Letter to a Columnist

Here is a recent article by the ever-wise Leonard Pitts, and my response to it.

Dear Mr. Pitts:

I enjoy reading your columns. You are a consistent voice of reason in a world that suffers from a severe lack of it.

I do have a disagreement with your column published locally in the Detroit Free Press this morning, titled "No Joking for Conservatives."

Sir, you are too much of a gentleman. Perhaps Mr. Datsyuk should share his Lady Bing* Trophy with you. You give historical conservatism credit for an intellectual coherence that never existed. Going back to Russell Kirk's 1953 epic, "The Conseravtive Mind," we find the pillars of the conservative mindset to be prejudice, ignorance, false choices, and magical thinking. I am not making this up - you only need to read the first 35 pages.

Further, President Reagan displayed every bit of the intellectual incoherence that his ideological heirs so proudly exhibit. It was Reagan who professed small government while it mushroomed around him, fiscal restraint while tripling the national debt, and foreign policy chaos - propping up Saddam Hussein while secretly arming the Iranians at war against him. The deaths of millions of people on both sides resulted from American weaponry and American financing.

Modern conservatism does not deserve to be called conservatism at all. As much as I disagree with real conservatives, I can at least respect a view point that is internally consistent, no matter how difficult it is to correlate it with reality. But modern faux-conservatism is simply guano-in-the-belfry crazy.

But, perhaps a more gentlemanly approach is what is needed in a world bereft of either sense or sensibility.

Keep up the good work.

Very truly yours,

Jazzbumpa

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* Should by BYNG. My bad.