I periodically get email asking me for a list of good conservative blogs. In fact, I got another one just yesterday. Around these parts, we consider "good" and "conservative" to be oxymorons for most of the year, but today I'm going to make an exception. For a variety of reasons — some are entertaining, some I learn things from, some are mainly anthropological excursions — there are several non-liberal blogs that I read daily or almost daily.I could roll out the usual protestations and say I'm not conservative, but I've become resigned to the label, which, more than anything else, means to me that the category "liberal hawk" doesn't exist anymore. Maybe I seem to be one of the "good" ones because I'm not one.
December 26, 2005
"Several non-liberal blogs that I read daily or almost daily."
Thanks to Kevin Drum for putting me on this list:
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31 comments:
I could roll out the usual protestations and say I'm not conservative
Anyone that is begging readers to vote her as conservative diva should have given up the usual protestations long ago.
Quxxo: When I saw this post had 1 comment, I guessed it was from you, saying something sour.
Ann, some are born conservative, and others have being conservative thrust upon them...
As you say, I don't know how many "liberals" (hawks or not!) are left...
Sorry if I am harshing your buzz.
In this day and age, Barry Goldwater is considered a liberal.
quxxo: "In this day and age, Barry Goldwater is considered a liberal."
Yeah, and look how well Goldwater did in the 1964 Presidential election.
You must consider him a liberal because he was a loser.
If you expect Ann to demonstrate his "liberal" credentials by attaching herself to failed and shallow democratic talking points, you obviously haven't been paying attention very long. Its about being intellectually honest, not partisan. Try being more original than "on the backs of the poor and middle class."
Come on Ann, advocate nationalization of a major part of the economy. Any old part will do: health care, oil, education or do the whole thing through confiscatory taxes. That would show quxxo and Stephen that you are a true liberal.
The reason that the tax cuts are heavily skewed to the rich is that they are the ones paying taxes! The poor in America don't pay taxes, and many of them already get "refunds" of money they never paid. You can't give people a tax cut if they don't pay taxes!
The left-wing hasn't won a U.S. Presidential election since 1964. Carter won as a Southern moderate. (He emerged as a liberal later.) Clinton won as a Southern moderate.
As a businessman, if I failed to make a profit for 40 years, I would look for some new products to sell.
Why are people assuming I want to establish my credentials as a liberal? Did I ever say that? I don't normally talk about economic policy things because I'm not knowledgable enough to be interested in my own opinions. Since I don't have ideological positions about wealth redistribution, I have nothing to say.
Q: Why are people assuming I want to establish my credentials as a liberal? Did I ever say that?
A: I could roll out the usual protestations and say I'm not conservative, but I've become resigned to the label, which, more than anything else, means to me that the category "liberal hawk" doesn't exist anymore.
P: Since I don't have ideological positions about wealth redistribution, I have nothing to say.
Q: What does this say about your other statements regarding the war, surveillance of US Citizens, and the President's conduct in all of the above?
I am wondering now, if you weren't buzzed when you wrote all of this.
BTW: While you pound on the table, I am wondering what you think of David Cole's review of John Yoo and his book in the NY Review of Books? or ReddHedd's statement that Law Professor Yoo failed his client? Or what the known innocent Uighurs still imprisoned at Gitmo think of Professor Yoo?
Ann, I love your blog. Now change it to suit my tastes.
C'mon, Ann. You need to start writing about what I want to read about or I'm going to stop reading your blog.
Don't you realize I'm just trying to be helpful?
As for politics, please affirm my personal political beliefs. Because, you know, I like you and all, and that means you should agree with me.
And if you don't agree with me, I'll call you names.
Then you'll start agreeing with me, right?
Odd that the Ace of Spades HQ which won "Best Conservative Blog" isn't on the list of conservative blogs while Drezner and Sullivan, both of whom announced they were supporting Kerry, made the list. Volokh and Instapundit probably wouldn't answer to conservative, and the Corner while correctly labeled conservative, is simply boring. Too much insider chit-chat. I haven't read the other blogs on the list times enough to comment on them.
Our hostess has self-identified as conservative, although if I hadn't read that, I'd have put her blog with Volokh and Reynolds as slightly right of center on some things and left of center on most others.
quxxo, Goldwater was in his dotage when he married a leftwing teeny bopper and turned liberal a few years before he died in 1998. He lost the presidency for two reasons, 1. the sympathy vote for Johnson in the wake of the Kennedy assassination, and 2. the media did a number on him with the full help and support of the Republican party then he the hands of Nelson Rockefeller and his thugs.
The world would be a far different place today had Goldwater won. No Vietnam war and it's aftermath that divided the nation and whose repercussions we are still feeling today.
gahrie, it's maddening that the media use the income tax as a propaganda tool. The poor pay no taxes, but they benefit from the reverse income tax aka Earned Income Credit. People who qualify, and it's remarkably easy to qualify, not only the poverty stricken get them, receive sizeable checks from Uncle Sam apropos of nothing much. While the so-called rich who got those BushCo tax breaks also get to pay the dread Alternate Minimum Tax (AMT) which comes to many thousands of dollars over and above their regular taxes.
Labels are marketing tools.
Me, I buy based on what's actually inside the package.
Regardless of the label, I'll take the contents of this blog, and those like it, any day.
Strange that nobody else noted this, that I saw.
I'm not sure exactly what it tells us, but surely it tells us something that Drum uses "conservative" as a synonym for "non-liberal"?
