Maybe I should resort to kidnapping: An Italian man has been charged with kidnapping after he forced his ex-girlfriend into his home to do the ironing. My wife refuses to iron. I've explained to her that it's tantamount to domestic treason, but she still refuses. And the Catholic Church doesn't allow divorce. Go figger.
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This strikes me like it could be a dangerous trend: Ahead of major public holidays the Russian Air Force often dispatches up to 12 cargo planes carrying loads of silver iodide, liquid nitrogen and cement powder to seed clouds above Moscow and empty the skies of moisture. Should we start trying to seed against tornadoes. Do we eventually end up with a repressed monster tornado that could throw Kansas into the ocean? Okay, maybe I'm being a bit dramatic, but it doesn't seem like a good idea.
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A similar thing happened to me, but I had it on backwards: Woman, 52, sues Victoria's Secret, claims injury from defective thong.
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Thomas Frank has a good WSJ op-ed piece about conservatism this morning. Excerpt:
Present a conservative with a list of the recent scandals and episodes of misgovernment that have turned voters so overwhelmingly against the Republican Party -- a good number of which involve Tom DeLay, as it happens -- and you can be almost certain that they will respond as "The Hammer" does. They can't be held responsible for that stuff, they will say, since true conservatism is opposed to "big government."
Frank goes on to say that conservatives are repeatedly in the front of government scandals, so they can't be believed when they say they're against big government. It's a clever argument, but it fails. He's probably right that self-identified conservatives get into power then carry on like big-government types. Can anyone reach a different conclusion after 1994? I can't. But that doesn't mean that conservatives aren't really against big government. The political conservative philosophy is against big government. In principle, it is. Do self-identified conservatives carry out the principles when they get into power? No, and it's frustrating. The problem is rooted in the problem of power, which merits a much deeper discourse than I can muster this morning. Some day, some day (always some day).
But it beats liberals. They are pro-government in principle and act. At least conservatives are pro-government in act only. I suppose it doesn't make a practical difference. I guess one could also argue that at least the liberals are consistent and honest (though they're not; their rhetoric doesn't boast big government anymore), whereas conservatives are schizophrenic.
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By the way, the quote from Tom DeLay at the beginning is a travesty: "To paraphrase G.K. Chesterton," Mr. DeLay wrote, "conservatism has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and left untried." The word is "Christianity," not "conservatism." They're not the same thing, in case you're wondering.
