As conservatives, we are supposed to make sure the polity doesnt get too much out of whack  which, for the overly serious ones, means dishing out praises and scoldings when dealing with everyday-life events when others dont quite see momentous political significance in the proceedings. Such laddos tend to get in trouble during university, especially since the professor at the receiving end of the truth audit is going to come to the conclusion that the young scold is either a lout which found a better way to jerk teacher around, or is someone who covers up a learning disability with political locutions.

Older conservatives tend to see guys like this as young gadabouts; the British type tends to peg them as stout-hearted. Theyre tolerated because of an awful secret thats waiting for any right winger thats bumping into their thirties: maturity. Thats the age when you begin to hear nuances in the more serious songs you grew up with that you didnt know were there when you were either swiping your mothers hair curler or trying to plead poverty to your dad as your hair grew. The same dad that kept trying to tell you: If youre going to make a point in class, son, you got to have your As nailed down or youll just make yourself look like one of those people! (The ones that we call totalitarian personality types behind their backs, Scotty. Along with a few other things.)

I have bumped into one of those types during my own university days: a libertarian who picked on a monetarist professor of economics during class. I noted very well that he confined his confrontational style to the endangered Friedmanite rather than the much more plentiful Keynesians.

One thing I have yet to see, though, is a solid right wing type praising the institution of marriage during the legal formation and recognition of one of them  a wedding. If I ever bump into such a phenomenon, Im sure I would hear the best speech that was ever misdeployed. Especially since such consecrations are  well, supposed to be under the province of the minister.

The one I went to just recently was hosted by the Waterloo-Kitchener United Mennonite Church. The bride and groom had already passed from the stage of mutual familiarity to mutual boredom, so this marriage could be considered one of those plod-to-the-altar types. Like a vast majority of them  and unlike the usual whirlaway in the love novels, the ones which flatter the reader into thinking that their skills as an empath are so great that they can instantly size up a marriage partner, both in terms of skill and in terms of character, to the point where a love-at-first- sight dealie will lead to love everlasting. (I have yet to hear of a romance boiler that features a five-year plan being unveiled during the denouement.)

Another discovery you make when you hit your maturity is that the sermon at these events  the same kind that you though was incredibly boring when young  contains subtle but definite barbs which are not revealed to your ears and eyes until youre old. Then your interest is held, as evidenced by your body shifting from side to side. Although sometimes this is confined to your head turning 90 or 180 degrees.

This particular sermon, dished out by the Pastor Rogalsky, centered around the theological opinion that God is love, and that love is a matter primarily of the spirit. This was the template of the advice given to the new bride and groom a few minutes before they both reached the point where the bride anxiously looked at the groom for any bodily Freudian slips when putting down a signature he cant claim was forged later. The bride actually smirked after the application was completed!

And this added to the ranks of society a new, well-adjusted couple which, if the service and reception was any guide, prefers the real, provided that its in pastoral form. All that pimply-faced bragging on the part of the man, and the casual lying on the part of the woman, both of which are necessary to keep humans off the endangered-species list, were over for these two. No more does the groom have to pump his vanity; no more does the bride have to tell a few strategic untruths to pen him in. The vanities are now put in the memory book, which leads to the combination of both disappointment and relief felt especially by the groom.

Of course youre not really a steel- pumped man, dear! Thats why my friends no longer say that youre aggressive and anti-social!

Gawd, were easy to fool!