In P.J. O'Rourke's column, "We Blew It" the conservative columnist carefully castigates his cohort for the failures of the period of their political ascendancy. He gets a lot right. He gets the left wrong.
An entire generation has been born, grown up, and had families of its own since Ronald Reagan was elected. And where is the world we promised these children of the Conservative Age? Where is this land of freedom and responsibility, knowledge, opportunity, accomplishment, honor, truth, trust, and one boring hour each week spent in itchy clothes at church, synagogue, or mosque? It lies in ruins at our feet, as well it might, since we ourselves kicked the shining city upon a hill into dust and rubble.
Fascinating stuff. Definitely worth reading the whole article. He's got a pretty good understanding of his side's shortcomings. But I think that his boogey-man/straw-man hybrid view of liberalism is part of why the conservatives lost. Even ignoring the stuff that was put in there for humorous effect, or to nourish the wounded souls of his readers, he's missing the point badly. Most of the values he claims for conservatism are liberal values.
Almost without exception, the people he paints as liberals do not in fact exist. He does not understand the motivations or the methods of the liberals. It's like he's blinded by this DIRTY HIPPIE image that exists nowhere but in his mind. Er-- except for the bits about public corruption. He pretty much nailed them there.
Why can't conservatives be sane? Why is it that the few who aren't on some crack-pot hobby-horse or other, still can't see their opponents clearly? Maybe I should count my blessings. The conservatives' inability to understand the appeal of liberalism has certainly contributed to their failure to offer anything of interest to the voters.
Now, you may be tempted to accuse me of doing the same thing to them. Did I not, just four sentences ago, wildly generalize conservatives as largely crack-pot? Perhaps, but compare the numbers and wackadoodle mouth-froth index of hemp-wackpots to those of gun nuts. Or housing-as-a-public-right advocates to Invisible Hand worshippers. Or New Age religionists to creationists. Or the looooonatic cry of the drug advocate "Um, why is it okay with alcohol but not pot?" to the "Burn the widows for fuel and coddle this, punk!" anti-drug zealots. Someone told me her sister is buying a gun for her (the sister's) daughter before January First because Obama said he's going to outlaw gun ownership. When Bush was coming into office a few wack-jobs said he'd start some wars, ruin the economy, and let his friends rob us blind. The two sides just don't compare. Reality, it has famously been observed, has a liberal bias.
I will close with a quotation from Mr. O'Rourke that I admire. In his Parliament of Whores, he says:
The Democrats planned to fiddle while Rome burned. The Republicans were going to burn Rome, then fiddle.