This is a step back diary, more philosophical. If the Conservative view puzzles you as much as it does me, you should find it interesting.
"All great peoples are conservative."
-Thomas Carlyle - 19th Century writer who helped forge a new tradition of Victorian era criticism of progress.
"Sarcasm I now see to be, in general, the language of the devil; for which reason I have long since as good as renounced it." Also, T. Carlyle
It should now be accepted that the Conservative movement is correct in every opinion and talking point. It is a well-publicized attribute of Conservatives that they are 100% right in all things.
Conservative inerrancy has been endlessly proven by media mouths. Now it is clear that Right-wing logic is impossible to defeat as long as there is money to pay for it. Conservative ideology has been crammed down the throats of the hair-twisting set. Let us all admit it: in the rules of their own world, Conservatives are Caesar.
Despite victory on all fronts for Conservatives, it remains difficult for some Liberals to understand our Conservative Republican friends and family. Most upsettingly, War seems to be the province of Conservatives, and they are well succeeding in having it. It is frustrating to argue in the prevailing wind of hot air coming from the TeeVee.
I've got money so I'm a Conservative.
- Lord Thomson of Fleet
And who are these Conservatives? Well, a good portion are known (to themselves) as "The Winners" in life. It appeals to them to bask in wholesome-sounding statements about caring for "one's own," to demand (of others) steadfast responsibility for actions, to be independent of all and to assume morality and courage are inherent in one's makeup no matter the evidence. It is the dream of ego made political.
Of COURSE there are many such thinkers--who would not want to be a Conservative?
Could anything be more foolish than Liberalism? To recognize "rights" of our lowest social members as being same as ours? To give gladly to the common cause--to find joy in giving without gain? It is easier to simply laugh at the idea. Many grudging Liberals would leap to proclaim themselves Conservative if only they could stand the guilt.
The essence of Conservative ideology is its being anchored in the divine order of things.
- Franz von Papen, Prominent German political leader who used his personal influence to promote the accession of the Nazis to power
Understanding Conservative thought is most easily done by recalling the mindset of one's adolescence. Logic will not do. Conservatism is natural, it is the raw clay of humanity. It is what we grow out of.
Consider our childhoods, that hallowed time of self-centered innocence. As a Conservative, you may eternally remain in this blissful state, losing only the innocence. Think how few young souls naturally share toys as toddlers, and how by the age of nine even the sweetest disposition will have tasted dark thrill of doing wrong. Conservatism is simply human nature made political.
Truly, who would not enjoy a philosophy in which all thoughts orbit around one's ego? Conservatism is about disliking others: it is the way we want to be.
In general, people give Conservative views too much credit--or rather, Conservatives give themselves too much credit for adopting Conservative views. Conservatism is the creed of ignorance, of denial, of the child. The sheepskin for the wolf of Greed. Conservatism is the instinct of the lemming for the cliff.
Blame enclave America.
But I do not distain Conservatives. On the contrary, as a Liberal I celebrate passion for values. Many staunch Conservatives are good people, even if morally stunted victims of closed minds and bad preaching. They will make fine Liberals once they discover the Truth, and will have much to teach the world.
"A conservative is a man who just sits and thinks, mostly sits."
- Woodrow Wilson
As children, Conservatives are not logical and see no reason to be. Thus a Conservative will spout political positions planted firmly in 12th century morality and when confronted, deftly perform a mental-Flashdance move to land back in the modern era with all such rights and courtesies due them.
Conservatives have a child's disrespect for those who have come before, preferring opinions based on the limited experience of their soft lives. The tone of a Conservative is a perpetual whine before Creation.
As with any rebellious youngster, all their own ideas are brilliant, and any who disagree are obviously fools. Their discoveries are unique, their self-serving insights new in the world.
But though Conservatism is utterly right and objectively true, within it's imagined perimeters, it has one great failing: Fate hates Conservative ideology. In fact calls it out by name. The life of Conservative societies is as described by an early figure of the Enlightenment--nasty, brutish and short.
Yes, there is only one cloud blocking the endless sunshine of adolescence that represents Conservatism. That cloud is that God, Nature, Creation, the Great Rule-Maker in the Sky--whatever brought humankind into existence--abhors and will not abide Conservative forms. The gifts offered to authoritarian, right-wing Conservative societies are hunger, poverty, bestial ignorance, misery from the elements, nightmarish epidemics and wholesale disease. Violence and fear are both the conservative's weapons and destiny.
The Taliban was a completed Conservative society, fully actualized. The end point of Conservative thinking is warlords, weapons and wrapped women. So it has always been.
When a nation's young men are conservative, its funeral bell is already rung.
-Henry Ward Beecher
Sadly for right-wing pundits, our planet rewards liberalism, not conservatism. We are to live as Liberals or scarcely at all.
If Conservatives are willfully ignorant children, it is not surprising this world will not allow them to remain so in peace. We live in a world of lessons, and one of the most basic is the need for a passage into adulthood. Like children who squabble in the back seat infinitely maligned by a look from a sibling, hostilities fester among conservatives. Under Conservative guidance, divisions and animosities multiply and never heal. The end result of Conservatism, repeated many thousands of times across all human existence, is War.
