All is vanity.

I stay away from those arguments…oh, I read them, but keep my own counsel, for often the purpose is to do little more than say “Dig Me” on the subject. The arguments are all meritorious, I suppose, but I don’t see anyone kicking the can by making them or rebutting them so somehow, I come away feeling the Left, the true enemy here, is the beneficiary of the debate, if not actually an invisible hand. If we come away more divided, what’s not to like about seeing this?

I was once told by a born-again Christian that she didn’t want me in on meetings because I said “damn” too much. Offended her. Me, if you wear pink shoelaces and ride side-saddle but want to go out and beat…not talk about, but beat, this insidious evil upon us…I’ll be by your side, kicking that can together. I’ll let God sort out the color scheme.

I’ve attended these shindigs before, and never (at least won’t admit) to ever having attended a meeting. It’s a great place to meet, talk, and conspire. I don’t go to listen, but to look people in the eye and take their measure….and vice versa.

All the talk you see and hear. Take it and edify yourself (that’s one Beck rule I agree with 100%), but behind it is usually vanity.

That is probably the most salient thing said in the battles of the SoCons, FiCons, etc.

In Reality, we’re all Conservatives. It’s just some people FOCUS more on one area or other of their beliefs.

As Vassar said, we all have a common goal (individual liberty) and a common foe (progressive, socialists, communists, and other statist ideologies). We shouldn’t be dividing our forces fighting amongst ourselves when there is a larger enemy to be defeated. To quote one of our founding fathers, “We must all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately.”.

I for one, don’t intend to hang separately and refuse to get into the arguments over who’s a better conservative.

this question crossed my mind: “Would I vote for any of these folks who tout so highly their conservative credentials yet behave in such a manner that if they were running for office in a local election, and I knew them face to face?” Think about it, behavior behind a screen, is still public.

Last fall I wrote a post after the primaries, that addressed losing candidates and their supporters. It is easily modified to apply to trying to work with those from our side right now.

People that we make into enemies today will not become friendly acquaintances tomorrow.

If we cannot tolerate or reasonably debate others from our own side, we will not win any fight against the Left, which, I think, is what most of us want.

Good post, Lisade.

This is a common error because many don’t bother to first differentiate between policies, issues, and principles.

Here is my take from the 08 conservative war.

Thank you very much; you’ve put this much better than I could.

Probably the best I’ve read on the on-going internecine battles among ourselves. I have the same issue with the posts and comments, often the opposing views all sound equally right. I can ponder upon ideas and issues in my head but when I begin to express that tenuous idea in words, written or spoken, it often reveals flaws I had failed to consider. That is what makes the community here at RS so valuable. We can begin to express and hone our opinions and ideas and someone will show up and point out the flaws in it. Sometimes its done with a couple strokes of a file and sharpened to a razor’s edge, sometimes it’s thrust back into the coals and hammered into another shape. Cie la vie!

There has been way too much time and too many keystrokes spent on ways to divide the Anti-Obama coalition. Finger-pointing, rehashes, recriminations–where does it lead? Conservatism isn’t like some society where you use a secret handshake, nor should we shun our neighbor or fellow citizen based on foolish group identity biases.

Know this, the enemy are watching these pages and the ensuing events with breathless anticipation. If we take the road toward exclusion, and we will be divided and conquered.

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Activists Taking Action: Unified Patriots

I was a waitress at a restaurant in South Africa. I landed there via a long series of adventures in Europe, wearing nothing but naivete’, old jeans and a rucksack. It was during the height of Apartheid (apart-hate, we called it). Nelson Mandela was in prison and the ANC was blowing up buildings all around Natal, where I stayed.

Most of the girls at the restaurant were European, which means White in that part of the World. A few were Afrikaans-speaking Dutch; most were of English descent. The cooks and salad girls were Zulu, or from some other local Bantu tribe. And then there was Eleanor. Eleanor was a new waitress who looked like anyone you’d see walking around Northwest D.C., a little mix of Africa and Europe in her.

After lunch one day, Eleanor got up from our waitress’ table and went out of earshot. The girls leaned into a huddle and began to debate, “Isn’t she a Colored?” “She looks like a Colored.” “I heard her say she lives in Point Road, she is obviously Colored.” “She has cheek being in here.” Pretty shocking to a naive suburban Yankee kid. I had no idea what to say to them, but I suddenly wanted to get as far away from them as I could. I invited Eleanor to join me every day after that.

There are lots of Eleanors in this diverse group we call conservatives, individuals who should be free to define themselves as they believe.

Excellent diary.

Try second grade in 1960. The death penalty for spitballs!

Great diary. Very well stated. The only place I think you were wrong is in contrasting the two parties. The Democrats go through the exact same process. Both parties manage to come together just long enough to run a semi-coherent campaign and then split up into warring factions.

