Hot, Dead Chicken

Years ago, after the end of AT&T’s monopoly, the company had to adjust to having competition, and some people thought the transition was a difficult and not necessarily well handled one.  A mild joke circulated at the time that the company was so awful at marketing  that, if it  bought Colonel Sanders, it would advertise its product as hot, dead chicken.

I  thought of that old joke recently when I read an article by a conservative describing what he saw as the fundamental difference between his side in politics and its opponents. The profound difference he said was that while their opponents have an optimistic view of humanity and believe people are capable of improvement, progress, rationality, and goodness, conservatives recognize people for the depraved creatures they are and  understand they need to be held in check  by tradition, law, religion, and authority.

 In the first place this is not true. A belief  in the potential of human beings to be good and wise and in the possibility and desirability of improvement and progress through education, reason, and science is an important aspect of the liberal tradition. However  the conservatives’ opponents these days  are more apt to be authoritarian leftists, often of the green variety,   than liberals and to have no more  truck with progress or  trust in the potential of humanity than the most dour of traditionalists. (The most likely place at present to find people holding these liberal notions  is among  libertarians,  though there also are many people on the general left and general right side of politics who do so as well.)  

Besides that it is terrible, hot dead, chicken marketing. It amounts to telling Americans “we think you are inherently flawed, base, and sinful and so is every else, including us, and we’d surely like you to vote to put us in charge of your government.” As an advertising pitch, it doesn’t exactly sing. So conservatives who hold these opinions and want to win elections should keep them to themselves. They should  remember that the most successful Republican politician of the last hundred years was not that sort of conservative, but  in this respect  very much a liberal.