Conservative Myths - What Every American Should Know About Republican Politics & Politicians

The Top 10 Conservative Myths

Conservative Success is based on two things: You forgetting their sorry history, and swallowing down these whoppers!


by Rusticus

1.Conservative Myth No. 1 CONSERVATIVES ARE THE REAL AMERICAN PATRIOTS!
    Conservative Reality No. 1 This concept would be laughable, if it wasn't so tragically perverse. Far from being patriots, conservatives are too often reckless and dangerous citizens, consistently veering very close to being actual traitors, and they've actually stampeded across that line several times in American history.

    At the dawn of the United States of America, there were patriots and there were royalists. The conservatives were the royalists. The liberals were the patriots. Nothing at all has changed in 240-something years. Just like the original patriots, liberals are still trying to smash down corporate power and the hegemony of wealth and entrenched power, while conservatives are still "royalists," lacking a king or queen, but ever eager to find a wealthy strongman to bow down to. Their latest fetish is the boyking Donald J. Trump.

    Yet conservatives will tell you, with a straight face, that they are, and always have been, the true keepers of American values and the real American patriots. Listen to no less than Ronald Reagan: "If we were back in the days of the Revolution, so-called conservatives today would be the Liberals and the liberals would be the Tories."

    Here's another nugget from Russell Kirk, one of the most influential conservative writers of the 20th Century: "I am a conservative. Quite possibly I am on the losing side; often I think so. Yet, out of a curious perversity I had rather lose with Socrates, let us say, than win with Lenin."

    Wishing it were true does not make it so. These two simple bald fabrications by two of the real titans of modern conservatism stand truth on its head. Apparently neither Reagan nor Kirk had picked up a dictionary or thesaurus or accurely deciphered all of human history. Today's liberals have zero similarities with yesteryear's Tories, while modern conservatives match them spot and stripe. Socrates was condemned to death by Burke's conserve-the-status-quo compatriots, while Lenin perverted a liberal economic theory into a perfectly standard, conservative, totalitarianism, though Soviet style Communism's was arguably a step superior to many of its precursors as it at least eliminated the god-worship.

    St. Reagan tells us that the Tories were liberals, and the patriots conservative? Um... no. Only by twisting your brain into mush is it possible to believe such a patently absurd claim. The American Revolution patriots were attempting to liberate not conserve. They were quintessentiallly liberal in whacking away at the conservative Dominator Hieararchy, while the American conservatives, the Tories, were quintessentially conservative, conserving that very tradition, along with remaining loyal to the old institutions of king and country and religion. This is a fact firmly underscored by the British conservative party, still to this day trying to conserve not liberate, and still proudly calling themselves "Tories." It is an intersting observation that American conservatives have long gone to such lengths to obfuscate, deflect and shun that term, "Tories," knowing how toxic it is to Americans who know a modicum of history. For moral clarity, in all fairness and in deference to truth, we should resolve to restore it to those who so fittingly deserve it, as American conservatives are still attempting to subvert the true, liberal American experiment just as their ideological ancestors were in 1776. Hello there, American Tories!

    Let's go further back in history to examine Kirk's claim: Socrates was conservative and Vladimir Lenin the liberal. Now conflating liberalism with totalitarian-style communism has long been a favorite distortion of conservatives. It's not at all true, and Kirk's attempt is likewise ridiculously false. In ancient Athens we see another clear example of liberals liberating and conservatives conserving. Socrates was a raving liberal, attempting to liberate the minds of his students and any passers-by from their conformist, staid and ignorant, illogical, unethical perspectives on the world. Conservatives couldn't stand of that, of course, and accused him of "corrupting our youth" and "blaspheming our gods." Yep, guilty as charged, it is liberals - not conservatives - who are always doing these very things. Yet, Kirk would have us believe that the Athenian court, staunchly defending entrenched political and religious tenets, and willing to shut down by penalty of death free speech and ideas which threated their hegemony (a tactic they would employ again and again in history) were the liberals! He takes us for utter fools. As he does, as well, with Lenin. Unlike with Socrates, here he has at least a small peg to stand on. Lenin was indeed a revolutionary agent of change, in the sense of one flavor of the Dominator Hierarchy overthrowing another - those conservatives do so love their violent coups, and are never against "change" so long as it serves their purposes of domination and subjugation. Lenin, and communism in generally are, falsely, referred to as "leftist" due to the association with an ostensibly liberal, "godless," socio-political theory. Yet Lenin proved to be truly just another hardcore conservative, interested in conserving what conservatives are most interested in conserving: the Dominator Hierarchy. Lenin and his comrades would quickly dispel any semblance of virtuous, idealistic communalism, and immediately installed a strict hierarchical and viciously authoritarian system that would lead to the enslavement, and deaths, of millions of people. This does not remotely qualify as "liberation," which liberalism enshrines and demands. But it easily qualifies as conservative; the Soviet Union, Red China, Cuba, all are just variations of conservation of traditional authoritarian oppression and subjugation. The utter corruption of an originally liberal theory, and dumping God from the equation, does not undo all else that is thoroughly conservative about these totalitarian regimes. A simple, immutable law of human culture is that if it is totalitarian, it is always conservative!

    Now that we debunked a couple of conservative heavyweights, let's delve deeper. How about that American Revolution? Conservatives were against it! Yes, they were the "Party of No" back then, too. Remember that the definition of a conservative is one who wishes to "conserve," promote, preserve and/or restore traditional "values," hierarchies and institutions. True to form, in 1776 they wanted no part of breaking away from English tradition and their much-beloved British monarchy. They liked being the king's subjects. These conservatives were called "Tories", the name still used for the Conservative Party in England. Another name for them back then was "the King's Men." The British King's Men in America... ah, so telling of their true traitorous nature. So conservatives started off on the wrong side of American history, and that's where they've been ever since.

    After the war, many disgusted conservatives fled America, heading back to Britain, or to Canada or the Caribbean. Good riddance to them. Unfortunately, many southern conservatives skedaddled to Florida, which was then still loyal to the crown, and we would inherit these traitors back in short time. In 2000 some of these Floridian conservative vipers would derail democracy to steal an American presidential election.

    For years after the Revolution had been won, American conservatives predicted the new republic's demise. Steeped in their key belief that the common rabble could not govern itself for long without anarchy ensuing, they resisted thinking of themselves as "Americans" at all, and patiently awaited their liberation from such liberality by either Armageddon or the return and revenge of their beloved British overlords.

    The conservative loyalists' shaky hopes for liberation from the Brits were finally dashed during the War of 1812, when, sure enough, the English arrived again on American shores but had no intention of taking back their former colonies. No, this time they went burning and pillaging (including the White House) while inviting slaves to run away and inciting Indians to attack any and all white Americans. This, as you can imagine, did not sit well with the conservatives, who, perhaps for the first time, considered themselves American. Well, better late than never.

    With Patriots like Conservatives, Who Needs Terrorists? But it was a tenuous loyalty for many conservatives. They still didn't really like the idea of a United States. They preferred the states to be un-united. The Southern states (i.e. slave states) could be counted on to regularly threaten to secede if they didn't get their way. One such hissy fit threw America into war with Mexico, as the slave states decided that stealing a big chunk of that country's territory would help them expand slavery westward, and thus increase their political clout in Washington.

