America is Not a Conservative Nation

Conservatism clings to what has been established, fearing that, once we begin to question the beliefs that we have inherited, all the values of life will be destroyed. - Morris Raphael Cohen

I am so tired of this false meme that America is a conservative nation that occasionally flirts with liberal principles. The truth is that the majority of Americans favor those so-called liberal policies that have defined this nation. The policies that created the largest middle-class the world has ever known and allowed many people the opportunity to better their lot in life. So if this is the case then why do we hear so often that this is a conservative country?

I believe that the reason this false premise is allowed to persist is because the true conservatives are the wealthiest amongst us, it is only in their interest to keep the status quo. After all what are the tenets of conservatism? Adherence to the Constitution is one of their favorites, a document that was written by a group of all white male property owners. Imagine if we had not amended the Constitution the state we would be in. Another one they like to espouse is smaller government, which is a euphemism for lower taxes. Then of course there are family values, but those values are “their” family values. Which anyone familiar with the family histories of the rich and powerful would almost surely scoff at the idea of emulating.

If we dig beyond the rhetoric it isn’t hard to see who the main beneficiaries of the conservative platform are. It isn’t the minorities, the immigrants, or the poor it is those who are already established and wealthy. Here is the strange part; this group only comprises about 2% of our population. So how has 2% of our population been able promote and embed this notion of conservatism into the larger population? It has been done systematically and at great expense on the part of the wealthy. We see this scenario being played out today if we look at those “grassroots” groups who are promoting this agenda. If we pull back the sheet we will see that the majority of them are being manipulated by these super rich puppet masters.

Even so you say people should be able to see through this ruse. That is where the folks I like to call the middle managers come in. These middle managers who include the likes of Rush Limbaugh, Sarah Palin, Glen Beck and the others are paid quite handsomely to pretend that they are just regular folks speaking to other regular folks about the evils that surround them. How is it that whenever we begin to ask the wealthy among us to pay their fair share that we hear the term socialism thrown about by this crowd? What the wealthy have done is hand selected these once regular folks who have the skills of manipulation and believability and promote them as people to be listened to while paying them handsomely to dupe the people. These people do not possess any real expertise on anything but the power of persuasion. How is it that they are constantly being shown to be wrong, misinformed, and outright liars and yet they continue to find a place to disseminate their garbage?

Over the course of the last few decades we have seen an erosion of the media into this obvious propaganda machine and all have played a role. Even those stations that claim to be unbiased have played a role by legitimizing these charlatans in the interest of equal time. There is no compromise or middle ground between right and wrong and good or evil. These outlets are being controlled by conservative wealthy people who behind the scenes manipulate these same outlets into offering up these ridiculous ideas and theories as legitimate alternatives. If this were not true then whenever anyone appeared on any news show and began to speak about tax-cuts and deregulation they would be lambasted. They would be lambasted not because of a disagreement between two competing and viable alternatives but because we have history and data that shows these ideas to be dishonest. But we continue to play this game every election and each newsperson pretends that they have never heard these arguments before and that they have no independent data to quote to demonstrate the outright deceit being perpetrated on the American public.

In the end what we have seen is the inexorable shift to the right based on this constant and unending refrain that we are a conservative nation by nature and that these conservative ideas have been proven true or at the very least untested. How can anyone with a straight face claim these ideas are true or untested? But no one in the media wants to lose their status or job by calling these clowns out for who they are and so the game continues. How anyone can say that America was a conservative country by nature is beyond me. It is obviously someone who is unfamiliar with their history. If we were a conservative people we would still only have 13 states. Conservative people do not explore and homestead in the wilderness. Conservative people do not leave their safety and cross mountains, deserts, and rivers.

It is unfortunate that we have allowed our spirit to be broken by these charlatans and the wealthy. Conservatism by its very nature is a fear of the future and the unknown. It prevents us from being innovative and flexible in shaping a new destiny for all Americans. The reason there has been no innovation in America in decades beyond the entertainment industry is because of this conservative attack on our spirit, the very nature that made us America. The sad truth is that the change or breaking of these shackles won’t come from some media call, but will come from the remnant of Americans who still yearn for freedom of expression not for the gilded few, but for all Americans. Oh and by the way those aren’t the teabaggers.

