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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Let’s Make A Deal

“I agree, Lord of Darkness, if you grant me the following wishes: First, I would like the nation to be hurled into an economic crisis caused by Wall Street greed and recklessness. This will discredit free-market fundamentalism once and for all.” – David Brooks

I just read the David Brooks ode to liberalism article and I must say he makes a compelling case not for the decline of liberalism but for the decline of our shared consciousness. The problem with pundits is that everything happens in a vacuum in their world. According to him there are no connections between any of the events that he described except that they occurred while Mr. Obama was President. So the link is not the failed policies of the Right, but that liberals could not clean them up fast enough. So the future of our governance is not based on those who caused the disasters but on how quickly those elected to repair them can get them repaired.

Using that logic then if I start a fire in a building and then when the fire department gets there I cut the water pressure to the hoses and someone dies in the building then it is the firefighters fault for not putting out the blaze quicker. What Mr. Brooks and many of his talking head friends fail to realize is that very few of the upcoming midterm elections will be decided by national issues. So while they will be trumpeted as the beginning of the end for Obama what they fail to realize is that following the midterms in 1994 Bill Clinton won reelection handily. I suspect the same will be true for President Obama. It is one thing to win an election in South Carolina running on corporate largess and apologies it is a far different thing to win nationally running on those issues. It is amazing to me how quickly these clowns forget that when we had a national referendum of policies the country overwhelmingly chose the policies of the Dems. Are we to believe that after four years of Republican prostrations in front of the corporate gods that the majority of Americans will turn away from those who are at least trying to solve the gigantic problems facing this nation?

Are we also to believe that the majority of Americans will agree with the likes of Glenn Beck that this President is a racist? If I have any complaint towards Mr. Obama it is that he has been too cautious towards the issue of race in America. The reason we are not moving forward as a nation is precisely because we are so divided. As a nation we are not using all of our resources we continue to choose tribalism over nationalism. We will not be able to compete against the likes of China and India if we continue to be willing to marginalize large segments of our population. We are going to need every able body and mind if we are to overcome the problems of energy, climate change, and retooling America. I read that some black leaders are offended by Mr. Beck holding a rally at the Washington Mall on the day that Dr. King gave his dream speech. Their fear is that Mr. Back will somehow diminish the stature of Dr. King and what he accomplished. To me this is akin to worrying about Joseph McCarthy diminishing the legacy of FDR because he accused him of having Communist sympathies. The biggest challenge to blacks in America is not Glenn Beck it is our refusal to deal with the problem that we are allowing women to train up our boys and the outcomes are abysmal. Instead of holding a rally to combat Glenn Beck we need to be holding a rally to recommit to our children.

Another missing component from Mr. Brook’s fairytale is that the Dems are not a monolithic party like the Republicans. An example would be what is currently taking place within the Republican Party with the teabag crowd if this were a Democratic group the Dems would allow them to caucus but that would be the extent of it. No one would suggest and rightly so that the Dems should adopt the lunacy of the fringe but with the Republicans that is exactly what they are doing. I guess when you are void of ideas and critical thought then any ideas seems plausible. The election of 2008 demonstrated that the Republicans were bankrupt of ideas and I have seen nothing since then to make me think they have found any now. With the political landscape of today you will never be a majority party if you are appealing to a shrinking base of gun-toting, history revisionist, pseudo patriots. I don’t know many Americans who want to see America returned to the “good ole” days of intolerance, bigotry, and robber barons. But I could be wrong and if I am then were all in trouble anyway.

Finally, the devil in the details that Mr. Brooks has mischaracterized is that leadership is what we elect President’s to have, that and a vision. Sometimes when you are leading a ragtag mob like America you will appear unpopular because you have to make some unpopular decisions, but the alternative which the Republicans are offering is to continue to defer these difficult choices until they are no longer choices but we are left with imperatives. Prior to the spill in the Gulf we had choices about how to conduct deep water drilling, due to our refusal to stand up to corporations we now are left with an imperative. Plug the hole. My fear is that there are many who are willing to shy away from the difficult in search of the easy quick fix. However when it comes to the issues facing America (climate change, clean energy, unemployment, depression, etc.) there are no easy quick fixes. So if the Right wants to govern based on popularity I suggest the majority of us begin to prepare our tin roof shacks because we are not far from a banana republic.

