It’s Time to Rename the Movement and Fight for Votes
Each day, the true progressives in this country, working families and individuals who believe in a small government that unleashes the individual’s power, call themselves conservatives. They call radio shows hosted by Limbaugh, Hannity, and Levin lamenting why the Republican leadership does not embrace their “conservative” thinking and now based on polls, the American people, especially the young.
These hosts use “conservative” to describe their limited government philosophy, greater individual freedom, and responsibility. They wish to empower the individual. They want the government to stop limiting the peoples’ “pursuit of happiness.” They use the word “conservative” hundreds of times a day. Sean Hannity says his show is the home of “Conservatism in Exile.” Each time the word conservative is uttered, the left rejoices. They know 30-years of using the major media networks to caricature conservatives worked with the unwitting participation of those they seek to destroy.
The cooked-up flap between Rush Limbaugh and President Obama was just one more example of this success. The left knows those who hear Limbaugh through the major media filter believe him to be a mean spirited racist who hates older people, children, and the environment.
The election, subsequent passage of the stimulus bill, and the continued support for Obama’s plans to destroy the middle class while defining them as rich should prove that the left’s strategy is working. People who will be hurt by the new President’s policy continue to fervently support him. It defies logic.
The Americans who believe in liberty are too optimistic about their ability to win in a logical argument. In this political fight, the conservative fights like the British in the war for independence and the left like the revolutionaries. The conservative stands in a line waiting for the gorillas to shoot them down, and with each defeat, they cry about the left, not fighting fair.
Each time the general public hears the word conservative, they think “unwilling to change,” “wanting to preserve the status quo,” and “cautious.” The public visualizes old white men devoid of ideas, unwilling to recognize the need for change, and unwilling to help the less fortunate. President Obama recognized he could run on a theme of “Hope and Change” because the number of citizens who were a product of the country’s educational system where propaganda and political correctness long ago replaced logic and critical thinking had reached critical mass.
The failure of the Republican Party to represent the true progressives and take advantage of their ideas is astounding. The true progressives promote solutions for schools, the economy, and health care. Other than those already in the camp, who would know that some of the most creative ideas and the true belief in the individual’s power reside with the people who define themselves as conservative? The Republican Party at all levels spent the last 30 years retreating from the cities and the East and West coasts. They believed they could continue to win elections in the South and Midwest. They retreated from our schools, colleges, and poor neighborhoods.
The conservatives, unfortunately, failed themselves selecting leaders who did not understand them or their philosophy. They were too willing to overlook their leaders’ shortcomings as long as they provide lip services to litmus test issues such as abortion.
Republican leaders show that they are embarrassed to be called conservative. Bush’s “compassionate conservative” and McCain’s “Maverick” telegraphed their weakness and embarrassment at being tied to the conservative label. How exactly do you win people to your cause when your rhetoric tells the very people you want to sway that your opponents are at least partly right?
Now that embarrassment is prevalent throughout the population. For most people, it is simply not cool to be a conservative. Joe Scarborough, who is quick to tell Republicans they must abandon some of their causes and tone down their rhetoric, appears more interested in getting along than selling an idea. When Barbara Walters of The View says, “You can see Joe Scarborough fits well in our panel,” you know his ideas pose no threat to them.
Many so-called Republican moderates join James Carvel in pointing out the nation’s demographic shift. They agree with his conclusion that this dooms the Republican Party if the fight for the rule of law on immigration and controlling government programs.
Carvel knows what the true progressives looking for leaders also know; the Republican Party is incapable or unwilling to pursue the poor and young’s vote. Instead of fighting this by going into the pockets of greatest resistance and selling their truly progressive ideas, the Republican leadership decided to adopt the left‘s solutions half-heartedly – buy votes with programs.
This sends the message that the left has the answer and allowed Democrats to tell these groups, “they don’t care about you.” Republicans should have been fighting the left’s overt and soft racism that has doomed the poor’s children for generations, but instead, they coward.
Instead, Republicans should be spending time in these Democrat strongholds pointing out every instance of the left’s racism. It will be difficult but not impossible. The left makes its racism obvious, and it is in their core belief system. A leader who believes only in evolution must, by definition, believe some are superior to others. It is the basis of Darwin’s theory. These leaders do not understand faith or the belief in something more powerful than themselves, and this empowers them and obligates them to seek power over those they deem inferior. This belief in inferiority is telegraphed as the left tells groups of people they are victims, and the only help they will ever receive is from the all-knowing, all feeling government run by the left’s elites.
In today’s world, the true progressive supports reforming the schools by breaking the stranglehold of the unions through the use of vouchers and empowering the individual. How does the left succeed in rejecting vouchers for the poorest of our country whose children are locked in the worst schools while at the same time sending their children to private schools? They succeed because of Republican cowardice and incompetence.
