“I WAS MISINFORMED.”

1/31/10

Today’s (i.e., Sunday, 1/31/10’s) Chicago Sun-Times reports that Representative Jean Schmidt, a “passionately conservative” Republican from Ohio and an ally of the “birther” movement, which contends that President Obama is not a U.S. citizen and thus is an illegitimate president, strategically positioned herself during, and immediately after, the State of the Union address so that she could personally greet the president and get his autograph on copy of the Speech.

Representative Schmidt explained away this paradox by stating that she was merely trying to get government help for a uranium enrichment plant in her district. Representative Schmidt apparently has a firm enough grip on the obvious to see the irony in her alternately lambasting the president’s integrity and shamelessly begging him for the favor of an autograph but apparently doesn’t possess the mental horsepower to see the at least equal irony in her response. It seems that this “passionate conservative” has no problem with big government, as in federally funded uranium enrichment plants, as long as the remunerative rewards of that big government are channeled in her direction.

Huh.

I always thought that conservatism had its basis in a fundamental distrust of government power, a vigilant concern for liberty, support of a muscular yet humble foreign policy that limited itself to the defense of American interests, and an attendant opposition to the overreaching power of governing, and especially of federal, institutions, or something like that. I wasn’t aware that “passionate conservatism” amounts to supporting the GOP in its efforts to expand government in its proper direction, i.e., toward Republican constituencies, opposing the Democratic Party even on those rare occasions when it actually supports the advance of liberty, endlessly exuding boundless and blind enthusiasm for sending even more young men and women to their graves in conflicts that seemingly serve only to enrich the defense contractors who underwrite your (and, come to think of it, the other) party, and ensuring the continuation of further government encroachment into the lives of individuals as long as there is something, usually money, in it for one and one’s constituents.

I guess according to Jean Schmidt and all those other “passionate conservatives,” I have been wrong all along.