The South Park Conservatives - My Generation's Hippies
South Park is still, after 8 seasons, one of the most creative and brilliant shows on TV. Free to work on a schedule outputting 7 or 8 shows at a time, Matt Stone and Trey Parker have been able to craft some of the best satire being made anywhere for almost a decade. Over the years, as I’ve watched South Park, I’ve never thought of it as conservative or liberal. It was always just clever satire, and it spared no one.
It was about two years ago that I started hearing rumblings in the media about how the show was ‘conservative.’ My existing notion of what is ‘conservative’ had to be readjusted just to begin to fathom that. They were not talking about morally conservative, but about libertarian conservative. People looked at the show as being an antidote to political correctness, and therefore it was seen as ‘conservative.’ But despite the fact that left-wing political correctness has been embarrassing and overreaching at times (read The Language Police from Diane Ravitch to see what I mean), just as much political correctness comes from the religious right as well. And in South Park, Matt and Trey have always done a good job skewering both sides.
The reality is that South Park shouldn’t be measured on the scale of left to right. The overriding theme in South Park is one of moderation over extremism, not conservative over liberal. The episode that, to me, most clearly defines their outlook is the “Spontaneous Combustion” episode, one of their earliest shows. In that episode, a person dies from holding in their farts, so out of fear that you could die from holding in your farts, everyone starts farting all the time, which begins to hurt the environment. In the end, Randy Marsh saves the day by explaining the notion of moderation. This is what South Park is all about. It’s about the notion that running towards the extremes is dangerous.
But now there’s a book, called the South Park Conservative, describing this new sector of political opinion that’s in tune with the irreverent South Park and staunchly conservative as well. Matt and Trey had nothing to do with the book, and I don't know what their opinions of the book are (although the fact that an asterisk on the cover of the book announces that it has no affiliation with the show should give some clue). The phrase was originally coined by Andrew Sullivan, a moderate conservative who enjoys voting for a party with members who are ready to ban anything he writes. From descriptions I've seen of the book (I haven't read it yet), a South Park Conservative is a person who has a libertarian outlook, but still believes that conservative Republicans are on the right path in terms of fighting the War on Terror. Much of this demographic is, not surprisingly, younger than the average Republican, and I think older Americans, both liberals and conservatives alike, would be surprised at how liberal (or libertarian, to be more accurate) these Republican voters' views are on drug laws and gay rights.
But it's the libertarian outlook on the War of Drugs combined with the authoritarian outlook in the War on Terror that exposes their overriding hypocrisy. Believing that the War on Drugs is a mistake, while also believing that the way the Bush Administration has fought the War on Terror is not, reveals certain contradictions. Both efforts make an assumption that fear and intimidation can control individual behavior. Believing that one effort will work, while also believing that the other has been a failure that has only made the problem worse, is silly. Drug abuse and terrorism are two very bad things for a society, but those of us who've studied the Drug War know that intimidating and locking up drug users has only exacerbated the problems of drug abuse and drug violence, and we’re being reminded every day in Iraq that our strategy of intimidation, and an acceptance that occasionally killing or imprisoning innocent people is necessary, is only giving the insurgency more support. This is where the South Park Conservatives, and arguably Andrew Sullivan himself, can never reconcile their political contradictions. They can believe they’re justified by saying that terrorism is worse than drug abuse, but that’s missing the point. Even if terrorism is worse (and it is), it’s still not an excuse to fight it in a way that they should already know will make it worse.
What this contradiction reveals to me is that the "South Park Conservatives" have become the hippies of my generation. They are the spoiled twenty-something children of American middle- and upper-class privilege who have much more progressive and uninhibited morals than their parent's generation, but have pointed to the foibles of an increasingly progressive political establishment as a reason to run full speed in the other direction, and to refrain from wrestling with the larger questions posed by the War on Terror. In the 60s, the blunders of the Vietnam War became the foible that sent many of our spoiled youth running towards the extremes of communism and a hatred for the military. Today, the follies of political correctness have sent our current pampered generation down the path of intellectual laziness towards a belief that just bombing the shit out of places will make them sprout into democracies. Both of these beliefs, from the 60s and today, come from a detachment with the true realities of the lives of those less fortunate than us here in America. And it proves the adage that once you go far enough towards one side, you eventually bump into the people from the other side that you were running away from. That’s the true lesson of moderation, and it's what I appreciate about watching South Park.
