Right Wing Nation

How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Being Called a Conservative

It’s silly, really, when you think about it, that any reasonable adult would want to be known as a libertarian. Given that the objectivist libertarians, anarchist libertarians, hippie scum libertarians, litmus test libertarians, liberaltarian libertarians, not in my name libertarians, whoever, they’re all nutball libertarians — anyway, given that the nutball libertarians not only run the LP but dominate every libertarian forum I can find, why would I want to object when they scream “You’re not a libertarian!” at me?

I want nothing to do with these nutcases. I do not want to be around them, I do not want to hear their wackjob conspiracy theories, and most of all, I do not want to read or hear their screaming, as they constantly do.

Tyranny! Treason! Fascist! Statist! Collectivist! Neocon! (Actually, those are toned-down versions; these nutcases usually use multiple exclamation points and all caps.)

This mass insanity results from the fact that nutball libertarians are not a political party, or adherents of a political philosophy of any sort, but are members of the Ayn Rand cult. This is why they behave just like cultists. Say anything even remotely critical about Rand and they scream at you. Say antyhing even remotely critical about them and they scream at you.

Just like liberals.

Except that liberals are a bit more rational. Even the Chomsky Club has not become a cult. Sure, they’re nuts, but they’re not the same kind of nuts.

So after quite some time of battling with these nutballs over their litmus test definitions of libertarian, I have given up. They call me a conservative, so a conservative I am.

Hell, they can call me a martian if it makes them STFU.

I’d like to share something with you. Giving up, more importantly, accepting the mantle of being a conservative, that was much like waking from a nightmare and discovering that no, I was safe in bed and not being chased by filthy stinking birkenstock-clad hippies screaming “Bush lied people died!”

My politics haven’t changed, understand, and conservative, well, I’m more correctly described as a constructionist. But to those who don’t understand what being a constructionist means, it’s pretty much the same as being a conservative. So fine. A conservative I am.

Certainly, being a pragmatist, I vote Republican more than Libertarian (that’s enough to get you screamed at right there). And Republicans are my kind of people. They’re sane and rational. They work for a living. They love their country. They have standards. And most of all, they don’t whine or scream.

No, that’s not right. Most of all, Republicans support national sovereignty, the military, and our country when we’re at war — while the nutball libertarians, like the liberals, do everything they can to bring us down. It’s funny how nearly every vehicle I see with a yellow ribbon on it also has some kind of conservative bumpersticker. I just don’t see a lot of “Support Our Troops”/”Vote Badnarik” combinations for some odd reason.

So put me down in your nutball cultist book as a conservative. I don’t mind at all.