Conservative Typography
I read something interesting today on the LewRockwell.com blog that I thought I would comment on. It was a brief listing of various types of conservatives that found both entertaining and enlightening. I will list and describe them here (my own description, not necessarily what was intended by the original author). I would be interested to hear of any new types of conservatives that people can think of.
Libertarians. These are the so-called small-”l” libertarians. They believe that there is a role in society for government, but that it should be limited to functions explicitly given to it by the Constitution or by some other concept of the social contract. They believe in small government that limits each individual’s rights only when they start to conflict with another’s rights. Think Ron Paul for a good example.
Neo-cons. Everybody has heard of these guys, they are the guys to claim to want smaller government while pushing to enlarge it at every turn. They want preemptive wars with other countries, military bases around the world, government surveillance powers such as those granted by the PATRIOT Act, etc. Think Dick Cheney on this one.
Theo-cons. This is the one that I found to be pretty entertaining because of the clever name. These are the conservatives who believe in a smaller government which is used to enforce their own religious beliefs on others. They believe in small government, but still want to outlaw any recreational drug use, pornography, gambling, equal homosexual rights, etc. I’m not entirely sure whom I should choose as a poster-boy for this one… maybe Mitt Romney or Mike Huckabee?
Now I feel that I should point out that these groups rarely self-identify what they actually believe. The neo-cons and theo-cons are far more likely to claim to be small-government people who believe in limited government power. But they seem to believe that it is “necessary” for the government to do more because of all the bad stuff out there (drugs, porn, Iraqis, terrorists, lazy people, etc.). The libertarians, on the other hand, don’t like to use that word because it’s the name of a political party that they don’t want to be associated with.
I would welcome your thoughts on other classifications here. Please try to make them at least as entertaining as “theo-cons”, just to help brighten my day.
