Q: What’s Wrong With This Tweet?

Red State founder Erick Erickson, who is nobody’s idea of a bleeding heart, posted this on Twitter:

I hate to see the elder President Bush grow old. What a patriot that guy is. https://t.co/rguq8yBaZb

— Erick Erickson (@EWErickson) October 24, 2015

And this is the response he got from some wingnut:

@EWErickson In what world is a establishment RHINO labeled a patriot. If he got his way we would of never had Reagan. Lost WH in one term.

— Jimmy Rae (@JimmyRae4senate) October 24, 2015

 

Mind you, Jimmy Rae is a nobody, with only a handful of followers. Still, his tweet symbolizes everything that’s wrong with movement conservatism today. There is no sense of the virtue of pietas, no sense of continuity with the past, no sense of prudence or balance or any of the other qualities that one traditionally associates with conservatism. Just mindless, malicious passion.

You see it on the Left too, of course. The spirit of liberality among movement liberalism is hard to find. It’s grim righteousness and mindless, puritanical intolerance.

I have come to hate politics. And to think that there was a time when I wanted politics to be my life, when I saw it as something exciting and hopeful and worth doing.