Compassionate conservatism was a thing in the late 1990s and 00s. For the life of me I can’t recall the last time I heard the expression used in a serious conversation. Maybe that’s because compassionate conservatism, like most political orientations packed into a slogan, wasn’t serious. It certainly didn’t help that the expression conjured up an image of regular old run-of-the-mill conservatism as downright mean, even frightening. Anyway, I don’t expect it to return to the forefront of our politics anytime soon, especially not in the era of “Tea Party” conservatism and, on the opposite end of the spectrum, a gross mixture of social libertinism and state-managed capitalism. This is why I am issuing a modest, measured, and above all mirthful call for #friendlyfascism. In a day and age when so many traditionally disenfranchised, even oppressed, groups have “taken back” certain words of derision, is it not time for us, concerned citizens of the United States who have grown indifferent toward, nay, disgusted with the present socio-economic ordo to take back the original F-Word?
