Paleoconservatism: I assume you mean “isolationism,” the standard paleocon thing, which hasn’t been terribly evident herein, to my view. Am I wrong?

“Stinking of theism”: why, how tolerant of you. Thanks so much for your contribution to civilized discourse.

As an un-Democrat more than a Rep[ublican, perhaps a neocon, and never a churchgoer, my long-pondered reaction:ROTFL.

“Allan Blum and William Buckley, who re-defined long standing, but almost marginalized in 70s tradition of mainly isolationist traditional conservatism.”

and neither of them were lefties if memory serves. I think the American tradition of isolationism stems in part because of the left’s attempts to ‘realize the social possibilities of war’ to quote an old progressive. They tended to use the national emergency of war to push ‘war socialism’ which they hoped would outlive the war/s. So, the other side dug in towards isolationism. Also, the British used to take of it all (keeping the sea lanes open and such).

Also, there is another reason why American conservatives can sometimes have leftyish thoughts compared to Euros. Marx found the US interesting. I think he tried to pick and choose a few American attitudes and fit them into his theories in order to recreate our success. If you give an American ‘right wing’ conservative a term neutral quiz about things like historical materialism he probably would give you the left wing (in Euro terms) answer… it’s simply part of our wider cultural assumptions. We (‘the right’) even assumed the Marxists-Leninists were, in part, bad because of their econ system made them so…

Choosing to click on a policital website to engage in an exchange of ideas and having political ideas pushed at you in acadamia (or the business world) aren’t the same. In my experience only one side engages in the latter.

I spent 11 years in the Navy (Reagan to Clinton) and didn’t once, from memory, hear any political talk. I wasn’t interested in politics myself at the time but I was a ‘legacy’ Democrat (and from MA to boot). I was also voting officer at two commands. Typical voting rates on the ship were 5 to 10% and at shore 10 to 20%. I conclude, then, that the military was largely ambivalent about politics. Not sure about now.

In the San Francisco business world, however, politics is broached like the weather. Rather one kind of politics – anti-Bush politics. How someone can inject politics into business activities, particularly when there are people they don’t even know are present, is a mystery to me.

I would love to find out who that was at Amazon. While the company is uniformly & crazily “progressive” at the lower & middle levels, that type of question is completely out of line.

One reason they are so “progressive” (except when it comes to employees actually giving their own money to charity) is that they hire an inordinate amount of people from Canada (Waterloo U) who (a) love the free social care of Canada but (b) love the freedom of expression & lower taxes of America. They are doing their best to turn America into Canada but neglect to consider the affect upon their own tax rates. It’s a wonderful system for them: they get to act morally superior as Canadians and yet avoid paying all those pesky Canadian consumer taxes. It’s like the best of both worlds!