    It was just a matter of time when the conservative traitorous streak returned in its full audacious decadence in 1861 when conservatives in the South said to hell with the United States, and huffed off to form their own more perfect union where "states rights" rule and a decent rich white person was really free... to own black people! Don't ever let a conservative tell you the Civil War was not about slavery. This is yet another dastardly Conservative Myth, a distortion or denial of the truth, so often a conservative abdication of virtue to "conserve" their hierarchy. The Civil War was about nothing but slavery; every other complaint the South had about "Northern Agression," circled back to its beloved (and enriching to the Southern elite) institution of slavery. Over seven hundred and twenty thousand Americans died as a result of conservative ideology run amok during the Civil War, including many poor clods from the South sent to their deaths by chicken hawk slave-owners who had no intention of sullying their silk breeches in the muck and blood. Hey, some things never change, eh Vietnam, Gulf War and Iraq and Afghanistan vets?

    You would think the stench of that shameful episode might have prompted some serious and humbling introspection regarding their mindset, but you would be wrong: down South, conservatives still proudly fly their Confederate flag, preferred, in fact, over Old Glory. There's an influential group called the "Neo-Confederate League of the South" that calls for a neo-secession of the South from the U.S. And now, with the tacit approval of Trump as president, white supremacists are again coming out from under their rocks and debating as to which patches of the country they could rip out of the national cloth if they can't take over all of the liberal bastions. Some patriots!

    Out in Texas, meanwhile, conservatives consider themselves Texans first, Americans second (if at all). Recently Texas conservatives, including Governor Rick Perry and libertarian fave Ron Paul, have rekindled the periodic Texan whine about seceding from the Union. Meanwhile, up in Alaska, there is the conservative Alaskan Independence Party, which promotes breaking away from the United States. This is the organization that Todd Palin (yes, Sarah's "First Dude") belonged to for years and years. Then we have the conservatives in Wyoming, home of dark lord Dick Cheney, who also daydream about secession, complete with their own aircraft carrier that can tool around in Lake Yellowstone and perhaps send sorties out over the increasingly blue state of Colorado.

    This long-running conservative "Who Needs America?" mindset came flooding up from fake patriotism's sewer when Obama was reelected in 2012. Conservatives were convinced that Obama's first election was a total fluke and that the world would be put right the second time around. Fox News and all the conservative radio shock jocks promised them good news in the 2012 campaign. But they lost again... to "that black boy," underscoring how badly they had lost control of "their country," and strongly suggesteing more extreme measures would be required to "take it back." As their shock and dismay turned to rage, over one million conservative "Americans" from all 50 states sent their "petitions" in to secede from the union! Ah, the sublime hypocrisy of it all... the "true" and "brave" defenders of democracy whining, blubbering, threatening, throwing a temper tantrum and cutting and running when they are defeated by... democracy! Throughout the old Confederacy, including Texas, and out in Alaska and Wyoming, and with all the petition filers, it's all more immature angst and macho posing and bluster than considered thought, but it certainly stands as proof positive of just how shallow "love of country" for conservatives really is.

    But don't take our word for it, take 2016 Republican vice-presidential nominee Mike Pence's. "I'm a Christian, a conservative, and a Republican... in that order," he proclaimed upon being selected by Donald Trump as a running mate. It's apparently one of his favorite sayings. Just to make sure everyone clearly understands, he said it again on national television during the Republican Convention. You may note something is left out of that grand statement: AMERICAN!

    Religion is one thing (though being a "Christian" is in no way, shape or form a guarantee of being an actual good person), but political ideology and party before country? Really? You betcha! And so it goes with conservatives and their gauzy-thin patriotism.

    All Americans should consider, as well, how conservatives have long tried so hard to actually thwart democracy. They were the original proponents of only allowing white men with property to vote and having senators hand-picked by state office-holders. Conserving the aristocracy you know; that's the way the Tories still have the British House of Lords rigged.

    As more Americans began gaining the right to vote, plus the right to vote for most government positions, including senators, conservatives scrambled to find other ways to thwart democracy. They have variously thrown up poll taxes, means testing, intimidation, inconvenient ID requirements, providing the poor and working class with fewer and/or malfunctioning voting machines, tampering with machine-counted votes, and setting up onerous and punitive restrictions for those registering voters, just to name a few of the malicious tactics to lower voter turnout they have tried... and are still trying. For decades, these democracy-deniers had to operate stealthily, but recently the conservative-leaning Supreme Court weakened the Voting Rights Act and now the red states are back - right out in the open - trying to suppress the vote.

    A few modern conservatives have even called for repeal of the 17th Amendment, the one which gave the people the power to vote for their senators. Leading conservatives such as Antonin Scalia, Rick Perry, Ron Paul, Zell Miller and others have actually proposed taking this right away from We the People and handing it back to the aristocracy. Those conservatives... loyal to the dominator hierarchy, not American ideals!

    The conservatives gave us one of the great villains of American history in the 1950s with the rise of despicable Senator Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin. This zealot ran roughshod over honesty, morality and the Constitution in a crusade that became a witch-hunt for Communists, spies and homosexuals hiding here, there and everywhere in America... including, so he insisted, inside the government. He ruined careers, inflamed fear and distrust of government, and McCarthy's crusade even directly led to the suicide of a sitting senator. The conservatives tolerated, even approved of much of McCarthy's un-American and un-Constitutional inquisition... until he turned his ire on them. When he impugned President Dwight Eisenhower, the hero of World War II, and the U.S. Army, even conservatives said enough is enough, and McCarthy's wrath was finally seen for what it was, factless conservative persecution. Indeed, the term "McCarthyism" surives from that dark period of American history brought about single-handedly by a conservative. The word means demagoguery, baseless defamation and mudslinging. Only a conservative could find a way to get a word coined for them that means something so vile. [And historic aside: McCarthy's legal counsel was a scheming scoundrel and schiester named Roy Cohn, who would go on from his infamous role in McCarthyism to impart the fine art of legal bullying and mud slinging to a young, rich, aspiring New York apprentice named Donald J. Trump].

    Starting in earnest in the 1980s, in their quixotic quest to wrench power from the liberals since the last time they nearly ruined the country (the 1920s), conservatives deliberately promoted hatred toward any government that isn't run by them. When they aren't in control, conservatives do everything they can to delegitimize the political and moral authority of those who are. This is a whisker away from high treason. Confucius was just one of the wise men who taught that it would be better for a nation to lose its security and its food than the trust of the people for the government. Many a once-powerful nation throughout history disintegrated once its people lost faith in their government (see The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire for useful information). Once the public loses love for and confidence in their government, civil strife is sure to follow (as we are experiencing), and so the Constitutional mandate of promoting the general welfare of the people is thwarted.

    This hate and distrust angle for the government (and for other Americans) has won conservatives elections (which is all they care about), but has been one of the most nefarious and potentially disastrous strategies for the country itself of any political tactic in American history. It intentionally fosters deep and passionate division within the populace. Conservatives are playing with apocalyptic fire as they fan the flames of not just disagreement but outright hatred for all things not conservative... moderate though such persons or programs may actually be. Over the past 50 years, conservatives have vomited up venomous bile toward the Kennedys, Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, Al Gore and (most particularly) Barack Obama, along with any idea they proffer (even those originally proposed by conservatives... like "RomneyCare").

    This dark, conservative vitriol is orders of magnitude more corrosive to national unity and stability than any such demagoguery from the liberal side.

    Following 9/11, the radical CorpCon George W. Bush had a 90 percent approval rating, which obviously included the bulk of so-called liberals, willing to give him a chance to lead the nation with due respect (even just shortly after his highly dubious Supreme Court route to the presidency). So, too, did Ronald Reagan, even as he ushered in the reckless era of "trickle-down" economics, enjoy widespread legitimacy (though not always agreement) in the view of liberals. Contrast this with the incessant and relentless conservative debasement of the American government throughout the Carter, Clinton and Obama administrations. They don't just disagree with politicians from the other side, they hate them! Seen from a non-partisan perspective, the degree of vitriol and hatred from the conservatives is utterly astounding, and easily discerned for the clear and present danger it really is.