Conservatism discards Prescription, shrinks from Principle, disavows Progress; having rejected all respect for antiquity, it offers no redress for the present, and makes no preparation for the future. - Benjamin Disraeli

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The Ugly American

In my class and place, I did not recognize myself as a racist because I was taught to see racism only in individual acts of meanness by members of my group, never in invisible systems conferring unsought racial dominance on my group from birth. - Peggy McIntosh

As the flames of revolution are being stoked by the loyal opposition, the tea-partiers, and libertines everywhere I think it is interesting to note what issue is at the heart of this fervor. It seems odd to me that when George W. was spending money like a drunken sailor, dismantling the financial regulatory system, and expanding government that these angry mobs were nowhere to be found. So if we strip away the deficit spending, the expansion of government, socialism, radicalism and all of the other red herrings we are left with only a handful of possible issues. I think the largest and most dangerous is the issue that has always been simmering just below the surface in American history. This issue has never gone away but becomes more pronounced during periods of economic uncertainty and general fear by the majority population.

In spite of the great opportunity American presents to the world that people from different countries, races, and religions can live harmoniously together that opportunity has never truly been realized because at our core we are a very tribal nation. We have accepted the false dichotomy that in order for one tribe to prosper another has to decline so during times of economic uncertainty each tribe begins to protect what it perceives as its right to the remaining assets. The problem with this scenario is that it is based on the false premise that we are operating under a truly free market system and of course we are not. The system we are employing is akin to placing magnets on the roulette wheel in Vegas. It is slighted to one group over another already. I believe that a lot of the anger that is being displayed is legitimate. Hell, I’m angry. But I think it is being misplaced.

Instead of focusing on those who are using house money to make extravagant bets and when they win they keep their winnings, but when they lose their loses are being covered by the house. Imagine going to Vegas with 100,000 of someone else’s money and placing bets and if you win you keep all of the winnings, but if you lose the house pays your losses. We are the house and we are paying the winners and the losers. My problem with this round of protests is this. The majority of us are being screwed. The difference is that if you belong to the majority group you are getting lubricant while the rest of us are not, but make no mistake in the morning all of our butts are sore. My question is that if you wake up and your butt is sore and so is mine why would you blame me for what happened. It would seem to me that the logical thing to do would be to find those folks who do not have sore butts and ask them why not.

But the reason this is not happening is because of a little thing we have in this country called “white privilege”. To show how deep this runs in our society imagine if a group of Latinos would show up at an immigration rally armed or a group of blacks would show up at a affirmative action rally strapped what the reaction would be. You see the media and the talking heads debate the appropriateness of the venue of being armed but never that you have an angry mob of armed white folks talking revolution. White folks have an inherent right to be angry when their perceived privilege is threatened and this right goes without question, it is considered patriotic. However, when any other group replicates this behavior it is considered treason and a threat to our security.

What many of these protesters are angry about is not a real threat to America, but a perceived threat to their America”. What is “their America”? It is an America where their tribal right’s supersedes the rights of others. An example of this mentality would be when Pat Buchanan on MSNBC stated publicly that the white man single handedly built this country and that the only contribution of Blacks, Latinos, and Asians was the drag they put on the white man’s progress by living off of the system and abusing the kindness of white folks. Not to mention that the blacks were the cause of the “2nd American Revolution” when the Yankee aggressors took away the “states rights” from the peaceful southerners. To rewrite history in this way is akin to Japan stating that Pearl Harbor was a precursor to the Bush Doctrine of preemptive strikes to prevent the western aggressors from enslaving the peaceful Japanese people.

What we are seeing with these latest protests is that because they are really about maintaining white privilege there will not be a groundswell of support from those who are not white. This is just another example of “the ugly American” truth that we are not ready to put tribal differences aside for the sake of something larger like “country first”. Until we realize that we are all taking it on the chin for the sake of a few who are making out like bandits we will continue this tribal warfare against those whom we have the most in common with. All the while the real culprits will continue laughing all the way to the banks we bailed out in the cars we bought. Is this a great country or what?

Many of us believe that wrongs aren't wrong if it's done by nice people like ourselves. - Author Unknown

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Why Do We Hate Poor People?

Why is it that when we encounter poor or homeless people they make us cringe? Why do we want to make them disappear into shelters or remove them out of our sights? Since the Reagan revolution we have instead of being at war against poverty, we have been at war with poor people. They litter our streets like so many abandoned cars at a salvage yard. Why has it been so easy to sell the false narrative that people are poor by choice and that if they would just work harder they wouldn’t be poor? I think that our reactions to the poor says more about who we are than who they are. Let’s face it there have been poor people throughout recorded history, so what’s the big deal? The big deal is not that there are poor people, but that there are poor people we could help and don’t.

The reason I think we hate poor people is that rather than reminding of us of the blessings we have received, they instead remind us of our vulnerabilities and our insecurities. They remind so many of us that we are only one missed paycheck or one serious health issue away from their lot and it scares the hell out of us. We need so badly to believe that this could never happen to us, that we are so insulated from them and their fate that it could never be our fate. When the reality is too frightening to consider we create these illusions to placate ourselves. The greatest illusion is that we live in a society that if anyone is willing to work hard enough they can overcome the poverty of their birth. We regale ourselves with these fables of rags to riches, never considering the reality of these tales. The reality is a far cry from the false narratives being maintained by those who would keep us ignorant of the truth.

