In Which Zandar Answers Your Burning Questions

In a guest column at CNN, Al Vivian asks a pretty good question about the conservative reaction to the Skip Gates case:

But within all that time and coverage, there is still one question that is yet to be asked: Why didn't the conservatives support professor Gates?

As practically every conservative on the Judiciary Committee so passionately spoke of at length during the Sonia Sotomayor confirmation hearings, legal matters should be decided on the facts alone and not on personal opinions or empathy.

Think about it. If this truly were a post-racial America, as so many of my conservative friends tell me, then wouldn't Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Glenn Beck, Bill O'Reilly and the likes have flooded the airwaves in support of professor Gates?

After all, don't their firmly stated beliefs force them to align with Gates? Aren't conservatives the ones who are always railing against "government intrusion" and "excessive use of government power"?

To which the reply of course is that conservatives are perfectly fine with government intrusion and use of government power if it is used against Dirty F'ckin Hippies, minorities, and women, to stop them from doing things that conservatives don't want those groups to be able to do, i.e. mouth off to a cop, have an abortion, oppose the war in Iraq and Afghanistan, use government safety net programs, etc.

Conservatives are only against government intrusion and excessive use of government power wielded by non-conservatives and/or for non-conservative purposes. Conservatives love big government, after all. The largest part of the United States Federal Government is the Department of Defense. Spending $3 trillion in Iraq and Afghanistan, cutting taxes for the wealthy and more than doubling the national debt from $5 trillion to $11 trillion plus is a perfectly acceptable conservative thing to do. Obama on the other hand trying to spend a fraction on getting 50 million people health insurance is proof of his fascist tax and spend liberal tendencies, dig?

Here endeth the lesson.