Of the current financial debacle, we can be sure there’s plenty of blame to go around both sides of the political aisle. To the chagrin of main street conservatives, however, a whole lot of the blame can be laid at the feet of renegade conservatives who sit in the highest seats of government — renegades, because they behaved like liberals.

An undeserved insult to those conservatives? No, because their behavior with respect to the corruption at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac can’t be distinguished from that of Barney Frank, Chris Dodd, Chuck Schumer, Nancy Pelosi, et al.

Moreover, it is a fact that from Alan Greenspan to members of Congress (except for a few such as John McCain and John Sununu) to bureaucrats in the administration to President Bush (where the buck stops), those renegades perfectly took their cue from the liberal bible as they promoted the “housing boom” by cheerleading for it, financing it, and turning a blind eye, deaf ear, and dumb mouth to the Everest of sham “sub-prime” loans that fueled it — all in a dream-world-hatched, grand governmental scheme to create an “ownership society.”

“The ownership society or bust!” How’s that for an example of the stupid, dangerous audacity of hallucinated hope.

Yes, like liberals, those “big idea” conservatives knew better than ordinary, common sense citizens, who would never have approved such madness at the ballot box.

Like liberals they knew better than ordinary Americans — working people and business owners alike — who live basically conservative lives as they hold up their end of the social contract by exhibiting the moral responsibility essential to the well being of a democracy.

Like liberals they considered the realities of human nature irrelevant to the creation of public policy.

Like liberals, they knew better than the CEO of a financial institution who appeared on a cable business show to say that his company was unaffected by the mortgage disaster because it had strictly adhered to the rule of granting mortgages only to qualified buyers putting 20% down.

They knew better. And the debacle came.

Well, at least now Sarah Palin Americans know that whether it is an Alan Greenspan or a Joe Biden lecturing them that they don’t know how Washington “really works,” the only sensible response is, “Thank God!”

Turning now to the “make no judgment about the markets” ideology of those conservative renegades, we find that it makes them indistinguishable from sixties space cadets whose entire understanding of social responsibility is summed up in the selfishness of “do your own thing.”

“Make no judgment?” What sheer stupidity. As every responsible conservative knows, a people form government, despite its dangers, precisely to make judgments and take actions to protect the society from harm, including protecting its members from numerous forms of morally and socially irresponsible behavior, a truth Roger Williams excellently illustrated in 1655 with the ship metaphor of his “Letter to the Town of Providence.”

Interestingly, Williams felt compelled to write that letter two decades after Rhode Island was established as a colony that respected individual freedom because a number of Pollyanna radicals were proclaiming that “it is Blood-Guiltiness, and [opposed to] the Rule of the Gospel, to execute Judgment upon Transgressors, against the private or public Weal.”

In response to those whom today we call anarchists or absolute libertarians, he proposed the image of a ship populated by diverse people living in liberty.

Then, to those who “shut not their Eyes” he argued for the punishment of “Trangressors” by the ship’s “Commanders,” thereby disassociating himself from the notion that “because all are equal in CHRIST, [there ought to be] no Masters, nor Officers, no Laws, nor Orders, no Corrections nor Punishments.”

Applying Williams’ argument to our time, we can say that conservatives of the ship called America believe in a crew that is as small and efficient as possible, a crew that keeps its focus on its most important duties, and, yes, a crew that keeps its collective power sucking nose strictly under control.

With that concept in mind, what should we call the conservative renegade crew who sat by issuing “no Laws, nor Orders, no Corrections nor Punishments” in the face of anti-social behavior so profound that it had the potential of throwing the nation, even the world, into an economic depression.

I argue they ought to be called kin to the empty-headed anarchists of the Rhode Island Colony or the pot-headed, “imagine there’s no Heaven...no hell...nothing to die for” radic-libs of the “Woodstock Colony.” After all, what are they but foolish idealists who reason, “I imagine realities; therefore, they are real.”

What are they except dangerous, new age radicals madly rushing to breathe life into a stupidly idealistic dream despite the fact that failure will leave the ship only two options: (1) do nothing and cause damage and suffering that could be catastrophic (2) administer a super-sized dose of temporary socialism to prevent a catastrophe — in either case, a monstrous price falling upon the passengers, ordinary persons who live their daily lives according to age-old conservative principles.

Sorry for the slip, but, in truth, the crew have allowed for a third option: Allow communist China and Middle Eastern dictatorships to buy huge stakes in our financial institutions, a solution to the problem that would demonstrate to the world just how dedicated the United States is to multiculturalism and just how wide-open its borders are.

Ah, the ultimate “ownership society.”

How fitting to end a commentary about what happens when conservatives behave like liberals with that astonishing irony.