Effete Elite conservatism vs. "Happy crazy hair smiles"

Sistah Raccoon is at it again. I think I'll just post her entire communiqué to the good people of St. Francisville, Louisiana. I will even include her signature remark to Baby Raccoon with which she always closes these missives.

Well I understan now why you peoples have all them famly conflicts down there in you deep dark woods. Lil Ray he be talking about you all a time. All a time. He even lead off he whole big new magazine article wif a rehash a Lil Ruthie an all her faults. Lil Ray say he say

http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articl...

"Years ago, when my wife and I first committed to homeschooling our kids, we caught hell from my sister, a public schoolteacher. Most of her objections were familiar to us, and we had answers for them. One we didn’t see coming, though: her utter lack of sympathy for our interest in a pedagogy that focused on the classics of the Western tradition.

This surprised me because my sister was a conservative, like most people in my hometown. My conservatism is primarily cultural, social, and intellectual. Hers was also cultural and social, but it was more temperamental than intellectual. In fact, though my sister was a math instructor, and a good one, she had a reflexive disdain for intellectualism. She saw it as an effete indulgence at best, at worst a rationale for exploiting the common man. For her, the culture war was really class warfare—and her brother was on the other side of the trenches.

It didn’t matter that I had forgotten more political theory than she ever knew. What mattered was that I was a city dweller who shopped at Whole Foods and didn’t care for Sarah Palin’s style of politics. That marked me out as a traitor to the tribe."

Now I dunno if Lil Ruthie ever did any such thing at all mind you. Jus what Lil Ray say. Poor Lil Ruthie dead now. Can't say for herself no more.

So the conflict mus be Lil Ray he be a "elite conservative" save by he Dante sav and he internet life style who be "forgotten more political theory than she ever knew" while a res a you folks watch that Duck Dynasty and smile you happy crazy hair smiles. An even wif you WFHS an all. No wonder you need you Lil Ray Dante Sav Benedict Option Healing Center. Heal you right up.

Peoples an they airs. You ain't nothin but a Raccoon Baby an don't you ever forget it. Thats right Baby. Good enough

There is a lot here for all you wild creatures of the forest to feast on.

"Alt-conservative"* publisher's purse dog pees on American Sniper for the team

By the way, "alt-conservatism" is the ideological equivalent of hermaphrodism or transgenderism, the gambit that some creature somewhere - a marmot, a penguin - will still be available to date you on Saturday night. Or, as in the case of this and TAC, that at least someone will buy your product.

Anyway, go here for the golden shower. If you don't already know who Chris Kyle is, educate yourself.

As usual, there is a wrapper and a payload.

The wrapper is two "niggling" gripes about the movie: an insufficiently realistic baby and a scene where it appears to be daylight in two distantly separated places simultaneously. The latter of these "goofs" as they are commonly known in IMDB leads to the payload:

If a filmmaker takes that kind of liberty with astronomy, one wonders what other details he has twisted.

Taking that kind of liberty with astronomy. Positively Ptolemaic. Best we flee while we still can.

Well, wonder no more, marmot. Skip the movie and instead either read "Peter [giving] it a B+ over on FrontRow", or better yet, read a story about "strange lies" Chris Kyle allegedly told someone. Alas, no Page 3 girl, penguin.

This is what Chris Kyle's heroic life and tragic murder are to alt-conservatives: product, in this case lipstick for a chihuahua, at best.

Give the purse dog a call, marmots and penguins; he's obviously lonely.

UPDATE (as they say): Contra pursedog (r), Paul Rieckhoff.

I just donated $18,000 to The American Conservative

And it was matched by a donor even wealthier than me.

Or maybe I didn't. How would I know? They certainly won't open their books for me. Maybe I intended to, but actually only misplaced that $18,000 instead. And was it really matched? Beats me.

Whatever. Like most of our Working Boy's writing there, the important thing is the narrative of someone like me giving to support what commenter Aaron Gross triumphantly reminds us

“The American Conservative: We Are The Alt-Right Base”

and that narrative of the giving of mine immediately turning into bread cast upon the waters because of the generosity of narratively saying two additional anonymous wealthy donors would match it.

For those like you who may be "skeptical of the market and of Wall Street" as Rod puts it, this sort of narrative matching is the very best thing short of the certainty of government wage and price controls.

