Clyde N Wilson is an old-right conservative. The sort for whom Capitalism is regarded as a reckless destroyer of tradition and community. He recently posted a column of things which he regarded as “forlorn hopes”. The following is one of his:
Ron Paul’s Farewell Address:
I also urge my colleagues to end unconstitutional wars overseas. Stop the drone strikes. Stop the covert activities and the meddling in the internal affairs of other nations. Strive to observe good faith and justice towards all nations, as George Washington admonished. We are only making more enemies, wasting lives and bankrupting ourselves with the neoconservative interventionist mindset that endorses preemptive war that now dominates both parties.
The Dissenting Democrat rarely agrees with Ron Paul on domestic policy but on foreign policy this man deserves a listen.
Posted in Foreign Policy, Military Affairs
Tagged Conservatives, Foreign Policy, Ron Paul
Once upon a time there was a radical president who tried to remake American society through government action. In his first term he created a vast network of federal grants to state and local governments for social programs that cost billions. He set up an imposing agency to regulate air and water emissions, and another to regulate workers’ health and safety. Had Congress not stood in his way he would have gone much further. He tried to establish a guaranteed minimum income for all working families and, to top it off, proposed a national health plan that would have provided government insurance for low-income families, required employers to cover all their workers and set standards for private insurance. Thankfully for the country, his second term was cut short and his collectivist dreams were never realized.
His name was Richard Nixon.
The above-cite comes from a review of the book I Am the Change: Barack Obama and the Crisis of Liberalism by Charles Kesler. As we’ve said before, Obama is not a Liberal just a sane moderate Conservative in an age in which to be a “severe” Conservative means being nutty, and Liberal is synonymous with bomb-throwing subversives.
George Monbiot, The Guardian
Self-deprecating, too liberal for their own good, today’s progressives stand back and watch, hands over their mouths, as the social vivisectionists of the right slice up a living society to see if its component parts can survive in isolation. Tied up in knots of reticence and self-doubt, they will not shout stop. Doing so requires an act of interruption, of presumption, for which they no longer possess a vocabulary.
Perhaps it is in the same spirit of liberal constipation that, with the exception of Charlie Brooker, we have been too polite to mention the Canadian study published last month in the journal Psychological Science, which revealed that people with conservative beliefs are likely to be of low intelligence. Paradoxically it was the Daily Mail that brought it to the attention of British readers last week. It feels crude, illiberal to point out that the other side is, on average, more stupid than our own. But this, the study suggests, is not unfounded generalisation but empirical fact.
It is by no means the first such paper. There is plenty of research showing that low general intelligence in childhood predicts greater prejudice towards people of different ethnicity or sexuality in adulthood. Open-mindedness, flexibility, trust in other people: all these require certain cognitive abilities. Understanding and accepting others – particularly “different” others – requires an enhanced capacity for abstract thinking.
But, drawing on a sample size of several thousand, correcting for both education and socioeconomic status, the new study looks embarrassingly robust. Importantly, it shows that prejudice tends not to arise directly from low intelligence but from the conservative ideologies to which people of low intelligence are drawn. Conservative ideology is the “critical pathway” from low intelligence to racism. Those with low cognitive abilities are attracted to “rightwing ideologies that promote coherence and order” and “emphasise the maintenance of the status quo”. Even for someone not yet renowned for liberal reticence, this feels hard to write.
This is not to suggest that all conservatives are stupid. There are some very clever people in government, advising politicians, running thinktanks and writing for newspapers, who have acquired power and influence by promoting rightwing ideologies.
But what we now see among their parties – however intelligent their guiding spirits may be – is the abandonment of any pretence of high-minded conservatism. On both sides of the Atlantic, conservative strategists have discovered that there is no pool so shallow that several million people won’t drown in it. Whether they are promoting the idea that Obama was not born in the U.S., climate change is an eco-fascist-communist-anarchist conspiracy, or that the deficit results from the greed of the poor, they now appeal to the basest, stupidest impulses, and find that it does them no harm in the polls.
