Who is the most conservative person you've ever met/known/talked to?

[BurtWorm]

About 20 years ago, I used to work with a guy--a tremendously nice guy in almost all respects--who one day surprised the hell out of me by confessing that he wished the US was a monarchy. I thought he was joking at first, but he insisted that he thought monarchy was the most rational form of government, and he was sorry the colonists ever won the revolution. His family was old New England Yankee, so his Loyalism may have even been genetic. Weird!

Sidebar: Oddly enough, this guy was also a film critic. One of his favorite points was that no American movie made after 1960 (or thereabouts) was made for grownups. I agreed with him up to a point. I used to list for him movie after movie--Woody Allen after Annie Hall, Chinatown, Robert Altman--and he would wrinkle up his nose in disgust and say, "Especially THAT one!" This used to bother me, but the older I get, the better I see his point.

[fudge stripe cookays]

1. Erm....

"Last Tango in Paris?" I wouldn't want my kid to watch it.

FSC

[BurtWorm]

5. I should have made the movie bit a separate thread.

His point was not about whether a kid should see it but whether the people in them were "adults." Think of the difference between Humphrey Bogart in Casablanca, or Cary Grant in North by Northwest and Brando in Last Tango. This guy would argue that Brando was not fully grown up--indeed that no protagonist of any American movie (especially) after 1960 or thereabouts is fully a grown up the way Brando, Grant, Stewart, Cooper, etc. were. He never really talked about women in film, but he'd probably say Maria Schneider (or whatever her name is) was no Kelly, Colbert, Garbo, Bergman, etc., either.

[fudge stripe cookays]

8. I see.

Then...it'd probably have to be this really unstable nutbar I used to work with in downtown Dallas.

No matter what I said, positive or negative, everything was "I'll pray for you." FUCK I hate people like that.

FSC

[Bertha Venation]

2. Probably Ben Ginsberg.

But I did grow up in the baptist church, so I guess it's possible that I've known folks even more conservative.

[Guy Fawkes]

3. re: sidebar: Have you seen "Kinsey"?

Great biopic, but definitely not for kids.

[BurtWorm]

9. See post #5

I haven't seen Kinsey, so I can't comment on it. But, again, the point is not whether it's "appropriate" for kids, but whether the characters in it are "grown ups." My friend argued that American movies in particular do not feature grown ups anymore; no matter how old the characters are supposed to be, no matter how "mature" the theme is, my friend would say, American movies are not about mentally, emotionally, spiritually grown up people.

[yardwork]

13. I'm curious about his belief that pre-1960 movies were about grownups

Is Citizen Kane a mature person? The fact that he is not is the core point of the movie. Despite all his wealth and power, the poor man never got over being given away by his parents. Who could, really?

Are the protagonists in Casablanca mature people? They too are struggling with unresolved issues from their pasts.

Gone with the Wind? Let's not go there.

This guy sounds like he hankers for a rosy-colored past where everything was just wonderful and the king told everybody what to do. Typical Republican.

[BurtWorm]

15. Those are excellent points.

Scarlett O'Hara is a grown-up? Bringing Up Baby is about grownups? John Ford's humor is grown up humor? I don't think so.

[MisterP]

21. Fanny Brice?

[fishwax]

26. My immediate reaction to the "grown up" thing

would be to relate it to the black and white (fantasy) world that conservatives enjoy, which used to be the main location for movies. I had a boss who had a similar attitude about modern movies (though not quite so severe) and who was notoriously conservative. But though he objected to modern characters as not grown-ups, I eventually distilled that down to the fact that he appreciated the idealized world of clear-cut morals that allowed Marshall Kane to appear like a grown-up.

Not that it covers ALL of the old movies, but It's easy for characters to appear mature when they don't have to deal with shades of gray. As a conservative, my boss hated shades of gray with a passion. That might have been part of your conservative's psyche as well.

[JohnKleeb]

4. The Alan Keyes supporting family in my neighborhood

You know I think said some not so nice things about the dude last night.

[madinmaryland]

39. I thought we had gotten rid of Keyes.

Isn't he in exile in illinois?

[rogerashton]

6. I've been acquainted with

Morton Blackwell and Walter Williams, but I don't think either of them really qualified.

But I'd better not say anything more about that. The most conservative person I recall knowing expressed himself in ways that are not appropriate to this family venue. Really racist.

