Conservatives: Hanging Tough?

In the last few years, at least in the 8 years between 2000 and 2008, Americans got a good look at many forms of conservatism. One fundamental tenet of modern conservatism, especially if you recognize the views of people like Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Sarah Palin, and Joe the Plumber as representative of modern conservatism, is that conservatives are tough. They're tough on crime, tough on terrorism, tough on foreign policy. They support rugged individualism, hard work, and making tough choices. They supported the war in Iraq, war in Afghanistan, and the war on terror. They support a strong military, tough border policies, and guns for everyone. Conservatives  would have you believe that they are the only people standing between Americans and those that would massacre them.

In contrast, liberals are supposedly soft, weak-willed naifs. If Republicans are the party of strong national security, Democrats are the party of cut-and-run and surrender. According to conservatives, liberals only care about making everyone feel good with politically correct language, affirmative action policies, and massive government spending. As Limbaugh, Hannity, O'Reilly and Beck are all too happy to announce, liberalism (also called "socialism," "fascism," and "communism" by voices of the conservative movement) is going to result in America's fall from grace.

If all you listened to was the way the two sides talked about themselves, it would be easy to fall into the trap of believing that conservatives are hardened, realistic defenders of American values and liberals are gentle, vulnerable, sentimental weenies.

And yet, conservatism is, at least in its current incarnation, nothing less than the fear of nearly everything. American conservatives' entire platform is based on the fear of something: terrorist attacks, government bankruptcy, higher taxes, divine retribution, the weakening of traditional marriages, feminists, the siege of illegal immigrants, Muslim infiltration, watering down of the 2nd Amendment, and on and on and on. I'm not saying they're wrong to be worried about some of these things, but for tough guys, they spend a lot of time cowering in fear of every shadow on the wall and breath of wind in the trees. On the other hand, those sad-sack, weakling libruls are getting pepper sprayed for protesting Wall Street abuse and getting their asses kicked in support of free speech.

Just as I'm not saying all conservative fears are misguided, I'm not saying all liberal demonstrations are justified. I'm simply pointing out that from where I'm standing, the "tough guys" look like a bunch of fraidy cats, and the supposed fraidy cats are standing tough for what they believe.

So I'm left wondering, how did conservatives get the reputation for toughness, again?

How Shakespeare and His Ilk Are Ruining Kids Today

Mark Bauerlein thinks technology is responsible for making today's youth the "dumbest generation" because social media only gets kids to talk to one another. Although there is some irony (and narcissism) in an grown-up academic arguing in a book to other grown-ups about the blight of kids talking only to one another, I think we can take his critique to fun extremes.

When literature scholars, one of which Bauerlein considers himself, talk about "The Classics," The Odyssey, The Iliad, Shakespeare's plays, and Chaucer's Canterbury Tales immediately come to mind. These texts are, by all accounts, great. But they have something else in common. Homer wrote The Odyssey and The Iliad in dactylic hexameter. Shakespeare's plays were in iambic pentameter. Chaucer's Canterbury Tales was heroic couplets (an ancestor of iambic pentameter).

In other words, "The Classics" all conform to some form of poetic meter. Know what else does? Popular music. That's right. A detailed historical analysis of meter would no doubt reveal a direct line from "Hamlet" to Brit-brit's "Baby Hit Me One More Time." For shame, Mr. Shakespeare. Without your insidious influence, our kids would be smarter and better able to focus on other literary texts that aren't constrainted by meter.

Oh, but it gets worse. Dactylic hexameter, iambic pentameter, trimeter, and heroic couplets all have another thing in common. Users are forced by the constraints of meter to limit what they say to a predetermined number of syllables. Sure, you can write several heroic couplets and string them together, but in order to conform to the heroic form, two lines of various meter must be self-contained. No matter what meter you use, you have to say all you need to say in an abbreviated amount of words and syllables.

If you're with me at this point, you know that poetic meter must be the direct ancestor of the single most dangerous phenomenon for our children: Twitter. Twitter, as we all know, and as Bauerlein is wont to tell us, stunts kids intellectual development and makes them dumb. Twitter and other technological "developments" undermine children's ability to concentrate and focus. They undermine children's ability to appreciate important works of literature and philosophical thought. In short, poetic meter (pioneered by Homer, refined by Chaucer, and perfected by Shakespeare) are directly responsible for dumbing down America's current generation of students.

The only solution as I see it is this: we must go back...back before Homer had the opportunity to stupify countless generations of Western civilization. Back to rudimentary shelters and mammoth hunts. Back to cave drawings, glacial melts, and land bridges. Only by delivering ourselves and our children to a time before poetic meter can we hope for a smarter generation.