"The Eton Rifles" - The Jam
Sorry for my utter blog neglect. Crazy week continues -- Louisville yesterday, Richmond today, Philadelphia tomorrow, New Jersey for the weekend (parent's weekend at the lad's college), and NYC on Monday. How is a man supposed to attend to his blogging duties with work constantly interfering?
I found this post -- and this -- by Kevin Drum to be amusing. I have to admit I would be deeply unhappy if my son were to be romantically serious with a Republican. He could bring home a woman or a man of any race or nationality and I would never blink. But if he came home with a Fox watcher or a Limbaugh listener, I would want to slit my wrists, would, in fact, view it as a symbol of tremendous failure on my part. I am puzzled why Drum doesn't get this, why he pretends that the difference between being a Democrat or Republican at this moment is simply a disagreement "about the optimal top marginal tax rate." This is nonsense. To consciously choose to identify with Republican Party at this juncture is to throw one's lot in with so much that is ugly -- the join the company of racists, homophobes, and nationalist bigots, to choose contemptous anti-empiricism and primitive religiosity as one's north star.
I have to confess that as a parent if my son brought home a budding Ann Coulter or Michelle Malkin or Jennifer Rubin, I would be seized with the urge to slit my wrists. I would feel like a complete failure, like I had failed to inculcate the values of decency into my lone offspring if he found himself attracted to such hatefulness.
I do know that there are decent Republicans -- but by and large the ones I know are only superficially political. They have inherited their world view or they live somewhere where their assumptions about politics are largely unchallenged. But for a young, well-educated person to make a conscious decision to join the party of Michelle Bachmann, Rick Santorum, Todd Akin, Steve King, Louie Gohmert, Allen West, Jan Brewer, Ralph Reed, Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Virginia Foxx, Joe Arpaio, Ken Cuccinelli, and Sam Brownback is to cast one's lot with hate and abysmal ignorance. Not in my house buddy.
Share your thoughts and consider this an open thread. I have not spent a minute online today, so I have much to catch up on.
