http://www.nationalreview.com/node/420055/print When We Say ‘Conservative,’ We Mean . . .
By Jonah Goldberg — June 20, 2015
I am writing this from the back parking lot of a random Ramada in Williamsburg, Va. I’m sitting in my car in a Tommy Bahama shirt and pinstripe suit pants smoking a cigar. It’s a pretty sketchy look, even before I take off my shirt to finish getting properly dressed. A passing cop would probably assume that I’m waiting for a hooker, a drug dealer, or maybe someone from the development office at the Clinton Foundation looking for a donation.
Oddly, I’m here for none of those reasons.
I’m here because I’m a conservative. Or, to put it more clearly, I’m here to give a talk about what it means to be a conservative. An outfit called the Congressional Institute asked me to come speak to a bunch of Capitol Hill muckety-muck GOP aides on the question “Why Are You a Conservative?”
And since I don’t have much time to write a good “news”letter, never mind time to prepare my talk, I figured I’d try to kill two birds with one stone.
Which reminds me, I always had a bit of a problem with that expression. I get the idea behind it; economy of effort, conservation of resources, blah blah. But when was the last time there was a premium on saving stones? It seems to me that there’s a contradiction between this saying and another avian-themed maxim. The idea behind “a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush” is that one should be a bit humble in one’s expectations and grateful for what one has. If you know you can kill one bird with one stone, why get greedy by going for two in one shot? Contrary to popular impressions, I don’t know a lot about killing birds with rocks, but it seems to me that going for one bird would be infinitely easier and wiser than going for two in a single shot. By being greedy, you risk getting nothing.
Where was I? Oh, right.
There are any number of definitions of conservatism out there on the Interwebs, though my sense from googling around is that at least half of them are invidious; caricatures plucked from the imaginations of anti-conservatives looking for convenient enemies, sort of like Apollo Creed handpicking Rocky Balboa out of obscurity because he thought Rocky fit a convenient, and easily defeatable, stereotype.
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