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Current Events » in reply to Re: evangelical Conservatives

Republican Jihad
Robert — (archived)

Not bad. "Republican Crusader" is also good, and gives conservative Christians a bigger place at that table.

I guess whether there are many Conservatives in the GOP depends on how you define "Conservative". Particular brands of Conservatism are almost always identified with an individual (must be that authoritarian streak), "Goldwater Conservative", "Reagan Conservative", and so on. That gives us a lot of ways to slice and dice Conservatives, ordering them by the rabidity and dogmatism of the iconic leader, among other metrics.

But for practical purposes, I'm willing to go with the self-description "Conservative". Disputing such a self-label can easily become a form of pursuing ideological purity in itself, and I'm not sure that as an outsider I can, or should, do that. That's something that Conservatives do, both to themselves and to others--we've all been on the receiving end of some breathtakingly clueless "explanation" of our supposed beliefs seen through the filter of Winger malevolence. I follow a simple rule to try to stay on the high road: If a Winger does it, I shouldn't do it.

I notice that my terminology mutated in that last paragraph, from "Conservative" to "Winger", and maybe that's useful. To try to categorize Conservatives by ideology may be less useful than to categorize them by behavior, because the heart of this little branch is abusive behavior rather than ideological beliefs. Any Conservative (self-styled or not) with whom I can have a civil and meaningful discussion isn't a Winger Jihadist, regardless of topic; while a Conservative who tries to quash dissent and avoids discussion in favor of abuse and attempted intimidation, is most surely a Winger.

Two illustrative examples come to mind. Nobody would ever call REB a "Winger", but he's a Conservative, one you can have a reasonable discussion with. In stark contrast, we have the departed Gary, who left in a huff when I challenged him for stating that Zoners who dared dispute the wisdom and judgment of his Glorious Leader were committing treason. Now that was a Winger Jihadist!

That suggests a point about relativity, too. Back when we had more Winger Jihadists here, they defined a particular scale of rabidity. We want to be careful that in the present population, we don't rescale and assign an absolute endpoint of extremism to the person who's currently relatively most extreme. As dogmatic and stubbornly close-minded as Tom is, he's definitely not the Winger Jihadist that Gary was, and deserves a modicum of respectful treatment for that. Tom can only make your head explode if you let him, while Gary most assuredly would have blown your head off if he'd had a chance in the real world.

Tom wants to win against his opponents, Gary and other Winger Jihadists want to kill their opponents.

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