Don’t take my word for it. Listen to what two former Republican ideologues, David Frumand Mike Lofgren, have been saying. Frum warns that “conservatives have built a whole alternative knowledge system, with its own facts, its own history, its own laws of economics”. The result is a “shift to ever more extreme, ever more fantasy-based ideology” which has “ominous real-world consequences for American society”.
Lofgren complains that ” the crackpot outliers of two decades ago have become the vital centre today”. The Republican party, with its “prevailing anti-intellectualism and hostility to science” is appealing to what he calls the “low-information voter”, or the “misinformation voter”. While most office holders probably don’t believe the “reactionary and paranoid claptrap” they peddle, “they cynically feed the worst instincts of their fearful and angry low-information political base”.
The madness hasn’t gone as far in the UK, but the effects of the Conservative appeal to stupidity are making themselves felt. This week the Guardian reported that recipients of disability benefits, scapegoated by the government as scroungers, blamed for the deficit, now find themselves subject to a new level of hostility and threatsfrom other people.
These are the perfect conditions for a billionaires’ feeding frenzy. Any party elected by misinformed, suggestible voters becomes a vehicle for undisclosed interests. A tax break for the 1% is dressed up as freedom for the 99%. The regulation that prevents big banks and corporations exploiting us becomes an assault on the working man and woman. Those of us who discuss man-made climate change are cast as elitists by people who happily embrace the claims of Lord Monckton, Lord Lawsonor thinktanks funded by ExxonMobil or the Koch brothers: now the authentic voices of the working class.
But when I survey this wreckage I wonder who the real idiots are. Confronted with mass discontent, the once-progressive major parties, as Thomas Frank laments in his latest book “Pity the Billionaire”, triangulate and accommodate, hesitate and prevaricate, muzzled by what he calls “terminal niceness”. They fail to produce a coherent analysis of what has gone wrong and why, or to make an uncluttered case for social justice, redistribution and regulation. The conceptual stupidities of conservatism are matched by the strategic stupidities of liberalism.
Yes, conservatism thrives on low intelligence and poor information. But the liberals in politics on both sides of the Atlantic continue to back off, yielding to the supremacy of the stupid. It’s turkeys all the way down.
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A persistent criticism made of the DISSENTING DEMOCRAT by Liberals has been that we are just too vehement in our discussions. We have been urged to be more respectful of Tea Partisans and Republicans and less strident in our advocacy of public policy. Well, we can be polite with people who are polite but when you deal with bullies, you must bust their chops to get attention.
One of the consistent themes animating the DISSENTING DEMOCRAT is the myth that Barack Obama is one of the most Liberal of U.S. Presidents. This is one of the biggest cons of the 21st Century hyped by the Media aided and abetted by the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy.
Over the past several years we’ve reported on actions and statements that have belied this oft-repeated lie. Recently, we returned to the newsletters of the Americans for Democratic Action (ADA) which like those on the conservative side maintain voting records on Senators and Representatives. A 100% rating by the ADA means that the office-holder votes along liberal/progressive lines all the time, a ZERO percent means the opposite.
In 2008, the last year Barack Obama spent in the Senate, he was rated 45%. For comparison sake, Bernie Sanders (VT), Amy Klobuchar (MN), and Russ Feingold (WI) received 100%. Republican Senators Dole and Warner scored 40% and Norm Coleman, Republican of Minnesota, got a 45% too! Obama was the MOST conservative Democrat in the Senate in 2008.
Since elected, President Obama has continued the policies of the Bush administration and has placed the weight of influence of the Government firmly in support of Wall Street and the Business Roundtable. The 2012 election will offer us a “choice” between bankster servant Barack Obama and bankster servant Mitt Romney. If Romney replaces Obama, he will continue the policies of the Obama regime as Obama has continued Bush’s.
Now that the Pixie dust is wearing off, movement Conservatives are taking another look at the Texas favorite Son of God, Rick Perry.
Conservatives don’t like government debt. When Perry took over Texas as Governor, the State was in hock by about $ 13 BILLION. During his term none of this debt was reduced but rather was increased by $ 24 BILLION.
