On the Contrary

Every now and then when I am watching the news and I hear morons like John Boehner claim that he hasn’t talked with anyone who wants a public option for health care and I go off, my wife reminds me that Republicans are not evil.  No they are not, but their conservative philosophy and the people they put in power are.  Okay, I will give you that John Boehner’s myopia is not any worse than Nancy Pelosi protecting Charlie Rangel from his lapses in ethics.  When it comes to politicians, most have been corrupted by power and money, too many deals, and too many compromises in order to stay in power.

But at the heart of conservative dogma is selfishness, pure and simple.  It is all about I got mine and I deserve it.  It is about a total lack of empathy for those not so fortunate, because they don’t believe they themselves are fortunate.  They believe that what is theirs they earned and that those less fortunate deserve their station in life.  Any sharing of their fortune would be to promote a lack of discipline and hard work, hence their aversion to any government program.  The proof in this statement is to watch how quickly a Republican “sees the light” when some calamity hits them and then they want to be bailed out.  But this only lasts for a few moments before they fall back on their “I deserved to be bailed out because I am a productive member of society, but the rest are just lazy scum living off the system.”  If you really listen to the underlying philosophy this is its basic underlying belief.  I am special.  The rest of you need to work harder.

Let’s look at their mantra of low taxes, small government, and balanced budgets.  The basic logic of low taxes is that it incentivizes businesses to expand.  But that is a gross over simplification.  Taxes are also how the government accumulates capital to invest in infrastructure and business cannot survive without first class transportation systems, communication systems, and a healthy and educated population.  So it has to be a balance.  But what the conservative ideology has become is a tax hating mob, which is kind of strange since they are suppose to be made up of businessmen and women who understand about capital investments and improvements.  But then why should they pay taxes which will just be wasted on the undeserving?

Small government and balanced budgets are part of the same ideology that says government interference with business equals bad, and free unrestrained markets provide the most return for our people.  Once again this is a gross oversimplification.  Certainly government bureaucracy can hinder business, but sometimes to the good.  Need I remind you of our recent financial crisis or the environmental abuses of the past?  Many of our problems that beg solutions are not local or regional, but are national.  Just how are these to be addressed with an ineffective and small national government?  Global warming (which they don’t believe in), energy policy, our depleted oceans, infrastructure problems, clean water and air, oh I could go on forever, are national problems that take a national approach.  As our populations grow and we become ever more interconnected, these problems will not have solutions at local or regionalI levels.  And of course when there is a national catastrophe, there is all of a sudden a national clamor for government intervention.  And the demand, “Why weren’t they prepared?”  They being that government they hate so much.

The balanced budget clamor is also a red herring.  All of us know that we need to balance the books if we don’t want to go under, but we also know that if we look at the business model, large corporations make long-term investments (read loans here) to improve their competitive advantage in the future.  So why can’t conservatives see this logic when it comes to our government?  We are in a whale of a mess and a lot of it comes from our lack of investment (read here tax cuts) in our future.  We are becoming one of the unhealthiest populations of the industrial countries, we are lagging badly in education, and our infrastructure is sad when you go to other countries and see their investments.  Right now is the time to take on big debts to invest in our future and yet conservatives have derailed any attempt to do this.  Why do they do this when it is so obvious we need it?  Why have their arguments become illogical?

The answer to this question goes back to the issue of why American conservatism, at its heart and in its present form, is evil.  At its basis is “I got mine and all the rest of you deserve your fate because you are lazy or undisciplined.”  It is a total rejection of the idea of the common good. It is a protection of the status quo, either for the individual or the corporation when change is what is required.  It started with Ronald Reagan, and the “problem is the government”, and the idea that greed is good because if you are making lots of money you are smart, deserve it, and are lubricating the economy.  This idea should have been totally destroyed by out latest financial crisis where greed almost destroyed our economy, millions were made jobless, but a few got very rich.  Let’s face it.  Most of us bought into this over the last 30 years as we borrowed our way to massive debt, because, well, we deserve the things we bought.

So what we are seeing in almost every debate now are conservatives who feel they are special and chosen, block anything that might require sacrifice now for our future investment or a change in the status quo.  Whether it is health care to protect our citizens, cap and trade to control global warming, energy tax for moving to green energy, infrastructure investment for better transportation, water and air improvements, or people investment, they are against it because they got theirs and they do not want to share in the common good by making any kind of sacrifice.  It is no coincidence that the religious right is part of this movement.  They believe they are also special and selected people.  This whole movement is about selfishness, being the chosen few who deserve their good fortune and justifying their lack of empathy. Money taken from me and spent on others just encourages their dependence on the system.  That is why socialized anything strikes terror in their souls.  The fact that many services like fire protection, police protection, transportation management, and education are socialized, is totally lost on them.

