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John great work as always, wish i had this up my sleeve this morning, love it

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I'm 83 and don't think of myself as elderly. O well. Listen, John, I think these words you wrote are spot on as the "learned" like to say: "[ there’s a dime’s worth of difference between the base of the Republican Party and the leader]".

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Exactly, and 100% of the Republican party base would identify as "conservatives". So why Mr. Stoehr continues to insist that today's Republicans aren't "real conservatives" is frustrating. Like it or not, this is what "conservatism" is now in the US: it's authoritarian to its core. The dictionary doesn't decide what words and labels mean. People do. Its just like religion. Jesus Christ doesn't decide what Christianity is, Christians do. I'm surprised John doesn't see that. He's trying to rescue a term and a philosophy that is long gone in America in any meaningful sense. The conservative movement in this country is what its always been since the '60s: an Authoritarian project designed to create a theocratic, corporate, police state that won't rest until it utterly dominates (or is completely overwhelmed by reasonable Americans-- the real "Silent Majority"). This is nothing new. Trump, and fealty to him, is just the latest development in what is a thoroughly conservative/authoritarian/fascist movement in the United States. (And there's not a dime's worth of difference between these terms nowadays.)

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Yep, yep, yep!

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Well,, they're terms of persuasion, not grammar. "Conservativism" has always confused as a label, fraught with tenets and practices that violate the meaning and mission of conservation. Use of "conservative" effectively masks the authoritarian goals of power-mad radicals whose mission fulfilled will result in self-destruction. We must not give Mike Pompeo his rapture.

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