Crossposted from my personal blog, The Random Opinionator.
After reading a short op-ed piece this morning in the L.A. Times, I really started to wonder: What's so "conservative" about these conservatives?
So, before starting, I've consulted my Random House dictionary, and it defines a conservative, first and foremost, as "1. disposed to preserve existing conditions, institutions, etc., or to restore traditional ones, and to limit change."
Ok, then. Now that we've defined what a conservative is supposed to be, let's take a look at the bunch running the show on various levels of government.
Follow me to the flipside.
First, in Wisconsin, we've got Koch's bought and paid for thug governor, Scott Walker. Wisconsin was the first state in the nation to innovate in a variety of areas, and its traditions are very liberal/progressive. From the start of the Progressive party under the La Follette family (who established direct primary voting, the minimum wage, workers compensation), to leading the fight for direct election of U.S. Senators and women's suffrage, to becoming the first state in the nation to allow public employees to collectively bargain, it has been a state where progressive innovation has been the tradition.
Scott Walker is upending the system and tradition of Wisconsin to suit his needs. He is wanting to go back over a hundred years in time, and take away the rights of the many to serve the powerful few. Decertify the unions, he says. Give me sole control of Medicaid in Wisconsin. Let me sell state property to who I want for what I want. All this under the cloak of a "fiscal emergency" that he helped create with his business tax cuts from a budget that was going to finish as a surplus. What's conservative about Scott Walker?
In Georgia this year, a bill has been introduced to criminalize miscarriages. That's right, miscarriages. The Georgia bill also says that the Supreme Court had "no jurisdiction to hear Roe v. Wade and because Georgia wasn't part of that case, "it carries no legal effect in Georgia." The Supreme Court stopped having jurisdiction? Since when? They've had that since the Constitution was written. They were the last resort in any court case, state or federal. What's conservative about declaring the Supreme Court has no jurisdiction after 224 years of the Constitution?
In Tennessee, a proposed law would jail those who follow Sharia law (which, on a personal level, includes washing of the feet and prayers) for up to 15 years. "Conservatives" have screamed for decades that Christianity and prayer is being persecuted, but yet in multiple states, bills such as this have been introduced, and in Oklahoma, passed. What's conservative about not allowing religious freedom?
In the House of Representatives, the "conservatives" want the government to not regulate Wall Street giants, yet they want to create abortion restrictions on private insurance companies and business via a Trojan horse bill to amend health care reform. If a business provides insurance to its employees that includes coverage for abortion, they lose the tax credits a company gets for providing insurance. They only get the tax credits if the insurance policy doesn't cover abortion. So, they don't want any regulation of business, unless it's tied to abortion, then they want to regulate the crap out of it. This, nonwithstanding the fact that some abortions are medically necessary. I had a friend who miscarried but the baby was still inside her. Guess what? An abortion procedure is how that baby is removed. What's "conservative" about telling people what specific kind of insurance they must buy (because, let's face it, when 87 percent of policies would be ineligible for the tax breaks, who would buy them)? Aren't conservatives up in arms over the simple mandate that people must buy health insurance in the first place under health care reform?
Let's face it. These people are radicals, and dangerous ones at that. They want to undo all the advances of the past 100 years, and ply us with the rules of the 1780s (but only the ones they approve). If they were conservatives, they would truly adhere to the Constitution and law of the land. They would move much more slowly and cautiously towards changes. They would do an awful lot of things differently. Richard Nixon was considered a conservative 40 years ago, but by God, he'd be a heretic to this bunch. Unless you're ready to gut America and change it into a privatized quasi-fascist state, you aren't conservative these days. Go ask Mike Castle. Go ask Bob Bennett. These guys got firebombed by these radical lunatics, and they used to be the "conservative" ones.
God help us all. Our fight in Wisconsin is only the beginning.