Family Values

Conservative astroturfers who are looking for more strident and garish forms of political protest would do well to consider this:

Revelations the Italian mafia has been disposing of toxic waste by putting it onboard ships and then sinking the vessels has sparked health fears along the nearby coastline.

A Mafia informant confessed to sinking three such ships and it is estimated the mob may have sunk 32 more in the last two decades, as European regulations covering waste disposal grew tougher and it became more expensive to comply with them.

Surely this is a cause that all good conservatarians can support, once they've been told to. Modern Republicanism has rallied behind far worse environmental crimes than this, and hailed them as downright Jeffersonian.

The Mafia has some other good things going for it, from a conservative standpoint. Hypermasculine posturing? Check. Achieving social dominance through bootlicking submission to authority? Check. Enforced privatization of public services? Check. Racism and misogyny? Check. Loyalty to the group first, and the country second (if at all)? Check. Unctuous sentimentality about family and children? Check. Gun fetishism? Check. Arms trafficking? Check. A rigid social code based on the bottomless demands of male egotism? Check. Loan sharking? Check. An uneasy marriage of homoeroticism and homophobia? Check.

But all of that is small potatoes, compared to the Mafia's decisive stand against the European Nanny State. The enemy of the friend of my enemy is my friend, and just as it was formerly necessary to arm Iraq against Iran (and vice versa), it is now necessary to stand with organized crime against enviro-socialist tyranny.

Teabagging and going Galt is all well and good, but here's a chance to make an even grander statement, simply by doing what comes naturally. Why shouldn't real Americans dump their garbage in rivers and lakes, in order to assert the inalienable right of legitimate businesses to do the same? It makes at least as much sense as agitating against public health on behalf of the insurance industry, God knows.

And unlike racial and sexual taunts, which linger only in the mind, it'd provide a stark visual reminder of bedrock conservative principles, among which taking unapologetic pride in one's own personal ugliness currently seems to be foremost.

Plus, think of how much fun it'd be to contrast the normal garbage of the workin' man with the effete biodegradable detritus of the Coastal Elite! This is the sort of extra-fancy-grade cultural theorizing that could keep Jonah Goldberg busy for months. (Dig it, man: it's not the garbage that freaks out the Establishment. It's, like, the Truth that the garbage represents.)

It might seem like a bad idea, at first glance, to side publicly with the Italian Mafia. (They're foreigners, after all.) But for a movement that takes an almost erotic pleasure in transgressing social norms, and turning logic on its head, the main danger of declaring that it'd be better to be ruled by the Cosa Nostra than Obama is that it might not be heard above the general din. Glenn Beck and Michelle Malkin say stranger things, and defend worse people, almost every day.

Which is why Massey Energy had better get busy, and base a spontaneous grassroots movement on this idea before it's too late. If the general tone deteriorates much further, the moment will be lost, and it'll be like trying to palm off Spooks Run Wild on an audience that's expecting Cannibal Holocaust. The sad truth is, even an über-patriotic orgy of illegal dumping may eventually seem unremarkable, or even quaint.

Hell, if people can get used to this, they can get used to just about anything.