The most difficult thing is the decision to act, the rest is merely tenacity. The fears are paper tigers. You can do anything you decide to do. You can act to change and control your life; and the procedure , the process is its own reward. - Amelia Earhart

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The Powerlessness of Power

There is a new victim-mentality sweeping college campuses and I believe America as a whole. It is the belief that whites are now victims. But that’s not the scary part; the scary part is in who they blame as the ones victimizing them. It seems that whites are being victimized by blacks and Latinos, that’s right the white privileged students on many college campuses are feeling victimized. They are not feeling victimized by higher crime rates on campus perpetrated by blacks and Latinos, no the victimization is occurring through college programs and political correctness. In an effort to fight back against these perceived threats to white privilege many conservative white students are hosting racial identity parties.

In many respects, ghetto-fabulous parties are the culmination of conservative politics on college campuses. They reflect the ongoing insecurities of whiteness in the wake of the civil rights movement and the supposed prominence of multiculturalism and political correctness. Indeed, ghetto-fab parties are part of a broader reactionary movement that believes whiteness and the ivory tower are being imperiled by political correctness, radical professors and “minority rights.” Pushing against these perceived evils, conservative students have organized political theatrics on campuses, holding “affirmative action” bake sales and “white-only” scholarships. They have in essence created a culture today in which those with power think of themselves as victims and those without become targets for violence.[1]

These ghetto-fabulous and cholo parties are events where white students depending on the cultural theme of the event dress up as what they consider to be representations of these cultures. For example at a ghetto-fabulous party the students wear black face, fake gold teeth, and drink 40oz bottles of malt liquor. The women sometimes even feign pregnancy and pad their posteriors to imitate the stereotypes of black females. These racial identity parties are growing in popularity across America's campuses. The question becomes why are they gaining in popularity when our universities should be the places where tolerance and diversity are being taught and practiced?

The first reason I think is the perceived loss of power felt by the white students. As college campuses became more liberal and diverse they began to institute political correctness policies, rather than helping to remove the prejudice they in fact caused it to go underground. It was no longer fashionable to use racial epithets in public or to display racially insensitive material. It was naïve to think that by forcing compliance to these policies that change of thought would result, instead what we got was a more deep seated type of intolerance. A type of intolerance that does not come out in public, but lurks under the surface waiting for the opportunity to demonstrate itself in a safe environment. These parties provide that opportunity for them to display their intolerance among like-minded people.

After all, all we are doing is just having a party, having a little fun. We certainly don’t mean any harm by it and it definitely is not racial. They pretend to ignore the harm of their actions, as if demonstrating the worst stereotypes of a racial group is harmless. Sort of like when the future King of England was seen attending a party in a Nazi outfit, just harmless fun. They also ignore the fact of how demeaning it is for members of that racial group to be depicted in these outlandish stereotypical roles and outfits.

The second reason for the increased outbreak I think is the corporate take-over of the university experience. There was a time when the university experience was dictated by experimentation and a desire to improve one’s environment. Students took an active role in leading social change. There was Vietnam, South Africa, poverty, civil rights and a whole host of other movements that were either begun or championed by college students. With corporations taking over more and more of university life there is less of the rebellious spirit and more of the boardroom spirit. The thing about the campus spirit is that it changes from conservative to liberal and vice versa. During the time of Vietnam and civil rights college campuses represented the same conservative values of the country as a whole, until the spirit of change and revolution swept through.

Today more and more universities have opened up the campuses to the influences of corporate America and in the process they have sold their creative and liberal souls to the devil. As the corporations exert more and more influence on not only student life but college curriculums, there are fewer classes and opportunities to study diversity of cultures or cultural studies in general. Social study classes are being cancelled due to the fact they are not generating graduating numbers, they are not adding to the bottom line of the university. They speak as though the goal of the university is to make money, I thought it was to educate, challenge and prepare young adults for adulthood. To develop independent, critical thought processes in preparation for the challenges of life was one worthwhile goal of the university experience I thought.

The final reason I think for the rise in racial identity parties is the lack of diversity on our nation’s campuses. With the challenges to affirmative action and financial aid cutbacks, there are fewer minority students on college campuses. This lack of diversity I think fuels the attitude of exclusiveness for the white students and offers less resistance to their antics. With fewer minority students to interact with, there is a lack of empathy and common sense to restrain their behavior. I think that as fewer minority students are able to attend college there will be an even greater increase in these parties and also in the escalation of similar activities.

Without the influence of cultural study classes and minority students there will be less inhibition on the part of those who truly harbor racists’ feelings to express those feelings in a more demonstrative way. I predict a rise in racial symbolism and more racial attacks. Our campuses are becoming more conservative and this is something that should trouble all of us. If the students are only being given one side of the story their views of the world will be askew. We all need to have beliefs challenged and questioned in order to either embrace them as truth or discard them as false. This gives rise to the false premise that those with power are now powerless victims and as such must lash out against the true powerless that they view as now usurping that power.

[1] http://www.colorlines.com/article.php?ID=248

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