or how you should think, over time if enough people think alike it becomes a form of political correctness and its sanctions for dealing with those who think outside the box are a kind of form of mind control else why the need to punish those who think differently and view things in their own sometimes unique ways? The whole Political Correctness Movement is threatened by something, the free use of your mind and its awesome power and in this respect it's more than an annoyance or a nuisance, it's a form of evil and I'm applying this in a general sense not to particular individuals. The mind represents freedom of thought and inquiry so those attackers of the Miss USA runnerup Carrie Prejean let's say, they are not only offended by what she's saying relating to traditional marriage but they are threatened by the mere thought she may be right. Many many years ago I offered to buy some pro-life videos for libraries here in Westchester County NY, should've been a done deal since freedom of thought and expression is the very foundation of their existence according to them but the sheer resistance I encountered in my own county from liberal librarians and pro-abortion groups prove to me they were threatened by something, threatened by IDEAS since the films in question were merely informational in nature, popping a movie into your VCR is not the same as banning abortion but because Z doesn't give up my persistence paid off over time and the county library system agreed to carry one of the films and the Westchester Coalition for Legal Abortion was allowed to get theirs in too. Geez was that so hard? The nature of the enemy is US, we're the threat but then again if THEY'RE so threatened by us then it means we have some power, the power of our minds and the ability to express that which they hate so really when you stop to think about it us conservatives shouldn't be so down in the dumps of late. If you get put on a list you're important, consider it a compliment and the sheer force of our ideas will prevail over time. The Death of Conservatism? not by a long shot!!

The way I see it

Conservatives, despite believing in smaller government or saying they do actually trust the government more than liberals!!! I'd hazard a guess that the vast majority of mainstream conservatives believe Oswald acted alone, since they don't believe in our government ever having nefarious overtones the various JFK conspiracy theories are loony and paranoid simply because they are metaphysical impossibilities. Take the Vietnam War, to this day your rank-and-file conservative's only problem is that we didn't stick it out long enough to defeat the Communist North Vietnamese. Conservatives positively hated the social and political upheaval of the '60s because the main aim or goal of conservatism is social and political stability. Oh they'll say it's freedom and liberty and to a certain degree that's true but they still trust the government more and so you had people like William F. Buckley Jr. almost single-handedly purging the John Birchers from the mainstream conservative movement, McCarthy is only defended by the likes of Ann Coulter these days and the conservative talk radio host most suspicious and least trusting of the government overall, Michael Savage, is constantly being marginalized by most other conservatives. You might say conservatives like the '50s and liberals love the '60s more, conservatives go with the oatmeal every day whereas liberals prefer the jalapenos. Spike Lee can voice some pretty radical Katrina theories but libs won't dare try to marginalize him and oust him from their movement, Tuskegee opened the door and so while most libs may not agree with Lee they understand and why do they understand? because historically they have trusted the government less. Put another way, who over time has Questioned Things more, liberals or conservatives? WHO are the conformists of the status-quo, of homogenous thought and who see a basic inherent problem with our very institutions (hint: which side of the torture issue are you on? how do you view the CIA?)? Not taking sides here at all but what I like about soapie is he questions things more than your average conservative talking head not in a conspiratorial way but by getting back to First Principles which both sides fail miserably on, a pox on both your houses. If I may put it another way how come Bush never got teabagged?

So why doesn't this work in reverse?

Liberal Supreme Court justice David Souter is retiring and returning home to New Hampshire because unlike Arlen Specter he has a life. Now consider some of the Supremes nominated by conservative presidents over the years who for some strange reason later evolved into liberals: Nixon got Harry Blackmun on the court and we all know what he did, Reagan gave us Sandra Day O'Connor and Bush the Sr. gave us Souter who usually voted with the liberal wing. So what Z is asking today is how come a liberal president never nominates someone to the court who later turns out to be a staunch conservative and a real pain in the ass to people with a liberal agenda? I'd bet dollars to doughnuts Obama is not gonna put up someone who later is going to "accidentally" overturn Roe vs. Wade so is it because the liberal vetting process is better? do conservative judges leave more of a paper trail? are they more vocal in their views? or does just saying Judge Q or W is good because he only interprets the Constitution and nothing more really mean anything these days? geez EVERY potential Supreme Court nominee is gonna say that. I'm in a wondering kind of mood today.

