July 2010 Meeting President's Remarks

Conservatism is Confused

This month's topic is conservative incoherence.

People are complex and everyone is unique. However, when it comes to political categories, we can often characterize people by the company they keep. We, in the Democratic Party, tend to be more liberal, seeking positive change. Sometimes the change we seek is a return to a proven but an unwisely abandoned way. I am personally and politically liberal, but some of my positions are justly conservative. Some in the opposition party claim their positions are conservative, but often that turns out not to be the case.

William F. Buckley said that a conservative is someone who "stands athwart the path of progress yelling 'stop!'" The general idea is to keep us from going off in a wrong direction. Isn't that being a bit like the "nanny state" that conservatives so despise?

Corporatism is not Conservative

Corporatism is not conservative, so why do so many so-called "conservatives" embrace corporatism?

Whatever happened to old fashioned Republicans like Abraham Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt? Teddy was known as the "Trust Buster," and his Republican successor William Taft busted twice as many trusts.

Anti-Choice is not Conservative

Carly Fiorina (who is running for Senate in California against Barbara Boxer) and Sarah Palin are both anti-choice. It kind of makes one wonder how Fiorina thinks she has any kind of chance with California women voters.

Conservatives claim to be in favor of the civil liberties guaranteed by the Constitution's Bill of Rights. Abraham Lincoln, the first Republican President, was against slavery, a very civil libertarian position. However, when it comes to the issue of the right of women to choose in reproductive issues, the so-called conservatives come down solidly on the side of a police state. Who can figure that out? They are very confused.

Perpetual War is not Conservative

Until the Vietnam fiasco, America prosecuted its wars deliberately and quickly. We got in, won, and got out. Being in long term wars for the sake of corporate profits is not conservative, but something rather new. One would think we should have learned our lesson from Vietnam, but apparently not.

Perpetual war weakens our economy and our military preparedness, degrading our national security. Liberals and conservatives alike should understand the importance of strong national security. For conservatives to have this continual war reflex is crazy.

Destroying Social Security is not Conservative

The so-called "deficit hawks" are using the Bush tax cut deficit as an excuse to privatize or otherwise destroy social security. Social security is one of this nation's most successful programs and is not in any credible danger of failure. "Fixing" success when it's not broken is hardly conservative.

"American Exceptionalism" is not Conservative

G. W. Bush's disgraced Attorney General Alberto Gonzales once referred to the Geneva Convention as a "quaint document," implying that the United States should be an exception to international standards of behavior. The radical and deluded notion that the USA is somehow an exception among nations or that there is some kind of divine special plan that makes the USA first among nations is not only demonstrably wrong, but downright dangerous. After all, it was similar national self-conceptions that led to the downfalls of both Japan and Germany in the second world war. That kind of thinking is neither rational nor conservative. George Washington, in his farewell address to the nation, warned us about foreign entanglements, such as we are now experiencing in Iraq and Afghanistan. True conservatives will avoid war except when it is proven to be unavoidable.

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