The cable news races are an evolving ball of information and entertainment. Bill O’ Reilly, the lanky Irishman turned talk-show host who has gained a toe hold in prime time news shows, is a pompous, middle-of-the-road wannabe who has seen his 15 minutes of fame pretending to be a conservative.
O’ Reilly, host of The Factor on Fox News Channel, gained support from conservatives because he was the only alternative to Chris Matthews at the same time slot. But, his success has peaked with three best-selling books and a radio show that has never even came close to out drawing Rush Limbaugh. He is losing the base that brought him fast fame.
Lashing out at everyone from liberals to conservatives, O’ Reilly uses his “no spin zone” to pummel victims who supposedly are prone to spin – except, that is, when he interviewed Rosie O’ Donnell.
O’Donnel had just come out as being gay and O’ Reilly conducted a rather light interview, leaving viewers holding him suspect of sympathizing with her.
The truth is that big O’Reilly is a libertarian.
Those pesky libertarians manage to pass themselves off as Burkean conservatives a lot, but in the end, they pass as radical Republicans; usually making a good news story for the Sunday editions of major newspapers.
Bobby Kennedy is one of O’ Reilly’s heroes. One has to wonder how a liberal, such as Kennedy, could fit into the Irishman’s misconstrued picture.
Easy! Libertarians want rights given to all peoples of race and sexual orientation by society. Of course, much of this is different from conservatism.
Conservatives have a standard of tested tradition. On the religious side, conservatives hail the Bible as their standard of conduct on building block for society.
In the modernist end of conservatism, Russell Kirk’s The Conservative Mind is looked upon as the standard in academic circles.
Conservatives are often mistaken as libertarians and vice versa. Many beliefs are the same, such as less government and low taxation.
The dividing lines are great and wide. Libertarians see a free market for drugs which depend son the user doing them responsibly without interfering upon someone else.
Under a libertarian government gay marriage would be expected and quite legal. In the political spectrum, conservatives and libertarians have worked with each other for no other reason than to win elections. It’s not at all uncommon to embark on libertarians at Republican events, there are not many Libertarian candidates to pick from in most states. That is until Libertarians develop their “Free State Project” in New Hampshire and Wyoming. In this project, these libertarians are organizing in states that are predominately conservatives with small populations for immediate impact.
A college student with a radical streak or any student educated in public school system, find libertarianism appealing.
Andrew Sullivan, the homosexual Tory from Britain, is trying to draw in students through his Internet columns to the belief in “enlightenment liberty.” It would be wise for conservatives to make a clean ideological break from the libertarians.
Both parties, the libertarians and conservatives, appear to be horses of the same color but one has a wild streak on it’s back and leads the pack astray – frighteningly close to the cliff that Bill O’ Reilly fell off of a long time ago.

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