This Week In the Conservative Underbelly: Tea Parties, Torture, and Telling
By Brad Porter | Related entries in NewsEvery once in a blue moon, on a low traffic weekend afternoon, I might post a roundup of activity on the other site I blog for, TheCrossedPond.com. The purpose of that site has always been a sort of rolling/roiling conversation on the nature of conservatism (perhaps more accurately, libertarian-conservatism) and its place, or lack of one, in the mainstream political conversation.
Given that right now the process amongst us conservatives of hacking out a political identity in the morass of party politics is not particularly pretty, and tends to be awkward and uncertain, I don’t usually cross-post a lot of that navel-gazing here. But, it might be interesting to see it being hacked out in real time, from the inside, from a collection of small government civil libertarian activists, rather than reading about it second or third hand (with bonus snark) on, say, Dailykos.
It’s been a banner week of sorts for conservative identity, so a recap, from our perspective.
We began the week with Rojas, a Libertarian activist from Kansas, calling out the current anti-Obama anti-big government movement for its increasingly revolutionary rhetoric.
I muse a bit, pre-Tea Party, on the similarities and differences between the Ron Paul movement and the other elements of the Tea Party coalition. The tension between the two makes me nervous.
Post Tea-Party, it just makes me angry, and I call out the fair weather small government activists, chief among them Michelle Malkin, for finding the limited government movement laudable this week, but worth expelling from the Republican party only a year ago.
That said, as a former Ron Paul Revolution national organizer, I bychance wandered into one of the Tea Parties, and found a myself awash in a grab-bag of mixed emotions, from the aforementioned nervousness to a gushing optimism that yes, small government activism still inspires.
This week of course also marked Obama’s decision to release the OLC torture memos. There’s nothing to say on the matter that Glenn Greenwald hasn’t said better, but we do take a look at one angle, a few of the people that Bybee (mis)cited in support of reasoning, and what that says about his professional conduct.
Also, does it surprise anybody that Hugh Hewitt lacks an even basic command of the facts about the torture debate? Yeah, me either. But still, F him.
Finally, this week also marked the release of a list of over a thousand retired generals and admirals in support of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell. A retired 20-year veteran of the Navy that blogs at our site can’t help but express his disappointment.
What’s more, Jack, as pure a civil libertarian on gays rights issues as I know, revealed a part of the reason he had come to that position: his experience as a midshipman and Shipboard Legal Officer having to personally investigate and dismiss gay servicemen.
This entry was posted on Sunday, April 19th, 2009 and is filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
April 19th, 2009 at 7:09 pm
Maybe a centrist range is finally returning to the political discourse as the fringe elements on both sides are jettisoned in favor of forward progress for the majority?
April 21st, 2009 at 11:40 am
Torture Gets A Pass, But Letter Writing……
So, you can apparently torture without recourse in America:
The Obama administration on Thursday released top secret memos outlining the legal rationale used to justify the CIA’s torture of terror suspects, but vowed not to prosecute the torturer…