The problem I have with the GOP

The Online Lunchpail is a progressive populist blog with multiparty appeal. By being progressive and populist, however, that eliminates the Republicans from being part of this multiparty big tent. The positions and actions that dominate today's GOP tend to give me trouble with almost all things Republican. My opposition to their acts is very personal, after I smartened up in middle school in the '80s.

Quite frankly, most modern conservatives have an attitude problem. They won't agree to disagree. They're big bullies.

Social engineering is a bulwark of conservatism today. Now, I may be more of an economic populist than anything, but it's been clear to me for years that conservatives take even their culture war stances to extremes. At a private high school I attended, the school administration practiced what I think was a very, very subtle advocacy of violence to advance political causes. It might not have been that noticeable to most who weren't cozy with the administration, but it was there. I think the school's favored students got the message, judging by what I and others experienced during the mock election. In short, if you admitted to supporting the "wrong" presidential candidate, you were called an accomplice to certain activities, and you faced the music for it - whether you supported all the candidate's stances or not.

My candidate got 46% of the popular vote nationwide - thus the thugs at school would treat 46% of the American public just as badly.

The principal did use the intercom to advance his political views. That much is undeniable. I think that alone resulted in violence because bullies at the school were so well-connected with the school administration that they'd do anything for it.

Is that right? Republican leaders apparently think so, because they try to appeal to this same violent element. The schoolhouse bully of 20 years ago is the statehouse bully today.

I'm putting it delicately. The Republican Party has been taken over by not just a strident but a militant conservatism. Greed and control (economic and social conservatism, respectively) overlap so much that it's like how when you chew 2 pieces of bubble gum at the same time you can't separate the pieces again.

My former high school's reputation for militant conservative advocacy didn't stop the Republicans and other conservatives who ran my county from supporting a declaration giving the school its own one-shot public holiday.

It boils down to the fact that the Republicans have a serious problem with reactionary weirdoes that they refuse to confront. People get a glimpse of it every so often, like when Trent Lott makes a racist statement, but these embarrassments never stick.

I don't know of any equivalent to this on the Left. Only on the Right am I able to locate the abysmal, forbidding marsh where ideology meets fervor that is so extreme that it doesn't care what's destroyed in the process of advancing an agenda.