Real Conservatism

Tristero over at Hullaballoo deconstructs Tobin Harshaw's paen to movement conservatism. It's a thing of beauty, and you should read the whole thing, but here's the takeaway lesson:

Conservatism - the real kind, the kind we've endured at least since Nixon - isn't an intellectual movement in need of reform. It is extreme right thuggery epitomized by the bloated face of a fat, cigar-chomping, drug addict who makes fun of Parkinson victims and proudly boasts that he wants the president of the United States to fail.

I"m sick and tired of these sober, ever so thoughtful, discussions of the direction of modern conservatism. There is only one direction I care to discuss for such an utterly dildo pseudo-philosophy: its journey to defeat. Conservatism in the 21st Century has no intellectual history worthy of discussion - Edmund Burke, my ass. Today's conservatives, like the incredibly influential religious nuts called The Family, are so unbelievably mush-brained they approvingly lump Hitler in with Jesus. Real conservatism is a haven for bigotry, stupidity, ignorance, bad ideas, and an unlimited obsession with violence that is symptomatic of profound deviance. It rots this country's economic, scientific, artistic, and moral health. As the 2000 election, and now Norm Coleman show, It is deeply inimical to democracy,

Conservatism as it is practiced today is not something to reform. It is something mightily to oppose.

Considering what the face of modern conservatism resembles, I'd say that's a fair statement.