Incoherent Gibberish Andrew Sullivan Says, Ctd.

Mr. Sullivan cannonballs off the deep end:

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The inarticulate tendency in conservatism is what led John Stuart Mill to say the following:

I never meant to say that the Conservatives are generally stupid. I meant to say that stupid people are generally Conservative. I believe that is so obviously and universally admitted a principle that I hardly think any gentleman will deny it.

Of course, I think that’s a misunderstanding. The inability to articulate the value of something you have come to love or do is, to my mind, part of its value. Some things in life are ineffable and to explain them almost a violation of their essence. Most of these lie in the practical arena. How does a master chef explain exactly how he makes a dish with his singular skill, developed for years? How do those who are doing beautiful things with scooters answer when you ask them how they became so good at it, and why they keep at it? How do I explain why the cutting down of a small copse of trees near my childhood home traumatized me – because of what it did to my little universe of boyish escape? 

There are reasons we can come up with. But they don’t capture the lived experience and never can. And it is precisely when you explain it that you undermine it. As soon as you call the town you have always lived in a “community”, it no longer is one. This is the Tao of conservatism. If conservatism were to be properly represented by a religion, it would be the opposite of fundamentalist Christianity. It would be Taoism.

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-- Andrew Sullivan, 03/25/13

Seen from the outside, it has long been painfully clear that the most charitable thing one could say about Conservatism is that it has two things in common with an alien encounter: chronic butt-hurt and a complete inability to remember the past.

But I suppose if you are is a Conservative -- especially if are a very public Conservative who has the word "Conservative" indelibly stamped on every professional document that defines your public existence -- and you cannot afford to look like a complete dolt, you need to make up some shit about how Conservatism is completely other than what it obviously is.

How it is a purely mysterious, interior experience
 

that disintegrates once you try to pin it to the page with words.

Or explain it to people who don't fall for the bullshit.

How it isn't a fucked up witchbag of bigots and imbeciles and hucksters.

It is ineffable.

It is Tao.

It is,.,pineapple ice cream.  

If Mr. Sullivan suddenly developed a taste for pineapple ice cream, within a week he would be penning columns about how "Liking Pineapple Ice Cream" is a  cardinal Conservative value because of something something Edmund Burke.  If he got sick on bad Thai food, we would suddenly see a spate of columns discussing bad Thai food and how it is something that only extreme Christianists or Left Liberal would ever put in their mouths.