the happy conservative

My aspirations aren’t so grand. I want to go back and start a business in Tarkio and hire a bunch of Tarkians and make something good. I want a family of rugrats who play pirates with corn cobs and eat pancakes at their Grandma’s house and beat their dad at Stratego. I want to sit on my porch in my underwear like Forrest Macdonald, watch the pickups drive by, and post about the good life on The Happy Conservative. I’m not going to change the world. It is what it is. But I can raise good children and employ people and found the Major Owens Institute for Conservative Studies, and at least Tarkio will be a better place.

Liberals are unhappy because they try to change the world and fail. Hayek would say they are silly for even trying to accumulate the necessary knowledge to understand the results of their changes. Just what would happen if we let gays marry? Who knows? Nobody. And nobody ever will.

But Hayek would like my idea; I know I can change lives.

Happiness isn’t about financial gain (except that you can buy more Diet Dew). Happiness is about making things better at the end of the day. The difference between liberals and conservatives is the scope of their reform. Conservatives want to change the lives of their children. Liberals want to save the children. Let me know how that works out.

Which is not to say some people don’t change the world; but Reagan was only one man, and he wasn’t selling flags for Darfur.

In the meantime, I’ll be sitting on my porch in my underwear in Tarkio, reading the latest edition of the Major Owens Review.