    (This is why Democratic presidents rarely achieve an approval rating of much more than 50 percent. They struggle against both the automatic, inflexible hatred of the right, plus the frustration of the left that they aren't liberal enough!)

    These examples show how conservatives value clan/party ideology and dogma over American ideals and values, including the all-important value of unity. Guided by clan mentality, which easily overrides both national or religious loyalty, conservatives seek not unity but division and separation of themselves, whom they consider superior, from "the other" whom they regard as inferior and potentially threatening. This pits them against most other Americans (as well as the rest of the world). Today conservatives demonize and blame many of the country's problems on blacks, immigrants, gays, the poor, unions, teachers, firefighters, government workers, liberals, and anybody else who seems a little different. Not a fact in the solar system supports this worldview, but they believe if they spew the lie and their coded prejudicial message often and loud enough, just enough gullible voters will believe it. And they are generally correct in that assessment.

    So, innately aligned against the interests of the people, the conservative's only real means to power is to divide and conquer. They know they cannot win by standing on their positions and true aims; they must lie, deceive, frighten, divide and subjugate. The whole idea of a united States is contrary to conservative objectives. They truly want an America separated into a distinct hierarchy of haves/have-nots, oppressed and oppressors. As always, conservatives have a real problem with the concept of We the People! To paraphrase William F. Buckley, conservatives stand athwart democracy yelling, "Stop!"

    Meanwhile, conservative politicians wrap themselves in the flag and wallow in faux-patriotism, but actually do everything they can to thwart democracy and denigrate, degrade and foment distrust for American government. From Harding's cronyism and corruption, to McCarthy's witch-hunts, to Nixon's lying and paranoia, to Reagan's illegal clandestine wars in Central America, to George W. Bush's immoral warmongering, incompetence and intentional running up a titanic deficit designed to "starve the beast," to the unprecedented obstructionism of today's radical Republican congressmen and senators, conservatives aggressively work to stop American progress and shared prosperity.

    Shortly after Obama's election Republican Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell famously declared that the No. 1 priority of conservatives was not to create jobs, not strengthen the economy, not defend the nation, nor serve We the People... but to make Obama a one-term president. And sure enough, the Republicans have tried to block every move of the administration's effort to get the economy moving again. The Republicans are perfectly willing to allow America to fail in order to paint Obama in a negative light. They are willing to forestall economic recovery, or even damage the country itself, to keep Obama from succeeding at anything.

    This tactic reached a climactic nadir when Republicans led by Eric Cantor, Paul Ryan and Kevin McCarthy took the full faith and credit of the United States of America, not to mention democracy, hostage by threatening not to raise the Debt Limit and thereby defaulting on loans and debts that previous Congresses had promised. And so, Republican grandstanding and brinkmanship earned the United States its first-ever downgrade in debt rating. (And then... conservatives had the gall to blame Obama for their own backfired stunt.)

    Tea Party Treason
    Now here's a fine conservative fellow using his right of free speech
    to tread right on the line of treason, and show how little he really believes
    in democracy... or virtue and non-violence.

    Then in 2013 Republicans held America hostage again, actually shutting down the government, demanding that President Obama defund the Affordable Care Act ("Obamacare"). There is no mechanism in the Constitution for any branch of government (much less a minority party) to shut down the government to prevent full enactment of a law passed by Congress, signed by the President, and verified legal by the Supreme Court.

    Is this behavior by the conservatives in Congress just a smidge short of grand treason... or is it actually over the line? If the roles were reversed, a Republican president and his allies would likely be howling for Congressional impeachments.

    Conservatives have long countered liberal progress with claims that the sky is falling. Public education, workers rights, women's suffrage, Social Security, Medicare all were enjoined with shrieks of anguish from conservatives. Now it is Obamacare that is a "train wreck," or a "disaster." They never have any real facts to back them up... just myths that scream at the top of their lungs.

    Again and again conservatives try to impose a rigid ideology that is based purely on mythology, totally lacking empirical evidence, an ideology that has never proven itself anything other than disastrous to the nation. Multiple times in American history so-called "laissez-faire" economic policies - i.e. let the "free market" run - have torpedoed the economy. Conservatives simply can't or won't learn the lessons, and they continue to place America at risk with their recklessness and wrongness.

    Today they are doubling-down on their discredited ideologies, bellowing for more deregulation of capitalism, just a few years after that very thing - a wildly speculating banking and investment industry - drove the world economy off the rails (for the umpteenth time). Such CorpCons who would bankrupt the country for an extra million in their own pockets, and the SoCons who ignorantly believe and enable them, are truly the greatest danger to our nation.

    As Lincoln said, "If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher." And there can be little doubt that not communism or socialism or liberalism will be that author. The true and present danger to America is conservatism!

    How about this, from a conservative political operative high in the ranks of the Virginia Republican Party, proclaiming that if the "socialist" Obama is re-elected in 2012, "We shall not have any coarse (sic) but armed revolution should we fail with the power of the vote in November ~ This Republic cannot survive for 4 more years underneath this political socialist ideologue."

    Right. Obama the moderate Republican, on whose watch the economy has mostly recovered and the stock market has doubled, is a socialist ideologue! This Virginia Republican is either an utter moron, or a deliberate liar (OK, perhaps both). His frothing-at-the-mouth ilk - and all who would agree with them - are those attempting to thwart the American democratic system, and skating well out on to the thin ice of treason.

    And that brings us to Donald Trump. In 2016 around 60 million conservatives across America were willing to risk 240 years of American democracy by handing over the Presidency of the United States to a rank (and we do mean rank), totally inexperienced, immature, ignorant, clumsy, uncouth, arrogant, narcissistic, conceited, crass, boastful, petulant, easy-to-provoke, mean, hateful, bigoted, serial liar and proven corporate thief and thug! Yes, that's the guy authoritarian-loving conservatives picked as their Republican nominee: a spoiled brat who would be quickly relegated to "time-out" in any kindergarten setting. They think they are supporting a "Strong Man," when the actual facts (which, of course, conservatives are keen to discount at every turn) prove the exact opposite (again, a perpetual conservative position... when you turn away from truth). Donald Trump is a tiny little man, an imp of intellect, moral fiber and deeper spirituality. He is a billionaire bully with no shame, an emotional wreck, and potential wrecking ball. Anyone with a scintilla of common sense can see through this charlatan. But not the conservatives. By selecting a potential utter disaster as their annoited champion, once again they put the nation in peril. Trump clearly has some mysterious affinity for and entanglement with Russia. Is he deeply indebted to Russia, or does he stand to make a Russian oligarch-size fortune through working with the Putin? No one knows. His tax return might provide some clues, but he refuses to release them... and conservatives think that's just perfectly fine. These are not patriots; at worst they may have elected the most traitorous president in U.S. history. In their fervor for Trump these people have revealed themselves as impoverished in true virtue, easily casting to the wind their self-proclaimed values (once again) to "conserve" the hierarchy that serves their interest and pushes back against those dastardly liberals who would take the Declaration of Independence and Constitution quite seriously. In the 2016 election, it was Hillary Clinton who was the focus of not just their ideological opposition but utter hatred (the very same hatred they espouse for every more liberal presidential candidate who has ever run for office). These people do not believe in American values. These people do not believe in Christian or higher religious values. These people are not Americans in any deeper sense of the term, other than they live in its geographic confines and are (most likely) white-skinned, and on that basis alone believe it belongs to them. This is the country that they are going to "take back." The country peopled by So we see how conservatives grandly prove once again how they are FOREVER WRONG. And once again it will be more liberal-minded people who must serve as the bulwark between these destroyers of America and the more perfect Union that real Americans are slowly but surely continuing to attempt to create.

