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Saturday, October 14, 2006
Conservative Caricatures: Our First Look
Your Curmudgeon allows himself to be called a conservative somewhat reluctantly. Not because he regards conservative principles and attitudes toward political change and enduring institutions as dubious in any way, but because he's become convinced that he understands them, while most persons (and many "conservatives") do not.
Conservatism -- beneficial conservatism, rather than the comic-book caricature of "one who opposes doing anything for the first time" -- rests on a small set of principles comprehensible by anyone of normal intelligence:
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Not too strenuous, eh? Just a few sensible precepts for getting along in a world mostly beyond one's control, peopled by others whose elbows are just as sharp as one's own. Well, your Curmudgeon has no problem with them, anyway. But quite a few "conservatives" stumble over them. It's as if they'd never reflected on their place in the world, or their essential irrelevance to it.
Yes, you read that correctly. For behind the above commandments stands a natural law which, no matter how frenzied our efforts, we will never succeed in repealing:
Your significance, such as it is, does not extend back to the beginning of time; it began on the day you were conceived. There will come a day on which it will end. No one's personal significance will extend indefinitely forward into the future. No matter how great his achievements, ultimately his name will be lost.
In this simple truth lies the germ of humility, the virtue least practiced or appreciated in our time.
Our humility shortfall leads to some incredible exercises in folly. As a category, the ones that involve trying to dictate to others coercively are the most destructive. That, of course, is the realm of politics. But there's another category of arrogances that have led to a real detriment to conservatism as an attitude toward life and existence: expressions of contempt toward others for their personal preferences.
Let's have an example, shall we?
One really loathes seeing tastelessness, self-indulgence, and lack of intelligence jump up onto the table and loudly defend itself. If you need to dress like a young boy well into your 30s and 40s because you are psychologically crippled or otherwise unable to shrug off adolescent immaturity, that's fine, but at least have the decency to acknowledge this as a weakness of character.There are really two components to the problem of male apparel (we are almost exclusively talking about men; women of better than working class are not this degenerate), one is the relaxation of standards for professionalism in business and the other is the utter squalor of indiscipline and childishness among people who today assume the privileges of adults.
The disappearance of professionalism is reflected by the boy-men who staff and, increasingly, run modern American businesses. These people hate formality and do everything they can to undermine it, so the adoption of business casual throughout society is actually the least of their malign effects. When you hear of corporate officers like Steve Ballmer carrying on like a genetically devolved madman before his own employees, or Steve Jobs preening like a narcissistic sociopath at a corporate cult gathering, or Larry Ellison buying yet another grotesquely expensive toy with which to pamper himself, you are seeing the modern boy-man of the corporate world in action. He leads by example, and the example is one of endless self-indulgence, petulance, and ego (oh, what egos they have). Lacking restraint, and observing in formal dress nothing but restraints, he does away with the old white collar dress code of coat and tie. In its place is the new look: business casual, the world of beige slacks and ill-fitting shirts, a look that says, "I'm saving a lot of effort by wearing these clothes."
This...person obviously has strong tastes of his own, to which he's fully entitled. What he's failed to recognize is that others are not required to share them, and that slathering others with abuse, whether one names names or not, demeans only himself -- the one making the demands. It marks him as a harridan whose contentment and satisfaction with the world can be undermined by the free choices of others. It is not manly behavior.
No doubt he deems himself a gentleman. Yet he has discarded the first rule of gentlemanly behavior: not to give unnecessary offense. It is never necessary to give offense over a matter of taste; one need only find a more suitable clime or circle of associates.
Yet his is one of the "vulgar" faces of the American conservative: a scold who demands that we all sit up straight, keep our collars buttoned, and listen to no music recorded since 1850. That visage, and other caricatures such as the "redneck" who sleeps with his shotgun, thinks women should be kept "barefoot and pregnant," worships Toby Keith, and spends his free time stomping "niggers," "kikes," and "faggots," are the principal public-relations weapons in the hands of the American Left. The truly terrible irony of this -- that of the two major families of American political thought, the Left is by far the more demanding and dictatorial -- should not be lost on anyone able to read this essay.
