Towards A Different Governmental Rationale

Robert James Bidinotto makes me think, damn him all to hell anyway! I've known Robert for a couple of years now, first coming across his name in a link of a blog long forgotten. At any rate, I clicked on the link and came to Robert's blog The Bidinotto Blog and quickly became a fan and occasional commenter. I've met some terrific people there, Oyster who is a regular commenter here and who authors Soy Como Soy (I am who I am) and Robert Jones, a talented photographer from my old stomping grounds in San Antonio but now out of Philadelphia and New York (and now a movie critic). But, I digress, this is about Robert's ideas and writings.

In the most recent copy of The New Individualist (and if you are capable of rational thought, I highly recommend trying a free copy or even better, subscribing) contains a remarkable treatise on conservatism and individualism. Bidinotto is an "individualist" and active in the movement. He writes with clarity and puts forth a pretty well crafted argument about what is wrong with modern conservatism. While not buying the full brunt of the argument, much of what he has written is inarguable and a feast for intelligent thought. A tidbit:

...conservaism arose as an anti-statist intellectual movement incorporating two elements: anticommunism and opposition to the burgeoning welfare state. That intellectual movement transformed itself into a political coalition with the 1964 presidential candidacy of Barry Goldwater. It achieved its political ascendancy with the election of Ronald Reagan.

But as an anti-statist coalition, conservatism always defined itself in negative terms - and remained united in terms of what it opposed. Members of that coalition did not share a single, overacrhing, philosophical frame of reference or agenda. ?There were a number of competing intellectual forces within that coalition, and as long as they confronted common enemies, they could remain in an uneasy alliance.

However, with the 1989 collapse of communism and the 1994 Democratic electoral debacle, conservatives found themselves in the political dirvers seat - and suddenly in need of a positive agenda on economic and cultural issues. But which competing set of views and valuses within the coalition would define that agenda?" [emphasis in the original]