So, I’ve been relatively silent recently because I’ve been working on a website for a friend’s new music video. The video, which is quite entertaining, is a rap video about Martin Luther and the Reformation, inspired by Jay-Z’s “99 Problems”. It’s below, and the website, with info on the video, cast, and crew, is at 95ThesesRap.com. If you like it, pass the website along. I’m sure Xander will appreciate it. And, if there are any embarrassing formatting snafu’s in the website, let me know in a comment, and include your OS, browser, and browser version.

So, I’m going to start actually posting again. My old wordpress-hosted blog will be defunct, and all new posting will happen here. I have a few longer articles to post in the next few days, including one about Sarah Palin, one about hipsters and underground culture, and some great new music. The design of the blog will also slowly change, and I’m hoping to set up a small online shop eventually. Until then, I hope you enjoy the new content.

So, I’ve been obviously absent recently. I had my mother in town, and have been too busy to post any of the cool cool thing I wanted to. Anyway, it will be a few more days before I have anything written up of importance, but you may see a few music posts soon. ALSO! I have got web hosting elsewhere and that will soon be set up, so this blog will be moving. “conservativehipster.com” already is pointing away from the blog, so you can only get here through the “hipamcon” wordpress link at the moment. This is exciting, because I’ll be able to have more than just a blog online, and I’m looking at possibilities or having a store and some other neat things up there. Once the blog is there (which may take some time) I’ll send everyone a reminder to stop checking here and to begin checking it there, including the RSS feed. Anyway, see you all sooooooooon.

I’m going out of town tomorrow, so my two longish posts in the works might take until the end of the weekend to actually find their way onto this blog. However, I am making things very purdy with my hand-coded html + css at work. Randall would be proud.

Inaugural post? What to say?  Mission statement? Explanation? A post like any other? How about all three?

Welcome to Conservative Hipster. Now hosted at http://hipamcon.wordpress.com/, soon to be hosted at http://conservativehipster.com/, I’m planning on making this my personal blog of musings on music, culture, philosophy, and politics. It stems from an idea I had while posting here, when I realized that making others know that conservatives come in all shapes and colours, even in a hipster variety that cares about the shape and colour of the typeface on ones shirts, is an important endeavor.

Why Conservative Hipster? Well, while if you asked me about specific issues you wouldn’t assume I’m a conservative (Political Compass has me pegged far in the libertarian camp), my stance on many issues comes from having a fairly conservative view on philosophy and life. I’m definitely not what is typically thought of when one things “conservative” in America. An atheist, pro-ACLU, socialist apologist? Don’t I belong on the left? Well, probably not. But we’ll see.

And finally, I wanted to draw attention to this little nugget, gained from TPM*: According to Johan Goldberg in the LA Times, Obama wants to bring back slavery in the U.S. Sound silly? It is. Some hard-core rights-based libertarians might agree with him, but I think it’s pretty obvious the choice one has in working for a scholarship that Black American slaves did not have. What’s more, and this is important when discussing slavery and involentary servitude, under this plan one is not owned by the government. That’s a very important distinction to be made when discussing American slavery and making ridiculous analogies to it: if one isn’t property now, then it’s nothing like slavery was. However, this isn’t my point. My point comes form this paragraph:

Perhaps thanks to the JFK cult, which sees the refrain “Ask not what your country can do for you …” as an all-purpose writ for social meddling, even the idealistic hipster crowd is on board. Devotees of Rolling Stone and MTV, who normally preen like cats in a pool of sunshine over their alleged libertarianism when the issue is sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll, see nothing wrong, and everything right, with involuntary servitude — as long as we just call it “voluntary.”

Um, confusion of terms much? First, last I checked no hipster would be caught dead reading the Rolling Stone or watching MTV (unless we’re doing it ironically). Secondly, I think he means “libertine”, not “libertarian”. Libertarianism does require some amount of economic conservatism. Finally, this isn’t involuntary servitude. No one is asking you to take money from the government. This is one of the large points of libertarianism: as long as no one is forcing me to buy more X or live like Y, then I’m OK, and I’m happy if they’re an option for others. No one is forcing me to accept money from the government to go to school, and I don’t see why teaching kids to work for their money and not expect (government) handouts for free is a bad thing. It sounds damn good to me. Now if we could just teach them to get off my lawn!

*You’ll find, as time goes on, that I read a lot of news sources on the right and left. I’ll eventually have a post on this very thing.