Now that our country has replaced its constitutionally-prescribed government with a liberal/socialist totalitarian state headed by a foreign Muslim, the Republican Party faces a tough choice. They can suffer the social ostracism, media persecution and periodic witch hunts that come with going their own way and standing on principle, or they can, you know, retire to one of their summer homes. The life of the rebel is not easy. In an America gripped by radical liberal social engineering, a few proud dissidents will hold their heads above the crowd, but many more will be cut down. Those who survive live as hunted animals, lapped at by a tide of conformity that has dragged this country further from its founding principles than ever in history. Frankly, the whole thing is sexy as hell. Like a less rapey Ayn Rand novel, the rebels who stand for conservatism move through a dystopia of groupthink and wealth redistribution. This Friday, we consider their habitat—a place we once dared call America.

First and foremost, it is dangerous to be rich. As Michele Bachmann reminds us, the wealthy in this country are a dwindling lot, eaten away from the bottom by grasping welfare queens and from the top by a tax-and-spend government. People don’t even want to be rich anymore, which is why you have to pay them so much to do it. According to Equilar—quoted by a livid-nearly-to-incoherence Peter Goodman in HuffPo—executive compensation at S&P 500 companies has risen 28% since 2009. Compare that to pay for what Goodman vaguely terms “rank-and-file” workers, which has risen by about 1% since…1980. Adjusted for inflation, the dad on The Wonder Years hasn’t gotten a raise since Fred Savage was scared to masturbate.* That’s how many people want to be poor in our modern welfare state:  so many you can’t afford to pay them.

Of course, the numerically awesome compensation package for being rich is just a trick, because you have to give pretty much all of that money back to the thugs government anyway. It’s a known fact that rich people pay more taxes than anybody. Yet liberal propaganda mills think tanks continue to try to convince us that taxes are actually low. Just because our top marginal tax rate, estate tax, corporate tax and federal tax revenue as a percentage of GDP are all at either historic or worldwide lows doesn’t mean that taxes aren’t too high. I mean, does anyone think we should pay more in taxes? Yes, everyone, except for a few bold individualists who question society.

Example: David Mamet. In a recent Slate interview/pair of gay glasses, the dramatist announced his admiration for Sarah Palin and conversion to free-market conservatism. I have been keeping quiet about this issue for many years, but I think it is finally time for us to say that David Mamet is not cool. Glengarry Glen Ross is incredibly cool, and I guess that movie with Alec Baldwin and the bear is cool, but the man is a dork. Worse, he is a Lou Reed-style dork, in that he is constantly trying to be cool. But he is not cool, and we should not obey his bizarre essays, and finally it can be said. You know why? Because society fears and reviles Republicans. This proves it.

Conservatism is the most dangerous form of thought in America today. The schools, the media, the government—they all try to stamp it out. Expressing conservative principles is the one thing our pathologically permissive society frowns upon; in no way does it approach the level of even polite conversation, much less some kind of fad. Completely unrelated to the idea of fads, here is a series of quotes from Michele Bachmann supertitled on pictures of pugs. I personally like #4, for both words and image and combination thereof. It’s not easy to be quirky sometimes, but you just have to do it. It may not be cool to be an individual in today’s society, but some of us just have to be ourselves. It’s probably because we’re such strong personalities. Our bravery gets us into trouble sometimes, but that’s the price we pay for sticking to good common sense.

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