John Brand, D.Min., J.D.
''Conservatives''
Wed Mar 3 10:44:12 2004
67.1.130.170

''Conservatives''
Printed on Wednesday, March 03, 2004 @ 00:04:02 CST
By John Brand, D.Min., J.D.
YellowTimes.org Columnist (United States)

(YellowTimes.org) – Election campaign signs are plastered all over town. Some promote the candidate as a "Conservative" or even as "A Proven Conservative."

What these folks do not tell us is what they seek to conserve. We all know that the best predictor of future conduct is past behavior. We have a pretty good idea what it is that Republicans seek to conserve.

On the top of the list, of course, is profligate spending. Republicans make a drunk sailor, throwing about his money on a Saturday night, look like a miser. When President Bush took over he found a 250 billion dollars surplus. Now about three years later we have a 500 billion dollars deficit.

We must not think that President Bush, belonging to a party bragging about fiscally responsibility, is a new phenomenon when it comes to monetary irresponsibility. Mr. Arch Conservative, that self-proclaimed paragon of fiduciary conservatism, President Reagan, increased the national debt from about three trillion dollars to over six trillion dollars in eight years. Surely, that record must be added to Ripley’s "Believe It or Not."

In spite of all the propaganda that Democrats throw money to the wind, we are surely beginning to realize that it is the Republicans who waste our dollars. Fiscal irresponsibility is a proven track record of Conservatives.

Secondly, conservatives have an interesting way of distributing our national wealth. One would expect that the political heirs of Abraham Lincoln would place the people’s weal above all other considerations. After all, our Republic is based upon the rock "that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth."

Being the heirs of such worthwhile and noble ideals it is only reasonable to expect that a government for the people would make certain that basic services are provided for all the people who, after all, are the backbone of our society. Adequate wages, health care, Social Security, and public education are some of the significant concerns of a government for the people. Conservatives talk a pretty good game in these areas but are woefully lacking in substance.

The candidates professing to be conservative are putting us on notice that the number of uninsured and underinsured citizens will continue to rise. They also avow that they are not particularly interested in public schools, Social Security, or the preservation of pension funds.

How can public services be assured if the controlling mantra is "Throw money to the rich and self-serving special interest groups?" Do Conservatives expect an Angel from heaven to insure the protection of basics to come from God’s personal Money Market Fund? In the absence of such divine assurance, it is left to liberals to protect the people from the predatory greed of Conservatives.

But I am asking too much to expect Conservatives to care a fig about hard-working folks. The record speaks for itself. When the President declared that the Treasury surplus belongs to the people, guess who were the main benefactors of this discovered boon? Not the folks who have to decide whether to buy prescription drugs or food. Not the millions of unemployed who have even given up looking for work. Not the millions who went from well-paying jobs to receiving less than half of what they used to make.

We all know those who got the big refunds were the Super Rich who spent their money at Neiman-Marcus or bought Hummers. Conservatives simply don’t understand that the trickle-down theory does not work. They are all in favor of outsourcing American jobs, allowing American companies to move their offices off-share beyond the reach of the Internal Revenue Service. President Bush proclaimed that all this is good for America. But he never explained how it is "good."

Has our fearless leaders ever wondered what will happen a few years down the road with this sort of Conservatism? Well-paying jobs are drying up, no matter what spin the President puts on reality. How do the Conservatives expect to keep on going? I guess they have some kind of delusion about the generation of capital. Years ago, I saw a cartoon of an innovative farmer. In order to save feed money, he taught the cow bend backwards and feed off her own udder. Of course, it was meant as a joke. But somehow I have the feeling that the Conservatives are living by that kind of voodoo economics. You suck yourself dry and there is nothing left.

Decreased tax revenue, increased under-employment and unemployment reduces revenues for the government and the old cow won’t have any milk in her udder. That means that pretty soon Conservatives won’t be able to award contracts guaranteeing obscene profits to V.P.’s Cheney’s former employer….then what?

Of course, Conservatives are always strong on religion. However, their opiate is more of a hoped for magical elixir than then reality of the Bible. I wish the folks promoting WWJD, (what would Jesus do) would take their own message seriously. There is the record in all four Gospels about WWJD. He took after bankers, accountants boiling books, and wheelers and dealers with a whip.

Boy, would Jesus be kept busy today cleaning out Wall Street Brokerage Houses, banks, defense contractors, executives at HMO’s and the pharmaceutical corporations. Yet Conservatives who brag so much about God and Jesus pay scarcely any attention to the substance of the Gospel they profess to believe.

To continue with Conservatism means the destruction of the Bill of Rights. The Patriot Act ensures that end. When all is said and done, the Attorney General has the sole power to declare anyone a terrorist at his discretion and to put that person away for life without benefit of the protection given to all citizens by the Bill of Rights.

Well, you get the general drift of my concerns. What is it that casts a spell over so many Americans when they hear the word "Conservative?" They almost go into a rapture and loose all contact with reality. As though someone confessing to be Conservative automatically has a mantle of righteousness, the aura of divine sanction, and the intelligence to solve all complicated problems with simplistic 30 second sound-bytes.

And why is it that when the word "Liberal" is mentioned, so many Americans start to salivate like Pavlov’s dogs? They have no idea what the word means. They do not realize that whatever benefits they receive in this economy have been the result of liberal political insights. Yet they turn against the ideas seeking to level the playing field in which the Conservatives have sold government and made it a subsidiary of "Corpgreed, USA."

The spin doctors not only have done a number on many Americans. Left in office they will be able to eliminate everything Constitutional government stands for.

In conclusion another accomplishment of Conservatives is the use of whatever means it takes to erase, destroy, and obliterate records they don’t want anyone to see. President Nixon taught that lesson well. Now the President just declares that information that should be public property is classified and kept from prying eyes. Then, maybe two or more years later a Commission is appointed to investigate the matter. Dah, in two years records can be changed in every which way.

Would it come as a total surprise that eventually the President’s service record would reveal that he was given the Congressional Medal of Honor? Of course, the award had to be kept secret because while under the pretext of serving in Alabama, he was really performing a highly important security mission for the nation. Since he faced continuous danger in this top secret venture, all records had to be kept secret.

[John Brand is a Purple Heart, Combat Infantry veteran of World War II. He received his Juris Doctor degree at Northwestern University and a Master of Theology and a Doctor of Ministry at Southern Methodist University. He served as a Methodist minister for 19 years, was Vice President, Birkman & Associates, Industrial Psychologists, and concluded his career as Director, Organizational and Human Resources, Warren-King Enterprises, an independent oil and gas company. He is the author of "Shaking the Foundations" and "Rebuilding the Foundations".]

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