Conservatism Is The New Punk Rock
Posted: July 28, 2014 Filed under: Humor, Politics | Tags: Bachman–Turner Overdrive, CBGB, Cold War, Conservatism, Generation Y, Liberalism, Millennial, Ramone, Ramones, Roger Daltrey, Styx, United States 5 Comments
For TownHall.com, Kurt Schlichter writes: Conservatism is the Ramones at CBGB – loud, fast and alive. In contrast, liberalism is the headliner at a state fair concert. It’s Foghat, serenading its anesthetized fans as America slow rides into decline.
“Liberals want to see themselves as punks. They aren’t. They are sad conformists.”
Back in the 70s, the Ramones put a steel-toed boot into the behind of a fat, flabby rock ‘n roll world that has lost its way. That’s what conservatives are doing today to American politics and culture. And 
the dinosaur rockers of the status quo hate it.
[Check out Kurt Schlichter’s book “Conservative Insurgency” at Amazon.com]
“Everything about liberalism is stodgy, everything is old, everything is about control.”
But some things have changed. Back in the 70’s, it was alienated young people leading the way, yet today’s Millennials support the very liberal status quo that keeps them down. What’s pathetic is that they are so eagerly complicit in their own serfdom.
Dead-end jobs, innovations like Uber sacrificed to protect established Democrat corporatist allies, and tons of student debt for their degrees in Feminist Interpretive 
Dance – you Millennials have been, and will be, fooled again. And again and again.
I want to make clear for the record that The Who rocks, though many liberals are likely offended by Roger Daltrey’s shamelessly heteronormative persona.
Look at ancient Hillary Clinton, that improbable Millennial heroine. She’s the Bachman Turner Overdrive of American politics, out there literally taking care of business – especially the businesses who take care of her by paying her hundreds of thousands a pop to come talk to them.
There’s no energy left in liberalism, no excitement, just more rules, more controls, everything the punks hated. You can’t say this, you can’t think that, everybody read the memo – today we’re scheduled to be angry at people don’t want to subsidize our birth control! Oh, and make sure you obtain a videotaped, notarized consent form before you kiss your cisgender hook-up.
What’s hilarious is that it’s us hidebound, repressed, sex-hating conservatives who are the ones trying to liberate liberalism’s victims from its fascisty clutches, but its greatest victims are the ones doing the most resisting.
Everything about liberalism is stodgy, everything is old, everything is about control. My new book, Conservative Insurgency, a speculative future history of the struggle to retake our culture, shows how the conservatives have the all of the energy and creativity. We want the freedom the punks demanded. The liberals want the opposite. The quintessential liberal isn’t a free-spirited manic pixie dream girl but a grim, bitter nightmare crone enraged because having gender-specific bathrooms in her dorm is history’s greatest hate crime.
Liberalism never tries anything new. It’s a greatest hits album from a crappy band…(read more)
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[…] By Pundit from another Planet For TownHall.com, Kurt Schlichter Conservatism is the Ramones at CBGB – loud, fast and alive. In contrast, liberalism is the headliner at a state fair concert. It’s Foghat, serenading its anesthetized fans as America slow rides into decline. “Liberals want to see themselves as punks. They aren’t. They are sad conformists.” Back in the 70s, the Ramones […] Like this? Read more and get your own subscription at […]
While I am in basic agreement with the criticism that the liberals are stuck on a tired philosophy, I find it laughable that Schlichter can, with a straight face, try to equate conservatives with punk rock. Seriously?
“We’re where the action is, where the excitement is, where you can hear new music from bands you mainstream liberals have probably never heard of.”
What is the ‘new music?’ The conservative ideology is just as tired as the liberals’ is.
I was at CBGB’s when the Ramones played. They didn’t shout about the ‘truth’s’ of ‘christian values,’ they didn’t declare war with disco and cross over town to Studio 54 with guns a-blazing because it was a different scene, the club was filled with social misfits and no one was kicked out of the club just because they couldn’t find a job and fell on hard times. There was sex and drugs and noise – what people did with their lives (and bodies) was their own concern. And corporate greed was a common hatred amongst most punk rockers.
Not wanting to pay taxes isn’t new – it’s as old as civilization itself. Making laws that conform to religious beliefs isn’t new, that’s as old as civilization itself. Using a nation’s military to impose its form of government isn’t new, nor is using the military to usurp other nation’s resources. Judging other people’s worth based on their social standing isn’t new either. With all that said, what is ‘new’ and ‘exciting’ about the conservative agenda?
Punk rock arose from way underground – it came from a generation that was sick and tired of their parent’s politics of left and right. For punks they were both fucked up false dichotomies. As a matter of fact, ANARCHY was often used as the only real war cry on both sides of the Atlantic. And we know what conservatives think of anarchists. Schlichter sounds like a know-nothing ass.
