Michael Fumento Attacks Angry Conservatism

Michael Fumento, long-time conservative activist and writer, has written a powerful attack on contemporary conservatism. He is disgusted by the antics of the Limbaughs, Malkins, and Breitbarts who compete with each other to say the nastiest things about liberals, as if angry insults were a substitute for reasoned politics:

Civility and respect for order – nay, demand for order – have always been tenets of conservatism. The most prominent work of history’s most prominent conservative, Edmund Burke, was a reaction to the anger and hatred that swept France during the revolution. It would eventually rip the country apart and plunge all of Europe into decades of war. Such is the rotted fruit of mass-produced hate and rage. 

What bothers him even more is that these "conservative" icons seem not to care much about conservative politics, but only about making money:

RightMarch.com accompanied the Obama-cum-tyrant message with an offer to “Blast Fax” every member of Congress for $139 – for a profit of about $139. Surely these people have their fingers crossed that President Obama is reelected.

I go back and forth in my own mind about these issues. Sometimes I think that angry incivility is a real threat to our political discourse, and sometimes I think it is a silly distraction.

At the end of the piece Fumento gets to something that I think, as all my readers know, is a lot more important, the dearth of ideas on either the left or the right to get the median household income rising again, reduce inequality, and generally get the country on a more positive footing. Maybe part of the reason shouting is so prominent in our politics is there aren't many good ideas around worth discussing in a serious way.