A bit long – from a longer piece – but good. I figure that Ace will let it slide; we’ve known each other for years.
On Twitter I remarked — lightheartedly, not snidely — that my fellow conservatives were turning into wild-eyed, casino-mad crazy gamblers. That really is a strong analogy for me, because that’s the way I see it: We, as a group, have been in the casino for a long time, and we’ve made a lot of risky bets. Most of these have paid off — Angle, Paul. Some haven’t — Maes. One big one — Miller — just paid out big.
And now I (and others) are trying to herd the group out of the casino, advising “We’ve had a great night, now let’s bank our winnings and leave here as winners, overall,” but other people are saying, “No, no, NOOOO! More betting! More betting! I have to catch that Joe Miller rush again!”
I feel that way. I do. I feel I’m offering the voice of prudence here and a lot of people are caught up in the rush of action and tumbling dice and are calling me a buzz-kill for offering the sort of sound advice which will look a hell of a lot better in the light of day. Or the light of early afternoon, after we all wake up after a jittery, wild late night at the tables.
And I get that people want to gamble, and I get that people disagree with me on whether our bets are prudent, and whether some “winnings” — like Mike Castle — are even winnings at all.
I just hate being called an asshole or sell-out or candy-ass or RINO for offering what is, in my mind, perfectly good advice which, seriously, is offered with the movement’s best interests at heart. Even if you disagree with me, I wish people who disagreed would accept that I am offering this advice with best intentions. I am not looking to screw anyone. Quite the opposite.
And that’s why Mark Levin is dead to me. He seems incapable of accepting that people of good heart and spirit might disagree with him; everyone who disagrees with him, it turns out, is a monster who just wants to “destroy” Christine O’Donnell because we’re all secretly liberals.
Which is the sort of thing a degenerate gambler says when you try to pry him way from the table. But you’ve got the problem, not him, you know?
Levin was never particularly alive for me – not having been raised as a conservative, I’m not particularly steeped in its tradition of talk radio – but yeah.
Here’s the only problem with that piece: NONE of these bets have paid off. We don’t get to see the cards for another 48 days.
Meh.
You could ignore Levin’s radio show — I do — and focus on his work with Landmark Legal and his book “Liberty and Tyranny”, and he’s still done more to fight the tide than Ace has ever done.
Rob: By that rule, I could (theoretically) grievously insult you for that defense and be as justified as Levin is for doing so.
Which I’m not going to do, because I’m not Mark Levin. 🙂
on a more positive note, run across any right-minded recaps of the Kasich/Strickland affair?
Rob,
Not so. Ace’s site gives a whole lot of us (he termed us “dirty conservatives”) a place to go and get all wee-wee’d up to walk precincts, make calls, what have you. If all I had were sites like Malkin’s spot, Mark Levin, and Rush, I’d probably have become very politically disinterested by now. They don’t do much to convince me that there’s room in “the movement” for a non-social conservative 23 year old. After posting there for the last 4 years I feel I can say with some certainty that most of the other frequent posters at AoSHQ feel the same way.
Levin’s books were okay (I’ll take Jonah Goldberg or Thomas Sowell any day of the week) but his radio show is unbearable. Angry kermit the frog bleating for several hours? No thanks.