Sounds like a tired, pro-statist complaint, that presents a false, paranoid, bigoted view of conservatives. Literally every complaint you level against ‘conservative’ thinking is so badly distorted (or dishonest) it’s a perfect example of how corrupted and reactionary postmodern liberalism has become.
Schlichter’s article is provocative, mock-confrontational, satirical. A less confrontational (and less funny or interesting) way to nail it is, that the Marxist-collectivist-preaching, Christian-hating ‘Radical Left’ of the 1960s is no longer the challenge to mainstream culture. Now it is THE dominant culture. Particularly in media, academia, and entertainment.
Of COURSE it has to use taxation, coercion, force, the monopoly power of the State to achieve its aims (as old as human history) because it can’t win on ideas, or persuasion. It can only succeed when backed by a heavily-armed Federal bureaucracy.
Liberals are sore winners. In the USA, marriage, religion, and two-parent households are in retreat, decline, diminishing further than Liberals could have ever hoped. And with it, liberty, and prosperity. Conservatives aren’t mainstream culture, they are now the counter-culture.
The article takes it into a comedic direction, with the analogy of punk rock.
That your response to it is ill-informed, and humorless, only underscores its point.
“we know what conservatives think of anarchists.”
No, actually, we don’t. Tell us, what do (in your view) “conservatives” think of “anarchists”?
Usually, anytime a conservative suggests imposing any limit whatsoever on Federal power or government overreach, they’re hysterically branded “anarchists!’ by defensive liberals.
One would think that radicals on both sides could join forces and combat crony capitalism and corruption and abuse of state power. Conservatives (libertarian at its roots) understand that state power ALWAYS abuses the rights of individuals, and prefer as little Federal intervention as possible. (as the constitution spells out, unambiguously) Understanding that with minimal State intervention, society can manage its affairs, and prosper. Government is viewed, not as an instrument of ‘social good’ (a collectivists fallacy) but as a necessary evil. Concentrated state power ALWAYS corrupts. Which is why separation of powers can, at best, limit the abuses.
Progressives LIKE state power, they’d like MORE of it, not less. They only dislike it when someone they disagree with has too much of it.
The “punk rock” analogy is flawed (there was a mono-racial, vaguely neo-nazi edge to some punk rock that conservatives would reject) and it also lacked soulfulness. But it was the necessary tonic to a bloated, boring 1970s elevator music that Rock had become.
The defensive, reactionary, cartoonish way you distort and misrepresent Conservatives is EXACTLY the way old people dismissed the counterculture, a few generations ago.
No wonder progressives and liberals have a diminishing grasp on the mainstream.
I agree with your criticisms and, for the most part, your description of the liberal ideology. You really didn’t have to base your rant on what liberalism has become – I’m quite familiar with it.
I find it just as laughable for ill-informed liberals to brand conservatives as ‘anarchists’ as I do Schlichter’s dis-ingenuous comparison of conservatives with punk rock. Anarchists oppose the political state and statism period. True anarchists oppose private property. Anarchists oppose any authority, established order, custom, or ruling power. Anarchists are anti-consumeristic and detest capitalism.
What do ‘conservatives’ think of ‘anarchists’? Conservatives have called folks who have tried to practice the above described lifestyle as ‘dirty hippies’, ‘un-American’, ‘un-patriotic’, ‘lawless’, ‘commies’, etc., etc..
You state that I’ve ‘distorted and misrepresent(ed)’ conservatives – in what way? You are confusing my descriptions of today’s conservative politics and ideology with conservative PHILOSOPHY. And there is a huge difference between the two. Also, in your ‘defensive, reactionary’ diatribe you never even tried to answer or suggest anything related to my actual question/point – What is the ‘new music?’
You state that my response is ‘ill-informed’ – in what way? I compared the punk rock aesthetic with that of conservatives. What information did I miss? As a matter of fact, you yourself assume you know what my particular political inclinations are simply because I critiqued the analogy and proclamation Schlichter presented in his laughable post.
There is one point you make rather accurately (maybe without realizing it) – conservatives are pissed as hell because it appears that the ‘progressives and liberals’ won the 20th century culture war. You state that ‘(n)ow it is THE dominant culture.’ As far as I can tell, the ‘dominant culture’ IS the ‘mainstream.’ Yet your last sentence suggests that ‘progressives and liberals have a diminishing grasp on the mainstream.’ That nicely rounds up to my point about punks – it was a rebellion against what was politically, socially, culturally, and economically ‘mainstream.’ Particularly the left-right, liberal/conservative culture war – they wanted to throw it ALL away. Conservatives just want to replace the current ‘dominant culture’ with their own.
THAT IS NOT NEW!
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