Cultural trends I don't get

Celebrity stalking

First off this isn't or shouldn't be a problem for us conservatives, rank-and-file conservatives view the average Hollywood celebrity as an airhead with left-wing leanings so where's the attraction? Then there's what I once called over at Hannityland our social caste system, no way Tyra Banks is gonna go out with some lonely drifter so why even go after someone totally outside of your own socio-economic orbit when you can bother the girl next door? So Brady Green, Tyra's stalker has been convicted at a non-jury trial and the judge would rather sentence him to psychiatric counseling rather than the 90 days in jail. I've talked about this before but you can't police somebody's head, you can only punish their actions. If I like Celebrity X or Z that's entirely between me myself and I, so long as my actions don't get out of bounds my mental domain is totally autonomous and no business of the Law. I am the sole judge and arbiter of my imaginative life, you cannot punish a person's thoughts and Hannity once said that's the real problem he has with hate-crime legislation, you're really in effect punishing a person's thoughts. So basically this judge sentencing Mr. Green to spend time with a shrink, first off it won't work nor should it, so some egghead is going to be able to dislodge IT? Only Mr. Green's actions should be the purview of the Law and as such he'd be better off getting the 90 days, as with Hannity's point there's the faintest whiff of fascism in the air say if Green is in some Barnes & Noble some day and wants to purchase a Tyra Banks calendar and the clerk calls security. It's Orwellian thought control and reading about these cases which for some quirk are becoming more common among the celebrity set a common thing is sending the woman flowers and gifts. Now you can debate the wisdom of this, Z doesn't think it's such a great idea in this day and age but by the same token it never struck me as a crime-crime, you know like bank robbery or embezzlement. If I were a cop I'd be like I didn't become a cop for this, it's basically Society making up laws as they go along. Celebrity stalking, it's weird for so many reasons and it's weirdly political but basically the mind cannot be put into a prison, punish people for what they do not what they think. If there's one rule at Stranded it's be not afraid, everything is bloggable and the day the cops come for your Cindy Crawford calendar it's over.

I normally could care less about beauty pageants

They have that rep for being shallow you know but this whole Carrie Prejean thing, the Miss USA runner-up from California and her comments on gay marriage. Well I did a simple google search to find out exactly what she said to cause such a ruckus and I'm like you couldn't be more temperate, mild and polite not to mention honest. Celebrity blogger Perez Hilton asked a simple question to which she gave a simple response and if Perez would just take a Q-tip and clean the sperm out of his ear he'd see that. Here's where pageant officials are being hypocritical, they don't like her being so openly political they said in a transparent statement but let's say she had come out in support of gay marriage, I just think it's not her being political that really bothers folks but rather her politics per se. Sheesh you can't say anything these days, I just wish they'd all get on that giant rocket phallus-ship to the Moon or something. Perez called her a bitch on his blog but be that as it may I'm with Camille Paglia on this, I don't buy into this whole gay male exclusivity thing, never did. Beyonce and Britney are playing nude volleyball on a beach against Jessica Alba and Tyra Banks, her stalker's there watching but you ain't? oh but Antonio Banderas is in the buff outside on the veranda of his nice Spanish villa, Castillian breezes in his hair, thing flopping around and he's puffing on a Cohiba and you're a-go? Political correctness has to go sooner or later, may as well start the rollback now, good a time as ever. Rock on Carrie!!

Maybe if she were less worried about Michael Savage

and more concerned with the earliest stages of the swine flu, Napolitano of DHS that is. If there are deaths in this country or many deaths related to whatever this is it will reflect badly on the Obama Administration, fair or unfair it will reflect. We're supposed to be a few eras beyond Typhoid Mary and for any administration official to say we ought to resign ourselves and expect a few deaths, well you just don't go there. I wanna go in my old age in a rowboat with a fishing rod in my hands and my dog dozing off half hanging over the side like in that Norman Rockwell painting and not at the hands of some disease that our government couldn't get a handle on in time because it was politically incorrect to do so (Mexico, illegals). House, he would know what to do.

He's 79, why doesn't he just retire?

