Conservative Refocus

By Barry Secrest

(Excerpt)

Are Columnists Michael Gerson and Paul Krugman twin sons of different mothers?  An even better question:  Is bizarre the new reality in today's political world of half-baked punditry?  At best, is it a requirement to either be a quantifiable nut-case who most recently stated that our $ 14 trillion dollar deficit is not a true concern, despite the fact that we may never be able to balance the blasted thing again, as Mr. Krugman actually stated?  Or, in a hyper-spate of extreme hypocrisy, is it Mr. Gerson's recently lamenting how we Conservatives feel about revolutionary "Democratic" protests in the Mideast--while Gerson essentially stomped  upon and trashed the truly Democratic "Tea Party protests" here within his own country for the past two years?  "What" on God's brown, sun-scorched earth are these guys smoking becomes the penultimate question?

Granted, Michael Gerson does tend to often write half-in and half-out of the shadows as it regards right-wing politics, frequently having the correct ideas but never quite drawing the full and proper conclusions from them.  Meanwhile, Krugman, also an anti-Tea Party zealot, virtually always starts out with fallacious conclusions and then tries to interject factually correct ideas to foment his habitually flawed answers.

It's a fascinating study in cause and effect. Examining how these writers, at the top of their mainstream media professions, make their respective cases, along with how they also endeavor to shape opinion with often perversely flawed perspectives.  Kind of like  Charlie Sheen writing political/cultural opinion--in a jiggly bed--is the rather daunting image that fills the mind's-eye.

Granted, Gerson did write numerous speeches for George W. Bush, and yet, it must also be noted that he, Michael Gerson, wrote  numerous speeches for George W. Bush...

Banging The Liberty Bell Of Freedom--Just For Fun?

But, in Gerson's latest column, "Conservatives shouldn't be so surprised by freedom," he delivers what would amount to a furious metrosexual diatribe, for him, leveled at Conservatives who are cautiously pessimistic about the protests going on in the Mideast.  Now, when I say "for him", I mean to infer that anyone who has read only a few of my "sometimes" caustic columns will generally have not even a tittle of doubt as to exactly where our particular attempt to shape and inform via opinion stands.  Fully in the sunlight, no shadows nor anything even hinting at hesitance.

Just say what you've been thinking, explain your reasoning, and be done with the thing while keeping it snappy to some degree.  Krugman is much the same way sans snappiness, I will admit.  Gerson, however, often appears to be hedging just a bit, but in this specific case, he thoughtfully allows us the understanding that he is not at all happy with those of us Constitutional Conservatives who have yet to loudly bang the liberty bell of freedom for the Mideast, as he is apparently prone to do with far too many events, having made an incrementally irritating career at it, for oh so long.

Gerson, in his column starts out by telling us that our often conservative criticism of the "democratic transformation" that is occurring in the Mideast is, indeed, unfounded.  He further notes that we are rather arrogantly, a word that I have interpreted from Gerson's ill-stimulating ginger tense,  concluding that Democratic success is not possible in a society lacking a Democratic culture.  Interesting conclusion, yet not exactly accurate--at all--with regard to how Conservatives actually feel about the process going on within the Mideast....

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