It used to be that people joined the Republican party because they were conservative, and wanted to associate themselves with like minded individuals who share the same world view. It wasn’t so long ago that people were Republicans because they were conservative. Nowadays though, it seems that people believe they are conservative, merely because they are associate themselves with the Republican Party. Click on the text to read the rest... Very smart post.
NPT, would you consider yourself a conservative? I find most people on this forum to identify most with conservatism, but perhaps that is because liberal is often used as a dirty word.
No, I don't. Sorry - personal rant follows. I'm really completely unfounded anymore. I have searched high and low for a framework to place myself in and have come up wanting. Even Burke's call for a national elite to sustain what is considered the transcendent, immutable culture of a nation - things such as the National Theatre of Great Britain, for instance - is considered anathema here. His decrying of the "metaphysical abstraction" of Rousseau and Co. has been proven to be a prophecy time and again in our sad history as a species since. I am not joking when I say I find the creeds of modern man riddled with hypocrisy, and all attempts at meaningful solution a flimsy pastiche of already hackneyed systems of thought. I carve my little corner of the world in art; that is the only place I feel truly human anymore. Art, and the small hope I find there, is the one ray that brightens what I find can otherwise be an oppressive, stultifying pessimism.
Hahahah, well, at the end of the day, I do enjoy a pint with pals. Afraid I was born with a restless spirit, and I have come to accept this will likely be my lot till become memory.