Punk Rock is Conservative; Conservatism is Punk Rock.

I am stealing this anecdote from Will who stole it from someone else. I would say I'm stealing it shamelessly, but I like shame:

I fell in love with Punk Rock when I was 13 years old and snuck into a club because my classmate was sleeping with the bouncer. It was a subculture defined by rigid rules which allowed for great expression, an overwhelming ethic, high expectations, and a bareknuckled willingness for confrontation. I'll never forget that first show—seeing a guy go down hard after taking an elbow in the face, then watching him get picked up by some guy he'd never met before who said to him: "You okay? You able to walk? Good, then get back in the pit and punch somebody."

I'll use this as a jumping-off point to answer a question posed by a Highly Placed Obama Operative about the difference between allowing heroism, encouraging heroism, and requiring heroism. First off, am I right in assuming that everyone finds the punk rock story compelling? It is, like war movies and Fight Club, right?

The only thing holding me back from strapping on my knee-high leather boots this minute is the suspicion that ordinary life has enough opportunities to "get back in the pit and punch somebody" without my looking for extra elbows to the face. A world that requires heroism, as opposed to one that simply allows for it, is a world in which the thrill of the pit is there all the time, and I'm skeptical of anyone who would have the world be less like that. Heroism isn't something for exceptional people; it's something for everyone.

To take an everyday example, I don't think it makes sense to ask a young woman to carry an unwanted child to term without convincing her that it's a kind of heroism to do so, even if your moral system (or hers) makes it a necessary heroism. To say that liberals like heroes doesn't get them very far if the only kind of heroism they can talk about is the optional kind; allowing heroism isn't enough, because sometimes it's icing on the cake and sometimes it isn't. (Pregnancy is one example of obligatory heroism; poverty is another; there are more.)

Life's tough, and when I say that it demands a punk rock approach, as defined above, I don't think it's just my aesthetic preferences talking. I'm sympathetic to liberals like The Operative who say that no one should ever have to be heroic, but I'm not sure that's the world we live in or that I would be happy if it were.