WHAT IT MEANS TO BE A CONSERVATIVE

Conservatism is a ploy. A ploy to get you (the middle class or non-wealthy) to help the wealthy and super wealthy in this country to protect their positions and possessions. Conservatism is a morally bankrupt belief system centered on self-interest. What conservatives seek is not to protect America (or the sanctity of America as they often claim) but rather the positions and the possessions of the most affluent Americans. We need only look at the basic positions of conservatives to see that conservative lore is based upon self-preservation and not (for example) self-sacrifice.

Conservatives often speak of cutting social spending, cutting their own personal taxes so that their own personal income can remain high, implementing the death penalty, harsher criminal sentences, the elimination of threats (like terrorists) by force and violence. All of these positions are aimed solely at maintaining one’s possessions or one’s positions without addressing the morality of the underlying means. While self-sacrifice entails helping someone at your own risk and/or your own peril, conservatism and it’s policies seek to eliminate the risks to one’s self (self interest). To eliminate both the peril and/or the cost associated with preventing or fixing the peril. In fact, the tools of a conservative are principally preservation and elimination. In the use of preservation, conservative policies deprive others who need a conservative’s possessions or positions from obtaining them. In the use of elimination (and to a lesser degree control), those people (locally, nationally and globally) who pose a threat to the positions or possessions of conservatives are eliminated (either killed or removed from society) through any and all means possible.

The Patriot Act; Harsher criminal sentences; Illegal searches and seizures; Warrant less wire taps; Who do these types of infringements target? Is it the (politically connected) wealthy and super wealthy? Is it the powerful? Is it the individual who has enough money that stealing is not necessary? Or are these types of infringements targeted to individuals at the lower end of the economic spectrum? At individuals who are essentially powerless in our country? But who nevertheless may pose a threat to a wealthy business man?

Who therefore wants the stiffest penalties for crime? And why? Who supports the death penalty? And why? Who seeks the harshest sentencing rules? And why? Who wants unaccountable aggressive police forces? And why? Who seeks to cut social programs? And why?

What is the foundation of these “conservative core values”? Are they to help people? Are they concepts which speak to self-sacrifice and love? Are they positions which help or hinder the downtrodden? Do they improve humanity?

In the mind of a conservative, a thief, a crook, a criminal, a poor person, a murderer is not a person with (spiritual or economic) potential but rather a potential future attacking entity. A person who could threaten their position or their possessions. A person who needs to be controlled and/or eliminated. A conservative does not accept that a criminal is person with a potentially rehabilitatable soul. Because a conservative focuses not on rehabilitation but rather elimination for the sake of their own position. Conservatives do not seek to address either the root causes of the threats to society or the possible transformation of these threats to a benign category, but rather their starvation, suppression and ultimately their elimination. Conservatives seek to deprive the lower class and poor in this country of the very means toward productively while simultaneously failing to acknowledge that the threats posed to them often arise from their inflicted positions of poverty. Conservatives do not consider what it might be like to have no wealth, no pinnacle position, no advantageous start, no or poor education. There is no thought that many individuals in this country begin life with an insurmountable starting position of despair. All that is central to conservative values are protection and possession of themselves.

A conservative appeals to other people to conform to their conservative beliefs and their ideals of maintaining the upper class in this country through various means. The most prevailing of which is fear. They motivate people to act by inciting their own basic self-preservation instinct. You better sign on to the Patriot Act’s freedom infringing policies because if you don’t the terrorists will get you. You better permit police to trample constitutional protections and permit warrant less searches and seizures because otherwise the criminals and terrorists will get you. You should permit harsher sentences or the criminals will get out of jail and get you. You should subscribe to the death penalty because it deters other killers from killing YOU. It’s always presented as being to YOUR benefit - but what it really is to the benefit of the people in power, the people with a great deal of money, and the people with a great deal of political connections. In short, the people who have the most things to lose. Do the poor really have a problem with theft? What is the likely-hood that the police are bashing down the door of a rich socialite and obtaining illegal evidence and that that socialite will go to jail (for example for ten years) ? How many rich socialites can not afford the best lawyers? How many rich socialites (by their sheer willingness to throw money at politicians) have some connection at the top somewhere that can bail them out of even the most over-reaching invasion of their civil, human or constitutionally protected rights?

To some extent the middle class in this country have the same core value system of protecting their position because they too actually have something to lose. The difference is that their positions are far less valuable. To offset this fact, the wealthy and super wealthy give the middle class simple diversionary pleasures to strengthen their desire to maintain their own lesser positions. They create positions of just enough comfort to make them follow the leaders.

