Conservatives of the World Unite

I think it's time that people who have a true responsible conservative agenda start calling the radical whacks who call themselves conservative but are really no-nonsense scam artists, illogical rhetoricians and fallacy-peddling propagandists in the pocket of some special intertest.

I know... I know... I'm name calling again. Fox-news-eating anti-intellectual scum that they are...

But check out the following interchanges:

TSC Daily: propaganda, let me count the ways. Anyone who has ever learned something about rhetoric and logical fallacies can use this site as a guidebook of how to win an argument at any cost to the truth. (I'm not a philosopher, but is this a symptom of post-structuralism?)

Then there's Emily DeVoto, who bothered to review the data on the lack of health coverage. Her posts are generally well thought-out and ask more questions than trying to ram so-called answers down the reader's throat.

At the other end of the spectrum, there is discussion and an interchange of ideas. A Healthy Blog is run by Heath Care For All, with an overtly liberal/progressive bias. Naturally, someone suggested using tax policy to incentivize healthy behaviors. This is an idea with a long pedigree, several examples of having worked in the past and arguments to commend as well as grounds to criticze. The discussion did not take long to degenerate as a couple of bizarre responses were appropraitely cut short.

I am being unnecessarily provocative, but please people... wake up! There is a problem here. Educated people are taught to be tolerant to contradictory ideas, but there is a crop of individuals who call themselves conservative but are nothing more than anti-intellectual radicals passing their ideas off as valid. They have gained sufficient currency to be seen on network news berating 'liberal' media (a paper tiger if I ever heard one).

There is much to discuss in art as in life and disgareement is at the core. The rules of civilized discourse have been rent. There are serious conservatives whose opinions need to be heard, consdered and discussed. I suspect Dr. Thorpe would describe himself as a conservative if pressed (it was his research that was the subject of A Healthy Blog's post.) Alan Greenspan is a conservative with some intelligent points to make. George Soros strikes me as someone with a very conservative capital-oriented orientation but he is also progressive and a significant intellect. As he stands against these Neanderthals, he has been viciuosly attacked by both media and instruments of government in the US.

What some shrewd forces, passing themselves off as conservatives, accomplish is give currency to outrageous ideas and toxic policies . These ideas, in turn, influence politics to the extent that policy is made based on junk data with faulty logic by bad intellects.

Sometimes we get the government we deserve.