We are constantly fed the fairy-tale of the poor kid who signs a million-dollar sports contract, the million-dollar recording contract, or the Ivy League scholarship. And for those who have desires that steer towards more iniquitous pursuits we even have the “gangster” or drug dealer chronicles. In other words there is money and wealth to be had by all except the most slothful of our fellow citizens. How prevalent are these scenarios in modern America? The truth is that very little has changed for poor people, the majority of children born into poverty will remain in poverty. How can they not? They are provided with in many cases inferior homes, schools, and sometimes parents. The deck is stacked against them from the moment they take their first breath.

Sure we occasionally give a few dollars here and there with moral superiority and discuss how unfortunate those people are. All the while hoping they would just disappear and not remind us of how tenuous our hold on the American Dream is. Not only do they remind us of our perilous situations they also remind us of our conspicuous consumption and how truly far we have bought and sold the lie of more is better. The truth of this is in the fact that many of us believe that today’s poor are not really poor. We look at poverty in the third world and convince ourselves that those are truly poor people, the ones here are just whiners.

Robert Rector, a Senior Fellow at Heritage and a leading force behind welfare reform, similarly argued that federal studies should highlight the consumption—rather than income—of impoverished households. Many poor families do not record 'gray area' earnings because the federal wage threshold provides a disincentive to report joint income or informal earnings. Also, purchasing power varies across metropolitan, suburban, and rural communities. Rector's study, which utilizes data provided by the U.S. Census Bureau, demonstrates that many allegedly impoverished households live in decent-to-comfortable conditions, making poverty somewhat different from John Edwards' "terrible condition struggling against incredible poverty."

Rector's report shows that the "typical," median poor household owns a car, air-conditioning, a refrigerator, a stove, a washer and dryer, a microwave, two color televisions, cable or satellite television, a vcr or dvd player, and a stereo. The typical poor family's house is in good repair and the family is able to afford both food and medical care throughout the year.

With living standards such as these, poverty in America may actually be an enviable state compared to living standards in other nations. According to the Census Bureau, 15.2% of immigrants live in poverty, whereas only 11.9% of natives are below the poverty threshold. Rector claims that 1 in 10 of immigrants in poverty is likely an illegal immigrant, but estimates remain vague; the U.S. census declines to ask immigrant responders whether they have documentation.[1]

So being poor in America is an enviable state? The Bible says, “Blessed is the poor”. How many of us actually drive by a poor neighborhood or a homeless person and say, “Boy, those folks are really lucky”? I wonder if the author of that report is willing to exchange places with one of these lucky poor people? The reason we need to deny their pain and hopelessness is so we can deny our greed. If poor people aren’t really poor, then I am not actually consuming too much. The world is made up of balances, there is only so many of anything. In order for someone to have more, someone has to have less. We assuage our guilt at ignoring their plight by criminalizing them or demonizing them. We don’t want them around us or bothering us. The thing I don’t like about poor people is that they are so needy. They are always asking for stuff.

We hate them because of what they tell us about ourselves and our lives. How we can live in a country that thinks nothing of spending over 700 billion for wars and war machinery, billions in corporate welfare, and every year we cut programs to help the poor. They don’t need early childhood intervention, better schools, or financial assistance. What they need is a swift kick in the butt to get them motivated. It’s no wonder that children born poor suffer from stress related brain trauma. Despite popular opinion being poor even as a child is stressful. We bombard the airwaves with these images of consumption, we tell our children you are not cool, hip, or anybody if you don’t wear these shoes, these clothes, or have these things. Then we act surprised by their actions to get them and call them animals and lock them up. And we’re the civilized ones. There, but for the grace of God, goes I.

[1] http://www.heritage.org/Research/Welfare/bg1713.cfm

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Who Are We?

The next President will have many challenges ahead of him or her. They will inherit our nation at arguably its lowest point in history. We have lost respect abroad and consensus at home. The most important challenge this person will be faced with is to help us as a nation decide just who we are.

Who are we? Are we a nation that respects the rule of law or are we a nation that ignores laws that do not fit into our vision of the world?

Who are we? Are we a nation whose justice system is based on “habeas corpus” and “innocent until proven guilty” or are we a nation where everyone is “guilty until proven innocent”?

Who are we? Are we nation that believes in humane treatment of prisoners no matter what their combat status or are we a nation the practices and condones torture?

Who are we? Are we a nation that seeks to live in peace with the rest of the world or are we a nation that shoots first and ask questions later?