The second most prevalent tactic of conservatives is to call anyone who is not immediately taken to support the wealthy, and super wealthy and their positions a traitor. Or worse yet, “un-American”. And in doing so they acknowledge that your failure to support the preservation of their wealth will lead to some diminution of our country. This is clever in that it plays upon our animal instinctual need to not only to belong, but to belong to a strong pack. If you don’t support the war in Iraq you’re un-American and you’re jeopardizing our country by doing so. Don’t you want to belong to the strongest pack? Don’t you want us to “win” the war so that we can maintain our position of power? Of course you do - it’s programmed behavior ingrained in all of us. Unfortunately, for so many people the reality is that these concepts are like drugs. They satisfy our programs to be dominant and in control and the strongest while simultaneously permitting us to feel “safe” and “secure”. All instinctual elements of our programming. And in this satiated drugged state we sacrifice our morality, That is why conservatives hammer the notion that they are “better able to protect us”. They know you are (by nature) afraid. They know that your natural instinctual fear will permit them to erode your constitutional rights so that they can keep their stuff and their lives in order. To erode your compassion for the criminal, your compassion for the poor, your over all sense of right and wrong. The real question is not “who is better able to protect you” but “who is better able to protect the possessory assets and positions of the wealthy and super-wealthy in this country?” And the answers are: those who will permit the erosion of our constitutional rights; those who will support the harshest sentences for criminals without addressing human rights, constitutional rights or even a persons humanity; those who will permit the killing (elimination) of the killers as opposed to those who would attempt to address the root causes of crime or the rehabilitation of a person’s soul; those who will permit war; those who will permit the slaughter of innocent women and children in the name of self-preservation.

Conservatives are not about fixing “our” problems but rather they are about maximizing control and/or eliminating “their” problems. They are not about humanity. They do not seek to address the root causes of evil but rather foster a perpetuation of their own morally cloaked evil toward their own self-preservationist goals. The Iraqi war is prime example of this - and naturally an extension of these core conservative self-preservation beliefs and modalities. It also offers us a glimpse in to how conservatives manipulate the public to continue their protectionist policies by “any and all means”. This (of course) includes killing and violence and death. Remember, protectionism of what they have is paramount. And it’s not the protectionism of our “American way of life” or even our safety but “their” way of life and “their” safety. Your safety is how they package it. That’s how they get you to sign on. But the truth is that their lives are a far cry from the lives of we average Americans.

Without speculating on what the Iraqi war may or may not really be about (oil, weapons of mass destruction, etc.), lets look at it in the context of conservative preservation and elimination. In the context of morality. In the context of what we can definitely say it does and does not entail.

The Iraqi war definitely entails violence and death - and the violence and death of innocent people (including women and children). It definitely entails the destruction of American families - over 10,000 dead American soldiers are a testament to this. It definitely entails the destruction of Iraqi families. It definitely entails the destruction of American Lives (over 21,00 wounded Americans) and Iraqi lives (over 40,000 dead an wounded Iraqi’s). It definitely entails the perpetuation of a multi-billion dollar defense industry (also run and controlled by the super-wealthy) - or the continuation of a money making entity for the super wealthy. It definitely entails the continuation of a conflict between Muslin and non-Muslin people. It definitely entails control (and an attempt to retain control or some relationship) over one of the richest oil bearing lands in the world. It short, it definitely entails the protection of self-interested positions and possessions by “any and all means” of the wealthy. Because whose sons and daughters are fighting over there? Whose children are dying? Which people are really exposed to terrorist threats in a public airport?

Ane then there is what the Iraqi war definitely does not entail. It definitely does not entail love, self-sacrifice, kindness, peace, sharing, giving, or compassion. It is never-the-less supported by self-proclaimed morally superior conservatives.

And how was (and how is) the Iraqi war being sold to you? Firstly by fear. You better be afraid of the terrorists so we need to use “any and all means” to protect you. Again through your instinctual need to feel safe. How else? Through your instinctual need to dominate. “We need to win this war to maintain our dominance”. “You like being the big dog don’t you? Well them we got to keep killing and slaughtering and....”

If you’re stuck on conservatism because you also believe that it’s the more “moral” position to partake in, you’d be sadly mistaken no matter which religion you subscribe to. I could get involved on this point, but do the math - what things are most meaningful to the God of Abraham, or Allah and or even Buddha. If you’re a Christian take this simple test - would Jesus be a conservative? Would Jesus support tax cuts for the wealthy? Would Jesus support the death penalty (or would he rather support the eternal soul of the individual and it’s potential to repent or even just grow?)? Would Jesus support a war based upon a potential threat (which as it turns out was probably at best a perceived threat and at worst a lie)? Would Jesus support killing innocent children in the name of one’s personal safety? Who are all these god-fearing conservatives kidding? The truth is, conservatives are not only devoid of any real moral fibre, they are also hypocrites as they continually point top their “good” and “godly” behavior to justify their immoral positions. It’s very easy to be a law abiding citizen and to remain a law abiding citizen when you have all the things that being an unlawful citizen could possibly bring. And while behaving morally when it is unnecessary to behave immorally is their selling point, the truth is something far less contrived. Simply that to be a conservative is to support those things which are most unimportant to god. And to ignore those things which are most important to god. All in exchange for protection of position. Things like self-sacrifice, love, caring, the rehabilitation of souls, the relinquishment of wealth, the relinquishment of power, and the relinquishment of self are abandoned for things like protectionism, accumulation of wealth, power, punishment, control and war.