Collapsing Conservatism

I believe I have mentioned in the past the ongoing discussion, that seems to have slowed a bit lately, amongst intellectual righty bloggin' types about the intellectual bankruptcy of conservative ideology at the current moment. I have had two posts on this topic brewing for awhile, but haven't really found the desire to write either one. Well, now I so desire. I am sure one of those intellectual righty bloggin' types have already covered this but none the less here is my view from the Central time zone. I think there is an extreme self centeredness at the heart of right wing ideology today. More than likely it has always been there, but it seems ever present now. To exemplify, I am going to use an anecdote from some former roommates of mine, good conservatives all, even if one wouldn't admit it.

At the time of Hurrican Katrina, these smart young men could not wrap their heads around why the black folks of New Orleans just didn't leave the city before hand following the evacuation order. Further, they couldn't stand the fact that "those people" then had the audacity to expect the federal government to bail them out of the disastrous situation in which they found themselves. Now I somewhat share sympathy with the idea that it is stupid to let people live below sea level on a coast. I am not sure if I have blogged about how I do not think we should be rebuilding massive parts of NOLA or not, but this story isn't about me, so lets return to my conservative roommates at the time.

In light of their stated opinions regarding those trapped in New Orleans at the time of Katrina, I pointed out that everyone everywhere in the United States expects the government to bail them out from disasters, whether it is hurricanes in the East, Tornadoes in the Midwest, or forest fires and earthquakes out West. Politically, this is one of the things we expect our government to do. As an aside conservatives might want to add rebuild after disasters to their mantra of the goverment should only build roads and defend the nation. Returning to the point at hand, my conservative roommates response was very similar to my point about living below sea level, but broader. Simply, they did not believe that people should live in areas in which such natural disasters existed if those people couldn't afford to rebuild themselves after such a disaster. We are coming up on the ultimate point, so hold on. When I pointed out that they likely would not be able to afford to rebuild after a disaster such as Katrina, their rejoinder was that they wouldn't live anywhere like that anyway.

What is important about this anecdote is that in the course of a conversation with two conservatives, is that their justifications for their beliefs ultimately rested on the idea that disasters wouldn't happen to them. The discussion kept coming down to what my friends and roommates as individuals. Broader intellectual points be damned, bad things just weren't going to happen to these two roommates so obviously the government shouldn't do anything to help anyone. This must be the much discussed "optimism" of conservatism. To me, it seemed exceptionally self centered and the reasoning infantile. It should make sense that if this is the ultimate foundation of American conservatism, and as it waters down this does seem to be the message, then it makes sense that conservatives are intellectually bankrupt right now.