"LIFE IS A LAZY SUSAN OF SHIT SANDWICHES" AND SHIT SANDWICHES IS WHAT REPUBLICANS ALLOW US.

I borrowed this title from a book written by Jennifer Welch and Angie Sullivan, two podcasters whom I like listening to. I have not read it, which puts me on the same footing as Republicans, but I'm old and have been political since we were seeing lights that did not exist in the tunnels of Vietnam. It is here that I must reveal that i once wrote a letter to the editor of the Oregon Statesman, when I was 14 years old. A time, I must plead, when young men are not known for their subtlety. In this letter, which was published, I called Wayne Morse and Mark Hatfield "worms in the bowels of government". Within the next 4 years my outlook changed. It took me some 40 years to hike up the trail to the Wayne Morse farm, with my ex-wife where i apologized to the bronze plaque comemorating our greatest Senator. A Senator who could not abide the Republican party of his day, which is being repeated in todays Republican party. The great old party is smothering the Grande Old Party. 

Conservatism did not have a strong hold on me for long. But the people i admired, outside of JFK,  were conservatives. Mostly conservative Democrats like my dad,  but with a smattering of paleo-Conservatives like my Uncle Clyde. He introduced me to the books of Ayn Rand. Little remains of my memory of her books, though I don't think 'riveting' was a verb i would use. What good can you claim when altruism is considered a weakness. Conservatism today is not the "Burkean Conservatism" of William F Buckley. Burke, the British Parliamentarian who thought those pesky 13 colonies should be allowed home rule. Few conservatives today could tell you a brief biography of Edmund Burke. Few conservatives today could identify William F Buckley, for that matter. For many years I was cautious about that word liberal, preferring the nicer sounding, progressive. Eventually, thinking people kick themselves for thinking there's a difference. Our democracy that we used to have has the teachings of the philosophers of the Enlightenment molded into a representative democracy by our founding fathers. That concept of liberal democracy was handed down through the ages from the Athenian democracy described as 'liberal' by Thucidides in his 5th Century BCE book, The History of the Pelopponesian War.  Sometime around the first decade of the current era, a teacher emerged that told parables of life, and how not to be an asshole, but they killed him and turned him into a demigod . Others followed, but most of them endured similar trials from others who think they know better.  They, the know-it-alls, became demagogues. The unique thing about liberal, in its journey through the annals of history, is that it does not stay the same nor does it seek to go back to a time of greatness. To remain as it was is to be Conservative. Even Edmund Burke realized that. Which is why he's forgotten by this new generation of conservatives. Often we liberals are called, by rightwing nuts, libtards. An irony maga will never appreciate. Liberals advance human rights, conservatives spend their lives retarding those developments. Which is why we are eating shit sandwiches off of the lazy susan of life today. Along the way we were introduced to Libertarian thought, thought by some to be some centrist ideology, though which only wanted to grease the skids for a business elite. In a pinch, with no libertarian candidate, they vote "conservative", then grouse because they didn't get their way. We liberals grouse too, but we keep pushing that mythical Boulder up the mountain. And when we get there they laugh at us as it rolls back down. 

Some years ago, while using the old card files in the library, I stumbled upon  Frederich Hyack's book with the over-dramatic title, "The Road to Serfdom". In spite of its hyperbolic title, it was another boring book. I thought at the time that it could become the subject of satire. I was then a beginning writer, and my accomplishments in the area of satire can be debated. I did find it amusing that he, and his cousin Ludwig Mises, were known by such Republican luminaries of thought as Michelle Bachman, who in 2011, introduced the light bulb choice act to forbid government from urging people to change-over to low energy light bulbs. Even more ironic this anti-choice Republican called it, The Light bulb Choice Act. She mentioned reading Mises on her August Congressional break. Forgive me if I speculate that that Congressional break was not lengthy enough for her to finish. 

Liberals are made for democracy. Democracy requires compromise and no one compromises more than liberals, even as we keep pushing for more. By contrast, conservatives are told that, "bi-partisanship is the moral equivolent of date rape. Only a conservative who doesn't know Edmund Burke would think that that makes sense. We push endlessly against that boulder of non-compromise. Sometimes we gain a little of the ground we need to cover. We take a moment to celebrate our partial success and push on with the next rock on the next hill. While our attention is turned to our next goal, conservatives hew away at the ground around that boulder until it rolls back down that damned hill. At the bottom, where the stone settles into the ravine, are the conservatives whose conservatism is a mere whim, and the libertarians worried that the fortunes of the power elites might be endangered if we go too far up that mountain. There is nothing to do but put our shoulders to that boulder and push. The Supreme Court, which is no longer supreme, but is supremely interested in maintaining their connection to generous benefactors, has once more set us back in our quest for Civil Rights. But we will push on. We have no choice, a thing that should frighten conservatives.