I did know a monarchist, too. He went away for the summer and came back a left-radical. That was 1965 or thereabouts.

[tjdee]

7. These ladies at my church.

Two in particular, and they're almost 50 but look younger...they are suburban women, but not typical. They're also funny, vivacious, charming...always nice to me and my kid. And they're hardcore Bushies. One of them was saying how happy she was with how "we" did with the popular vote.

I'm hoping I can influence them slightly, but I doubt it as I'm younger than they are, singler than they are, and poorer than they are. I plan on defending Spongebob when I see them next week.

Makes me kind of sad.

[pres2032]

10. Pat Toomey

ran against Spector in the primaries for senate from PA. back when i was seriously contemplating going to a military academy, there was an open house with all the branches and toomey was there.

[JohnKleeb]

11. Toomey is so nuts even the man on dog lover didnt support him

[BBradley]

12. My marine friend.

His dad is a cop. Always takes the side of authority. Thinks it's funny to tell me his dad is about to "bash hippy skull" at the inauguration protests. The funny thing is, he says that I'm better informed and more intelligent than him, but they're his beliefs, and he's going to hold onto them. That has got to be the most retarded reason to hang onto your xenophobic, racist ideology I've ever heard.

[yardwork]

14. "I know what I like"

The last fallback for the ignorant and uninformed.

[Left Is Write]

24. I was acquainted with someone like that in the cyberworld.

I didn't know her outside of the internet. She used to post on a debate forum I frequented, but she really had no debate skills whatsoever. Her MO was to follow articulate people around and agree with them. When asked to give her own reasons for supporting Junior, she would say, "I don't have to explain myself" or "My reasons are personal. I just like him."

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

16. A relative is a member of Opus Dei.

He's a MD, and one time I heard him say you can't be a doctor if you don't have religion. :scared:

Thankfully, there's an ocean between us. Literally.

[BurtWorm]

19. Are you Spanish or Portuguese by heritage, Dirtbag?

(Nothing personal. ;) ) Or something else? Just out of curiosity. I always thought the "y" in your previous identity indicated you were Spanish.

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

25. By heritage, Spanish

Despite me being born and raised in Brazil, my parents chose to give me an über-Spanish name.

[BurtWorm]

27. über-Spanish

sounds so Hapsburgian.

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

29. Well, I AM named after the King. (nt)

[GumboYaYa]

17. I win this one.

I worked at the same law firm as John Ashcroft after his last term as govenor and before his term in the US Senate. Let me tell you, the Evangelical Christian thing is not an act. Ole Johnny Boy had quite a hard time dealing with the amount of alcohol consumed by his fellow attorneys.

[BurtWorm]

18. I'd hardly call that "winning!"

:o

[GumboYaYa]

20. LMAO

Good point!

[fluffernutter]

22. my step-dad.

his money and possessions are more important to him than actual people, much less family. he forced my brother and i to call him "dad" even though we did not want to. he is uber-conservative, a homophobe and has a tendancy to talk down to people and he somehow turned my once-liberal mom to the dark side :cry:

[name not needed]

23. Some nutty John Birch Society chump.

I win.

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

28. Nobody beats John Ashcroft.

Unless this guy's dead. Then he might have a chance. :evilgrin:

[fishwax]

31. I think my former boss beats john ashcroft

but then, I'm biased.

For years afterwards, the people I worked with (we were a pretty close-knit crew) would occasionally get together for lunch (without the boss), and like the memory of an abusive patriarch at a family reunion, stories of Ted would completely dominate the conversation.

It's been about a year since I ran into tedder, but I can imagine he would think of Ashcroft as a softy.

[fishwax]

30. A former boss of mine believed that

the kids at Kent State got what was coming to them. He would get very upset if the Kennedy assassination were mentioned, and if you needed extra cash it was very easy to get overtime by bringing that (or any other of a multitude of subjects) up a few minutes before the end of the day and then laughing while he totally lost control, half-swearing and half-debating for an hour or so.

One time we were having some other political discussion (I was constantly arguing with him) when the sexual double standard came up, and he proceeded to speak at length (and great volume) as to why the double standard was natural and correct. Rather disgusting and embarassing.

Of course, he hated gay people, and used to spend hours of work time on the alt.politics.homosexuality newsgroup, arguing with the people there until they got tired of him and started to ignore him.