Who are we? Are we the nation that helped to liberate the world from fascism and tyranny or are we a nation that will impose imperialism at the end of a gun?

Who are we? Are we a nation who believes that everyone has a right to health care, a decent wage, and food and shelter or are we nation who believes that our only obligation is to ourselves and our own comforts?

Who are we? Are we a nation that believes in freedom for its citizens from a repressive and secretive government or are we nation that believes all is fair in the war on terrorism?

Who are we? Are we a nation where everyone does and pays his fair share or are we a nation where the wealthy are shielded from their responsibility?

Who are we? Are we a nation that demonstrates the principles of democracy and courage or are we a nation that cowers in fear and paranoia?

Who are we? Are we a nation that learns from its mistakes or are we a nation that has never made a mistake?

Who are we? Are we a nation that leads the fight in solving climate change or are we a nation that buries its head in the sand?

Who are we? Are we a nation that stands united and falls divided or are we a nation that allows politics and demagoguery to keep us separate?

The next president will inherit this country at one of its most important crossroads ever. The next president will have to help this nation define who we really are. Not who we proclaim to be, but who and what we truly believe in. We, as a nation must do some soul searching about some real core issues that supersede red and blue. The answers to these questions will define who we are as a nation for the next generation and beyond. It is time for a national conversation and discussion as to what type of nation we want to be. The choice for now is ours to make. I don’t know how long the decision will be ours at the rate we are going. There are forces at work that want to limit our freedoms and our choices. There are forces at work that want to define for us, who we are.

We as a nation must unite and get past the rhetoric of politics and division and come together to solve the many issues that are facing us. We may not agree on every issue, but we should be able to build a consensus on most. We must all be ready to sacrifice and compromise for the sake of unity and country. First and foremost, we are Americans, any affiliation after that is supposed to be secondary. We are to overlook our petty differences and come together for the greater good. How many of us can truly say we have done this? How many of us can look beyond politics, race, and economics and put America first for a change?

The next president cannot solve all that ails us, but they can be a unifier. They can be a catalyst for the debate we so desperately need. They can keep the discussion on point and steer it away from partisan agendas. If the Dems win back the White House it will be difficult to not dismiss the losing party out of hand, but we must not do it. Our country is greatest when we use all of our assets. My position is made stronger by the opposition not weaker; my ideas must be able to stand up to critical review. Our next leader must have the strength of character to acknowledge mistakes and learn from them. There is no strength or wisdom in being stubborn and blind to changes taking place around us.

America…who are we? The answer to that question begins with, who are you?

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Time For A New Pact

The time has come for America to once again start to reinvest in its young people. Not in the small increments we have seen the last few years, but a whole scale project to once again make them a priority.

Why is it important to make this investment? It is important because as a nation our fortunes have risen with the amount of investment we have made in our young. In previous generations our investments in our young have created the middle-class society, it fueled our technology surge, and it drove our housing markets. By providing affordable college to young people who otherwise would have been unable to attend through the GI Bill and the grant programs we expanded our economy and our societal well-being. Money invested in our young has proven in the past to be money well spent and has repaid itself a hundred-fold.

Today so much of our public investments have been redirected through Medicare and Social Security to the elderly due to their growing costs and populations. Well these programs are important and I would never advocate them being dropped, but we need to make just as large an investment in our future as we are doing for our past. We as a nation have been paralyzed by the Iraq war with all of its enormous cost in money and humanity, but we must not lose sight of our future and those charged to lead it. We must provide more avenues to our young people than “Be all you can be”. We as a society must develop other forms of service for our young people and in return they would receive an investment from this country. We have dabbled with various forms of this, but have not made a full-fledged effort to invest in those young people at the time when they need it most. We must begin to create opportunities for all of our young that want to participate in our society. We are becoming a nation again of the haves and the have nots. Our greatest economic growth occurred when we opened up opportunities for everyone, not just the wealthy. It is time for us to take our focus off destroying the world and place it back on improving the world. We have gained more converts to our system through programs like the Peace Corps than we ever have through violence.

Many of today’s foreign leaders learned about America not from propaganda, but from average American young people who took their values, “our values” abroad and taught the world who we are through service. These programs not only benefit our nation and the nations abroad, but they will also benefit the young people. They will teach them the value of self sacrifice, ingenuity, and perseverance. Ask anyone who has volunteered and they will tell you how it teaches one as much about themselves as about those they are helping. We should create programs that if they provide service to our nation, then we will provide an education, an affordable home, or some sort of job skill. The rewards of the program can be worked out, but the incentive should be there to provide an opportunity for all.

Today, when we are asking some of our young people to make the ultimate sacrifice shouldn’t we also be willing to make a sacrifice for them?

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