Forget nay-sayers like allenkopf, who cavil "The market and Wall Street are two very different things often opposing each other" - that's the whole problem in a nutshell, isn't it? Two nihilistic systems in opposition to each other, both going up and down, driven by nothing but the sheer caprice of the average uninformed American, not systematically supported by the thoughtfully credulous average American with money to spend like you.

Compare that sort of quibbling with my narratives and those I support at The American Conservative with my generous narrative donations, narratives which can always be counted on to faithfully follow the prevailing media wind, as we have just seen there in those addressing the shooting of Michael Brown, the arrest of Eric Garner, the UVA-"Jackie" horror, and now the Democratic Senate torture report.

In fact, if you give now, directly to me, your generous contribution will be multiplied, not two, but three ways: first, I'll receive it; second, I'll donate it to TAC - honest; and then, third, it will be matched in kind by unknown wealthy donors up to a maximum of $20,000.

I don't need to point out to someone with an advanced degree like you that donating the maximum $20,000 to me directly will wring the most result out of this compound triple multiplier effect I just described.

Donate to me now, and generously, and defend the Alt-Right Base from all of her enemies, internal and external, domestic and foreign.

And as a token of my respect for the generous person who donates the most, I'll let you, yes, you, decide what "Alt-Right" and "Alt-Conservatism" is supposed to mean in ordinary everyday English for all of taxable year 2015 to come.

Thank you for your generous support of my support and generosity , and may God bless you.

Their kind of conservatism

Charades:

Boy Working

Yes. Everyone who guessed, guessed correctly. And now to the main event.

Just recently, to further promote his forthcoming Dante book, our hard-sniffing Working Boy availed himself of an interview with  "philosopher James K.A. Smith" (Is philosopher a professional designation? If not, can anyone be one? If so, how does one rank Smith relative to philosopher Charlie Brown or philosopher Pogo?).


Naturally, such favors must be repaid, head to tail, and so this tongue bath urging readers to subscribe to Smith's Comment magazine entitled Our Kind of Conservatism.

Here's what we need to figure out, though. In the comments under Smith's article Redeeming Conservatism, a commenter named John Tiemstra puts us on this notice:

OK, just as long as we understand that the real conservatives are people who favor market-based reforms, like cap and trade, Obamacare, and Dodd-Frank. Most so-called conservatives these days are not conservative at all, but radical libertarians.

Whoa, really? Forgive me, but that sounds more like the Pelosi-Obama-Reid wing of conservatism to me.

And no "Nuh-huh, nooooooooo, no way, Dude!" from philosopher James K. A. Smith.

Is there a nuanced mystery to this redeemed conservatism too complex for my dense and primitive monkey noggin? If not, where am I going astray from real conservatism? I will say Smith appears to me to be successfully "offer[ing] a posture".

(philosopher and noted poultry critic Keith M. Ionlyhaveonemiddleinitial H.)

Here we go again...

I was reading the Comment magazine post which is referenced by a link Pikkumatti included here when I noticed a little blurb on this page for their next issue. Here we go again, I remember thinking. Looks like more alternative "conservatism", the kind that won't make you unpopular, is completely non-threatening and won't do anything to change the prevailing cultural landscape. No wonder they booked Dreher to write something for the issue.

Here's my, uh, deconstruction of their advertisement:

The Winter 2014 issue of Comment is themed Redeeming Conservatism. Are we out of our minds?

You are out of your minds for publishing a print edition of your rag in 2014. As to your proposed content, you are probably just very confused, arrogant, or both.

If you can't imagine anything good coming out of conservatism, this issue is for you.

There is actually a word for people who "can't imagine anything good coming out of conservatism". That word is liberals. So our guess is that, based on how you are presenting this topic, that word describes most of your readership.

Our hope is you'll discover, first, that conservatism is not what you thought it was ("You keep using that word. I don't think it means what you think it means.").

Yes, we saw The Princess Bride many times, too. So y'all are going to explain what conservatism is supposed to be. This should be really instructive. But we could read the Wikipedia pages on it for free—just sayin'.

Second, we hope when you encounter this conservative disposition, you might have occasion to take stock and be surprised to find this names a sensibility you already share.

The disposition and sensibility of this new and improved conservatism you are describing will be so much better because you are going to throw out the views you don't like in mainstream conservatism, i.e., what most people call conservatism.

Our goal is to start a conversation that "redeems" conservatism precisely by deconstructing what we tend to identify with conservatism.

Knew it; told you.

Conservatism, as we mean it, is not a recovery project; it's a preservation project.

Whatever that means.