    The Washington Post summarizes the dire threat conservatives have put before the nation in nominating Donald J. Trump as the Republican presidential candidate in 2016.

    A real American patriot loves America's land, people and ideals. Conservatives have no real respect for any of these. They don't give a damn about protecting the American environment or native species; they despise most other Americans; and they really don't believe in America's founding principles, including democracy itself. They bitch and groan about paying their fair share of taxes, and hate the government. Real patriots? Not a chance. Conservatives are always just a hissy-fit away from being abject traitors!

    Benghazi conservative hypocrisy
    Presently, conservatives, wildly inconsistent in their ethics, want to impeach Obama
    over the lamentable deaths at the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya. Once again,
    we see conservative hatred, prejudice, and greed for power moving their party
    in directions counter to democracy itself.

    "Us patriots have had enough!"
    Meanwhile, in the spirit of listening the other side, let's hear from a real-life, modern conservative "American Patriot" and see how close many of them are to veering again toward treason. Here's Drew Walker spewing hate and racism and untruths, and believing wholeheartedly in conservative mythology. Let's just say this about this rant: not a word he says is based in truth or justice or respect or love. This man is emblematic of the wholly non-virtuous strain of conservatism that is far removed from the Founding Fathers' ideals as you can get. "Us patriots have had enough!" Enough of what, Drew? Democracy is what. Obama was duly elected TWICE, and your ilk can't stand it. And you so wish that you could somehow, some way change the situation outside of the voting booth.
    Sorry, Drew, that actually makes you the opposite of a patriot.
    Warning: Explicit Language.



2. AMERICA IS A CONSERVATIVE COUNTRY.
    America was born in its day as a radically liberal experiment, and has only become progressively more liberal over the past 230 years.

    Let's always keep our fundamental definitions of the political ideologies of liberal and conservative in mind:

    • Liberal: favorable to progress or reform, open minded, tolerant, creative, promoting ever greater liberty, equality, justice and pursuit of happiness; generally opposing aristocratic and unequal hierarchies.

    • Conservative: fearful of change, inflexible and unimaginative, disposed to conserve traditional hierarchies, institutions and traditions.

    All Americans are actually liberal at heart. They all believe in Freedom for All. That, folks, is a WILDLY liberal idea. For thousands of years of human history there was no such consideration; the fact that some people were inherently more free and others less so, even as abject slaves, was taken as just the way the world worked, had always worked and always would. Conservatives of just a few hundred years ago certainly did NOT believe in this idea, and were willing to go to war to fight it. One of those wars was the American Revolution. The conservatives lost that one, and most of the others they have fought to preserve Freedom for A Few. Yet vestiges of this old conservative impulse to deny freedom and equality to some people continues to live in the minds of true conservatives. Thankfully, these kinds of folks are becoming fewer and fewer in America and around the world.

    It is true that many Americans consider themselves religious, as well as prudent and frugal, and not prone to risky undertakings or big change, and thus may think of themselves as "conservative." So this is how the big myth that "America is a conservative country" seems to have the ring of truth, and remains a popular belief, urged on by conservatives themselves. But the characteristics listed above are not exclusively conservative traits by any stretch. One can be extremely liberal and still be religious, prudent, frugal, as well as wary of big change. The majority of Americans are a lot more liberal than they think. And as a whole, keeping those standard definitions in mind, America is way more liberal than conservative.

    Anyone who wishes to expand liberty, equality, justice, pursuit of happiness, and love for one another is a liberal. If you really believe in the equality and capabilities of the common person; if you believe we are all in this together, as in "We the People," and "Love One Another", then you're a liberal. It's as simple as that.

    On the other hand, if you distrust others who don't look like you or believe like you, and you'd really like to impose your will on them or exploit them; if you long to return to some mythical America that existed sometime in the past; if you actually like the old unequal traditions, hierarchies and institutions and wish to conserve them... if you really think white people are superior to brown or black, males are superior to females, and rich are superior to poor, this is the way it has always been and always should be... hello, you are a conservative!

    Conservative social ideology has taken a whipping through American history. Why? Because the vast majority of Americans are simply not very conservative. Oh sure, there are large patches of the nation that are conservative, and pockets of conservatism around every corner. And sometimes they even win elections and manage to turn back progress a notch or two. But sooner or later their ideas end up getting flattened as the wheels of liberal progress get moving again.

    To become a conservative country, America would have to dismantle its liberal ideals. Instead, it is these very ideals that propel America to become more and more liberal. What did the founding fathers think would happen when they voted for a Declaration of Independence that included the phrase "All men are created equal..." and possess the "inalienable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness?" What did they have in mind when they established a Constitution for "We the People and set up a government to promote the general welfare?

    How far America has come in its great liberal experiment! Ideals that the founding fathers themselves could only give to America as idea-seeds, successive generations of Americans have brought to fruition. The Louisiana Purchase, emancipation of the slaves, votes for all adult citizens, public education, women's liberation, Native American rights, workers' rights and safety, food and drug safety, banking and commerce regulation, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, national parks, environmental protection, civil rights, the Interstate Highway System, the space program, medical discoveries, disease control, weather science and so much more... constant pursuit of a "more perfect union." These are the great liberal achievements of this great country... and each and every one of them was opposed by conservatives of their day!

    Conversely, from witch-burning to the Tories to the stealing of Indian lands and breaking of treaties to secession and Civil War to Jim Crow lynchings to serial banking panics and busts to industrial abuses to Prohibition to the Depression to McCarthyism and Communist fear-mongering to today's crony corporatacracy and out-of-control militarism, conservative ideas have generally evoked the very worst episodes of our national story.

    As you sit there reading this, conservatives are busily trying their hardest to deny liberty, equality, justice and pursuit of happiness for union members, gay, lesbian, transgender, Muslim and Hispanic citizens. They have no intention of actually loving any of these "others," as Jesus commanded them to. Instead, incoherently, they direct their "love" toward the hierarchy of the richest of the rich, and the most powerful of the powerful... the very ones who Jesus said have as much chance of getting into heaven as a camel through the eye of a needle! They have even distorted patriotism to where it now requires loyalty to corporations... yes, the very same corporations that have stolen us blind, polluted our planet, shipped jobs overseas and relocated their headquarters to a post office box in Bermuda to avoid paying American taxes have conservatives swooning in slavish devotion!

    Conservatism! Always a messy sight.

    But most Americans do not share this craziness. They don't swear blind allegiance to the rich or corporations or even a "free market;" they want a fair market. They want good public schools, safe working conditions, safe food, safe drugs, a clean environment. They support Social Security and Medicare and the idea of a social contract whereby we all help each other. They support the government supporting the arts and sciences in addition to the armed forces. The believe in the U.S. government helping out in natural disasters at home and abroad. They support the idea of the United Nations. They think for themselves and do not fear change or want to perpetuate hoary old hierarchies that lock in white, male, rich advantage over all others. They elected Woodrow Wilson (twice), Franklin Roosevelt (thrice), Harry Truman, John F. Kennedy (a Catholic), Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton (twice), and even stunned and inspired the world by voting in unprecedented numbers to elect a black man named Barack Hussein Obama president (TWICE)! In other words, they are substantially more liberal than they are conservative.

    Indeed, after Obama's reelection, Fox News main anchor, Brit Hume, finally admitted, "This tells us something about moderates: A lot of people who call themselves that are actually liberal, more liberal than many of us thought."

    And this is rather the rub for conservatives. They know they are losing the "cultural war," and that's why they are so angry and afraid. What most of them don't realize is that this "cultural war" is not new. They've been losing this "war" for hundreds of years. More than any other group of people, social conservatives are oblivious to their own ideological history. Instead they imbibe a rosy mythology of some ideal America that existed a short time back, and needs to be reclaimed by bringing back "traditional values." If they could only impose these values on everybody else, America could be great again. They can't go into too much detail about when this ideal time-frame was, or what such a renewed America would actually look like, just that it wouldn't be so liberal.