Rep. Sen. from PA Arlen Specter, now a Dem. No great political analysis here, I leave that to others but from what people are saying it ain't hard to figure. He's a cancer survivor to boot so I never got this work 'til you drop philosophy. I work now 'cause I have to but when the time comes I won't go over. When you love work that much you confound God, work was supposed to be a curse from the time of Adam, you're not getting it. Specter says the extremes have taken over both parties so why switch to the other one? I don't find the story all that jazzy but maybe McCain can give 'em that filibuster-proof majority, who knows?

Al Gore on Capitol Hill

"Climate change legislation has the moral equivalence of the civil rights struggle of the 1960s."

HUH? Even the most avid ecos don't make this argument. Is a tree a person? Al Gore has always been a bit......otherworldly. He's either nuts or has a higher spiritual understanding of these things than the rest of us but I'm gonna go with flakey for now.

The fetal conundrum

People especially liberals often assume if you take the pro-life position that they can guess with a rather high degree of accuracy your position on other issues, some pro-choice whiners at Danny's place a few months back assumed quite naturally that I was for the war in Iraq but for me I take each issue as it comes. A theme has emerged at my blog of late and that is I don't apply social conservatism across the board. I'm on the record, on porn and prostitution I am very libertarian and with gay marriage I have no problem with the federalist approach although you'd have to put a gun to my head to attend the gay nuptials ("ok I'm getting dressed just let me find my tie"). BUT abortion is different my friends and that's because it's very very unique from the three big issues I just mentioned. Those have a personal element of distaste for so many by their very nature, my God just think Eliot Spitezer in nothing but his black socks but these issues generally do not involve the taking of an innocent human life (ok, generally speaking). For the average liberal though he glumps them all together into some kind of collective trauma of keeping the government out of our lives, actually out of our sexual lives because he does care very very much if you smoke or use an aerosol can. For the liberal with a conscience abortion is resolved this way: from a biological perspective he or she readily admits it's a human life, he's very personally against it as he's always fond of saying but because that human life resides for a time within a woman's body it ipso facto becomes a feminist issue, a women's rights issue not so much because of the nature of the fetus as he has pretty much figured this out by now but by the sit'chayshen. He or she can't get it out of his damn head that because the home of the fetus is the womb that the homeowner as property owner can do as she likes, it's nothing personal. She might see the fetus as an intruder although truth be told she answered the door when the penis rang. I'm a bad person because I only see the human life, I ain't sophisticated like Bill Moyers you know? I just know how to spit chickens.

While it doesn't prove Obama's a socialist

this begs the question why leaders like Hugo Chavez and Raul Castro vastly prefer him over Bush. They say they know, they have a way of telling, they can pick up on these things so is Obama giving off some kind of socialist vibe? a signal? {wink wink} maybe Obama is in denial of these things himself, he's conflicted, he's not orientated yet, he's had a couple of socialist dreams recently that probably meant nothing. Come on over to the other side

comrade!

Savage went off the deep end last night

Actually when you have a catalyst like Janet Napolitano, Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security and her report that veterans returning home may pose a terrorist threat Savage is gonna blow a gasket but he went off on some pretty radical tangents last night and practically called the Obama Administration a totalitarian regime in the works, a bunch of Nazis and oven-stuffers he said who are gonna knock on your door in the middle of the night to take you away for saying the wrong thing, anti-abortionists are on her list, Obama may be the Beast with horns rising out of the sea to rule the world with China and Russia and oh yeah, McCain was the Manchurian Candidate. Actually the real threat is not those who have served their country so well but radical assholery and Obama if he had any smarts would can her right now...Now my Dad says there are things you keep to yourself, things you don't talk about. You might have the thought for a nanosecond that these new DTV converter boxes are the government's way of spying on you, maybe you think your boss is on acid ("a random drug test wouldn't hurt buddy") or the stray kitten that shows up on your doorstep is really the reincarnation of your dead cat. It's the Realm of the Untalkable, most people if they're honest have some theories, views and opinions that fall outside the Norm shall we say but you pretty much shelve it, don't want the respectable folks talking. Put it this way, if I blogged after two tumblers of the Christian Brothers it'd be a whole other blog, real Robodoon stuff but anyway what you got last night was the raw feed, Savage's political id, free association and real stream-of-consciousness totally unencumbered by should I say this or should I say that? The thing was so scary last night that I had to switch on Gwen Ifill's Washington Week in Review after to bring me back down to Earth, like waking up from a bad dream in a cold sweat and you still think there's a squirrel in your room. Now Savage seems to be on everyone's shitlist these days, even right-wingers don't like him and I disagreed with almost everything the man said BUT it was awesome, I like it

it's all good.

