If I, as a liberal, didn't speak out against those who would squelch the free speech of conservatives, I wouldn't deserve to call myself a liberal.
Ultraconservatism is, to me, so illogical. Everywhere you go, conservatives want to cut, cut, cut, cut - cut money for powerless people. So, that's the biggest problem I have with them.
I have dear friends of mine who represent real Republicans. Goldwater Republicans. Strong on defense. Tough on immigration. Fiscal conservatives.
When I called Clinton a Wall Street puppet, they called me a right-wing extremist. When I said the same about George W. Bush, they called me an anti-war communist. Now that I'm against Obama for the same reasons, mainline conservatives embrace me. When I attack the next right-wing 'savior,' they're gonna call me a communist again.
There are a lot of people whose livelihoods depend on keeping lots of conservatives terrified and ill-informed. The groups that exist to raise funds raise more funds when they endorse the crazier candidate.
Conservatives frequently complain of being frozen out of the culture industry, though, like all industries, the culture industry will produce or sell anything it expects to profit from.
Conservatives don't want to read good, smart books. They mostly want to read Fox and talk radio hosts writing about presidents.
Conservatives have long argued, correctly, that 'fine-tuning' the economy is a chimera, but that argument seems to have disappeared from the conservative handbook.
The Human Rights Convention was written by Conservatives in the aftermath of the Second World War. It was designed to combat the risk of another Holocaust, and to try to stop people being sent to prison camps without trial.
It was in that uncertain world that the European Convention on Human Rights was shaped. Written by Conservatives, it set out the principles which should lie behind a modern democratic state, where human rights were respected.