Given that there are many types and shades of conservatives, I don’t understand the people who want all conservatives to think just like them. To demand that Olympia Snowe vote exactly like Marco Rubio like Jim Demint like Rand Paul like Scott Brown is just absurd. They are each representing a distinctly different constituency so how is it “democratic” to expect them all to vote the same?

Are they SUPPOSED to represent the citizens of THEIR states or some self appointed cabal of “true conservatives” ?

The thing that drew me to conservatism from the get-go was that it was about regular folk, not The People, whether The People be a monolith spouting Marxist cliche or the cabal of busibodies who know exactly what everyone is up to and how it can be fixed. This diary expressed my thoughts to a tee, and apparently the thoughts of many others, besides. We can our disagreements about religion, lifestyle, etc, but at the end of the day, we’re all regular folk.

BTW, your mom reminds me quite a bit of mine: just replace the wooden spoon with a gnarly-looking paddle, and imagine every spanking being prefaced by a dramatic speech spoken entirely in Spanish and punctuated by the occasional query to the heavens for how she could have failed so miserably in raising two wretches

First, LisaDe, thanks for putting this up. Non-politico that I am, your

I would read one comment and agree, then read someone’s rebuttal and agree again

echoes my own experience, and perhaps that of many of the non-professionals here.

I’m quite sure that your memory of seeing Leonard sitting alone during your moments of elevated–if misbegotten–fear resonates with similar stories among at least the more honest among us. My concern, however, lies in the present.

Several years of reading much of the best offered on this site has convinced me that the conservative movement, with stellar exceptions, has implicitly agreed that Leonard neither can, nor therefore should, be reached–and that due to fears more misplaced than those of your childhood, even fears incompatible with core conservative principles.

Some of us living under the radar see hopeful signs that Leonard might be thinking about walking over to our corner of the schoolyard. Will we have an answer for why we left him sitting on the steps?

and as LisaDe wrote this diary, I’m asking that she answer it for herself. She knows what was in her own heart and mind when these words were written. For the moment, I only see how things could seem to be.

You’ve made this comment in this diary
“And yet, because of the close-minded, those that want to embrace the values that we take for granted because we lived them all of our lives, are left on the little steps of the school, alone, wanting to join, but are all to often shunned by the fearful. And that is what it is. Fear of the Unknown. Punishable by the strict conservative who says, “You, stay away, and if you don’t, I will boycott the very gathering that I have been tirelessly building up for the passed five years”.

What do you think the response of SoCons is likely to be to this statement?

I’ve never had the desire to impose my own views or beliefs on other people. OTOH, neither am I all that crazy about the idea of exposing myself to ridicule for expressing those beliefs either.

If the truth of matter is that RS is moving in the direction of joining forces with social liberals, I would simply rather it be stated honestly at this point.

I sit back and wonder if there is no answer simply because Conservatism might only be defined logically by the individual – strictly for that individual.

Without stating it here, I will assert that there is, indeed, an objective definition of Conservatism within every culture and political system. To have a roomful of people show up, each with his own definition of the conservative principles in play, is to have chaos. We have examples of this phenomenon wherever liberalism thrives. Seeing such chaos emerging at CPAC certainly makes me scratch my head knowing what that first C stands for.

Punishable by the strict conservative who says, “You, stay away, and if you don’t, I will boycott the very gathering that I have been tirelessly building up for the passed five years”.

With gay activists from GOProud showing up on liberal news venues attacking those declining on CPAC this year, the reality is quite the opposite of the scenario you paint. Such tactics only prove that those opting out were not being judgmental, they were just using good judgment.

Nobody, as far as I know, told anyone to “stay away” from CPAC, unless you count those who told the social conservatives to leave their bleepity bleep family values at the doorstep before they dare enter the building. I would dare say that, if I had been planning to spend a couple thousand dollars on a trip to DC in bleeding February to hob nob with like-thinking patriotic Republicans, such nonsense would make me reconsider.

Your narrative is heartwarming and compelling, but the inference of bigotry and closed-mindedness on the part of anyone opting out of CPAC is simply misguided. Conservatism will survive this. It’s the Republican Party that risks its survival by playing a liberal Democrat game of triangulation at which they are singularly inept.

Who’s prosthelytizing who at this event?

And why are we talking about prosthelytizing at all? That’s not what CPAC is for, AFAIK.

And where are all the budding, ostensibly “fiscal“ conservatives on the RS budget and deficit diaries? I can find nary a one. They all seem to be too busy commenting on the social issue and CPAC diaries. How dumb do they think we are not to notice that?

Conservatism is about removing power from the center and distrubuting back to the states and local governments where it was originally intended to exist. That is all it is about. And it is at that level that individuals come together to reach an amicable concensus of how they wish their local communities to be governed. Rugged Individualism is certainly about the individual providing for himself and his family, but it is not about being protected from tne need to accomodate his/her behavior to conform to the social standards of those they share their community with. Personal/Individual responsibility includes social responsibility. Maintaining a civil social standard is the responsibility of every individual.