Is “Reform Conservatism” Compassionate Conservatism Redux?

BlaiseP says:

It’s beyond cliché and gone to truism: the Republicans need to change. Perhaps they do in some respects. In others, they can rely on the Tried and True appeals to fear, ignorance and doubt which have been their staff of life for many decades.

If I was in charge of GOP outreach efforts to Hispanics in the USA, I’d tell those Cubanos Rubio and Ted Cruz to STFU and speak English. Every time they open their mouths to speak Spanish, they sound like Cubanos, already within the GOP camp for many years.

Hispanos are not united: they aren’t even united as expatriates: elite Guatemalans have nothing to do with the poor native peoples whom they vigorously oppressed for four decades in a Dirty War which beggars description. Millions of landmines are still in the soil of Guatemala, they’re still digging them out and the nastiest dictator in living memory, José Efraín Ríos Montt, was a great hero to Ronald Reagan, who called him a Freedom Fighter. The Guatemalans remember that fact. The GOP has never recante its support for the worst dictators, ever.

The Hispanic American community enjoys speaking Spanish among themselves but they want their own kids to speak English and they’re quite adamant on this subject. I wouldn’t attempt to put out ads in Spanish. I’d write those ads in simple English, showing a student learning English, teaching his abuela English. Be American. Vote GOP. That would bring ’em in like flies to a dog turd but the GOP is far too stupid to know what Hispanos want. They’re in the same predicament the Democrats were in years ago, not really knowing how to appeal to minorities. The minorities reached out to the Democrats, not the other way round.

It’s unbecoming a conservative to be too compassionate. Smacks of pity and condescending. No, a Conservative, if he’s to make any headway, must appeal to Kantian Duty. It’s our duty as a nation to respect the law, to respect the government, to respect each other, to respect ourselves. Yes, you too can join the Great American Experiment: become part of something greater. Be American. What does it mean? That’s up to you: every generation must define American for itself. Be a Conservative, we believe in something. See, that approach gains converts. This line of rhetoric might even convince me — but then, conservatism stopped preaching this sermon long ago.

The current crop of Young Conservative Comment Taters are worthless, to a boy. I would say “to a man” but they clearly are nothing of the sort. They do have a point, though: compassionate conservatism is an iffy proposition.

Larry Taunton debated Christopher Hitchens on the subject of atheism many times. An unlikely friendship developed. Taunton:

Following our 2010 debate in Billings, Montana, I asked Christopher Hitchens why he didn’t try to savage me on stage the way he had so many others. His reply was immediate and emphatic: “Because you believe it.”

Later, Hitchens, clearly quite ill in this video said of Taunton: If everyone in the United States had the same qualities of loyalty and care and concern for others Larry Taunton had, we would be living in a much better society than we do

The Conservatives need to quit trying to pander. If there’s any validity in their worldview, it will start with believing in something worth believing in. Thus far, I am not encouraged by what I have seen coming from their camp. They do not care for others. They are not loyal, not even to their own.Report