There are really and truly principled conservatives in the USA.

Their dilemma is that they have no one to vote for, they are entirely unrepresented in the political system.

“When Rumsfeld and [Paul] Wolfowitz came into office they were determined to shift the balance of civil/military authority within the Pentagon. They were intent on trimming the sails of the generals.”
http://tiny.cc/iUx8n
Respect for tradition, for sure, but not all military tradition is imperialist, and some of it’s pretty heroic.

“BILL MOYERS: And do you remember that it was his successor, his Vice President, the first President Bush who said in 1992, the American way of life is not negotiable.

ANDREW BACEVICH: And all presidents, again, this is not a Republican thing, or a Democratic thing, all presidents, all administrations are committed to that proposition. Now, I would say, that probably, 90 percent of the American people today would concur. The American way of life is not up for negotiation.
What I would invite them to consider is that, if you want to preserve that which you value most in the American way of life, and of course you need to ask yourself, what is it you value most. That if you want to preserve that which you value most in the American way of life, then we need to change the American way of life.”
http://tiny.cc/croRz
Changing the American way of life in order to preserve what you value most in it is a form of traditionalism, yes, but…

These quotes aren’t from his books, which I haven’t read, but interviews online.
Either what we have as a nation is capable of redemption, or it isn’t.
Dogging someone who believes it is redeemable is pretty easy given the real history of the country, but the alternatives to that redemption are looking pretty ghastly and will involve even worse forms of tyrannical bullying, or a vulnerability to them that’s scary as hell.
You’re imputing to Bacevich a cynicism and that’s mostly personal I think. Maybe what’s most irritating about it is it’s a call to arms. With all that implies.

The truth that needs to be faced I think is that the Mafia crime family style of organization, the Bush family, trumps representative democracy. Is that really true? If so then we have a serious problem.

If any of the mythical personally principled non-electoral conservatives that people assume must exist actually do exist, they are not principled because by continuing to adhere to conservatism at this point, they support the evil done in their name. Damn them all.

That doesn’t mean that non-conservatives stand for good. But they at least have the possibility of acting on principle.

Moreover, McCain is a pretty sleazy character (see Keating Five) as well as an enthusiastic warmonger. He does exhibit some of Reagan’s charm, which isn’t necessarily a sign of Alzheimer’s…

Or in other words, I’m right and all those poeple are not merely wrong, but evil. Lovely, charming attitude, which I am sure will make all those nasty conservatives suddenly realise how totally evil they are and cause them to convert to the way of Puchalsky.

There’s all kinds of self-identified conservatives who are principled within their view of the world, and their place in it. Some of those places align more or less with what the rest of us see as the real world, though the misalignments can be glaring.

It seems more the time to be finding common ground than increasing division. But maybe Pulasky’s right, and we should start throwing large blocks of people overboard.

I was going to leave “Eat the rich” as a snappy closer, but it won’t work, sadly.