The rich con mythology contains explanations for many things that all come round at some point to blame liberalism for society's ills. Loss of morality in society? That comes from loss of traditional values which comes from immoral liberalism. Poverty? That comes from excessive coddling for those who don't wish to work which comes from welfare which comes from liberalism. The bank crash from mortgages that couldn't be paid? That comes from ignorant poor people who took out loans on homes they couldn't afford and shouldn't be offered in the first place and that comes from liberalism. Riots in the streets? That comes from loss of neighborhood and family stability that comes from loss of traditional values and fathers in the home which comes from liberalism.
That mythology is extraordinarily comfortable for people sitting in their homes, well-fed, watching the 50-inch flat screen with the cable channel selector set permanently to Fox, or driving to the grocery in the Buick with the Sirius XM radio locked into Fox News or the Patriot (sic) channel. They have never seen anyone arrested, never seen someone beaten or shot by police, they have never themselves been stopped simply for driving, they have never been redlined out of a new home, and they have never been locked up for no other reason than the color of their skin, the way they wore their pants, or the style of their hair. They have certainly never seen anyone shot to death.
They do, however, have a fervent belief in their guns in order protect themselves from the mayhem they see on TV and the day those same police come for them when the government finally makes good on its promise of tyranny. There's a paradox that is unseen by the comfortable armed white cons: the tyranny of government against which they claim to be armed is the tyranny being rebelled against in cities and towns across the country. There is apparent grounds for paranoid whites to find common cause with persecuted blacks, one might logically think. The difference, if there is one, is that the tyranny being practiced on black populations comes most directly from the local and state governments that cons find so preferable to the Federal government, while the government they fear is the Federal one that seeks to guarantee common rights across all America.
The more-or-less comfortable white population would apparently explode in armed violence were they to be the target of government-sponsored suppression that blacks face everyday from local and state agencies. The clucking of tongues and moralistic shakes of the head and condemnation of violence in rebellion would have to come from another quarter were whites facing the same conditions that black people face everyday. The wags of the finger toward individuals choosing "victimhood" taking their grievances to court and to the ballot box would need to have different hands. Were governmental entities to pursue innocent white individuals in the same proportion to population in which innocent blacks are tormented, we would have the armed apocalypse pursuing Second Amendment remedies that the Dominionists so long for. The difference is their enemy resides far away in Washington, DC, while the enemies of black liberty patrol blacks' own neighborhoods.
States' Rights and local control have always been used for regressive purposes, enabling a local hegemony to those in power and affiliated with it. Only the Federal government can apply a common standard for liberty and justice across all America, because local interests will always seek control in ways that segregate and denigrate without some counterforce to guarantee individual rights. The shame we face now is that over the last 40-odd years, the Federal government has come under increasing control by the same interests that exert local hegemony. All the mythology of local control has served only the purpose of further subjugating the already subordinated.
There is an irony in this: the rise of the right in the 70's and 80's was based in part on the assignment of the lawlessness and riots of the 60's to the failures of liberalism. The country had developed a series of more liberal policies since the Great Depression that seemed, to the cons, to have culminated in rending the social fabric that wrapped whatever incidence of injustice in calm, tranquility and social order. Never mind that the triggering episodes for rioting and lawlessness were violent suppressions by local authorities, the cons believed and became sold on the notion that liberalism was at the root of the unrest. Insults to minority communities, both acute and chronic were blamed on the communities themselves, never to the local hegemonies.
So, while liberalism held sway for some 30 years and was blamed by cons for unrest, cons have held sway for the last 30-40 years. Here's the ironical part: should not cons be held accountable for this latest round of unrest? Liberal policy has been on the run for over a generation -- surely that cannot be the root of evil spawning lawlessness now. If liberalism was labeled (albeit falsely) a failure for the turbulence of the 60's, should not conservatism be blamed for the turbulence and violence that is evident today? Failed conservative policy has imprisoned, murdered, battered and harassed blacks in communities across the country, leading to anger that can no longer be contained. If it was the lib's fault in the 70's, surely it is the con's fault now.
The reality is much less ironical -- the causes in both sets of cases is the same. Local power structures ghettoized the black reality, cops, prosecutors, sentencing requirements and increasing numbers of con judges served the power structures and their own mythologies with brutality, aggravating and perpetuating an aggrieved poor black community. The reality is that conservatism just flat doesn't work. It has failed repeatedly to maintain social order, provide equal justice under the laws, enable equality in opportunity if not in outcome, secure tranquility for ourselves and our prosperity, and to provide for a common defense of hearth and home.
The reality includes the contrast between our progress in the American Experiment under liberal trajectories and those under conservative trajectories. Liberal trajectories have included improvements in the national economy, strong relations in the rest of the world, peace over war, life over death, prosperity over poverty, advances in our infrastructure, new solutions in research, community over division, understanding over alienation, success over failure.
Conservatism has, in every crossover experiment run in our society, produced war over peace, suppression of liberty, segregation of the other, persecution of heretics, surrenders to labels, destiny over choice, zero sum economics that favor the powerful, poverty over prosperity, slavery over freedom, safety over liberty. Conservatism is anathema to the American Ideal. More than any of those things, and apart from any ideological predisposition, conservatism has failed on every objective measure.
Conservatism should be ready to join communism on the scrap heap of history, another weird experiment in social engineering that seeks to choose whom is deserving and whom is not.
One last thing: cons who fear government should get off their couches, turn off Fox News, safely lock up their weapons, and get themselves to Baltimore to stand peacefully shoulder-to-shoulder with Baltimore's aggrieved community being assaulted by their own government. Until then, those noisy, violent, Bundy-lovers are only hypocritical cowards.
If Baltimore's Bloods and Crips can drop their grievances against each other and unite to peacefully seek justice for Mr. Gray, maybe the cons can likewise drop their distaste for those who are black and powerless, and seek true justice as well.