Tuesday, October 04, 2005

True Conservatism

Having voiced my discomfature with conservative, and especially Christian fundamentalists ("fundis") one can read about that below in the preivous offering. To alley fears of my critics, I wil state that my feelings are not all one sided. I said I had "tensions," and tension reqquires a dynamism streached between two polls. Of course I find conservatives who are good people, the salt of the earth, of course I have conservative friends, and there are many conservatives whom I love.There are even a few instances in whcih I'm forced to abide their politics.

True conservatism, however, is not about busieness, or law enforcement, or being peranoid about the sixites, true conservatism is about a feeling of naustalga. The concept of "the conservative" was actually started by Sir Walter Scott, who was a great historian forced to turn to fiction writting to get his ideas across to the publiic. His notion of conservatism (he did coin start the concept) was centered around the general public of Scottland and thier feelings regarding their relationship with the British monarchy. The concept was tha of a feeling, a sense of reversnse and longing for the former state of things, the way things used to be. A regard for tradition and the love of the past. In this sense my sixites naustalgia is actually true conservatism.

When I first got saved I thought that my weariness of the bourgeoise would negate my experinces in the chruch. That first sumemr I found that I was totally wrong. I foudn myself haning out with people I would never have gotten to know as a would be radial drug taking left wing college student. I actually began to see their humanity and to feel, well, love for them. I was amazed adn chalcked it up to God. Since in my ealry days of conversion miracles were coming almost every day, I just felt this was yet another mircle God was working in my life.

Of course I've always loved my parents, and they were wonderful people. But they Rosevelt Democrats so perhaps they don't count. However, I made friends with a couple of elderly people at my new chruch, Jim and Dotty. They saw me as the son they never had, and I saw them as the conservative republican parents I never had. I actually did love them, I beileve they both gone now. We lost touch over the years, this was all early 80s. But I enjoyed haning out with them, always spent afernoons on Sudnay at their house. I just overlooked wired ideas they had about the Beattles being evil and everyting in the sixities being evil and rock music being of the devil. Dottie was a music teacher, their Daughter was a virtuoso on the piano, and so we shared other musical interests.

Come to that I've always managed to make freinds with right wingers. I have had a number of unlikely friendships that most of my firends could not figure out. One guy I was frineds with in the 80s I met by accient in the 2000's when he came to my message baord not even knowing that Metacrock was the person he knew in college. Why were we freinds? We argued all the time. I don't know, but I find it a great victory that he became stark raving liberal in the 90s!

Politics is not worth friendship. We are all humans together, trying to figure it out and get by. We are all Christians toegehter thrying to serve God as best we can.

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