    It's the fervent conservative fantasy: return to an era that never really existed. So even in their dreams the conservatives themselves pay homage to how liberal America really is, and will remain as long as the founding ideals light the way.



3. AMERICA IS A CHRISTIAN COUNTRY.
    America has never been a "Christian nation," and never will be. If it ever becomes officially a Christian nation, that's the end of America!

    There is no exclusively or specifically Biblical or Christian legal construct or ideology encoded in America's foundational ideals, Declaration of Independence, original Constitution, subsequent Amendments, laws or system of government. If anything whatsoever, the American system is a radical and emphatic rejection of the "divine right of kings" and religion-government entanglement which comprise the core of Abrahamic (Jewish-Christian-Islamic) governmental tradition.

    Diametrically opposite of this tradition (thankfully), the United States of America is based upon English common law, as established principally by the Magna Carta (1215), Constitution of 1657, Habeas Corpus Act (1679), and Bill of Rights (1689). These in turn draw not from Biblical governmental philosophy, but from pagan Greek democracy and Roman law. Other important inspirations for the novel U.S. system were obtained from Enlightenment and utilitarian philosophers, principal among these the English philosopher John Locke, as well as French champions of the common man's rights and qualities: Voltaire, Rousseau and Montesquieu. Also, there is some evidence that Benjamin Franklin brought ideas from the Iroquois Confederacy's form of democracy into the original discussions of American government, particularly the aspect of each state/tribe being an autonomous unit yet bound to a larger federal whole: a league of united tribes/states.

    If the founding fathers had intended to create a Christian country they most certainly would have included the five letters J-E-S-U-S or the six letters C-H-R-I-S-T or the nine letters C-H-R-I-S-T-I-A-N somewhere - anywhere - in the nation's bylaws. But nope. Did they just forget Jesus? Well yes, they did. They intentionally forgot Jesus, and left out Christianity for some very, very, very good reasons.

    America is NOT a Christian Nation First off, more than a few of the founding fathers were simply not Christian. Right along with the vanguard of Western civilization as it embraced the philosophies of the Enlightenment, the leading lights of the American Revolution, including Thomas Paine, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson, were reevaluating religious doctrine and dogma and "tradition," and finding much of it quite lacking and contrary to their rational sense of justice, morality and spirituality. Recent scientific discoveries, including Newton's laws, had served to undercut Biblical explanations of how the world works. Jefferson went so far as to cut out all the parts of the Bible he disagreed with, ending up with a very compact little treatise.

    Many of the most sophisticated members of the American founding fathers claimed to be "deists," not Christians or even "theists." These men still believed in God, but not in a god who would break His own laws of nature to interfere in human affairs.

    As well, the American patriots were keenly aware of the disastrous intersection of religion and government as it had played out in their ancestral England and throughout Europe, as well in the American colonies where at a time in history a person could be put to death for being of a particular religious stripe and caught in the wrong colony. They had absolutely no intention of adhering to the "traditional value" of brutal and bloody Christian vs. Christian warfare that had ravaged Britain, Ireland and the continent for centuries, much less sanction something as barbaric as a new government-sponsored religious crusade against some purported "infidel" (like, say, the Cherokee).

    So the founding fathers extremely wisely chose to create a wholly secular government and society, where the religions would be allowed to freely, and hopefully peaceably, coexist. In the new America you had the right to be an Anglican or a Quaker or a Catholic or a Muslim or a Hindu or a deist or an atheist. This concept is called "freedom of religion." Or it could likewise be defined as "freedom from religion," if you so choose. Either way you want to parse it, it is a fundamental aspect of the concept of freedom itself.

    Is America a Christian Nation?

    The very idea that America used to be more religious is also false. Church membership as a percent of the population peaked in the 1980s, and we are still a more religious nation than were those early Americans. During the Revolutionary War period only about a fifth of the population were church members. That had grown to about a third by the time of the Civil War. Today about two-thirds of the population are church members, but most churches are losing members. The "non-churched" (or "nones") - that is people who do not go to church - is the fastest growing segment of the population, now standing at about 20 percent of the population. If we keep going at this rate soon we'll be right back to the level of religiosity of those beloved first patriots!

    So a Christian America was never created, nor remotely intended, by the founding fathers... and the idea that the original Americans were more religious is another myth.

    But let's do as Christians suggest - take a "leap of faith" - disregard all evidence (or lack thereof), suspend all common sense and fantasize that America really was intended to be a "Christian nation." Now we must ask ourselves, what would that even mean?

    What is a "Christian nation?" What are the sterling models of such a government? Solomon's Israel? (Oops, that wasn't even Christian). Constantine's Byzantium? Michelangelo's Italy? Joan's France? Henry's England? Luther's Germany? Hamlet's Denmark? Whose version of Christianity is it based upon? There are hundreds of different sects of Christianity, some viciously opposed to the others. Would it be based upon the love, forgiveness and passivity of the actual Jesus, or the ascetic socialism of the first Christian community of Peter and James in Jerusalem, or the "Christian soldier" mentality that came along much later? Would it be a Catholic, Orthodox, Anglican, Protestant, Evangelical Christian, Holy Roller, Amish or Mormon nation? Who would decide? To be democratic, rather than voting for President every four years would we vote on which Christian sect the majority preferred? Might we lurch from liberal tenets of "love thy neighbor as thyself," "feed the poor," "give away your clothes," and "turn the other cheek," to conservative xenophobic zealotry, "an eye for an eye," and "all heathens shall roast in hell for eternity?" Would we be a nation that turns the other cheek, or would we become Crusaders for Christ (with drones and nukes)? It's all rather fuzzy, rather like Christians' descriptions of heaven... not nearly as well defined as their sweeping details of hell.

    As long as we are dreaming of the Christian America, we might also pause to ponder when America has ever acted according to the major precepts of Jesus the Christ... EVER!

    Oh, of course, America (half inspired by a semblance of conscience and the other half by the desire to feel good about itself and influence world opinion) sends a pittance of a percentage of its titanic wealth in aid and comfort to this or that country suffering from poverty, disease or disaster. Conservatives would like to cut out even that morsel of true Christian charity that America extends to the world community. But by far the primary impulse from America's "real Christians" (i.e. white, Anglo-Saxons) has been toward utterly selfish, exploitative and destructive tendencies... for longer than America has even existed.

    James Madison on America's Christianity
    Founding Father James Madison pretty much sums up how un-Christian are most "Christians."

    The first Christian Europeans to arrive had barely dried out from their sea voyages before they were stealing from and murdering the original inhabitants of the new "promised land," which, come to think of it, is pretty similar to the way the invading Israelites treated the rightful owners of the land of Canaan. So this behavior may be described as "biblical," but it certainly was not Christian.

    These Anglo, so-called Christians, quickly expanded their exploitation, subjugation, superstition and cruelty to burning "witches" (also all the rage among European Christians of the day) and establishing a lively trade with Africa for that all-important commodity for their burgeoning capitalism: slaves.

    Surely we cannot expect to locate a "Christian nation" within the moral morass of perennial abuse of the Indians, or the institutional debacle that was slavery, or the rampant sinfulness of the segregation era right up through the 1960s.

    As well, when they weren't tormenting natives, burning witches or whipping slaves, these enterprising "people of the Book" turned their voracious righteousness toward chopping down the primal forests and blasting away at any animal that moved, all aspects of the "nature" they so wished to have dominion over, as urged by the Bible. Again we can see glimmers of Old Testament ruthlessness in these hardy ancestors, but hardly a glint of the agape love of Jesus or St. Francis.

