Is there a problem at the heart of ‘Conservatism’?

Today at CPAC Newsbuster.org’s Brent Bozell went ballistic over CPAC’s invite to an Atheist organization which has acted out of an abundance of grievance and is, IMHO, quite obnoxious as a proponent group for their ideas. Think #occupy-religion. CPAC dug a bit and discovered that this org was going to be too disruptive and withdrew their invite for a booth.

Mr. Bozell characterized this all as an attack on God and told ‘conservatives’ to have nothing to do with CPAC since their purpose was to destroy the conservative movement. This exploded during the day all over Twitter, with confusing and unhelpful statements.

I remind everyone that Barry Goldwater told us all good conservatives should line up to ‘kick Jerry Falwell in the ass’ over social religious ‘values’ in politics. Count me with him.

I jumped over to the article and statement from Twitter to newsbusters and added a comment in support of someone who gave general approval to the idea that all sorts of people should be welcome at CPAC without regard for being Christian or whatever.

The result was lengthy vitriol which characterized me as a Christophobic leftist of some sort. This accelerated when I remarked that the Holocaust took place in a nation which self identified as in vast majority - CHRISTIAN, in direct response to someone claiming social interaction without God caused the Holocaust. 

The threads are there for all to see so I won’t go into the minutiae but it was clear that there was a strong strain of rejection FROM the movement if you were not going to be a believer, AND defend our inalienable rights solely on the basis of the direct sourcing from God.

What I found alarming was that this was done with no thought about the result of drumming people, otherwise quite conservative from the ‘movement’, or that in defending Christianity as not having any fault in the Holocaust, sources beloved of some well known people, for well known reasons such as David Irving and Norman Finkelstein were used in an attempt to debunk just one of many many sources, such as David Goldhagen. Of course this degenerated to ad hominem attacks based on what others insisted I must be.

Now I have no way to know if this is the general thought of the so called Christian conservative movement, but I can say that what I experienced in fact gives strength to the stereotype conceived of by the Chuck Schumer’s and David Axelrod’s when speaking of this movement.

THAT is a great pity, but it is a fact.

I hope these people are awake to the unalterable fact that there are many kinds of conservatives for all sorts of reasons built around a central core of unity among key principals. I hope they recognize that all must be made welcome.

It is my opinion that after MANY years of religious dispute with Muslims, that the reasoning (not the desired outcome) used by these people is not dissimilar to what I experienced in defense of orthodox Shia, and Salafist Islam.

That is ALARMING.

I now wonder aloud if this portion of the conservative movement is more interested in religious purity among its adherents than in achieving power and routing this nation to safety.

What is amazing is the day started with a discussion with someone from a progressive public policy organization on twitter who asserted the view that the national debt was fine if it was double the GDP, and tried to say over and over that as a % of GDP the $415 BILLION in interest for 2013 was ‘practically nothing’. Medicare in 2013 cost this nation $524 Billion. A Gerald Ford nuclear aircraft carrier .. well we could buy 32 aircraft carriers a year. We have 11 now. He ended up calling me an asshole (which I certainly am) and quitting.

That was fun.

This afternoon in the Bozell forum was alarming because it may mean that for RELIGIOUS REASONS this nation will elect another progressive in 2016.