When the left argues against vouchers, they say it will deplete the public schools of the most motivated and talented students in the inner-city schools. At the same time, many of these parents making this argument are wealthy and already have their children in private schools. Unlike President Carter, who sent his child to public school while in Washington, Obama has chosen a private school for his daughters. He then proceeded to end a successful voucher program for poor children in the District of Columbia. Yes, everyone will say we understand his daughters have to be secure. His daughters will have 24-hour Secret Service protection while the poor minority child going to a dangerous public school in the District of Columbia has no protection.
The truth is the left’s marriage to organized labor at any expense means schools will never be reformed. It is a world where seniority replaces logic and need. When these systems fail, who do the so-called progressives blame, the customer? The children cannot learn because of who they are, the children cannot learn because of where they come from, the children cannot learn because of their parents, and finally, the children cannot learn because we don’t have enough money. The fact is the unions have converted the nobility of Civil Service to the disgrace of Civil Self-Service. They are the pinnacle of selfishness and greed.
The true progressive knows it is detrimental to the public servant to solve a problem. If they solved a problem, there would be no new employees, no ladder to climb, and a shrinking budget. Continuous failure brings more employees and more money.
The true progressive supports reforming social security by providing our youngest workers the ability to retain their own money and invest in themselves. The left argues against t such private accounts and argues for higher taxes and smaller benefits in order to preserve the current all-government program.
Now they are even planning to take the last bit of private control from the worker by ruining the 401K program. They will entice workers in this bad market into a government system. Once they get the billions of dollars into the Social Security system, they will not deliver what is promised just as Social Security has not. In fact, the true progressive would realize now is actually the best time to have workers move to a private system, and many would retire very wealthy if they buy into the market at these low levels. While our Congress holds hearings on how Bernard Madoff conducted what they call the largest Ponzi scheme in history, somebody should point out; he is an armature compared to the federal government’s Social Security program. Each year Congress takes billions from young workers and pays that out to already retired people and promises that they will be able to collect those billions back at some future date. The problem is there will not be enough workers to pay the billions that have been promised.
The true progressive argues for the development of energy resources within the nation. Those proclaimed to be progressives by the media are against drilling, refining, and nuclear power based on their fear that it will damage the environment. Fear-based decision making is a key element of truly non-political conservative thinking. This is just one more example of where the so-called progressives act in the dictionary definition of conservative.
The true progressives believe in life knowing the individual is bestowed rights at the time of conception and not at some point decided by man. This is truly progressive. Only incompetence by Republicans has allowed people who argue for the right to kill to succeed in this debate. How difficult would it be to tie the deadline for having an abortion to the earliest point that a baby can live outside of the womb? Medical science continues to make that time shorter and shorter.
The so-called progressive, with the help of the conservatives, moved this debate into the realm of religion where it does not belong. Obama, when asked at what point does he believe a human is entitled to basic rights, he answered it was above his “pay grade.” This answer was obfuscation as the philosophy of the so-called progressive is rights are granted and not inherent. This is their pro-choice argument. This is a regressive philosophy where a group can decide whether a life is worthy of rights. It is within this philosophy President Obama will implement national health care, and treatment will only be approved after a cost-benefit analysis by government workers.
These workers will be union protected, unfeeling, and likely incapable of understanding the regulations they are charged with implementing.
Cost savings will be sought at the expense of compassion. Will American’s with disabilities be happy when cost-benefit analysis studies are done on whether they are treated? Take, for example, numerous countries already study when efforts should be made to discover if a pregnant woman is carrying a baby with Down syndrome. The assumption of the researchers is that young families not wanting to be bothered by the difficulties of having a Down syndrome child will likely choose abortion over birth if they learn of the condition early. They are looking to find at what point testing mother’s early offsets the costs of a baby born with the genetic condition. That is neither progressive nor compassionate. A progressive society would be working to bring these children into the world and provide them with a wonderful life and make them as successful as possible.
Today’s progressive argues that since these children would not live a “normal” life and raising them is more difficult, aborting them is the right thing to do. In a government-run healthcare system, the argument will be made aborting them saves money. The rights of the parents trump the rights of the unborn child. In the future, the rights of society to save money will trump the parents and the child’s right to live. In this future system, it won’t be long that treatment will be withheld from the elderly, severely injured or anyone society determines is less than perfect. The argument will be the same. “Who would want to live that way?”
Those who call themselves progressives today argue for an open border one with no limits and uncontrolled immigration. The true progressive realizes that allowing an entire population to work off the books lowers wages for the neediest citizens in the country and allows those illegal immigrants to be exploited by employers. With no control over immigration, the true progressive know that the ability for the poor to climb the financial and social ladder will be undercut, creating a permanent underclass competing for jobs with a never-ending stream of undocumented.
It is this permanent underclass that the Democrat Party elites are striving to build. They will promise this group meager benefits, and the reward for them will be permanent power.
Until conservatives challenge everyone who claims to be a progressive and every media member who defines the left as progressive and stop calling themselves conservatives, Americans will continue to see their freedom eroded.