    Yet even before the Civil War, the Rise of Corporations had begun, where the very folk that Jesus routed from the temple and warned had as much chance to get into heaven as a camel through the eye of a needle had taken control of the ship of state and were steering like wild pirates toward their own idea of a promised realm: the Land of Greed and Gluttony. This America, ascendant still today, with its celebrated filthy rich celebrities, athletes and corporate titans (not to mention the bulging waistlines of an obesity epidemic) also seems quite bereft of any tangible Christ connection.

    Thomas Jefferson on whether America is founded on Christian or Biblical principles

    The corporatization of America also ushered the clarion call for all of its citizens to put away their thoughts of philosophy, virtue, love and piety and turn back to "childish things." Consume! Consume! Consume! Jesus said, "If you have two coats, give one away." The corporations demand, "If you only have two coats, you are seriously out of style. Get yourself straight to the mall!" Nothing is too childish, nothing too silly, nothing too meaningless to be obsessed over until you purchase it, at which point you will turn to craving something else entirely. And, of course, while you are selfishly wanting and buying and obsessing, your mind is as far away from Jesus and God as it is possible to be. Such is the real religion of America!

    So too is America exporting some of the most un-virtuous and potentially dangerous products in world history, including high-sugar, high-calorie, non-nutritious fast foods and beverages, cigarettes, drugs made of rat poison, predatory business, banking and industrial practices, as well as pesticides, herbicides and other toxic chemicals so dangerous they are not allowed for use in America, but perfectly fine to export to other unfortunate countries. It is all too clear that America's rampant consumerism and immoral capitalism - the dominant systems of today's America - lead not toward but dramatically away from Christian precepts. And yet we never hear a peep of protest from would-be Christians against this type of corporate missionary zeal as their "Christian Nation" traffics in Satan's stock and trade.

    Meanwhile, the mighty American "military-industrial complex" arose that has never seen a lethal weapon it didn't want to put into action, and then, typically, sell to the world. In most textbooks American history actually comes across as a continuous fabric of prelude-to-war, war, and then build-up to the next prelude-to. In its entire 230-something year history, America the Christian Nation has been unable to avoid armed conflict for more than a decade or so. In just the past 75 years America has carpet-bombed Europe, dropped not one, but two, atomic bombs on an exhausted and helpless Japan, rained bombs, napalm and Agent Orange all over the tiny nations of Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos that never threatened us, invaded the tiny countries of Grenada and Panama that never threatened us, and belched "shock and awe" at Iraq and Afghanistan, killing hundreds of thousands of innocent people, though these nations had never threatened us, either. "Destroying the village to save it," and "peace" through warmongering, conquering and exploiting is the precise opposite of what Jesus had urged.

    Speaking of martial violence, it's certainly true that a large chunk of the "Christian Nation" has no use for Jesus' message of peace, passivity and "turning the other cheek." Quite the opposite, as this batch of fake Christians packs pistols in their pockets and rifles in their truck cabs, while hording more firearms and lockers full of ammo in anticipation not of Judgment Day but of the day when they can, finally, shoot at will at other humans who are coming to take their guns away. They certainly belong to some religion, as yet unnamed and unrecognized, but one that more or less refutes every word out of Jesus' mouth.

    Thomas Jefferson takes a knife to the New Testament
    Very unlike a devout Christian, Thomas Jefferson took a knife to the Holy Book:
    "I have performed this operation for my own use, by cutting verse by verse out of the printed book, and arranging the matter which is evidently his (Jesus), and which is as easily distinguishable as diamonds in a dunghill."
    (The missing pieces in the photo above are the excerpts he retained!)

    Today we can clearly see by the real passions of our nation - consumption, mindless entertainment, gun obsession and perpetual militarism - that America is far from being a Christian Nation. How many millions of "Christians" spread out across America on Sunday morning are fixated not to the words and ways of Jesus, but can't wait to get out of church and back to their favorite reality-TV shows, starring strange people with names like Snookie and P-Fuddy... or the Big Game! Indeed, speaking of sports, if you want final proof of the mind and heart of America, consider the simple fact that not a single major sports team (pro or college) calls itself the "Christians." We have Lions and Tigers and Bears and Indians and Patriots and Pirates and Rockets and all manner of other weird monikers (the Hoyas!), but not even one team of Christians. Even that vaunted Catholic university, Notre Dame, calls itself not the Christians but the "Irish," famous for being the hard-fighting, hard-drinking, very last pagans of Europe to adopt Christianity. Even down South, the Bible Belt, it's football that dominates communal attention and consciousness, not the Lord. Yes it's true that on Christmas Day some 60 million pious Christians go to church. That sounds impressive, until we remember that 100 million Americans watch the Super Bowl each year! How pathetic all of these facts for those who believe they live in a Christian nation.

    Actually, in its entire history about the only time America has wanders into actual Jesus ideological territory is when it has attempted to care for and expand the rights and dignity of those disenfranchised and abused: slaves, the poor, women, children, people of color, Native Americans, immigrants, gay and lesbian and transgender, the sick, the elderly, the physically handicapped, the mentally impaired: in other words those outsiders that Jesus called the "meek" who would "inherit the world." America has a name for them: "We the People."

    But wait! That can't be right! These are the very people that the "Christians" who scream loudest about America being a "Christian nation" can't stand! These "Christians" never seem to take issue with the continuing exploitation, subjugation and prejudice directed at the people who made up Jesus' original flock. Nor do they ever condemn the greed, the gluttony, the rampant consumerism, the vacuousness, the jingoism, the machismo, the gun crazies, the militarism, the violence, the injustice, the stupidity, the immorality of so much of Americanism. They seem to have Jesus' essential message precisely back asswards! The truth is, of course: these people are not Christians in the sense of behavior that Jesus emphasized*. They are actually more like the Pharisees, and the rabble that at Jesus' trial would have been screaming "Release Barabbas!" and "Long Live Caesar!"

    (* - Check out this article about how modern American Christians would reject the first Christians)

    Conservatives Taking the Bible Literally

    And while we are on the subject of faux-Christians, it seems that the screech of America being a "Christian nation" comes shrillest from the American South. Wouldn't you know it? The "Bible Belt." What a myth that is! The "Devil's Den" the whole place should be called. The least educated states in the country, and the original home of the Confederate traitors, think they know better than anyone else what America is all about! What a laugh! Hey South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi... have you ever even read your own state histories? It's a toss-up as to which of you ignorant, bigoted, blood-drenched, drowning-in-sin states is actually the least American and the least Christian, in the truest sense of these ideals!

    So now we come to yet another sublime irony. If there were ever to emerge an actual "Christian America" following the words and ways of Jesus, these fake "Christians" and brain-dead "Americans" would go berserk trying to destroy it. Because such a "Christian Nation" would be the most liberal country in world history! Such an entity would represent a clear and present danger to the narrow, shallow and selfish mindset of conservatism. Conservatives no more understand the most basic precepts of Jesus Christ than they have the foggiest notion of what America truly stands for. If a truly "Christ-like" America appeared tomorrow, all conservatives would want to kill it. Just like a certain conservative rabble did to a certain radical liberal 2000 years ago.

    Click Here for a thoughtful evangelical Christian's take on modern conservatism and the Grand Old Party. And Click Here for an article about how Jesus would be received at a Tea Party rally.




4. CONSERVATIVES ARE BETTER MANAGERS OF THE ECONOMY!
    There are two essential problems with conservative economic management: they are greedy and they are liars. Putting them in charge of the economy is like hiring a bunch of pirates. If you're one of the pirates, you might get a share of the booty. If you're not one of the pirates, you are likely to get shanked.

