Bodies politic

[cjsmith]

There's a stereotype that you can't really be a good little conservative if you're not able-bodied. I don't really know how true it is. I've never much tried to be a good little conservative.

It's obvious, on the other hand, that you can't be a good little liberal if you're not able-bodied. Fortunately, I don't particularly care to be a good little liberal either.

Comments

[leback.livejournal.com]

I haven't met many athletic individuals who aren't smug about it.

That may just be because if they're not smug, they don't come across as "athletic." akosut has gotten to where he bikes close to ten miles a day, and probably walks another four or five, but his attitude about it is very low-key, and so it doesn't even tend to occur to me that he's "one of those cyclist types." :-)

Wow, I've never perceived that as a uniquely conservative thing. If it ever was, I'm positive it isn't now. I see big heaping bucketsful of that from both today's conservatives and today's liberals.

I tend to think of the relevant axis as "conservative/radical" (i.e., the distinction between wanting to preserve the dominant social organization, and wanting to revolutionize it) rather than "conservative/liberal." "Liberal" is a term that means different things to different people -- the balance of conservatism and radicalism in it varies -- but in contemporary mainstream politics, it seems to apply to ideologies that are basically conservative but want to make modest alterations to the window dressing on the status quo. My self-assigned function is to point that out wherever it crops up. :-)

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

That may just be because if they're not smug, they don't come across as "athletic."

Maybe, although I've also now come up with a non-smug athlete: an ex-coworker who runs ultramarathons. He too is low-key about it, but nobody will ever mistake him for someone who doesn't use his body. :-)

I tend to think of the relevant axis as "conservative/radical" (i.e., the distinction between wanting to preserve the dominant social organization, and wanting to revolutionize it)

*nod* Yeah, ok, I can see that. Along that axis, US Democrats and Republicans are pretty much in the same boat, just trying to row in different directions.

[hitchhiker.livejournal.com]

there are worse self-assigned functions :)