They say the most arrogant and obnoxious residents of New York City are the ones born in Buffalo.<\/p>\n
Likewise, the most annoying, provincial, arrogant hangers-on to any ideology are the ones that came to it with the\u00a0 most personal\u00a0sturm und drang<\/em>.<\/p>\n There’ a former conservative blogger who, along with some other personal changes, flipped their politics a while ago.\u00a0 They’ve written a few angst soaked social media posts theatrically apologizing for and renouncing having ever been a conservative, much less an outspoken one.<\/p>\n Which I found a little insulting and a lot depressing.\u00a0 I mean, I grew up liberal, to the extent that I didn’t tell anyone that I’d voted for Reagan (in the middle of one of the most Republican states in the Union, mind you) – but consider the things I learned as a larval prorgressive key to my development.\u00a0 I’ve never apologized for having once written a party platform at a mock government that’d send a tingle up Bernie Sanders’ leg – although some have thought I should (and have been told to go pound sand, albeit in a good-natured kind of way).<\/p>\n So be what you want to be.\u00a0 Go with God.\u00a0 It’s a free country.\u00a0 So far.<\/p>\n Which is why the ever-more-constipated-sounding virtue signaling of Max Boot, once one of the best foreign policy writers out there, has been such a buzzkill.\u00a0 He’s changed his alignment…<\/p>\n …well, no.\u00a0 He’s let his never-Trumpism define his politics, which were always “Eisenhower Republican”;\u00a0 think New Dealers who opposed communism.<\/p>\n His departure from the GOP<\/a> (OK, its departure from him) is kind of cloying and annoying.<\/p>\n