One overlooked feature of the Conservative Movement that the late William F Buckley bestowed upon us was the purge of the putative fringe elements, most pointedly, the John Birch Society.
Years later in The Conservative Crackup, Emmett Tyrrell outlined the difference between “natural conservatives” and Movement Conservatives. By Movement Conservatives we mean men and women who participated in W F B’s Young American for Freedom, subscribed to The American Spectator or National Review, and the like. By natural conservatives, Tyrrell meant people, say gun owners, who weren’t otherwise political apart from maybe their NRA membership, who didn’t belong to the identifiably Conservative organizations or read their publications.
In the case of gun owners, you had many people who simply wanted to own guns, whether for self defense, hunting, shooting sports, or because they just liked guns. Most gun owners believe they can own their guns responsibily and not result in the innocent getting hurt without the Nanny State imposing all manners of restrictions or even banning types of guns they would like to own. Hence gun owners are natural conservatives even if an individual gun owner is not overtly political.
Now who else would be in the Conservative camp, and unlike gun owners, whom would you want to keep out? Well, anyone with a racial, anti-Semitic, anti-Communist stance that mixes in some race or anti-Semitic overtones, and the like.
Hey not so fast, you are thinking, who among us Conservatives and Libertarians are you accusing of being a racist, anti-Semite or worse? Me, I am not accusing anyone of nothing, it is just that WFB “made his bones” as the founder and charter member of the Conservative Movement by distancing himself from such elements in the American political landscape — disrespecting the anti-Communist John Birch Society for flirting with International Jewish Conspiracy fear mongering.
OK, OK, the long stories I tell do have a point to them. Back in the early 70’s, a Conservative activist named Lorren Smith made something of a name for himself with humorous political impersonations, mainly in the Chicago area. He was doing the Stephen Colbert schtick of impersonating an over-earnest Right Winger, but the object of his satire was not Hannity or O’Reilly as is the case with Colbert. Rather, riffing on WFB’s purge of Conservatism of the kook fringe, the object of his satire was the “kook fringe” as a way of highlighting how much new and improved the WFB conservatives were, or perhaps satirizing the Media as portraying all Conservatives as kook Right Wingers.
Part of the Lorren Smith humor monologue was The Fluoron Theory, and yes, this was a riff on the obsession on water fluoridation by the kook fringe, also made famous in Doctor Strangelove.
You see, fluorons are these subatomic particles, not yet known to science because they are even smaller than the electron. Fluorons are, of course, emitted by fluorescent light bulbs, and we know that fluoresent bulbs are common place in schools and other government buildings. Fluorons are also shaped like a small hammer-and-sickle, which by chance is the same as the heraldic symbol of Soviet Communism. When you are exposed to fluorons, some of them penetrate your skull, and because they are energetic particles, every now and then, one of them explodes one of your brain cells, turning it into a Communist idealogue.
Now with the average exposure to fluorescent lights applied to the average person, only a small percentage of your brain cells are affected that way, and you turn into a Liberal. But exposure as well as sensitivity to exposure varies, and some people are turned into radical Leftists that way, and in rare cases, full-blown Soviet Communists.
Just saying, that no one paid much heed to Lorren Smith back in 1971 where he explained this theory at the Houston, Texas YAF convention, but with the government mandate for CFL’s, one cannot be too careful . . .
Funny and true. I can’t tell you how many times I have found one or two less bulbs in the drawer and asked around only to discovered that where they went was a complete mystery to every little head in the house. That is until you find a few shards the little slackers missed when they cleaned up their mess. Now imagine you were blowing Mercury albeit in small amounts into the air each time you vacuumed after that incident. We’ll all be as mad as AlGore eventually. Unintended consequences are a %itch.
Since I, like many of my cohort, grew up in a world where kids were encouraged to play with little puddles of mercury in their hands to spur their interest in science, I cannot get exercised about the teensy bit of mercury “spilled” from a broken CFL.
And in general, I don’t mind installing CFLs for most of the household lamps, especially the ones we keep on 24/7 to prevent falls. Since they seem a bit more resistant to burnout from the spiky electricity we have in our house, I also install them in receptacles that seem particularly burnout-prone.
But I came to an ugly realization when I replaced the last of my six indoor floods that illuminate my living room — they don’t turn on right away. I mean, I knew that, but things get ugly when all the light in a room is provided by CFLs. Because that means when it’s pitch dark and you flip a switch, it’s still pitch dark. This is not the America I grew up in, dammit.
Study on confirmation bias confirms Leftist bias that Conservatives are Stupid(tm).
D’oh!
Someone needs to buy Titus a beer, he deserves it.
I agree that fluorescents (not just CFLs) work a hell of a lot better and last a great deal longer when not switched on and off too often – which is probably why they are good for commercial environments.
Personally, I think that the whole business of getting rid of incandescents ought to have waited until LED lights got a bit more reasonable; they last practically forever and are even more energy-efficient than CFLs. They are more flexible in terms of lighting design, too.
Fletcher, I have the feeling that the first company to embed tiny white LED’s in the fancy crystals of big chandeliers will make a fortune.