All of the other associated issues, whether it is hating gays, denying a woman’s right to choose, wanting their country back, interjecting religion into politics, interceding into end of life decisions, demanding the impeachment of Obama, denying his legitimacy, it is all about defending their moral superiority, and their perceived deserved affluence.  I got mine and there is no need to share because you would just squander it.  It epitomizes a total lack of empathy or an understanding of our common condition, that there for the grace of “god”, go I.  It is a denial of our basic common humanity, it is an attitude that is at the heart of some of the most evil acts this world has seen, and it is destroying our once rich and prosperous country.  It is evil.

One other thought:  It is true that the nation sprung up for a highly individualized population that took amazing risks in our past to create the nation we have.  But what we have forgotten in this worship of the individual is that they also knew their vulnerability and their survival in the new world depended upon working together.  We have raised that individualism to a level of worship, and we forgot about all of the cooperation that it took to just survive.  It is time to remember both.

This election is really about who we are as Americans and what our philosophy for the future really is.  The conservatives understand that the very survival of their ideas depends upon this election.  The progressives have yet to really define what this battle is about.  “Change” doesn’t begin to describe what is really at stake here and until the progressive really engage in this battle, they will forever be relegated to second place.  This battle is not about issues; it is about how we approach the 21st century and who we are as a people.

Progressives think in terms of empathy and responsibility.  They have empathy for those around us, and they have a responsibility to do something about it.  Government is for protection and empowerment:  Protect one’s physical security and rights, and empower its people to be successful (think education, healthcare, infrastructure, etc).  Progressives understand their morality in what George Lakoff* calls the nurturant parent model (NPM).  Both parents are responsible for raising their children, children are born good and can be make better, the world can be a better place, our job is to work on that, and parents job is to nurture their children and to raise their children to be nurturers of others.  From that comes the edict that it is your moral responsibility to teach your child to be a happy, fulfilled person who wants others to be happy and fulfilled.  It is a moral world of cooperation and synergy.

Conservatives think in terms of authority and obedience to authority.  There is a moral person in charge and the role of the people is to be obedient to authority to maintain order and morality.  Government’s primary purpose is to maintain order by protecting us from threats from outside the system and enforcing the authority and discipline of the leader. Conservatives understand their morality in what George Lakoff* calls the strict father family model (SFM).  Morality in this system is obedience to authority, assumed to be a legitimate authority who is inherently good.  Note that in this system it is assumed the world is an evil and dangerous place, children are born into it immoral, and through punishment learn discipline to be obedient.  If people are disciplined, pursue their self-interest, they will become prosperous and self-reliant.  Without this strict discipline, the world is an immoral place.

This are two very different systems views of government and moral systems.  One, the progressive is open to dissent.  Progressive want to find the best possible world and they are in the mode of cooperation and discussion to find it.  Conservatives think they have found the best possible world and it is defined by small government, little regulation, non-existent taxes, open and unregulated markets where the moral will be victorious and the immoral and undisciplined will fail.  Government intervention to help these that have failed is just encouraging immorality.  Most importantly, in the strict father family, dissent is viewed as disobedience, and is not tolerated.  In their system, the self sufficient and disciplined person who seeks his and only his self-interest will prevail and there will be good for all.  That is why the huntress and fisherwoman Sarah Palin is so valued among conservatives.  She embodies these characteristics.  The problem is that these characteristics, self sufficiency and independence, which made us a great country in the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries, are no longer relevant in the world we live in, the 21st century.  The proof of that is in the failures in the last eight years reflected in our economy and in our standing in the world.

Conservative philosophy, unlike progressive philosophy, is a deeply held faith.  The strict father model of morality is a reflection of conservative religious beliefs.  As such, the basic underpinnings cannot be challenged.  Much for the same reason fundamentalist Christians deny evolution because it might bring their whole religious edifice down,  conservatives will not accept that their basic beliefs are no longer functional in the 21st century.  The failures of the last eight years must be due to conservatives who lost their way, lost their self-discipline.  Change to them just means finding conservatives who are pure.  Then things will be hunky dory.  Remember that conservatives feel they are morally right because they are conservatives.  The rest of us who question their basic philosophy are the barbarians that will bring chaos into the world.