    Now remember that when we speak of conservatives managing the economy, we're not talking about social conservatives, or SoCons. They have little or no control over the economy. Here we are talking about professional conservatives... corporate conservatives. CorpCons represent the wealth and power on the conservative side. SoCons just go along for the ride. That ride is usually extremely bumpy... and almost always ends up negatively affecting SoCons themselves, but they just stupidly ask for more.

    The most important thing to consider about CorpCons managing the economy is to understand their economic Holy Trinity. Here it is:

    THE CONSERVATIVE ECONOMIC HOLY TRINITY:
    1) Low (or no) taxes for the rich and their corporations.
    2) Low (or no) regulations on the rich or their corporations.
    3) The legal system skewed in favor of the rich and their corporations.

    Conversely, the liberal economic philosophy and goal can be summed up in a single phrase.

    THE LIBERAL ECONOMIC HOLY GRAIL:
    1) Economic and legal justice for all and supportive of the commons (or as the Constitution words it, the "General Welfare.").

    The Conservative Economic Holy Trinity boils down to this: they want all governmental policy (certainly including judicial rulings) to aid and abet the richest of the rich and the biggest of corporations. Though much of American history they have achieved this goal, using Big Government as benefactor and protector. In this scheme there will be a few huge winners and many huge losers; the welfare of the commons (including the environment) is hardly considered, indeed the commons is something to be exploited and profitted from, not protected. The conservative ideology behind this economic plan is that it is natural that wealth and power should be concentrated in the hands of an elite few, and the Earth and its resources (including people) are commodities and assets which this select few should be free to manipulate. This is the economic policy which we are currently following, and have for most of American history... with the notable exception (to some degree, at least) of the years following the New Deal. Consevative economic theory is "top-down" in orientation.

    By contrast, the Liberal Economic Holy Grail is aimed at aiding and abetting the average Joe, the middle and lower classes, so as to sustain and nurture the overall health and well-being of the nation. In this scheme, there will be many more winners, though perhaps not as "huge" as in the conservative plan, but few, if any, "huge" losers. There will still be "rich" and "poor" but the disparity between these polarities will not be as extreme as in the conservative model, and there will be a large and flourishing Middle Class between the two narrowed extremes. The non-traditional, All-American ideology here is that all men are created equal and should be protected by the government from domination by wealth or power; that both the government and the commons actually belong to The People, and should be dedicated to service of The People, the health and well-being (the welfare) of We the People automatically and far overriding the aspirations of any single individual, small group, corporation or class. Liberal economic theory is "bottom-up" in orientation. This liberal philosophy remains a "grail" that has never been fully actualized (due to powerful conservative thwarting). However, even a partial liberal lean to overall government economic policy has yielded the most astounding gains for the Middle Class in all of human history.

    That's the conservative/liberal economic difference in a nutshell.

    The conservative economic ideology of coddling the rich and giant corporations is sometimes called "supply-side" economics, AKA "trickle-down" or "Voodoo economics." The mantra for this approach is the same old conservative Holy Trinity: low, low taxes (at least for the rich and corporations) and deregulation of commerce and markets, and legal system manipulation to protect wealth and power.

    Conservative economics has NEVER worked for the nation as a whole. Historically, supply-side economics ALWAYS provokes cycles of boom and bust, and tends to suck capital and assets from the lower and middle socio-economic ranks and move itinto the control of the upper echelons. It gave us the Gilded Age and "panics" of the late 1800s. It brought us the "Roaring Twenties" and then the Great Depression. More recently it spawned the Reagan-Bush-Clinton-Bush serial bubbles, the Savings & Loan bailout, the 2008 Bush Bank bailout, and then, of course, the Great Recession that we are still mired in. "Trickle-down" works great for the rich and corporations... not well at all for the middle class and poor. The famous "trickle-down" flood that is supposed to create jobs and "float all boats," never quite seems to come in... even as the rich get richer and corporations reap record profits.

    Tax cuts create jobs idea proven false.

    Republican Tax Cut Myth

    The liberal economic ideology oriented toward supporting the middle class is called "demand-side" economics, or "Keynesian" after economist John Maynard Keynes. This philosophy, put into place during the Depression by Franklin D. Roosevelt, created relative calm in the American economy for nearly five decades, and the largest expansion of a middle class in world history. Those are facts that conservatives do NOT want anyone to process and remember.

    Remember that time not so long ago when a middle class family could afford a decent house, a new car every few years, braces and piano lessons for the kids, adequate insurance and health care, and also count on a decent pension? And that was when, in many families, only the father worked and mom stayed at home with the kids!!!! That was the day when LIBERAL ECONOMIC POLICY was in effect, when the Holy Grail was being pursued as our national economic policy. That was a very different America. Those were the times of "demand-side" economics... when many companies cared enough to take care of their employees and pay them well enough so they could afford to buy products. That was also back when unions were strong, taxes on the rich and corporations were far higher than today, and regulation, most importantly on financial institutions, was often far tighter than today.

    Conservatives consistently insist that lowering taxes on the wealthy and corporations will directly stimulate job creation and general prosperity. There's just one huge problem. It is a lie. It doesn't work. Never has. Never will. You might think that a claim this important, affecting almost everyone in a society, would be more closely linked to historical facts and common sense. But, of course, conservatives are not too keen on actual "facts" anyway, preferring their own "alternative facts," and apparently liberals are too nice to more aggressively counter with the truth. But finally, in 2011, a team of researchers actually sought to scientifically study the evidence. Economist Thomas Pikett and his team examined tax cuts over the period from 1975 through 2008 in 18 western countries to see if any of them had actually worked as advertised in spurring the economy, creating jobs and helping the general population. What did they find? They found zero correlation. ZERO! And yet, turn on the news and see if conservatives aren't today still selling this very same snakeoil. And millions of gullible conservative (and middle of the road) voters will buy it.

    No less than the world's most successful entrepreneur and capitalist, Bill Gates, fully recognizes this fact. "The highest economic growth decade was the 1960s. Income tax rates were 90 percent. I mean, the idea that there's some direct connection that all these innovators are on strike because tax rates are at 35 percent on corporations, that's just such nonsense."

    The moral of this story is that the corporate conservative emphasis on the rich and large corporations is completely backwards. It doesn't matter how much "supply" there is; if there is little or no "demand" for that product, it ain't going to sell, and the economy is going to falter. It takes demand to fuel an economy. It takes a strong middle class to make a strong economy. When the middle class does well, all classes do well.


    Columbia University economist and Nobel Prize winner Joseph Stiglitz
    explains (again) why trickle-down doesn't work.

    Think about it. If you are in the lower class but the middle class is doing quite well, then there's more opportunity for you to wiggle your way up and into the middle class, and for middle class workers to wiggle higher into the sub-upper class, and maybe from there even into the upper class. In such a scenario, like we had after World War II, the economy is humming, so there's an abundance of what's called "social mobility." But when the upper class is inordinately favored, as in conservative economic theory, this allows for vast sums of money to flow upward. Where does it come from? You guessed it: from lower down. Now the middle class and lower class get hammered, and even the lower upper class can be skinned. This is exactly what has been happening since the 1980s and the wholesale switchover to conservative economics in America (and much of the rest of the world). What we have seen is precisely what liberal economics predicts: a flurry of wealth rising to the top 20 percent (and increasing in potency all the way to the tippy-top one percent), while income for the rest of the population stagnates or even declines. then there is only downward movement: middle class people getting laid off, and poor people absolutely stuck. When middle class people, including new college graduates can't find a job, there is no chance for the poor. No matter what, rich people prosper. They even prosper when all other classes are faltering. But when it's only the rich getting richer and corporations piling up profits, neither willing to share, that's a recipe for disaster.... thus the booms, the panics, the crashes, the Great Depression, the bail-outs and our recent Great Recession.


