I am sick and tired of the right taking ownership of words that do not belong to them. I am also sick and tiered of the left abdicating like a well-beaten stepchild.
I am nothing like Michele Bachmann, Rick Perry or Newt Gingrich but I am conservative. I am also liberal. These concepts are not mutually exclusive.
We on the left have allowed the dialogue to be controlled by Machiavellians and the media rather the reason and realism. For years we have conceded to the linguistics of trickle down economics and its slow devolution into the utter economic incoherence being expressed by the current slate of Republican presidential gladiators.
I am a liberal because I believe in movement toward progress as defined by fairness and equal opportunities and I honor, value and defend individual expression. I am a conservative because I am skeptical of big spending and big government and so are you.
The problem is that the idea of what it is to be conservative has been defined by the trickle down, big spending, economics of modern corporatism. I ask you what is conservative about spending 4.8% of GDP on the military? What is conservative about our country being responsible for 43% of all military spending in the world? What is conservative about massive subsidies going to oil companies and ethanol producers when we know that the amount of energy obtained from ethanol is about the same as that that goes into producing it? What is conservative about wasting our rare pristine lands and coastlines in pursuit of profits? Conservative should be about conserving. Nonetheless, these are the policies that are maintained under the guise of conservatives.
Trickle down caught on despite its obvious flaws in economic theory and metaphoric meaning. We have had enough of being trickled down on. The left should never have let go of the conservative/conservation meme. We have had enough of being trickled down on. It is time for us to define a bottom up economics that makes more sense, provide better economic viability and fairness. Bottom up is the way that plants grow, pyramids are supported and it is even the modern business model of Total Quality Management (TQM). So why can’t the left present an economic model based on these well-established and sound principles?
It seems that that many on the left prefer to wear the badge of big government despite obvious areas of skepticism. Most on the left do not embrace big subsidies to large corporations much less wholesale bailouts of the banking industry. Most on the left are skeptical of big government when it comes to the invasions of privacy actuated by the patriot act. Most on the left are opposed to the grand scale of the war on drugs. But we allow ourselves to be tarnished with the smear of naiveté by defending the responsibilities of government without standing up to, or understanding, this war on words.
It is important for the left to use the smear of big government to limit military spending, subsidies to multinational corporations and large-scale invasions on the privacy of all of us.
Even before the Citizens United case corporate interests had long since usurped the authority of the popular vote. Our government has become a tool of corporate greed. The left has allowed defending our social safety net to become a defense for all big government even though we know who runs it and toward what ends.
We have allowed language to become a tool that divides the 99% and empowers the far-reaching infrastructure of the 1%. There is no doubt that the right most often votes against their own best interest, and that of fairness, but it is also true that the left works against its best interest by refusing to defend the language to would provide the commonality to build a bridge across the divide. It is this polarity that most benefits the 1%.