Monday June 17, 2019; 11:00 AM EDT
- Here are two fallacies of conservatism.#
This story comes from Dennis Lehane, the author of Shutter Island. He heard a famous TV conservative talk about the America of his youth, how great everything was, how simple, fun, safe. The conservative was born in the mid-60s. When he talks about his youth, he's talking about the 70s. Nixon, Kent State, Watergate, Vietnam, spiraling stagflation, the hostage crisis, OPEC, it goes on and on. It's conceivable that the pundit doesn't know that the world was totally crazy when he was growing up. Lehane concludes, wisely, what conservatives want is to be children again. #- Another reason the past is so attractive is we know how it turned out. We survived it, so we can romanticize it. It was safe, even though there were lots of scary things, they were fun because we survived. If we do the same things now, the fallacy goes, we'll be safe once again. Of course it doesn't work that way.#