I can confirm that the phrase came to me in a cafe conversation with students. I had been saying the part about liberals for some time. The students pushed me to name the complementary conservative vice. And that post leads on to two more, one on what liberals and conservatives did right, and another (the necessary other shoe) on the vice of centrists.

Indeed. We could be seen as the noble class.

Respect our position?

Do they call those the “Cash Bar Conservatives�?

You may be on to something there, Justin. That has a nice ring to it.

In my opinion, however, these claims apply more readily to political activists than to other citizens. For example, the most profound philosophers of the 20th century (Heidegger, Wittgenstein, Gadamer) and the most compelling literary artists of the past 100 years (Eliot, Joyce, Faulkner, Pound) were either uninterested in political life or hostile to liberalism.

The only real problem with this comment is that he should capitalize the “L” in liberalism. It is not classical liberalism that these philosophers and literary genius’ opposed, but the leviathan of the state. So let us continue to slobber in bullheaded rage over social security reform — intelligence, indeed, Jezuus or whatever you want to call Him.

You can be a conservative, without having moral values -like me.

Do they call those the “Cash Bar Conservatives”?