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February 27, 2006
'The man who is not a socialist at 20 has no heart, but if he is still a socialist at 40 he has no head.' Aristide Briand
And so we have the traditional justification and explanation of conservatism. Why the split? Head and heart can, and do, work together, don't they?
 That accounts for the old conservatives----cold war ones and the neo-cons--- but not the young ones.
But the conservative youth under Howard are different to the older conservatives. They are seen as similar to those the US blogger Andrew Sullivan called the 'South Park Republicans', to describe young iconoclasts who "see through the cant and the piety of the Left and cannot help giggling".
The term comes from the anti-establishment television cartoon series South Park whose heroes are four, foul-mouthed fourth-graders who gleefully lampoon the sacred values of the Left.
South Park lampoons the baby boomers who championed individual happiness over familial responsibility and promoted no-fault divorce. The young conservatives are opposed to the liberal-progressive values, or what is defined as political correctness. Hence the culture wars and the South Park conservative's views of the liberal media's bias and the intellectual exhaustion of the Left in the post-9/11 era.
The South Park conservatives do not adopt the Marxist view that capitalism contains the seeds of its own destruction. They celebrate the fruits of capitalism --- new cars, plasma TVs and trips overseas. They have grown up amidst the prosperity of a vibrant economy has encouraged the young conservatives to create small businesses of their own. So the welfare state appears redundant to these libertarians.
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Gary, I would suggest that there is nothing "conservative" whatsoever about the South Park "conservatives". I would suggest that they are essentially a mob of punk adolescents--as are most/all so called libertarians.
My favourite philosopher pointed out 3-4 years ago that the film/movie that BEST encapsulates the current ethos of the USA body politic is/was
Beavis & Butthead Do America which is essentially about 2 emotionally retarded totally unconscious punk adolescents obsesssed with stuffing things in their mouths and screwing any and everything that moves.
Also regarding the famous quote re head vs heart.
Anyone who admits to that description is essentially telling the world that they are in effect already dead. A quote from my favourite philosopher.
"Love not reason, should make decisions.Decisions based on reason and not love are karmic.
Therefore, let the heart be your intelligence. The heart is unreasonable. The heart is mad. And the heart is the ground I call you to walk on.
The only way to overcome the murderer that is the cosmos is to love. Allow the heart to break, and BE that sign. Be a FEELING being. Then you cannot be murdered, you cannot be a fool, you cannot be deceived."