It’s odd that I had two different posts pop up in my feed reader today, both of them revolving around the theme that the modern conservative movement, as represented by TV punditry and the tea parties and Republicans in Congress, has some more than passing resemblance to the hard-left counterculture of the 60s and 70s. First is this piece by Stan Collender:

it was hard not to conclude that one of the biggest changes from when I last saw “Hair” was that the real radicals these days are not kids on the street wearing torn jeans, wearing peace symbols, and getting high (Never mind the fact that torn jeans are now sold in the stores).

Today, the most radical behavior by far is coming from middle age congressional Republicans.
Think about it: GOP members of the House and Senate routinely reject rules, norms, and procedures and, like the hippies from the 60s, feel absolutely justified in doing it.

House and Senate Republicans also don’t feel bound by precedents or culture.

And then, there’s this essay by Freddie de Boer, which I cannot recommend highly enough.

Convinced of the necessity of imprinting the conservative brand onto even the most elementary of human experiences, conservatives have come to look for ideological status (and thus ideological battle) in the narrowest crevices of day-to-day life. This has led to the sprawling industry of providing “conservative alternatives,” in the realm of commodities or media, to conservative people. It is now entirely easy for someone to consume only conservative-oriented media at every level: conservative magazines, conservative radio, conservative television and news, conservative websites. Broader still, there are conservative dating services, conservative coffee houses, conservative colleges, conservative financial services, conservative rock music, a conservative YouTube….Often explicit, always obvious, these conservative-situated alternatives send the inescapable message: there is no end to the political; all of human life is a part of an endless ideological struggle; nothing is to be considered free from the quest for conservative purity.

As I’ve said, this is an uneasy development for an antigovernment movement; branding all of one’s attachments, affinities, and commodities self-consciously “conservative” ensures that all political arguments will be fought on liberal battlegrounds. More troubling, though, is the inevitable stakes-raising that this kind of ideology-in-everything provokes. If one’s whole life is part of an ideological war, if every aspect of someone’s daily existence is to be counted as a function of an endless partisan squabble, there is no hope for reconciliation, only for victory. Political disagreement becomes not an easily-compartmentalized distraction from everyday life, but an affront to the whole self. Whatever its valuable insights, Marxism has this elementary failing; it is a corrosion of human life to relegate all behavior to the battle for resources and the wages of political war. Yet this is a seduction that movement conservatism has fallen prey to almost entirely.

Read both pieces. They’re quite fascinating.

“What has the world come to when Ann Coulter and Bill O’Reilly represent the rational side of the Republican Party?”
– Alex Koppelman

(The whole post, by the way, is a good rundown of the conservative pundits who have rightly railed the Birthers. Here’s hoping that looking at the Birthers helps conservative punditry stop focusing on crazy and start focusing on policy. I won’t hold my breath, mind you, but let’s hope.)

I feel like it’s worth noting that all throughout the 2008 campaign, the line that conservatives had against Obama is that he was just “pretty words.” A good speaker who can “inspire with words” (according to Sarah Palin) but can’t back them up with deeds or experience.

Now, during the Iranian protests, it appears that the most common complaint about Obama is that he hasn’t “spoken forcefully enough” to the point where many conservatives are echoing this claim of Melanie Phillips:

What a disgrace that this man is leader of the free world; and at such a point in history. If he had put America stoutly behind the protesters and championed them against the regime, by now they might have toppled it.

Yes, you’ve got that right. During the campaign, Obama’s rhetorical skills were meaningless and couldn’t accomplish anything. But when it comes to Iran, Obama is such a compelling speaker that if he just said the right things, the protesters would magically become bullet and club proof and topple Khameni once and for all!