The funny thing is that George Bush, other than his Neocon leanings, met the test of a good conservative.  He lowered taxes on the rich and two-thirds of business don’t pay any.  He neglected government by starving the beast and appointing his cronies instead of competent public servants since government is the problem anyway; he gutted the important roles of protecting our citizens through the FDA, securities oversight, banking oversight, because regulation stifles business; he turned the Justice Department into a political partisan organization because only conservatives have the proper morals to govern; and then he instituted torture, rendition, and waived the constitution because obedience is above all else.  Their abuse of power was systemic and is a result of the fact that they really feel they are morally superior and they don’t have to answer to the rest of us, just the discipline of their rules.  Ted Stevens come to mind?

So the battle is really between whether we are going to adopt the model of the self-reliant hunter and frontiersman/frontierswoman that was in tune with 18th century America, or are we going to adopt a model of cooperation in working together with government to address the real challenges of the 21st century.   The rest of the world is moving past us while we dither on which model will propel us forward.  The conservative model has failed and failed miserably.  The challenges of the future are not how to be self-reliant or gut a moose, they are about working together to solve massive problems that will take a partnership of both an empowered government and private enterprise.  Ask your self the following questions:

• If the economy needs a modern infrastructure to be competitive in the global market place, who is going to build it and how are we going to afford to build it as we continue think small government is the answer?
• We have a deficit that is amounting to roughly $30,000 for every man, woman, and child under conservative cut taxes and spend wildly.  How are we going to take this load off our children by reducing taxes even more?
• Most economists agree that our future depends upon our human capital, and our ability to innovate in the future.  How is this going to happen as we cut our investment in education and research and development, and depend more on competition in the school market place?  Anybody noticed the debt our graduates are carrying today?
• How are we going to have an energy strategy that really does relieve us of our burden on foreign oil and oil itself unless government invests in a massive way to help industry build the infrastructure for alternate energy systems?
• Every other industrialized nation has recognized that for profit medicine is the most expensive way to deliver healthcare.  But conservatives are terrified of this system because it threatens their whole edifice of the marketplace solves all problems.  What is it about making a profit by denying claims don’t they get?
• How does reducing taxes produce flow down to increase economic activity when we have no more room to reduce taxes and the inequality in America is growing every day?
• How can we have less regulation on businesses and avoid the Erons or Mortgage crisis melt down that is upending our economy?
• How are we winning the surge when there is no movement in Iraq and the troops and the costs are not being significantly reduced?  How much longer can we continue to afford to “win” this way?

Said another way:

• Flow down/trickle down economics (Voodoo Economics) has been a failure except for the very rich
• Seeking your own self-Interest in the extreme and hurts more people than it helps
• The marketplace is limited in a global marketplace in solving problems and righting the system
• Decreasing taxes is not a cure-all for the economy and has not substantially helped our economy in these troubled times – there is little more to cut as we go broke
• Government has an important role in both our society and our marketplace
• The welfare of all of our people is critical to our success
• We have a responsibility to help those disadvantaged so that we are all buoyed up
• We are all in this together

The problems that face America in the future are complex and difficult.  They will take a partnership of our government and our private sector to deal with them.  Government doesn’t need to be smaller when you consider the things we ask and need it to do.  It needs to be smarter.  Conservative philosophy does not recognize this complexity and looks for simple solutions that have totally failed us.  They have no plan for the future except more of the same applied more rigorously.  That is because it is their religion and their faith is unshakeable.

This election is not just about ideas, it is about our future place in the world.  If the conservatives succeed in distracting the voting public from the real state of our country with cultural wars, inciting class warfare, and emotional cheap shots (that’s why the McCain camp is now working with Karl Rove), they may win this election.  But we all may loose if we fall any further behind the rest of the world.  Four more years to prove the travesty of this approach may just be four more too many.  It is a battle worth fighting and I wish the Democrats would show the passion in this fight that the Republicans have in trying to protect their religion from reality.  It’s about our children’s future.  The Democrats do not have perfect answers but their philosophy allows for dissent and discussion.  In the strict father family of the conservatives, this is heresy.  Which world do you want to live in?  Until Democrats understand that this is a real war for the soul of our country and the emotional, not rational basis it is being fought on, they will be striking out with “the facts ma’am, just the facts.”

* George Lakoff, “The Political Mind”, “Don’t Think of an Elephant”

Make no mistake; the mess we are in is a direct result of conservative thinking.  What we are going to be presented with in the next week was previewed in Andrew Ferguson’s column that appeared in the New York Times on Sunday, “Republicans, bound for Mars”, the old bad Republicans are gone and the real conservatives in the form of John McCain and Sarah Palin are back to save us.  I could only stand Meet the Press for about two minutes on Sunday because those were the Republican talking points and Tom Brokaw is no Tim Russert.  Now think about it.  We have John McCain who promises to stay in Iraq for as long as it takes while our nation goes bankrupt and Sarah Palin who represents every extreme right political dogma that has bogged us down for the last eight years to include drilling everywhere while our problem is our dependence on oil, teaching evolution and creationism as equal scientific theories, staunch supporter of the NRA, supports a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriages, and deny women any choice even in the case of rape or incest.  How are these new Republicans and how do any of their policies address our problems going forward?

