Apparently I'm a liberal. Who knew?

This is just beyond parody: Sean Hannity has called the John Birch Society- the John freakin' Birch Society- "liberal" for being opposed to the war in Iraq. Apparently, that's the deciding factor that decides a person's ideology. Economic systems? Social structures? Views on the nature of justice and the proper sphere of state action? Mere frippery! It's all about Iraq. I was thoroughly dismayed to discover that I'm a liberal, though I suppose this saves me the expense of buying those Michael Oakeshott books I was interested in.

Sadly, I think this is symptomatic of why mainstream American conservatism has lost its last libertarian elements: conservatives have become so single-mindedly focused on war and closely related issues to the exclusion of all else that they have lost all interest in the idea of limiting government power. In fact, it seems like a continuation of the Cold War situation, when the respectable Right excommunicated non-interventionists like Murray Rothbard but embraced social democrats as long as they were sufficiently bellicose on foreign policy. Now that mainstream conservatism has given up even the pretense of trying to limit the state, we see where that sort of "pragmatism" leads.