Many thinkers on the right (notably Burke and Hayek) have emphasized that human reason, while a valuable tool, has its limits when it comes to understanding and organizing a society. This week, some Kossacks expressed the slightly different view that conservatives not only oppose reason but also ignore logic and evidence. Oh, yes: they're also really jumpy and paranoid and soon will impose a fascist regime.
As usual, each headline is preceded by the blogger's name or pseudonym.
Ray Pensador: The left is too smart for its own good
...[T]he faulty assumption widely shared by the Left [is] that our perception of reality based on logic, reason, science, empirical evidence, and willingness to compromise, is an attitude widely shared by society at large. This attitude, at the end, will be one of the main reasons the country continued its march toward a neo-fascist future under the total control of corporations and religious fundamentalists...
Glenn Melancon: Reagan's lie won't die
...Reagan’s Big Lie restored the primacy of mythology over observation and reason. Conservatives wanted politicians to act based on gut feelings rather than empirical evidence. This lie shut down experimentation and paralyzed American government to this day...
Hunter: Conspiracies keep conservatives busy
...Being a modern conservative apparently means living in your own personal Da Vinci Code. It sounds exciting, in a way: you always have to be on the lookout for things around you that look like crescents, or crafty scientists trying to make you believe crafty science stuff, or government programs that are just one small step away from socialism.
You never know which food stamp program is going to finally send us into Red Dawn territory, or which state God will get really pissed at next. You never know if tonight will be the night that a homosexual seduces you into their deviant lifestyle, or which day you will finally receive a knock on your door from three burly men informing you that the U.N. now owns your house because Agenda 21-something-something, and every time you purchase any product with a multilingual instruction manual, you always have to skim through the other languages to see if they're talking about you behind your back...
Hunter: The right strives for respectable bigotry
...Bigotry against groups of "outsiders" has always been and will always remain the staple of [Frank] Gaffney-style "conservatism." They just switch the "outsiders" they're targeting according to public tastes: It is now considered tasteless to fearmonger against black Americans (unless you're Rush Limbaugh, in which case you can still do it every single day without being called out on it), but immigrants, homosexuals, non-Christians and other groups are still fair game.
Jed Lewison: Obama's speech should have trumped the GOP debate
...There's something like twenty GOP presidential debates already in the calendar, including at least three of them next month alone. So if we have to put everything on hold every time they take the stage to blather on about how the Earth is 6,000 years old and how the most important issue facing the country is whether two people of the same sex want to get married, we're going to be doing a lot of putting things on hold...
Ray Pensador: Bush fans are a coalition of the disgusting
...If I was a wild-eyed end-of-days religious fundamentalist, or a hate-filled racist, or a misguided follower of socioeconomic philosophies influenced by Social Darwinism, eugenics, Ayn Rand, or Leo Strauss, I would be extremely satisfied with the Bush presidency.
And of course, if I was a member of the Oligarchy...I would also be extremely pleased with Bush's two terms.
They put everything in place for the nascent fascist state which is now consolidating power...
