Kirby Olson
Is society shifting to the left as a consequence of the Bush presidency? One of the few Conservatives I know is Kirby Olson. Once he was a hippie liberal poet scholar; in years past, for instance, he wrote a book about Gregory Corso. But now his opinions seem insane; or is he just a turncoat?
posted by Michael Andre at
7:04 AM
5 Comments:
I'm going to respond on my blague today.
I was never a hippie. In high school I briefly flirted with the style, and even with their pharmaceuticals. But I haven't been high on anything since I was sixteen (I even refuse to drink coffee).
And I have a work ethic.
I am still a liberal -- but in the classical sense -- Locke, Madison, Paul Simon of Illinois, etc.
I like the kind of things that Bill Cosby is saying about getting and staying married, getting and staying employed, staying out of trouble with the law, and being a decent citizen and neighbor.
The hippy/conservative binary doesn't fit Bill Cosby. And I'm with him.
Try for us another category: tertium quid!
And humorists, to boot!
pEOPLE OFTEN MORPH OUT OF AN EARLIER perspective.
Wordsworth early on like the French R. Later on he saw its' excesses.
I used to like the Beats, but then I saw their excesses. Ginsberg and Burroughs posterboys for NAmbla, etc.
The left is now making a dictatorship of the arts based on spurious claims.
The left is like Maoism. I am like the man in Tianamen Square who's holding up the line of tanks. Or at least that's how I see it.
There's been a shift. The left is no longer the left. It's now something that we should fear -- as Orwell already made clear 50 years ago.
Fear the left.
Fear the right.
Hold to the center!
I'm probably not a conservative although I wouldn't mind helping to leave America as good as I found it, or better.
But at least 50% of America is conservative. Why don't you know any of them? Aren't you interested in half of the country?
Conservatives are the nicest people around, and it's refreshing not to have to deal with any knee-jerk PC spasmodic behavior. Try to go to a conservative outing of some kind. You'll find yourself amazed at how much more you like it than hanging out with crazy Beatniks.
Michael, did you know that Jack Kerouac was a Republican who thought that the hippies were a bunch of communists?
Did you know that James Brown was a Republican who stumped for Nixon?
Did you know that Marianne Moore championed Nixon and wore a Nixon campaign button?
I'm not a Republican. I'm a kind of independent and centrist, but I think there were a lot of hip Republicans.
Pound was certainly not a hippy liberal.
I think a lot of our greatest writers have been on the right.
It's more fashionable to be on the left, I suppose, but ...
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