Conservatism leads to War
The evidence of our world is that human progress happens in response to conflict. Struggle is the mechanism of change, and change is the nature of life. Hunger, poverty, hatred, and fear are conflicts that resolve in favor of community and connection. Ironically, it is the Conservatives' fate to cause the very conditions that destroy their erroneous beliefs.
War is the ultimate conflict
Consider that the greatest Liberal era in America came after WWII. Vietnam and the resulting Day of the Hippie was another such time. Today, returning Iraq vets are running as Democrats, where liberal values of Commonwealth, Individual Rights, and the Separation of Church and State are at least professed.
Liberalism is the belief in individual rights. It stands for the liberty of humanity. Liberalism has delivered--against the ages of Conservative slander--a prosperity to mankind unimagined before its appearance on this earth. Liberalism has defeated both fascism and communism, and yet does not lift an angry fist. Liberalism is the embodiment of man's stumbling efforts to implement true Christian values so distained by the right-wing. Liberalism is rewarded by reality. It is the way forward which our world teaches.
A Conservative is a man with two perfectly good legs who, however, has never learned how to walk forward.
Franklin D. Roosevelt
But we don't have to like it, do we? Liberal philosophy was born a mewling orphan upon this earth. Liberalism has died many times before, and populations of people have conspired to kill it. Liberals have been despised by both the Communist Left and Religious Right: Hitler, Stalin, Lenin, and Mao all denounced liberal thought as weak degeneracy, and millions thought they believed it.
Where Liberalism speaks of equality, Conservativism clutches the view that some are better than others. You hear this in Rush Limbaugh's chuckle, the Rovian sneer, the Coulterian mockery. "How insanely silly to believe THEY are as important as WE" say Conservatives with every talking point and held position.
Liberalism is still a new idea in the world, and we are slow to learn.
The release of atom power has changed everything except our way of thinking... the solution to this problem lies in the heart of mankind. If only I had known, I should have become a watchmaker.
- Albert Einstein
Old societies inevitably become more conservative, because conservative beliefs are the baseline of human nature. The cycle repeats as life-experienced Liberals--those who suffered whichever previous War--slowly die off. The human baseline returns in succeeding generations, and again we fall to War, which brings yet another change.
History has not been an even path upward. With one step we advance, then fall back towards barbarism. It is almost as if the human race pauses to test each new decision, to see, for example, if perhaps Imperial violence may in fact be worthwhile...
But War is a soul-wrenching event that shocks mankind into a new phase of thinking: of praising and striving to nurture life upon this earth. It is no coincidence the great warmongers are "chickenhawks" who never served, who in fact have avoided service to their country. Had these men been to War they would not have considered it a tool for their dark dreams.
From disaster, the human race peers up from the dug hole called War, from the shells of burned-out shelters, from foxholes and blasted lives, to discover with new eyes that the world is beautiful, diverse, abhorrent of uniformity--and welcoming of toleration, mental activity, harmony and peaceful effort. Even the most aggressive pause in their work of spitting in the face of civilization to beg and plead for its return.
In War, humankind looks into the abyss and cries out for what we pretended to despise. We don't want shards of bone and bloody piles to be the sum of us, we desperately reject that our world is as we have treated it and scream hope into the desolation. In dark War we begin again to crave community, we pray for happiness to exist, in any place, in any way possible. Because that Happiness should exist is seen in Truth as the greatest miracle, the memory most dear, and the soul sells itself back to its Creator in trade for hope that existence is not as ugly as what we have made.
It doesn't matter what conservative "thinkers" say or do, it matters what we as free-thinking, change-embracing, Creation-loving Liberals do. Conservatives are again demonstrating their failed ideology by their actions and results. Conservatism is a dead letter--if Conservative values work so well ...why have they never done so?
The challenge for Liberals to be true to ourselves and our beliefs in liberty, self-determination and respect for others. Regardless of temptation to bend rules because "the other side" is doing it. Our task is not to convince, but to hold the line. Conservatism is a sum of childish attitudes that reality itself changes. The direction of human thought and life is toward liberalization--accomplished most rapidly in the crucible of War.
Man...requires proper instruction and a fortunate nature, and then of all animals he becomes the most divine and most civilized; but if he be insufficiently or ill- educated he is the most savage of earthly creatures. - Plato
It is not easy to fight against right wing resources--propaganda works, and not only on Germans. We as working class Liberals do not have the megaphone of the corporate media. But Liberal ideals are the American values and what made our nation the hope of the world. That is what made us strong. It is only important for us to define and articulate our principles. Conservatism is where we have been. Liberalism is where we are going.
And our work is easier than it once was, because now people have seen a better way. Our fellow Americans will come looking.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
Declaration of Independence, July 4, 1776
War is Creation's answer to conservatism ... a question asked often, for we don't like the answer. But if War is the answer to Conservatism, what then is Liberalism?
Liberalism is the answer to War.
What a cruel thing is war: to separate and destroy families and friends, and mar the purest joys and happiness God has granted us in this world; to fill our hearts with hatred instead of love for our neighbors, and to devastate the fair face of this beautiful world.
- Robert E. Lee, letter to his wife, 1864