In the wake of the decision, Mario became a prominent source on the front pages of the Post as he decried the unscrupulous machinations of the Democrats. A few weeks later Scott'a appointment to the Mayor's cabinet became front page news and his role in the redistricting drama came to the surface. State Republicans expressed relief that Scott would be safely buried in the Mayor's office, unable to inflict any more damage on the Republican party.
It was fun to read that because both Scott and Mario had well developed instincts for the jugular as high school students. I can only guess what some of those meetings were like.
I would love to sit down with those two sometime so they could help answer all the questions I'm having about politics lately. They might be able to make sense out of two articles in today's Denver Post (1/3/12).
In the lead story on page 1 (GOP gains on gay issues) we discover that a new GOP group called Coloradans for Freedom is working for the passage of civil unions. As it turns out, Mario is the group's spokesman and a major source in the article. Mario, who describes himself as " hard-core partisan Republican," says that joining in civil unions is a matter of personal freedom consistent with conservative values.
Here is where I start to get confused. It seems to me that conservatives have usurped this whole "personal freedom" issue. Wasn't the cry for freedom over the oppression of government a liberal cause in 1776 in America, 1876 in France, and the 1960's back in America? Don't get me wrong. I applaud Mario and his group, even though I think civil unions a poor and dishonest substitute for same sex marriage. I just wish Republicans would be more consistent in what they believe.
Later, on page 9 (Bill seeks cooling-off period before divorce), we find that a Republican senator from Berthoud, Kevin Lundberg, has proposed legislation asking the state to intercede in divorce cases where children are involved in order to make a separation more difficult. Is it just me, or does this seem an imposition on personal freedom by state government?
To make it even more confusing, we discover that Lundberg got the idea for his divorce bill while attending a legislative conference for conservative lawmakers. It seems that Chris Gersten, chair of the Coalition for Divorce Reform gave a presentation on ways to slow down divorce through legislation. How does that line up with Mario's call for civil unions and personal freedom.
Is this what Orwell meant by Doublethink?
2 comments:
Conservatism is a coalition of people with bad ideas, social conservatives desperately want the "freedom" to impose their values on everyone else, fiscal conservatives seem to believe government services magically happen, and want the "freedom" not to help pay for them; and they are united by a hatred of poor people and anything that might help low income individuals, but social conservatives also hate gays, where fiscal conservatives don't. Hence the occasional contradiction.
Karl: man oh man am I glad you had the courage to post this- I couldn’t agree with you more. Without exception, people who embrace any Conservative ideas—people like Florence King, Robert Penn Warren, Alexis de Tocqueville, Harvey Milk, George Santayana, P.J. O’Rourke, Zora Neale Hurston, Henry Hazlitt, Dan Savage, H.L. Mencken, Aristophanes, Chris Rock, John Henry Newman, T.S. Eliot, Robert Nisbet, John Ford, Joan Didion, C.S. Lewis, Andrew Sullivan and Jonathan Swift—are all avaricious bigots and bullying pitiless monsters. If only there were a wing of politics that’s ideas dependably lead to the extirpation of tens of millions of people, we could be rid of a lot of these villains.
-brandon :)
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