Diagramming Disintegration

by digby

If you are in the mood for a really entertaining and insightful look at the current state of conservatism, give yourself a treat and click over to at Batocchio at Vagabond Scholar and read his post and the Venn Diagrams he’s done to illustrate it.

Here’s just one little excerpt:

This isn’t drawn exactly to scale, and it’s flawed of course, but I think it’s roughly accurate. Most pundits are hacks, but if we broaden out to the general population, we find people of good faith in addition to the professional hacks, their amateur brethren, and the true zealots. The circles represent a kind of compassion-asshole continuum of character and worldview: Cloistered-Indifferent-Callous-Spiteful-Evil. The diamonds represent a continuum of knowledge and wisdom: Thoughtful-Mistaken-Ignorant-Zealous-Devious. This latter continuum loops somewhat, in that both the thoughtful and the devious understand to some degree how the world actually works, but the devious are bent on exploiting that, with little to no concern about who’s hurt in the process.

The different strains of conservatism can be broken down several different ways, but Drew Westen has a pretty good set of five: libertarian conservatism, social conservatism, fiscal conservatism, national security conservatism, and an unnamed strain that’s basically… bigotry. Authoritarianism is also an important dynamic, and the full dishonesty, idiocy and lethality of the neocons can’t be underestimated (see the “Persistence” post for more).

Read the whole thing. It’s just great, especially as we watch one GOP circus sideshow after another.

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