David McElroy

The most conservative person I know is essentially an anarchist. She doesn’t like change. Despite being quite young, she’s uncomfortable with technology and wishes she never had to upgrade computers or pretty much any gadget. She got a manual typewriter last year and she plays LPs on something old folks used to call a “record player.”

But she doesn’t belong to a Republican women’s club. And she’s not voting for Mitt Romney in November. She doesn’t believe in voting, because she’s an anarcho-capitalist. How can a conservative be an anarchist?

We’ve come to associate words such as “liberal” and “conservative” with politics, but there’s a more general meaning that I wish we could go back to. In the political sense, the words have become useless. Today’s conservatives aren’t conserving anything. Today’s liberals want nothing like what liberals of the classical era wanted. So why do we keep using such useless labels?

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These days, everyone wants to be a good liar. After all, that’s the way to get ahead in life. Right? You might think you’re already a seasoned veteran liar after fooling your boss or wife or friends, but are you ready for the Big Leagues?

No, I’m not talking about selling Chevys or Fords or Winnebagos. I’m talking about learning to lie like a professional politician.

This brief tutorial will be enough to get you started by giving you the basics. You won’t be a master, but you’ll start seeing the principles if you pay attention.

In the advanced course, we’ll also cover the brilliance of promising “energy independence,” as performed by presidents going back to Nixon and Carter; promising “no new taxes,” as brilliantly performed by George Bush I; and “free drugs for old people,” as performed by George Bush II. The advanced course has an entire section devoted to the brilliance of Bill Clinton, too. My apologies to these other great liars — and many more — for not being able to show full appreciation for all of their work in this brief introductory course.

So let’s get started with the most important single point you will learn in this guide:

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When you first meet Jenny, it doesn’t occur to you that this woman could have been in an abusive marriage for years. She’s friendly and pleasant to talk with, and she seems to have a lot of confidence in herself. I had known her for a month or so before she mentioned her past abuse to me. As the story came out, it was disturbing to me.

Jenny is about 60. She’s been divorced for two years, after a decades-long marriage to the man she still calls her soulmate. But her husband was emotionally abusive in ways that left her feeling like a shell of herself. After years of falling apart in ways that I won’t describe, she finally divorced him. She feels emotionally safer now, but she misses the man she considers her soulmate.

I found out Saturday that she talks to her former husband three times each day now. They didn’t talk for awhile, but the divorce hit him hard and forced him to start re-evaluating himself. She said he’s changing. They’re talking seriously about getting back together again.

Do people really change? Or are we just fooling ourselves when we believe we’re changing for the better? And when we trust people who have hurt us before, are we just fooling ourselves?

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