Vegetarians were violating God's law (and were probably communists to boot), women only voted for the most attractive candidate (he vacillated on whether or not they should even be allowed the vote), and Newt Gingrich (honest to god) sold out to the liberal power structure.

One summer he decided to send his troubled (imagine that) kid to a military summer camp. About six weeks before his son was to ship off, a coworker brought in a USA Today story about how the very same camp was being investigated by the govt and sued by two families for abuse their kids suffered at camp. His response: I hope this investigation doesn't make them back off and go easy on the plebes :puke:

Oh yeah, and once in a very heated argument over skateboarding (he said that any boy who wanted his parents to buy him a skateboard should be forced to join the football team) and I said if my theoretical kid wanted a skateboard, I would buy one for him, tedder called me a "fucked-up anti-American marxist piece of shit."

Any one of us could have had him fired on numerous occasions, but it was REAAAAALLLLY easy to get over on the guy, and we were mostly college students who wanted an easy job, so we let it slide. Eventually, though, someone joined the team that clashed with him personally (ironically, the politics didn't bother this guy) and complained, and my former boss finally lost his job.

Truly, he was a sick, sick man, but I sometimes (in my more sympathetic moments) got the sense that it was a put-on to a high degree. In the final analysis, I think he was just really afraid of going to hell, and thought if he made himself a mercenary for radical right wing christianity (his understanding of christianity and the internal debates being extremely immature) it would somehow cover his sins and shortcomings ... perhaps the most extreme version of the self-hating homosexual i've ever known.

[Menshevik]

49. wow

I don't remember any mention of skateboarding in the Communist Manifesto...

[fishwax]

54. You've got to read between the lines

;)

[Taverner]

32. Define conservative - I knew someone in the KKK

I knew someone who's dad was the head of the local NRA chapter, right to life league and was a past grand whizgadget in the KKK.

He (the dad, not my friend) beleived in this whole 100% BS that white people should run the world, and drive all other races to extinction, and that the Jews aren't really the Jews but gypsy impostors, and the real Jews are the Aryans. Seriously crazy shit. Even scarier, the guy had Ph.D in Chemistry.

[BurtWorm]

33. Good point.

Some of these guys are radicals. Maybe most right-wing is more apt?

There's a well-known ultraracist whose name I can't remember--Tom Metzger or something?--who used to say he was really closer to being a Trotskyist than a Nazi. He thought of himself as a defender of the white working class. Really fucked up loser. I don't know if he still sees himself as a "leftist." But by far most racists I've ever come across have been constipated right-wingers.

[JohnKleeb]

35. Its Metzger

Ahh a lot of right wing racist types think of themselves as champions of working people, Metzger is still a neo-nazi.

[BurtWorm]

36. Another good point.

:toast:

Racism is not a left-wing philosophy, if it can be called that. It's basically rooted in fear of difference, which is a form of fear of change. Ultra-conservatism.

[JohnKleeb]

37. its not, like maybe Metzger isnt a big corporationist

but I am sure he is no left winger on economics.

[tjwash]

41. "Even scarier, the guy had Ph.D in Chemistry."

Sounds like he forgot the golden rule, don't sample your own home brewed product.

Don't forget, Crazy doesn't mean dumb.

[Z_I_Peevey]

34. Dave Somebody-or-Other.

He is/was a loner, gun nut and worshipper of all things military. He lived in South Texas and hated Mexicans. He thought women inferior to men. He was fastidious about his clothing; always had a sharp, pressed seam in his britches. But he had disgustingly filthy teeth.

He had no social skills whatsoever, and was one of those people who launch off into long, detailed speeches about obscure subjects, talking and talking and talking until people practically clawed at the door to get away from him. He laughed at inappropriate moments.

I always thought he would snap someday and kill someone. Really.

[bettyellen]

38. A neighbor I had was a conservative journalist, every single time i ran

into him at our mailboxes he would start on me again with the abortion debate. every fucking time.
i finally told him about how the super who used to live in his apartment, and was found dead there by his sobbing kids on fathers day , and about all the flies in the building becasue he was dead for three days.
he moved out in about six weeks.

[saltpoint]

40. Back in high school days my friend's mother would not --

-- allow her 17-year old son to go with us to see PAINT YOUR WAGON, owing to her having been warned by her pastor that one of the characters was a "woman of the night."