Peter Hoh: It's comments like that which make me always read "Peter Hoh" comments.
This blog provides reasoned thinking, prolific good writing, interesting topics and thoughtful comments. If the author and I disagree on some aspects of politics, that's no big deal because this blog has everything else going for it.
Maybe I seem to be one of the "good" ones because I'm not one.
Yawn.
Stop this incessant backtalk about not being a conservative already, else I'll delete my Althouse vote for "Conservative Blogress Diva".
Cheers,
Victoria
And if you don't agree with me, I'll call you names.
Then you'll start agreeing with me, right?
No way!
I thought I was the only one who got "Daily Kos' Guide to Blogging" as a stocking-stuffer.
Cheers,
Victoria
If you expect Ann to demonstrate his "liberal" credentials by attaching herself
Ann, his, herself.
Please tell me this was just a common typing blooper which we've all done, because I'm at a very fragile emotional state in my life.
I can't take one more surprise.
Cheers,
Victoria
This I like.
Kevin Drum asks his commentariat to 'play nice', second comment on thread (from Nads)
i don't think tennessee positions count as "academic."
(Referencing the first comment that's trying to make a point that because many of the bloggers listed are professors that the academy must not be left leaning as so many conservatives claim, and I guess 'Nads' must think a calumny directed at a whole state scores points on some sort of ledger of wit (while at the same time bringing down Instapundit, who could never recover from such a cutting remark))
Somehow no comments about this blog yet, the vitriol is focused on either Volokh or Instapundit for the moment, but give them time, I'm sure someone will find something reprehensible about Prof. Althouse and express it with the usual wit and wisdom.
I'm not sure that being lumped with Sully is such a compliment, tho ;p
::: beautifulatrocities :::
erp,
Drum's list wasn't a list of conservative blogs it was a list of conservative blogs that he reads.
Also, what do you mean by "the poor pay no taxes". If they're getting the EITC then they're working which means they're paying payroll taxes. Payroll taxes hit the poorest Americans the hardest and the ones hit are the working poor.
Thank you, Ann for expressing your POV as you see it. Labels are not of interest to me. I simply enjoy your take on things. Wih abounding love and encouragement to go forth each and every day, Steve
I've only been reading this blog for a few weeks, and I keep coming back because I like the mix of topics covered. I've seen Althouse referred to as a conservative by others, but one other thing I like about this blog is that I'm not really sure how I'd label her.
Anyway, Ann Althouse said:
I don't normally talk about economic policy things
I'd like to plug one of _my_ favorite non-leftist blogs which is a good place to go for economics coverage. www.johannorberg.net
A Swedish libertarian's blog. I have no connection to that blog whatsoever. Just an anonymous reader, same as here.
Part of being a conservative is not having an ideology.
Althouse, maybe your problem is that you are unable to eject your own pragmatism in favor of a proclaimed principle such as egalitarianism.
If all you have is principle, truth is meaningless. However, if you are unable to rid yourself of common sense you will fall into the "conservative" bucket. That's just the way it is.
Low wage earners are hurt by payroll taxes just like the rest of us. Payroll taxes are a problem for everyone, but then how else to fund the welfare state. High wage earners no longer have a cap on FICA. They just keep paying and paying.
DEC:
"The left-wing hasn't won a U.S. Presidential election since 1964 . . . Clinton won as a Southern moderate."
And technically, when you look at the numbers, even the Clinton wins are qualified wins: the GOP vote was split by the presense of a third party. Absent Perot, no Clinton presidency. You'd think that the left would have learned from this, but they seem to have their own third-party nuisance.
Sloan:
" Part of being a conservative is not having an ideology."
I don't agree that this is true. I see no indication that - even in its most pure, Burkeian form - conservatism is "nonideological". I'm actually reading Russell Kirk's The Conservative Mind at the moment, and what's surprising is just how little evidence there is of this strange pro-Kristolian time when conservatism was "non-ideological." At root, conservatism is of course a general proclivity for what is over what might be, for stability over radical change and for tradition over innovation, but so far as I can discern, through the times of Burke and Adams, Calhoun and Macauly, even to Thatcher and Reagan, conservatism it has never been the mindless reactionary stand-pattism of the left-liberal imagination.
This is what makes this an interesting time for Britain's Tory party. After becoming, essentially, the party of mindless reactionary stand-pattism since they became paralysed during the Major administration, there is a possibility that Cameron will bring back a sense of purpose - something they can only have precisely by embracing an ideology, by standing for more than no change.
I've noticed this both on blogs and at a personal level with some of my lefty friends. I won't talk about politics with many of them because it quickly descends into insults and indignation, even from people who are otherwise good friends and very civil toward me. It is as if they have decided that certain ways of thinking make a person evil, and they don't want to hear it.
I think that's a good example of what someone said some years ago:
"Conservatives think liberals are idiots, but liberals think conservatives are evil."
Now, while that's certainly an oversimplification/overgeneralization, I believe there's more than a few grains of truth to it.
At least in my crowd it holds true -- conservative friends of mine are often contemptuous of and condescending towards liberals (along the lines of raking them over the coals for "how dumb do you have to be to believe in policy X which has never worked in all of recorded history") though they'll at least engage what the liberals say, but the liberals are like Drum's or Kos's readers -- demonizing, ascribing evil motives, and not wanting to even hear what the other side has to say.
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