What to do when you have radical friends

Democratic peer pressure

This issue has to make Obama uncomfortable. New York is now the latest state to push for gay marriage. Democratic Governor David Paterson is sending up a bill to the Assembly pronto, Chuck Schumer has only recently converted to the gay marriage cause and Bam must be thinking "you know guys your state has its own economic woes and you're concerned with this right now?" It's like when you have a group of friends and over time you see they're a little bit off, just a wee tad like Bam is in the back seat and Paterson is driving his souped up GTO with the hemi, Chuck is sitting right next to him, they both got little old lady cataract glasses on and Paterson puts the pedal to the medal and Bam is like "SLOW DOWN ALREADY!!" They pick up Bloomberg, for some reason I can't get it out of my head that he's not a Democrat, he's for the gay marriage too and he's enjoying the ride as well. I don't think Obama wants to go down in History as the one-term president who effected radical social change or more likely at least wanted to as I really doubt even if Richard Simmons were president he'd be able to pass gay marriage in all 50 states in just one term. Even if Obama in his heart of hearts were for the thing I think he'd much prefer to be safely ensconced in his second term before upheaving society as we know it. I think he wants to govern moderately for the next four years, he has his nice sweater on with the little alligator but his friends Dave and Chuck are like

"hey Bam come and watch the sheep video with us"

maybe someone passes him a joint. They take him to a club and pay for a free lap dance for him but he's sitting there all stiff,

you know man can't he just break free and hang with his own crowd? those who get it about not rocking the boat too much, these be tough economic times. Can't we be content with making peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for now, kicking back with some milk and getting those economic numbers up again ("hey guys it's time for a break") while Dave and Chuck behind his back are calling him a f****n faggot for not getting on board. He's the first African-American president for cryin' out loud, he's Made History, lower the flame and just let it simmer for awhile.

Rush's persecution complex

He has one big-time you know. I haven't listened to him in literally a couple of years now but of the occasional snippets I hear and read about he's STILL complaining of the conspiracy against him. He can't talk about ANY subject without bringing IT up. New York Governor David Paterson has raised taxes through the roof here acting like your typical Democratic executive and Rush was complaining about this recently, says he has no choice but to move out of the state but then had to add he (Paterson) wants that and so good ole Dave started messin' with him and said if he knew his tax policy would have that effect he would have considered it much sooner. Now conservatism is largely reactionary by nature almost by default. Since liberalism pretty much holds sway in all areas of life today so much of conservative energy is spent merely reacting to the dominant philosophy of the day, it's a conservative malaise with a heavy shaving of Zoloft. Let's say it's all true, vast swaths of the msm hate Rush and want to silence him, one 24/7 subproject of the VLWC (or Vast Left-Wing Conspiracy) wants to suppress him through a new Fairness Doctrine, what of it? While if even some of these things are true it doesn't help the Right to have a persecution complex. Rush gives it that conspiratorial and paranoid edge but the time he wastes marinating in his own self-pity instead of just pushing conservative principles, it reminds me of the time you waste in traffic jams. Part of him wants to be an existential hero, some kind of angst-ridden character out of some graphic novel constantly warring with forces larger than himself. It's like working with someone who says all the time "they hate me, they want to get rid of me" instead of just putting in your eight hours, pumping it out and going home. God GOD I miss the days of the caller abortions and the blow monkeys!

Where to begin?

So yeah, unless you've been living in a cave like a blind salamander you're aware that Mel's wife of, what is it? like almost thirty years is divorcing him for his philandering ways. Seven or eight children, staunch and ultra-traditionalist pre-Vatican 2 Catholic who once said his Protestant wife is going to hell, spotted on a tropical beach with some bombshell Russian singer in a bikini so why'd he make The Passion? I've a theory about this and it involves a little Stephen Hawking, wormholes, superstrings applied to psychology, Einsteinian Freudianism......I'm working on it......it's my Loop Theory. Let's say you're not just average conservative, you keep walking along this loop and you enter the woods of SuperConservatism, I mean EVERYTHING bothers you but remember it's still a loop or a giant circle and what's on the other side of the loop? Where your ultraconservatism ends is where liberalism begins, I'm still working on the precise algebraic differential equation...but before you know it your average SuperCon "accidentally" walks into some porn shop, just browsing mind you, keeping tabs on the culture a la Tom Wolfe. When he wakes up the same hand that once condemned his wife to hell is now circle-jerking to some Slovakian fantasy, the same mouth that once lumped all things post-Vatican 2 as Antichrist is now saying "Jose Cuervo I pray for your power!" It also helps explain why former lefties like David Horowitz are now confirmed righties, they traveled the same loop as Mel only from the opposite direction. Fruit loops.

