Come to Texas, if you think civility is a conservative virtue. What the
Democrats call Bush is very very mild compared to what people like Barbara
Jordon was called by her conservative colleauges in the State House. Or,
the names Hillery gets called all the time in public. Shrub is kinda
affectionate by comparison.
Dan M.
Conservative virtue - as in, those few remaining people who seem to
practice it and/or make rhetorical obeisance to it - are conservatives.
Not all conservatives have conservative virtues, not all liberals have
liberal ones. Witness Strom Thurmond, who appears to lack all political
virtues, so far as I can tell. Well, he may also lack life, but that's a
current state, as opposed to a career long description. But it's not an
accident that Bush could make "returning civility to Washington" be a major
point of his campaign. Whether he believes it or not - and he genuinely
does seem to believe in it judging by his behavior of the past few months -
it's something that a conservative can say and be believed. Were Gore to
have made the same argument he would have looked like a fool. Given his
performance during the campaign he perhaps did not need any assistance in
that task, but even he of the most remarkable political tin ear in modern
memory could sense that this was not a winning issue for him. Calling B
ush "shrub" appears to be the central attack of most of his opponents at
the moment, actually - and thus witness his 57% approval ratings, vastly
higher than those of his predecessor at the same point in his Presidency.
It is, nonetheless, uncivil, and the defense of civility has been one of
the major tenets of conservatism since at least Edmund Burke, and really
(given conservatism's virtual definition as the defense of the norms and
behaviors of the status quo) a very long time before that.
Gautam
