the only constant in their universe

mark levin:	there is a road to tyranny, and i believe we're headed on that road ...
glenn beck:	fascism is coming!
unidentified:	intimidation is yet another part of the slow erosion of our liberties.
mark levin:	they want the population to surrender their liberties to the government ...
yaron brook:	you're in very dangerous water to the freedoms that exist in this country.
glenn beck:	and controlling your life ... !
michelle bachman:	i believe that there is a very strong chance that we will see that young people will be put into mandatory service ... and the real concern is that there are provisions for what i would call re-education camps for young people, where young people have to go and get trained in a philosophy that the government puts forward ...
sean hannity:	keep it up, congresswoman, you're doing a great job, and, uh, i have no doubt that they will keep attacking you 'cause you're so effective. thank you for being with us. we appreciate it.
michelle bachman:	thank you, we're gonna fight for our freedom!
sean hannity:	absolutely — against tyranny!

since the great summer of our malcontents a great many pixels have been spent on the unimpeded descent of the republican party into self-perpetuated paranoia and terror.

most of us readily recognize their screeching obstructionism as a coldly calculated form of aversion therapy designed to induce a reflexive nausea in the voting public at the very mention of each and every word and deed of their new liberal overlords. but that's just their election strategy for 2010. as i pointed out in "not just obama", republican hostility can be traced to their long-standing and wholehearted denial of legitimacy and fitness to any leaders not proudly swearing fealty to so-called "conservative principles" even patron saint ronaldus magnus could not uphold.

upon further reflection, i think the paranoia in particular erupts from a place fundamentally ingrained within the conservative psyche. an all-encompassing paranoia is the inevitable response to the acceptance of conservatism as an outlook on life or philosophy.

what is the essence of conservatism at its core, when stripped of the emperor's clothes? it is a dedication to the preservation of the status quo against the forces of change. and what is the only constant in the universe, as the saying goes? that's right, it's change, which i guess makes paranoia the only constant in the republican universe. who wouldn't be crippled by dread with the very laws of the universe arrayed against them?

thus conservatives struggle, in a futile battle they can never ever win. on their side, a homogeneous, aging, shrinking, increasingly unpleasant and disconnected and ultimately dying base that is less interested in recruiting fresh troops than in purging its few remaining heretics. across the battlefield, a younger, diverse, tolerant and growing army untainted by bitter memories of the cold war of the 50's or the culture wars of the 60's, 70's and 80's, for whom the terms liberal, far left, socialist, marxist and communist don't trigger a pavlovian release of the contents of their bladders. for conservatives, time will never be on their side.