One of Jeff Horwich’s questions last night was one that I should have been ready for – but wasn’t.\u00a0<\/p>\n
It was (and I’m paraphrasing fairly closely here) Why aren’t conservatives out there protesting<\/em>?\u00a0<\/p>\n I responded with a quip about people having day jobs and mortages and kids to take care of – to which Erica responded “But I <\/em>have a day job too…”<\/p>\n Of course, my response was all wrong.\u00a0 And while I pride myself on usually getting those “woulda coulda shoulda” responses out there in time most of the time, I kinda woofed that one.<\/p>\n So if you happen to listen to the broadcast on MPR tonight, please fill in the following answer for that question.<\/p>\n “Jeff, I think the difference is that conservatism isn’t fundamentally about emotions, or their expression.\u00a0<\/p>\n Liberalism – or the left, anyway – is really a co-option (good or cynical, or a little of both, really) of a lot of things most of us are taught as kids; share with people, be nice, don’t fight, you’ll shoot your eye out with that gun.\u00a0 That kind of thing.\u00a0 Now, it adds some grownup things, like a legal imperative and, in extreme cases, a certain pseudo-religious ardor – but at the end of the day liberalism is\u00a0 just an institutionalized version of things we all learned in kindergarten.<\/p>\n Conservatism is not about emotions, usually; it’s something that doesn’t come easily to a lot of people, since it’s something you have to think hard about, and in some ways on the surface it seems to fly in the face of things we’re brought up to believe.\u00a0 You share, or be nice, or quit fighting, not because mommy or the government tell you to, but because it’s the right thing to do.\u00a0 And you realize that there’s complexity to all these things; sharing in the form of charity is good, while welfare has and causes serious problems.\u00a0 Fighting is bad, but sometimes it’s necessary to defend yourself, your family, and your country.\u00a0 That kind of thing.<\/p>\n So if you consider that becoming a real conservative is largely a solitary, intellectual journey rather than an emotional wave one gets swept up in, it makes a lot more sense that we’re not out there waving signs and threatening to, say, bum-rush Erica’s convention, to pick a random example.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Maybe next time…<\/p>\n UPDATE:\u00a0 Troy, in the comment section, had a good point.\u00a0 Changed accordingly.<\/p>\n All of you voicing over my radio appearance; Take Two!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" One of Jeff Horwich’s questions last night was one that I should have been ready for – but wasn’t.\u00a0 It was (and I’m paraphrasing fairly closely here) Why aren’t conservatives out there protesting?\u00a0 I responded with a quip about people having day jobs and mortages and kids to take care of – to which Erica […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-740","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture-war"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/740","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=740"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/740\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":42252,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/740\/revisions\/42252"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=740"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=740"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=740"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}