One overlooked feature of the Conservative Movement that the late William F Buckley bestowed upon us was the purge of the putative fringe elements, most pointedly, the John Birch Society.
Years later in The Conservative Crackup, Emmett Tyrrell outlined the difference between “natural conservatives” and Movement Conservatives. By Movement Conservatives we mean men and women who participated in W F B’s Young American for Freedom, subscribed to The American Spectator or National Review, and the like. By natural conservatives, Tyrrell meant people, say gun owners, who weren’t otherwise political apart from maybe their NRA membership, who didn’t belong to the identifiably Conservative organizations or read their publications.
In the case of gun owners, you had many people who simply wanted to own guns, whether for self defense, hunting, shooting sports, or because they just liked guns. Most gun owners believe they can own their guns responsibily and not result in the innocent getting hurt without the Nanny State imposing all manners of restrictions or even banning types of guns they would like to own. Hence gun owners are natural conservatives even if an individual gun owner is not overtly political.
Now who else would be in the Conservative camp, and unlike gun owners, whom would you want to keep out? Well, anyone with a racial, anti-Semitic, anti-Communist stance that mixes in some race or anti-Semitic overtones, and the like.
Hey not so fast, you are thinking, who among us Conservatives and Libertarians are you accusing of being a racist, anti-Semite or worse? Me, I am not accusing anyone of nothing, it is just that WFB “made his bones” as the founder and charter member of the Conservative Movement by distancing himself from such elements in the American political landscape — disrespecting the anti-Communist John Birch Society for flirting with International Jewish Conspiracy fear mongering.
OK, OK, the long stories I tell do have a point to them. Back in the early 70’s, a Conservative activist named Lorren Smith made something of a name for himself with humorous political impersonations, mainly in the Chicago area. He was doing the Stephen Colbert schtick of impersonating an over-earnest Right Winger, but the object of his satire was not Hannity or O’Reilly as is the case with Colbert. Rather, riffing on WFB’s purge of Conservatism of the kook fringe, the object of his satire was the “kook fringe” as a way of highlighting how much new and improved the WFB conservatives were, or perhaps satirizing the Media as portraying all Conservatives as kook Right Wingers.
Part of the Lorren Smith humor monologue was The Fluoron Theory, and yes, this was a riff on the obsession on water fluoridation by the kook fringe, also made famous in Doctor Strangelove.
You see, fluorons are these subatomic particles, not yet known to science because they are even smaller than the electron. Fluorons are, of course, emitted by fluorescent light bulbs, and we know that fluoresent bulbs are common place in schools and other government buildings. Fluorons are also shaped like a small hammer-and-sickle, which by chance is the same as the heraldic symbol of Soviet Communism. When you are exposed to fluorons, some of them penetrate your skull, and because they are energetic particles, every now and then, one of them explodes one of your brain cells, turning it into a Communist idealogue.
Now with the average exposure to fluorescent lights applied to the average person, only a small percentage of your brain cells are affected that way, and you turn into a Liberal. But exposure as well as sensitivity to exposure varies, and some people are turned into radical Leftists that way, and in rare cases, full-blown Soviet Communists.
Just saying, that no one paid much heed to Lorren Smith back in 1971 where he explained this theory at the Houston, Texas YAF convention, but with the government mandate for CFL’s, one cannot be too careful . . .
Funny and true. I can’t tell you how many times I have found one or two less bulbs in the drawer and asked around only to discovered that where they went was a complete mystery to every little head in the house. That is until you find a few shards the little slackers missed when they cleaned up their mess. Now imagine you were blowing Mercury albeit in small amounts into the air each time you vacuumed after that incident. We’ll all be as mad as AlGore eventually. Unintended consequences are a %itch.
Since I, like many of my cohort, grew up in a world where kids were encouraged to play with little puddles of mercury in their hands to spur their interest in science, I cannot get exercised about the teensy bit of mercury “spilled” from a broken CFL.
And in general, I don’t mind installing CFLs for most of the household lamps, especially the ones we keep on 24/7 to prevent falls. Since they seem a bit more resistant to burnout from the spiky electricity we have in our house, I also install them in receptacles that seem particularly burnout-prone.
But I came to an ugly realization when I replaced the last of my six indoor floods that illuminate my living room — they don’t turn on right away. I mean, I knew that, but things get ugly when all the light in a room is provided by CFLs. Because that means when it’s pitch dark and you flip a switch, it’s still pitch dark. This is not the America I grew up in, dammit.
Study on confirmation bias confirms Leftist bias that Conservatives are Stupid(tm).
D’oh!
Someone needs to buy Titus a beer, he deserves it.
I agree that fluorescents (not just CFLs) work a hell of a lot better and last a great deal longer when not switched on and off too often – which is probably why they are good for commercial environments.
Personally, I think that the whole business of getting rid of incandescents ought to have waited until LED lights got a bit more reasonable; they last practically forever and are even more energy-efficient than CFLs. They are more flexible in terms of lighting design, too.
Fletcher, I have the feeling that the first company to embed tiny white LED’s in the fancy crystals of big chandeliers will make a fortune.