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Entry: Arm the Unborn Link: http://www.takimag.com/site/article/arm_the_unborn#402 Post contents: I appreciate and agree with a lot of this article, but I think we should be careful about using the term "social conservative", because it lends itself so easily to being hijacked by vulgar populists/nationalists who confuse "conservativism" and "traditional values" with their own petty grievances against perceived "elites", including the residue of true conservatives among those "elites." Much, or perhaps most of what are popularly called "traditional values" in America today - perhaps especially a fetishistic faith in a "free market" which no longer exists except as a hyper-abstraction, and a relatively new species of American nationalism - are very recent concoctions which are either alien or opposed to the values of America's founders. As for Rockefeller, I'm no great fan of his, but I think the Republican Party was more authentically conservative when it was represented by the likes of Rockefeller, than it has become after being hijacked by the populist-nationalists of the Reagan era, and then by their mutant offspring the neocon revolutionaries of the Bush era. All I am saying is that the term "socially conservative" is essentially contestable and very vulnerable to exploitation in very dishonest ways - so, let's be careful about how we use such terms, in these times when we need to make special efforts to reclaim and to restore the meaning of words. Sent at: 2008 10 07