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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsThe Conservative Onion
The other thing that I think needs clarification is that its wrong to think of conservatives as having a single argument for their preferred policies. What they offer instead is more like an onion, with layers inside layers; every time you strip away one excuse theres another one inside.
Thus someone like Paul Ryan starts by claiming to be a deficit hawk. Push him really hard, however, on why in that case he advocates big tax cuts, and hell shift to arguing that big government (as opposed to not-paid-for government) is the real problem. (Thats also what happened in my UK debate on Newsnight.) But if you push hard on that, it turns out that theres yet another layer: the claim that things like taxing the rich to help pay for social insurance are immoral, because people have a right to keep the wealth they created which is why suggesting that no plutocrat is an island is heresy.
This onion structure is why you should never believe reasonable-sounding conservatives who say that youre attacking a straw man, that nobody believes that wealth creators owe nothing to society. Oh yes they do its usually hidden inside a couple of more socially acceptable excuses, but at their core Ryan and people like him believe that theyre characters in Atlas Shrugged.
By the way, who built the roads in Galts Gulch?
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/07/21/the-conservative-onion/
Thus someone like Paul Ryan starts by claiming to be a deficit hawk. Push him really hard, however, on why in that case he advocates big tax cuts, and hell shift to arguing that big government (as opposed to not-paid-for government) is the real problem. (Thats also what happened in my UK debate on Newsnight.) But if you push hard on that, it turns out that theres yet another layer: the claim that things like taxing the rich to help pay for social insurance are immoral, because people have a right to keep the wealth they created which is why suggesting that no plutocrat is an island is heresy.
This onion structure is why you should never believe reasonable-sounding conservatives who say that youre attacking a straw man, that nobody believes that wealth creators owe nothing to society. Oh yes they do its usually hidden inside a couple of more socially acceptable excuses, but at their core Ryan and people like him believe that theyre characters in Atlas Shrugged.
By the way, who built the roads in Galts Gulch?
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/07/21/the-conservative-onion/
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The Conservative Onion (Original Post)
phantom power
Jul 2012
OP
More like an Escher onion or mobius strip - when you think you are at the center, you
NRaleighLiberal
Jul 2012
#2
Duer 157099
(17,742 posts)1. I thought you meant there was a conservative version of The Onion
and I couldn't imagine it even being funny at all.
Hong Kong Cavalier
(4,572 posts)3. I thought the same thing.
And I was thinking "How the heck can they pull that off and be funny? Conservatives are rarely funny."
HughBeaumont
(24,461 posts)4. How would they do it?
Conservatives have been putting satirists, comedians and joke writers out of business for 10 years now. You can't get much more apeshit-heaving, off-the-charts LOL than the modern Republican and their policies.
Marie Marie
(9,999 posts)5. You read my mind.
(or I read yours..??). We all know that conservatives are only funny when they are not trying to be.
ThoughtCriminal
(14,047 posts)6. All Onion, all the time
after so many years, they still have the ability to produce astonishingly stupid ideas and commentary.
NRaleighLiberal
(60,014 posts)2. More like an Escher onion or mobius strip - when you think you are at the center, you
are back at the top. It is a bizarro argument with no rational conclusion - just leads you in circles.
phantom power
(25,966 posts)7. well said