Basic conservative thinking is all over the block, but to distill it down, it is small government, minimal government interference in public discourse, and fiscal responsibility.  The “new” Republicans are going to bring back all these wonderful traits, and do away with the old Republicans of the last 8-12 years and of course, the evil doer Democrats who are responsible for everything that has gone wrong.  The problem with all of this is that it is a strategy for 1900’s not the 21st century.  Even Republicans recognize this in their actions if not in their words as they call for more border enforcement and better FDA screening of products and goods imported into this country, all of which results in larger government.  Our energy crisis is not going to be solved by less government, but by massive investments especially in the electrical transmissions systems to make alternate energy viable.  Even Boone Pickens get this.  The whole idea of minimal government is not compatible with the massive challenges we face for the future that will take a collective effort of both government and industry.  Should I even remind you of what reduced regulation has brought us in the energy mess of Eron, the contaminated food stuffs and toys that have shown up in our stores, or the potential bank failures of the mortgage crisis?  Government is not the enemy as the Republicans believe, but the tool that will allow us to propel ourselves into the 21st century

Then there is the less intrusive government that stays out of people’s lives.  The reality is the only Party that believes in this is the Democrats.  Take a look at Sarah Palin’s beliefs and religious dogma that represents what the religious right would like to enforce on the rest of us.  The real conservatives, the Barry Goldwaters of the world, believed that government had no right to enter into people’s private lives and force them to carry babies they did not want, decide what their rights were in an end of life situation, or decide who we can love and marry.  They believed in a strong separation of church and state.  Do you see that in John McCain or Sarah Palin?

Finally there is the issue of fiscal responsibility.  Needless to say the present crop of Republicans have spent wildly and under a Republican Congress and Republican President, they have created the greatest deficit in the history of the country.  But these “new” Republicans are going to save us and right our ship.  Here is where I go against the conventional wisdom grain.  We have ignored our country and its infrastructure needs for years and now all the chickens are coming home to roast.  We need massive investments in roads, bridges, rail, education, energy, communications, medical care, and on and on.  This is not the time to further backslide on what will make us competitive in the 21st century against China and India who have been and are making these investments. Katrina vanden Heuvel, a woman I highly admire for her ability to rationally take on the conservatives and editor and publisher of Nation Magazine, made a similar argument on the Bill Moyer’s Journal last week. If you need a simple minded example, I really can’t afford to reseal my quarter mile asphalt driveway this year, but I can’t afford not to because saving money today will bankrupt me tomorrow.  If we don’t invest in ourselves today, we will get so far behind we will never catch up with the rest of the world.

To me it is so obvious that the Republican’s and their conservative philosophy is at a dead end, but I got a lesson the other evening in how Republicans think or more appropriately don’t think.  I made an off-handed comment over dinner about the fact that the  country is in a mess and the Republicans have controlled our course for eight years.  My friend, who like most of people who live up here think conservative, said yes but the Democrats have had the Congress for two years and so they are also the problem.  When I pointed out that it was less than 18 months (when they actually were seated) and that the Republicans had blocked every substantial legislation with a filibuster, he commented that the Democrats did the same thing when the Republicans had the Congress.  When I pointed out that that was not true and that the Republicans in the last session had set an all time record for the use of the filibuster, he was incredulous.  That’s when I got a kick under the table from my wife to move on.

The point here is quite simple.  Eight years of failure doesn’t faze the Republicans.  It must be the Democrats fault.  There is no acceptance that their basic conservative dogma offers us no solutions for the future.  There is no acceptance of responsibility for what the people they put in office have wrought with our nation.  “We’ll just get a few better ones, not the misguide ones we had, and things will be fine.”  Thus we have the depiction of John McCain as a maverick and Sarah Palin as a real conservative.  There is only one way for them to face up to the reality of their failures.  Throw them out of office.  It is now or never ladies and gentlemen.

By the by, in the world of cynical politics, have you seen John McCain using the hurricane Gustav as a political tool to gather sympathy for he and Sarah.  Republican Govenors invite them down to the South to view their preparations.  I wonder how many resources were diverted for their visti?  I am appalled that he has anything to say about the hurricane other than to get out of way and let local and federal officials do their job.