Your Curmudgeon remembers a time when American conservatives trusted men to voluntarily adopt the highest standards of personal conduct they could attain, because they wanted access to the circles in which those standards prevailed. In other words, we trusted to the power of social discrimination; it was regarded as a principal guardian of order in a nation that enshrines liberty as its highest political end. Most conservatives still do trust to the ceaseless operation of social and economic incentives, but a sufficient number imagine themselves the second coming of Louis XIV to tar the rest of us with a very black brush.
Perhaps this is a response to the continuously increasing venom from the Left. It's hard to see exactly how, but when they start screaming about mass violations of our privacy in the name of their movement, or polluting their "entertainments" with viciousness toward us because of our political differences, one must at least entertain the possibility.
The most important aspect of the practice of Conservative Caricature, however, is not its origins but its effect in the real world of today. It permits those who differ with us to portray us in a range of unflattering colors:
Rules of the Self-Conservatizing Experiment:
- No lies, no fake names, no deception. No stating an opinion that isn’t really my own. I’m free to be cryptic about my opinions and turn questions around when asked them, but it has to be me going through this.
- Activities are to be based on a purely unscientific but highly personal idea of what American conservatism means. While I will surely meet academic conservatives who have no use for country music and working-class folks who don’t read The National Review, both of those things represent conservatism to me and so will be part of the research.
- Throughout, I will be sleeping with a hot liberal woman, but as I’ve been married to her for ten years, that’s grandfathered in.
- On the issue of the president of the United States, I’ve always had a hard time putting the name George W. Bush after the word president. The 2000 election was highly controversial and the 2004 seemed a little shaky too, in Ohio especially. But during the experiment, he will be President George W. Bush. Full title. Every single time.
- All news and information will be gathered by conservative outlets. No daily newspaper or radio from any source that has ever been accused of liberal bias (which is most of the news media I currently rely on). When something happens in the world, I will find out about it through the filter of conservatism. If Bush is caught selling heroin on the White House lawn, I want to hear how it was actually the fault of the degenerate liberal culture propagated by the Democrats in Congress who somehow forced Bush, against his will, into dealing smack and who have probably done things that were a lot worse. And then someone would bring up Monica Lewinsky. Nothing goes into my head without conservative context.
- No talking politics with liberal friends. If the subject comes up, I must literally put my finger in my ears and say la-la-la.
- Music must be by artists known to be conservative, Republican, or sympathetic to those causes. Artists who have performed at either of President George W. Bush’s two inaugurals are acceptable.
- Movies will be gleaned from a list provided by devotees of FreeRepublic.com. They must either enforce conservative values or implicitly or explicitly endorse conservative beliefs or Republican policies.
- Another rule and a big one: no arguing, only listening. It’s easy when you hear things that you might not agree with to dismiss them out of hand or find flaws in the argument or compose pithy withering retorts that you’re sure will put the offending talker in his place. It’s harder to just shut up and listen.
- Drink Coors beer. The family is famously blamed by liberals for everything from union busting to putting prospective employees through polygraph tests in the 1970s to determine if they were gay. Pete Coors, current family scion, ran for Senate as a Republican but lost when conservatives questioned the company’s sponsorship of a gay-themed festival in Canada. Play with fire and you get burned. Play with gay fire and you’ll get gay burned.
- Steak whenever possible. Also beef jerky.
- This all must take place within the space of thirty days.
[Applause to Sondra K. for the citation.]
This aspect of the battle for the American mind is an under-addressed reason for why our gains have been so limited, and our efforts to slow the statist tide have been so thinly rewarded: quite a lot of people have bought into the caricatures, because they've encountered someone who fits them, and have decided they don't want to be "like that."
More anon.
Comments
Great. Way to harsh MY mellow on a saturday. You’d better have something uplifting to say tomorrow.
