“To be conservative, then, is to prefer the familiar to the unknown, to prefer the tried to the untried, fact to mystery, the actual to the possible, the limited to the unbounded, the near to the distant, the sufficient to the superabundant, the convenient to the perfect, present laughter to utopian bliss.”  ~ Michael Oakeshott, On Being Conservative

[The only dichotomy I might take issue with is "fact to mystery."]

Update: Read iMonk’s Whine and Sheesh Party.  Excellent stuff, from someone unenthusiastically voting McCain.

Bob Barr is not a candidate to get excited about.  At least, I’m not excited.  I’m kinda lethargic about the whole thing.  I haven’t listened to his speeches, read his press releases, watched him on YouTube, or read the blog.  If something unexpected happens, preventing me from getting to the voting booth, I won’t cry about it.  But I’m certain I’ll get there, and I’m fairly certain I’ll be voting Bob Barr.

What I’m absolutely certain about is that I won’t be voting for John McCain.  Ready for something shocking?  Gun to my head, forced to vote for one of the two major parties, I’d vote Obama.  No, I don’t like his policies. I don’t think Obama with a hugely Democratic Congress is a good thing.  But there’s no way in hell I’m rewarding the party that’s supposed to be representing conservatism with my vote.  

And least of all for John McCain.

I can’t understand the reasons conservatives are contriving for supporting McCain.  I can’t.  I don’t get it. He is manifestly not a conservative, and the fact that some people have figured out ways to convince themselves that he is just shows how far the definition of “conservatism” has shifted.  

I mean, come on.  He complains about Obama’s economic policies.  Are you kidding me?  The man whines about socialism, redistribution, and earmarks, but he supports bailouts and the government buying up bad mortgages.  One blogger complained recently about Obama’s Kenyesianism, citing it as one of the reasons he’s voting for, you guessed it, John McCain.  I can respond with just three letters:   W.T.F.

Complaints from McCain supporters about Obama’s tax policies are equally shocking.  I mean, after all:

The Republican argument of the moment seems to be that the difference between capitalism and socialism corresponds to the difference between a top marginal income-tax rate of 35 per cent and a top marginal income-tax rate of 39.6 per cent.

Beyond his obvious silliness in trying to make some actual distinction between himself and Obama on domestic policy, his foreign policy is beyond frightening.  Should he win, I think we’ll see a Lieberman Secretary of State.  And then that dynamic duo, along with Palin who seems to think we’re already at war with Iran, we’ll be changing our national anthem to “Bomb Iran” and taking over the whole Middle East.

And speaking of Palin.  Come on, folks.  She’s … nevermind.  I’m not even going to start.  If you don’t get why this woman can’t ever be our president (including, but not limited to, her complete misunderstanding of the simplest part of the First Amendment), and why her selection by McCain was reckless and demonstrated terrible judgment, I’m not going to convince you with anything I write here.  Yes, the media has been biased and vicious toward her.  But still.  

John McCain is a man who served his country honorably, but who dove head-first into Rove-style politics as soon as he got the nomination.  He is bad for conservatism, even if I do believe his desire is to honorably serve his country.

So I’m voting for Bob Barr.  He isn’t a great candidate, but he’s the only one who’s close to what small-government conservatism actually looks like.  

And because the Republicans deserve an embarrassing defeat on Tuesday.  And I hope they get it.

Washington Irving embedded a comical criticism of the way people in modern society uproot in his classic story The Legend of Sleepy Hollow:

There is no encouragement for ghosts in most of our villages, for, they have scarcely had time to finish their first nap, and turn themselves in their graves, before their surviving friends have travelled away from the neighborhood; so that when they turn out at night to walk their rounds, they have no acquaintance left to call upon.

I submit than when conservatism becomes primarily about a certain ideology and not about unique, longstanding, commitment to a location and its traditions and well-being, it ceases to be conservative and has already passed on into liberalism. There is no metanarrative of conservatism; there are only local expressions.

Stay put, and have a chat with the ghost of great-great grandpa.

(Added: Which is not to say, of course, that all conservatives who move are automatic liberals.  I’m talking about the Limbaugh-trajectory of conservative thought in general which has abandoned family, community, and tradition in favor of anything that makes money or looks like the so-called “American Dream.”)

Yes, it’s happening, and not just among weirdo conservatives that no one’s heard of. Jeffrey Hart is a Burkean conservative was a speechwriter for Reagan and former writer for NRO (HT to De Regno Christi)

Jeffrey Hart sat at his kitchen table in slippers, reading Barack Obama’s words aloud. The retired Dartmouth professor, a former speechwriter for Ronald Reagan and Richard Nixon, wore on his shirt an artifact of the 1900 Republican presidential ticket — a McKinley-Roosevelt pin.

“I am not opposed to all wars,” Hart intoned, quoting a 2002 speech before the Illinois State Legislature in which Obama, then a state senator, had warned of the perils of invading Iraq. “I’m opposed to dumb wars.” Looking up from the page, Hart nodded his approval.

“Very Burkean,” he said, referring to the 18th century Irish political writer Edmund Burke, hailed by many as the founder of modern conservatism. “Prudential. A sense of history, and what we’re up against there.”

I bet he freaked when McCain invoked Burke in his CPAC speech. I know I did. It seems to me that a growing number of conservatives are coming to the conclusion that Iraq was simply not a conservative war. The neocons duped us. (And I include myself in that “us.”)

Thoughts?