Where Conspiracy and Reality Collide

by Eric Harrington

con·serv·a·tive

 Adjective

 holding to traditional attitudes and values and cautious about change or innovation, typically in relation to politics or religion.

Noun

1. a person who is averse to change and holds to traditional values and attitudes, typically in relation to politics.

I am here to officially announce that “Conservatism”  is dead. It’s demise is not really a new thing, it’s been gone a long, long  time, hijacked by an ideology that has virtually NOTHING to do with “caution, hesitation, or resistance to change”

The basic premise of the original, old-school Conservative could maybe be best expressed in the folksy cliché “If it aint broke, don’t fix it.”

But the modern Conservative ideology is literally the antithesis of resisting change.   It has evolved from the idea of keeping things as they are, unless they don’t work, to a deeply radical notion that the very nature of government is corrupt and must be shrunk literally starved, “until it can be drown in the bathtub”

This idea is connected to a naive and utterly out of touch with history notion that in earlier eras — most romantically that of the 50’s — one man (yes I said MAN) could work a normal working class job and afford a family of 4, a car and own a house completely on his wages.  But this romantic time was in reality the antithesis of small government. In fact all the gains of the middle class from World War 2 until the 70’s when Republicans began to deregulate and recklessly cut taxes, were won by extensive social programs, and MUCH higher taxes on the rich. Most notably during Eisenhower, the top tax bracket was 90%, and life was good for the vast majority of Americans.

The really ironic aspect to modern “Conservatism” , is their ideal of small government, of low/no regulation, and low taxes has simply NEVER really been done, at least here. It is a theory, pure and simple, based on the economic work of Milton Friedman, from the University of Chicago dating back to the 1940’s.

His students (and subsequent disciples), then went out across the globe, with the funding and political backing of the rich American Republican power base and spread the religion of free market to numerous third world economies, and forced austerity to disastrous consequences.

WITHOUT FAIL, their free market policies have NEVER created economic parity, economic success, or fairness. They only result in collapse and vast economic disparity between the working class and the rich oligarchs. And it HAS been tested in numerous countries from Ecuador to Russia.

And after each successive failure, the Free Market disciples blame “government corruption” as the reason for the failure(s). But it is either naive or disingenuous; because what has become painfully clear is that a lack of regulation inherently CREATES Corruption. Corporations, countries, armies, NONE will regulate themselves. It is absurd on it’s face. The powerful will end up controlling / owning everything, and ONLY Government Regulation can stop them.

So the very concept Conservatives claim to be the thing they want to CONSERVE has never been successfully implemented. You can’t conserve something that NEVER EXISTED. It is a theory, an experiment really, that they have been forcing down the throat of the American body politic AND more importantly the gullible, clannish Fox news working class audience.

So let me REPEAT. There is NOTHING Conservative about the ideology of the modern “Conservative” or the Republican Party. They are RADICALS promoting a unproven, or rather, a widely DISPROVED ECONOMIC THEORY with a result of increasing economic disparity and stagnant wage growth for over 40 years.

So when you see one of these Republicans who are fleeing the current party of crazies suggesting that they are old school “Conservatives” and not responsible for this mess, call it what it is. BULLSHIT. Republicans have not nor ever BEEN CONSERVATIVE. They are free market radicals and have been for over 60 YEARS. And all the problems we face today are a direct result of their radical, reckless quest for power.

This is FACT, Conservatism is a FICTION…

~ by Eric Harrington on February 6, 2018.

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