But ... but ... weren't their Truths self-evident?

What a difference desperation makes.

Facing years of irrelevancy and idle torment in the philosophical wilderness, American conservatives--the non-officeholding ones, anyway--are discovering that moral imperatives set in political ideologies operating within electoral metamorphoses aren't quite as imperative or morally compelling as they and their unchanging god of universal truths once thought.

Divine mistakes have been made, it seems; or at any rate certain natural conservative bugaboos of eternal tradition are scheduled for preternatural modification--namely gay marriage, which the imperiously dandified George Will has now ruled acceptable because of "an emerging consensus" (thank you, George), and even that hellish harpy of a partisan hack Mary Matalin agrees, "because Americans have common sense."

But good luck, guys, persuading American conservatism's Louie Gohmerts and Michele Bachmanns that they should join in your consensual orgy of common sense. Their universal truths are either gerrymandered or of the naturally wacko regional sort--a kind of religious splendor of secular political survival. Apostasy would be, as British Conservative MP David Davies put it yesterday, "barking mad," since any political celebration of common sense would cost both Tories and conservative American pols a "large number of very loyal activists."

If, in that, you can still find some authentic "conservative" fidelity to Universal Truth--as opposed to cowardly, perpetual catering to human ignorance--please call 911. Because it's in pretty bad shape.

Comments

[Robert Lipscomb]

This issue might be one of the few examples in recent history where the "liberal" position is truly liberal and the "conservative" position is truly conservative and the "progressive" position is truly progressive. This might be a teachable moment