Sharron Angle Is a Founding Father, Because History All Happens At Once

Apparently Sharron Angle has been taking some heat from the Republican leadership for her refusal to talk to, or even make direct eye contact with, members of the press. So she finally invited the New York Times and other big city members of the lamestream media JournoList cabal to come talk to her, and, "under the gaze of a half-dozen advisers and an official videographer," she managed to mostly not be insane, except for a stray moment when she revealed that she doesn't believe in human progress or, indeed, in the linear progression of time.

Do you think that maybe Sharron Angle is too conservative? Well, I hope you like having Ben Franklin's ghost haunting you, because when you mess with Sharron, you mess with Ben!

Ms. Angle said she was in step with most Nevada voters and dismissed Mr. Reid's contention that she was too conservative.

"I'm sure that they probably said that about Thomas Jefferson and George Washington and Benjamin Franklin," she said. "And truly, when you look at the Constitution and our founding fathers and their writings, the things that made this country great, you might draw those conclusions: That they were conservative. They were fiscally conservative and socially conservative."

Yes, this is exactly what Harry Reid's distant ancestor (Harold Reed-Smythe, 11th Earl of Pokington) would have said about Thomas Jefferson and George Washington and Benjamin Franklin, with their ideas of replacing a monarchy with a republic and creating a country without a state church: that they were too conservative. Clearly their goal in breaking away from Britain was to keep the Lobsterbacks, with their abortion clinics and their progressive income taxation structure, off of American soil.

Here is the problem -- or, one of the problems -- with morons like Sharron Angle. They are completely unable to grasp the fact that the specific issues that cause them such rage today were irrelevant 200 years ago (and will be irrelevant 200 years from now), and that "liberal" and "conservative" are labels for the way people feel about the current political landscape, not convenient shorthand terms for an unchanging collection of policy proposals. Do you think the Tea Party people realize that the actual Boston Tea Party was about an excise tax, not the income taxes they pay every year, and that the colonists' main complaint was not that it was too high but that it was imposed by a legislature they didn't get to vote for? Do they even know what an excise tax is?

But, no, whatever, Angle sees that the Founding Fathers believed in an elected system of government and sees that as conservative rather than radical, because, after all, we've had elected officials for over 200 years! See? Conservative! Fortunately, her only interest in history involves the years between 1776 and 1789. Don't try to make her fit, say, debates on bimetallism or railroad rates into her liberal/conservative dichotomy -- it will make her head explode.

Anyway, just as Sharron Angle does not recognize that human society evolves over time, so too does she not see any need for any changes to her campaign.

Asked if her campaign had done anything wrong, she responded, "I don't think so."

And asked if she would be doing anything differently going forward, Ms. Angle paused again and said, "I can't think of anything like that."

Sharron Angle literally can not think of anything changing, ever. She lives in an eternal present moment. [ NYT ]