Posted by og on 10/14/2006 at 09:27 AMPersonally, I don’t have a problem with business going more casual, fashion changes for goodness sakes, that’s probably why George W. Bush doesn’t wear a funky white wig. Of course I have my own complaints about the fashion choices some people make, I prefer not to see young men wearing their pants around their knees, I find the show of thong underwear by some women to be in poor taste. I have yet to see any business executive do either.
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 10/14/2006 at 09:41 AMI, like SondraK, heard that segment of the Medved interview while picking my kids up from school. I see your point, and probably make your point occasionally, but the guy was so brainwashed going into the thing the only thing he came away with was the conclusion that contrary to his initial suspicions, conservatives were not as horrible and awful as he previously imagined.
Progress of sorts, I suppose. The difference between conservatives and liberals in my experience is that conservatives know quite a few liberals and already know this.
Oh, and to burnish my redneck, country-music listening ways, of which I am very proud and unlikely to renounce to make myself more palatable to liberals, Toby Keith is a democrat.
(And yes, I did get the gist of your post, but I fail to see how conservatives can change the opinions of the deliberately and willfully blind. Or, shut up Don Wildemon for that matter.)
Posted by Lana on 10/14/2006 at 07:39 PMWhile I completely agree with your thoughts on humility being among the most important of virtues, and fail more often than I succeed to my chagrin, I take a bit of exception to this:
Your significance, such as it is, does not extend back to the beginning of time; it began on the day you were conceived. There will come a day on which it will end. No one’s personal significance will extend indefinitely forward into the future. No matter how great his achievements, ultimately his name will be lost.
My significance, such as it is, did not in any way begin on the day I was conceived. It was passed down to me by my parents and grandparents, who gave me the very tools of conservatism and humility that serve me well to this day. When I fail, I hear about it in loud terms. And not just from the living, from my own remembering of what I was taught by the recently deceased.
And going along, my paltry contribution of 5 children and however many grandchildren and great grandchildren might happen along after me will be greatly influenced and guided by me to the extent I captured their hearts and minds with my teachings and exhortations.
In turn, my grandmother or grandfather influenced them from beyond the grave, all because of what they gave me that I passed along to them. That is six generations and counting. The names may well be forgotten in time, but the values hold true and rescue a future generation.
Posted by Lana on 10/14/2006 at 09:34 PMClothing is a form of communication, and - to some degree - a form of respect.
When I go to the bank, I dress up a bit, to show them that I am coherent enough and competent enough to UNDERSTAND their expectations and CONFORM to their expectations. Dress is a signalling mechanism, and to wear my normal Carhartt t-shirt and jeans to the bank would be a signal that I either was too obtuse to understand their culture or too stubborn to conform, minimally, to it…and a banker would be right to consider either of those slight negatives.
When I meet with my business advisors, I also dress up a bit.
However, in my own company, the dress code is casual. All of our interactions with customers are by email and website. My employees seem to enjoy this, and it does not detract in the least from the deference that each person shows their superior in the organization.
Posted by TJIC on 10/14/2006 at 10:13 PMWearing business casual isn’t the mark of the absolute nadir of civilization, but I would agree that dressing businesslike does lead to a more formal environment.
The worst dressers are educators and academics. My last roommate needed to be told to put on “big boy shoes” when meeting parents. Sometimes, I cringe to see university-educated women wearing capri-length pants at work, WITH SANDALS (no socks or hose).
Some of the horrors I’ve seen (many of them in urban schools) on TEACHERS:
sweatpants
t-shirts (not all that clean)
rubber thongs
leather pants on a body not made for them
too many buttons undone on women
boobs on display
too-tight clothes
flannel shirtsI won’t even mention the Einstein hair (without the brains), the comb-overs, and the dirty hair in a “banana clip”.
You wanna know why most kids haven’t a clue about how to dress properly? Check out the teachers and parents.
Posted by Linda F on 10/15/2006 at 11:50 AMYep, and then check out “What Not To Wear” on The Learning Channel. I have learned a lot from Stacy and Clinton, albeit sometimes reluctantly. It would have been very handy when I was a teenager if one of those two had been, say, an aunt or uncle or family friend.
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 10/16/2006 at 01:27 AM
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