It was about two years ago that I started hearing rumblings in the media about how the show was ‘conservative.’ My existing notion of what is ‘conservative’ had to be readjusted just to begin to fathom that. They were not talking about morally conservative, but about libertarian conservative. People looked at the show as being an antidote to political correctness, and therefore it was seen as ‘conservative.’ But despite the fact that left-wing political correctness has been embarrassing and overreaching at times (read The Language Police from Diane Ravitch to see what I mean), just as much political correctness comes from the religious right as well. And in South Park, Matt and Trey have always done a good job skewering both sides.
The reality is that South Park shouldn’t be measured on the scale of left to right. The overriding theme in South Park is one of moderation over extremism, not conservative over liberal. The episode that, to me, most clearly defines their outlook is the “Spontaneous Combustion” episode, one of their earliest shows. In that episode, a person dies from holding in their farts, so out of fear that you could die from holding in your farts, everyone starts farting all the time, which begins to hurt the environment. In the end, Randy Marsh saves the day by explaining the notion of moderation. This is what South Park is all about. It’s about the notion that running towards the extremes is dangerous.
But now there’s a book, called the South Park Conservative, describing this new sector of political opinion that’s in tune with the irreverent South Park and staunchly conservative as well. Matt and Trey had nothing to do with the book, and I don't know what their opinions of the book are (although the fact that an asterisk on the cover of the book announces that it has no affiliation with the show should give some clue). The phrase was originally coined by Andrew Sullivan, a moderate conservative who enjoys voting for a party with members who are ready to ban anything he writes. From descriptions I've seen of the book (I haven't read it yet), a South Park Conservative is a person who has a libertarian outlook, but still believes that conservative Republicans are on the right path in terms of fighting the War on Terror. Much of this demographic is, not surprisingly, younger than the average Republican, and I think older Americans, both liberals and conservatives alike, would be surprised at how liberal (or libertarian, to be more accurate) these Republican voters' views are on drug laws and gay rights.
But it's the libertarian outlook on the War of Drugs combined with the authoritarian outlook in the War on Terror that exposes their overriding hypocrisy. Believing that the War on Drugs is a mistake, while also believing that the way the Bush Administration has fought the War on Terror is not, reveals certain contradictions. Both efforts make an assumption that fear and intimidation can control individual behavior. Believing that one effort will work, while also believing that the other has been a failure that has only made the problem worse, is silly. Drug abuse and terrorism are two very bad things for a society, but those of us who've studied the Drug War know that intimidating and locking up drug users has only exacerbated the problems of drug abuse and drug violence, and we’re being reminded every day in Iraq that our strategy of intimidation, and an acceptance that occasionally killing or imprisoning innocent people is necessary, is only giving the insurgency more support. This is where the South Park Conservatives, and arguably Andrew Sullivan himself, can never reconcile their political contradictions. They can believe they’re justified by saying that terrorism is worse than drug abuse, but that’s missing the point. Even if terrorism is worse (and it is), it’s still not an excuse to fight it in a way that they should already know will make it worse.
What this contradiction reveals to me is that the "South Park Conservatives" have become the hippies of my generation. They are the spoiled twenty-something children of American middle- and upper-class privilege who have much more progressive and uninhibited morals than their parent's generation, but have pointed to the foibles of an increasingly progressive political establishment as a reason to run full speed in the other direction, and to refrain from wrestling with the larger questions posed by the War on Terror. In the 60s, the blunders of the Vietnam War became the foible that sent many of our spoiled youth running towards the extremes of communism and a hatred for the military. Today, the follies of political correctness have sent our current pampered generation down the path of intellectual laziness towards a belief that just bombing the shit out of places will make them sprout into democracies. Both of these beliefs, from the 60s and today, come from a detachment with the true realities of the lives of those less fortunate than us here in America. And it proves the adage that once you go far enough towards one side, you eventually bump into the people from the other side that you were running away from. That’s the true lesson of moderation, and it's what I appreciate about watching South Park.
posted by thehim at 4:20 PM
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