Conservatives hate taxes more than debt but Governor Perry raised taxes 6 times during his term thus far resulting in HIGHER taxes on smokes, fireworks and businesses.
Conservatives aren’t too keen on immigration but Perry is A-OK having required Texas Universities to provide illegals with in-state tuition plans, dissed the Arizona immigrant crackdown and earned a “D” from the anti-immigration lobby.
Perry aided and abetted the forcible dispossession of Texas property owners of some 80,000 acres to build his NAFTA Highway connecting Mexico to Canada.
Rick Perry went around the State Legislature and issued an executive order mandating the forced immunization of young girls, ages 11-12, to prevent HPV among sexually-active youngsters. This not only offended Conservatives who think that abstinence is the ONLY thing kids should contemplate but ticked off Christianist parents who were astonished that their Gov would think little Janie was doing it.
Rick Perry endorsed pro-choice, pro-gay, pro-gun control Rudy Giulani for President AGAINST fellow Texan George W Bush and Rudy IS … IS … A NEW YORKER!
And worst of all, Rick Perry WAS a Democrat, in fact he was an active booster of Al Gore for the Presidency as Texas campaign chair for Gore.
So, if Perry isn’t a Conservative, what is he? A politician.
Posted in Politics, Presidency, State Politics
Tagged Conservatives, Election of 2012, Republicans, Rick Perry
The Governor of Texas, Rick Perry, is on the public record
— Holding that a State may lawfully secede from the Union;
— Proudly boasting that he as governor has authorized the killing of more convicts than any other governor;
— Describing Social Security as a fraudulent Ponzi scheme;
— Erroneously stating that Texas schools teach Creationism;
— Advocating that the Rich be taxed less while average middle-income Americans be taxed MORE (incredibly, Perry thinks that middle-Americans are paying too little in taxes);
— Accusing the world’s scientists as conspiring to pretend that Global Warming exists so as to gain research grants; and,
— That the citizens of the United States should have their right to vote for U.S. Senators taken away from then so as to allow the wiser minds in the various state legislatures to make those decisions for them.
We can fully expect this unreconstructed rebel to advocate the reintroduction of slavery, orphanages, debtors’ prisons, dueling for gentlemen, lynching, keeping women folk in the kitchen, burning witches, 16 hour work days, 6 1/2 day workweeks, flogging, drawing and quartering for homosexuals.
It was laughable when Texas would display its ignorance by electing such boobs, but it moves from farce to tragedy when the Confederate Party offers such persons for national office.
The modern conservative is engaged in one of man’s oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness
The workers at Wal-Mart have put a lot of faith in their lawsuit against the company for sex discrimination. It wouldn’t raise wages (Wal-Mart employees are so underpaid that it has more people qualified for food stamps and medicaid than any other employer) or allow for the organization of unions but it would remedy years of unlawful treatment of women.
The faith was not justified for even though the plaintiffs had the law and the evidence on their side, Wal-Mart had the support of the court’s ideologically-blinkered rightwing majority. The Court, as in their case of Bush v Gore, essentially said hell who needs the Law when we got the power.
The Court said that the list of plaintiffs was just too big (if you’re going to screw somebody make sure its a lot of people) and just because there is evidence of discrimination at thousands of stores it doesn’t mean corporate management knew of it. The hundreds of years old proposition of law: that a principal is liable for the acts of their agents went out the window.
By the Court’s logic, Hitler couldn’t be held culpable for killing 6 million because he wasn’t physically present at the murders and there was no expressed memo relaying the order. Likewise, no memo from Wal-Mart to local managers saying “diss the bitties” thus no liability.
The Law used be known for justice and logic, it no longer has such a claim.
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RANDOM FACT: 85% of all U.S. appellate judges were appointed by the Republicans. When Republican Presidents are in office, Congressional Democrats accept whomsoever they appoint. While Democratic Presidents are denied most of their appointees by an activist Republican caucus. Only the most inoffensive, milquetoasts without a principle in their souls are allowed to survive the advise and consent process.
The Dissenting Democrat 