Pro-gay conservatives

Another two-parter, I HAVE TO say something about Mel Gibson but let's get back to Z's Law of the Power of Negative Appraisal for a minute. It works like this, for years we've taken libs to task for being pro-abortion until they have to overexplain themselves, "oh no we're not for THAT, no man, you got us all wrong" and so basically all you have to do from a political angle is to criticize someone and according to this basic law of political psychology the person will start to move in the direction of the critic, nay will almost or just stop short of adopting his position or may even take on a diluted version. OK, so now for the same amount of time the average conservative has been labeled a gay-basher, a homophobe and so now they can't wait to show their new gay colors like Bree on Desperate Housewives doing a complete 180 after she found out her son is gay. So now you have conservatives applauding the State of Vermont for legalizing gay marriage through the legislature, BINGO! pass the lube, we weren't really against gays marrying in the first place just wanted you to respect federalist concerns is all. This is Kyle Smith of the New York Post but for a fair majority of us we still have a residual distaste for gay acts. We don't form an entire movement around it the way the evangelicals have, we don't have the fervor or the time and we're more than tolerant but by the same token don't ask us to celebrate the destruction of your anus. Kyle says it all amounts to this, the buggery bothers us but I'd go further. The larger issue is the loss of masuline culture. Sure a guy wearing a dress won't upset the Order of the Universe but we have a problem with it if it's not part of a comedy sketch, we can't picture him like Dirty Harry jumping from the overpass onto that school bus with the sniper holding the schoolkids hostage and any culture that celebrates the first tranny mayor who's ugly btw is a little off. We actually prefer male culture as we should, those weren't tranny SEALS after all who shot those three Somali pirates to death. In relations between the sexes feminism wants to criminalize the Alpha Male, if I'm meandering it's because it's all part and parcel of the same package, it's all part of the pussification of America but it doesn't mean you have to be like Mel Gibson...(to be continued)

Conservatives out of sorts

First off we have to put a checkmark in Obama's corner. He gave the order for the use of force last Friday to free Captain Richard Phillips from those Somali pirates. He gets a kudo or two in my book but somehow Jimmy Carter would've f****d it up.

The Winter of our Conservative Discontent - Beth has had it with liberals, you can't change their minds she says but before we go there we gotta look at our own camp. IMO the fiscal conservatives (FCs) want to take over the Party and purge us social conservatives (SCs) from the ranks. OK, maybe not soapie and Patrick M but the ones who pull the strings do. The FCs don't just want to stop moralizing about things like abortion, rather they want to moralize or mainstream abortion so as to talk about other more important things. Now as I blogged recently when you take the social issues off the table there is less and less that bonds us FCs and SCs together - economic policy, military campaigns and overall patriotism is basically what you're left with, kind of a thin gruel like eating the same thing everyday. Here's where the FCs are wrong though. I'm an idealist not just about politics but Life in general, even if our politics were correct Life could still suck. Put another way you need spirituality, conservatism has to be about moral values too. One of the SCs' focus is doing the right thing, the FCs would add nothing wrong with that but such right choices need to be freely made in an environment of maximum freedom. Whatever, we could have the right economic policies tomorrow, ultimate victory in Iraq and all the rest and still have the usual laundry list of social ills, divorce, abortion, drug abuse etc. In short how can you be a conservative and not talk about spirituality, about moral values? Social conservatism is about preserving traditions, not about saying psychedelics are good for you, that's libertarianism. So before I can respond to Beth's points we need to define what conservatism means, what does it really stand for? with so many strains of conservatism today it's hard at times to know exactly what it is we're fighting for and conversely before we take on liberalism we have to know what that stands for too, what precisely are they fighting for on their side?