We didn't bother to ask if he could go along for MIDNIGHT COWBOY.

[BurtWorm]

42. Yeeeeeeeeeeeehaw!

That is funny!

[saltpoint]

50. Hi, BurtWorm. I apologize if I veered off your original --

-- post.

Your friend who advocated monarchy sounds interesting. If we go to a monarchy, though, I want exclusive dibs on picking the monarch. Once that's agreed to, it's all systems Go. : )

I wonder how your friend felt about the Bob Rafaelson film FIVE EASY PIECES with Karen Black and Jack Nicholson.

[BurtWorm]

52. Probably hated it.

As I say, he hated every movie after 1960. :hi:

[greendog]

43. First of all...

...he lived in a metal box for 3 years, one of those inter modal containers. In a remote part of Montana off the grid. He had no heat but he did have a satellite up link that allowed him to have Fox news and Limbaugh 24/7. The guy isn't religious but otherwise lives and breaths freeper politics. He's an extreme 'tooth and claw' social darwinist...he has no problem with war for profit...I could go on and on.

[BurtWorm]

45. His name wasn't "Ted" by any chance, was it?

:scared:

[greendog]

47. Compared to this guy...

...Ted was sane.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

44. Most reflexively military: one of my great-uncles

He was career military, and he thought that Walter Cronkite and Eric Sevareid were Communist moles because they opposed the Vietnam War. He also agreed with Patton that the U.S. should have conquered the Soviet Union as long as they were already in Europe.

Most outspokenly racist: a guy I dated briefly in high school. He once said (and this is a direct quote), "Show me a Negro who's so black that he's purple, and I'll show you a creature who can't count to 15." As I said, I dated him briefly. Like, until he made that statement.

[Liberty Belle]

46. A guy I've interviewed for a business publication.

Recently, I was shocked to learn he actually gave ten grand to fund the Swift Boat ads!

I will have to hold my nose the next time I have to interview him, I think.

[last_texas_dem]

48. Some psycho from Greenfield, WI

I did some canvassing for Kerry (with the League of Conservation Voters) in and around Milwaukee last year. Met this guy at the door, ended up talking with him way too long- twenty minutes or so. Seemed intelligent, had me stumped on how to respond to him, but definitely delusional, seemed to buy into all right-wing theories no matter how ridiculous. One of those guys who is a public school teacher, rich because of his wife's salary, sends his kids to private school, and bitches a lot about taxes. Thought environmentalists are all socialists for the redistribution of wealth. Thinks private industry can do anything better than government. Had some nice racist rants about welfare... Nearly exploded when I suggested Bush had "flip-flopped" with his stances on abortion and gay marriage. Thinks the government is only equipped to handle "terrorism", taxes (very low, of course, and "flat"), and the military- nothing else. Thoroughly a delusionial nutjob, scary-looking to boot (big bulging eyes, almost shit himself the couple times I argued with him) but knew his delusions. Guy shook me up pretty badly. So yeah, from my experience with him, the scariest conservative I've ever met. That I didn't more effectively debate him will bother me to my grave, but I can reassure myself by considering that there is probably nothing I said that could have changed his mind.

[Kire]

51. maybe, William F. Buckley, Jr.

definitely the most famously conservative person I've talked to

I asked him a question about the "Timber Salvage Rider" (the grandfather of the "Healthy Forest Initiative") at an appearance he made at my college in 1996. There weren't many students there, but all of the guests were all yelling at me to "Go home." I wrote in a letter to the school newspaper, "I am home. I live on campus."

[Cadence]

53. I used to work with a guy that was an over the top homophobe.

He would print out anti-gay propaganda and leave it in our cubicles, on our chairs, before anyone got there in the morning. He had every piece of anti-gay legislation ever made posted in his cube. He was ultra-conservative when it came to language, like you couldn't say hell it had to be heck and even the word heck was pushing it. He thought women belonged at home, not in the workplace. He called the Vietnamese woman on our team, a "little yellow person". He told me in front of my team of mostly males, that he couldn't work with me because I was a woman. He preached religion any chance he got.
If I had a suggestion for a different networking configuration that went against the proposed solution he would say in a meeting, "oh looks like someone has P.M.S" when it was all business, no emotions even involved.

Complete Neanderthal idiot.