Heresy and Heretics

I'm not sure these days exactly what or who is conservative.

There was a time when "conservative" referred to people who dressed conservatively (women wore white gloves and hats, men wore suits and ties with hats and perhaps a vest), spoke with attention to grammatical and factual correctness, and who were cautious about making changes to the existing order. Plainly that understanding no longer applies.

There always were, I knew, different kinds of people who called themselves conservative. A quarter of a century ago, I was puzzled by two of them in particular: James J. Kilpatrick and William F. Buckley, Jr.

What puzzled me was the fact that, though I seldom agreed with James J. Kilpatrick (except when his topic was the English language), I could understand what he was saying and follow the logic of his arguments. Buckley, on the other hand, made no sense to me at all. Because of this, I had no idea if I ever agreed with him.

I asked an Irish Catholic friend and co-worker, who explained: "Kilpatrick is a Protestant. He presents facts and uses logic to make his case. Buckley, on the other hand, is seeking to expose heresy." Then he added: "by the way, liberal Catholic columnists do the same."

It appears that we are being led toward economic catastrophe by a group of grand inquisitors bent on rooting out heresy against the revealed truth as proclaimed by sainted (though dead) economists. If the economic facts collected by statisticians don't fit the revealed theories, then the facts are wrong! If predictions based on those theories don't come to pass - well then, there must be some other explanation.