Defining the Political Inquirer

Posted on November 18, 2007 by Lance

I’ve realized recently that pretty much everyone on our site who writes is generally a libertarian or conservative minded person who supports Ron Paul. An exception or two is present, I think, but they’re generally open to the man. Some may think it strange that we post so much about Ron Paul, but I think that’s because the people here at the Inquirer are excited about him–plus there’s some interesting news about Ron Paul and his campaign at least every day or two.

Depending on the way something is written or directed, we often come across hostile to Democrats and Republicans alike, but due to the crazy amount we post about Paul, a lot of criticism has really been directed toward the Republicans.

I can’t speak for anyone else here, but I’ve always been a Republican. I have in the past couple of years only moved to a more libertarian position, and in the past few months only really let go of the idea that Democrats aren’t the only bad guys and that in, sadly, some instances, the Republicans are actually far more dangerous. It’s really due to this that I’ve become so angry with the Republicans and conservatives (or so-called conservatives) that a lot of my posts have been directed toward the Republicans. As I said, I can’t speak for anyone else here, but I suspect most of those posting here feel the same way or close to it.

Anyway, I just felt like getting that out there.

Filed under: Blogroll

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2 Responses to “Defining the Political Inquirer”

  1. Hughvic, on November 19th, 2007 at 1:15 am Said:

    Hi Lance,

    Well I usually don’t care, one way or the other, about labeling myself, but If I’m gonna say what I wanna say I think I’d better first peg myself, so that you can place my answer in context.

    I’m an ultra-traditional Republican, a libertarian and a sometime constitutional scholar and teacher, and I also worked for left-wing California Democrats for 20 years. I recently moved to Georgia, where my family has roots dating back to the mid-colonial era. Oy vey! Am I evah glad to be out of the political biz, awredday! My blog ID is a tribute to my hero Hugh of St. Victor, a 12th Century Scholastic thinker. Although I am myself, as were the first of my American ancestors, a run-of-the mill Protestant, I was formally trained in Catholic theology, and am now studying Judaism informally. I embrace Giuliani for President but don’t mind (in fact am quite interested) when you dish dirt on him. (As it happens, I myself am researching the Bracewell Giuliani firm’s questionable dealings in Austin.)

    SIDE NOTE: fooser is silly to get worked up over the objective claims of Judith Regan and the subjective partisanship of Sean Hannity, when Regan is anything but objective (she’s a Republican Mary Mapes) and Hannity the overworked commentator is in fact supposed to be partisan and subjective. He’s not the news anchor on that peculiar news network. Brit Hume is the network news anchor, and he’s the best in the business. A far more important, timely and valid story concerning the Politico-journalistic Industrial Complex: the shocking staging, scripting and rigging of Thursday’s debate by a secret confederacy of CNN and Generalisima Hillary’s Battleaxe Brigade, with Wolf Blitzer serving as a most unlikely Leni Riefenstahl. That story broke wide open Friday, and the big-ticket GOP consultants are going to keep that thing alive for 35 weeks and raise money off of it until the GOP nomination, at which point they’ll spin it and sell it and spend it for seven weeks until it reaches a crescendo (including mailers) on October 25, the crucial second Saturday out, when they’ll go over to an around-the-clock counterattack defense for the remaining 10 days till Election Day. The Rollinses and Russos and Roves of the world already will have recognized that story as future grist for their money mills. They’re already doing contract oppo on Hillary for the top-tier candidates, and by now those efforts already will have shifted mainly onto this story. So that particular, possibly decisive, effort already has begun.

    A former newspaperman, policy consultant, political scumbag and lifelong skeptic, I’ve been in the habit for 40 years of comparison shopping in the media marketplace. Consequently I hold subscriptions to a number of journals of which I’m not proud. I keep my eye on the country’s remaining neo-Marxists via The Nation, on the NeoCons via TNR, on the Goldwater wing via NRO, on the middle-brow New York liberal intelligentsia via the NYRB, on the Straussians and other Chicago School diaspora via the Claremont Review, on Catholic Orthodoxy via the New Oxford Review, on Reform Judaism via Tikkun, on the Cult of Gaia via the Utne Reader, on Orthodox Judaism via the newsletter Toward Tradition, on classical Liberalism via The Economist, and on a few of the proliferating subspecies of wonklings, including you guys, via the Net. That’s about as much waterfront as I’ve been able to handle over the years, except that as you may have noticed none of this covers the trendy Conventional Wisdumb. For that I currently read the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, a kind of LAT but with actual writers on the payroll, and the shamelessly over-edited, breathlessly partisan Newsweek. (”The new _______ that everyone’s talking about!”)

    So all of this is where I’m coming from when I say: (a) that it’s characteristically upstanding of you, Lance, to give this update on your editorial policy; (b) I’m perfectly happy for you guys to back RP here daily because he’s a good man whose multiform mistreatment makes for a fine study in contemporary political pathology; and (c) there is no doubt in my mind or heart that all politics is now and always has been corrupt. This last part, (c), is why I for one couldn’t possibly be miffed about your trashing any pol as long as you’re trying to get it right, and also why I feel that Rep. Paul should not get near the White House. Were it not unseemly, I could name several rascals I’ve known who never should have run for other than the House of Representatives. It’s just where they belonged. It takes a special kind of animal–a horse, say–to succeed in that body. There are lots of kinds of horses that succeed, but they’re all horses, not zebras or camels. Dr. Paul is not only a horse, he’s a unicorn, a wonder horse. I say this without deprication or condescension, but with sincere respect : he belongs with the horses. Congress is more full now than ever of circus horses, another preposterous breed, and a dangerous one. In my opinion it would be best were RP to continue to displace one circus horse and offset the rest.

    But, no, this one reader at least doesn’t mind your defending him and championing his bid.

  2. Lance, on November 19th, 2007 at 8:31 am Said:

    Glad you’re here then, Hugh :)

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