Sully on The Conservative Moment

Andrew Sullivan | The Daily Dish: Ponnuru Is Right

I'm for balanced budgets, low taxes, cuts in entitlements, welfare reform, more military manpower, privately run healthcare, free speech, religious liberty, a stronger commitment to Iraq, and gun rights. I'm against affirmative action, federally-funded abortion and embryonic stem-cell research, protectionism, hate crime laws, the Medicare prescription drug program, pork barrel spending, torture, an untrammeled executive, and censoring anyone anywhere to appease Islamist extremists. And, according to Ponnuru, no "serious" conservative regards me as a conservative any more. What does that tell you?

Well, it confirms for me what I've seen ever since the local rightwing blogosphere dove off it's own deep end back in 2004 (some would say earlier ... others would say they permanently reside at the bottom of a deep canyon as it is). The ones doing the most damage to conservatism these days are the so-called conservatives themselves.

Nowadays, the surest way to know that someone is most definitely not a conservative is to hear them say that they are. It's sorta like the day & age when liberals would claim to be fiscally conservative, yet were also up in arms over Clinton signing a balanced budget and welfare reform. Truly an ironic (post-ideological?) age in which we live.