Pragmatic Conservatism

Guest Post by Doctor Snedley, Doctor Biobrain's Personal Assistant

Over at the aptly named Unclaimed Territory, liberal lawyer freak Glenn Greenwald rants about something he calls the "Cult of Bush" suggesting that conservatives have abandoned their conservative ideology in exchange for Bush loyalty. But as is to be expected of an ultra-liberal Bush-hater like Glenn, he is totally and completely incorrect.

Sure, the current-day conservatives completely go against everything that they stood for before, but there's a perfectly good explanation for that: That was then, this is now. The conservative movement is nothing if not pragmatic, and simply because some liberals like Glenn are stuck in a pre-9/11 attitude concerning political ideologies is no concern to us. The conservative movement has moved on, and guys like Greenwald and Sullivan were simply left behind; flailing about like dying salmon.

You see, before 9/11, America's biggest threat was Bill Clinton and his Soviet masters, and so the conservative movement worked to combat that threat at every turn. The exceptions, of course, being Welfare Reform, which clearly worked against his Soviet master's interests, as well as the war in Kosovo; in which we again maneuvered Clinton to go against the Soviet agenda. Conservatives were also able to save the economy from Clinton’s evil clutches; turning his recession into one of America’s strongest growth periods. And we clearly won that battle, as Bill Clinton is no longer President and the Soviet Union has been vanquished.

But post-9/11, everything is different. Now our biggest threat is no longer communism. Now our biggest threat is fundamentalism. And so our arguments have adapted accordingly. No longer opposing government power, which had been used by the communists for decades; we now believe that an infinitely strong government and budget-busting deficits are key to defeating the new threat that America faces. And by doing so, we will surely have the Bush-hating liberal idiots defeated in no time. Oh, and the terrorists too. It'll be a two-fer. We'll get them both.

And so that explains Glenn's confusion as to why the label "conservative" no longer applies to him. Rather than this being a case of a movement without ideology; we see poor dinosaur Greenwald lamenting his impending extinction. While the True Conservatives stay busy striving to prevent the destruction of our great nation, poor Glenn finds himself the proverbial “odd man out”; continuing to dance to a song which has long ceased playing. And all because he insists on imperiling our nation due to his everlasting and irrational hatred of a man named Bush.