    Check out these recent strategies - by states side-by-side in the upper Midwest. The Republican governor in Wisconsin has coddled the rich and huge corporations while hammering unions, working people and education in his state. The results are nothing short of disastrous. At this rate, Wisconsin is on track to become the Mississippi of the heartland. Meanwhile, the Democratic governor of Minnesota has taken a diametrically opposite tact: raising taxes on the rich and corporations - as they were back when the Middle Class was truly prospering and expanding - and lo and behold, his state is soaring both economically and in quality of life. Now these are the facts, folks, and the facts don't lie. Two experiments: two results. Now you choose which you want for your state.

    MEANWHILE IN KANSAS....

    Kansas anti-Middle Class tax policy
    Republican Governor Sam Brownback is slamming true conservative tax dogma into effect, slashing taxes in escalating fashion for the richest... while actually RAISING taxes on the Middle and Lower classes. Now according to conservative philosophy this should have Kansas BOOMING!!!! Yipppie-Ki-Yayyy!!! Ride 'em cowboy!!!!! Watch that state economy soar!!! Uh, nope! As predicted by liberal economic philosophy, the exact opposite has happened. Brownback's fundamentalism is dooming Kansas. It has gone from a $200 million surplus before Brownback's folly to a bleeding red deficit of $328 million. Brownback called his plan "a real live experiment." How true, how true! Sort of like testing known-caustic substances on the skin and in the eyes of animals... but in Kansas the testing subjects are the middle and lower class citizens, along with the viability of the state economy itself. Great experiment, Sam! Of course, just like with animal testing, this very same experiment has been run many times before throughout history: the results are ALWAYS the same. Just as the animal is always harmed by the "test" (repeated over and over again because that's how the "testers" earn their money), so too the middle and lower classes take a consistent whacking when conservatives repeat over and over their incoherent economic "plans" (because, you guessed it, the "testers" are making shitloads of money by doing so). Now Sam, as a stupid true believer in conservative dogma, has been taken back by this setback. The state is in a panic. What to do? Change course and quickly revise the tax scheme? If the Top 20 percent of earners in Kansas only paid the same as the middle 20 percent (yeah, go ahead and keep slapping the lower 60 percent with that higher tax rate), the state's financial woes would be over! But of course that's not an option.. for the CorpCons in control. That would acknowledge the utter failure of Sam's experiment, and, far worse, expose the essential falsity of basic conservative economic principle. No, if we need more money, Sam wants to take it from highways, schools, Medicaid. He'll cut pensions for (conservative punching bags) teachers and government workers. He'll increase cigarette and liquor taxes (clearly acknowledging it's not really "taxes" that conservatives oppose... just taxes on the rich). And he'll steal from the state's reserve fund, meant for true emergencies... not self-inflicted, "experimental" wounds. In 2014 the good citizens of Kansas re-elected this utter fool (or clever thief, it's always difficult to tell with CorpCons)... so overall they deserve exactly what they get, but we still feel pity and compassion for the good folks who know that conservative dogma is nothing but a mess of myths distilled into tasty Kool-Aid. Hey Kansans, here's an experiment you might try: impeaching Sam Brownback and maybe throwing him and his ilk into jail for public endangerment!

    Republican, conservative tax plan creates disaster

    Now, good reader... ponder for yourself. You're an intelligent person. Which ideology do you think works best overall? Which ideology works best for you and your family. If you are in the 1 Percent, then obviously, "trickle-down" works much better for you. So if you are the selfish type, you SHOULD vote for the CorpCons. You will certainly serve yourself well (but not your nation) if you vote conservative. But if you are in the vast middle class and you are voting for those who want to continue "trickle-down," continue enriching the rich, continue destroying labor unions thereby lowering wages overall for working people, you must be completely crazy! You are voting for an ideology that may likely destroy your economic future and that of your children, your grandchildren and the country!

    Republican Deficit The CorpCons know this. They are not dummies. In fact, they are some of the most intelligent people around. The problem is that they are also the greediest, and among the least virtuous. They have no problem lying to you. And so it is their best interest to propagate the trickle-down myth. "Trust us." "Look at how successful we are in business." "We are the job-creators."

    But the proof is in the pudding, folks. There can be no doubt that the Conservative Holy Trinity has entirely squelched the Liberal Holy Grail in terms of political ascendancy. Over the past 30 years both Republican and Democratic (including Clinton and Obama) politicians and policy-makers have bought hook, line and sinker into the "trickle down" ideology. And look what has happened: Profits for the rich and large corporations are predictably huge. But equally predictable: wages for workers stagnant or actually lowered, outsourcing of factories and jobs, pensions gone, corporation loyalty gone, unions destroyed, boom-and-bust cycles again, greater and greater economic disparity, a shrinking middle class, an increasingly hopeless lower class, an increasingly callous and arrogant upper class, little or no job assurance, lost benefits, both parents having to work in most families, college graduates struggling to find jobs (and often saddled with debt from onerous student loans), most new jobs at low wages, millions unemployed, more millions under-employed, savings at all-time lows, and, of course, an ever-growing deficit and national debt due in large part to the rich and corporations no longer paying their fair share to sustain the "general welfare."

    Why is corporate America cutting its own throat by denigrating workers and consumers?

    The answer is greed. American corporations are not the same animals as they were 40-60 years ago during the height of the great middle class expansion. In those days, they were concerned about reputation and longevity. No longer. They now have their eye on the quarterly report. Whatever they can do to bring that number in higher, they will do. Their reputation is the quarterly report. They have loyalty only to their own upper management and large stock holders. They have no loyalty to their employees, their customers, their small stock holders, their cities, or their nation. For an extra billion they would screw over the United States of America in a heartbeat.

    And that's essentially what they are doing. They are going for the gold now. And record profits are flowing in.... for a time. Even as they outsource their factories to the lowest-wages countries they can find, they are paying their left-over employess less and less, taking away benefits, and screwing over their consumers any way they can get away with. Why not? Almost all other corporations are doing the same. The economic system put in place by the conservatives allows and encourages such behavior. The free market, you know? Where corporations are at last free to do what they want.

    But it's a recipe for disaster, the road to ruin, for America. If we don't turn this economic policy on its head, America will be that third world country, saddled with debt, a vicious economic disparity, and no way back amidst an equally vicious world economy.

    But there's more... It turns out professional conservatives are lying about more than just "trickle-down."

    Concerning the lying liars: Professional conservatives rail against government spending when seeking your vote, but never actually get around to doing anything about it when they are in power. Time after time they promise to cut spending, but do the exact opposite. They were lying to you. To win your trust. To get elected. They never really intend to cut spending or shrink the government. They love spending and a big government. The bigger the better to manipulate things all around the world.

    Indeed, the facts prove that conservatives are the worst money managers and most profligate spenders of all. It's not even close.

    Conservatives blame liberals of being "tax and spenders." Well, conservatives are "charge and spenders," which is much, much worse. They just put everything on the nation's credit card without any clue as to how it's going to be paid for. "Tax and spend" is a caricature of liberals, another way conservatives try to distort the truth, but it does suggest at least some forethought as to how things are going to be paid for. If conservatives were managing your family's budget, you would rush to jerk the checkbook and credit cards away from them.

    Professional conservatives are perpetually promoting this mythical thing called "small government" (as if in the modern world there could ever really be such a thing). It's all a web of lies. Who were the two biggest expanders of the federal government in U.S. history? Look at this! Lo and behold, it's none other than our good Republican buddies Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush. Liars... they say one thing, and do the exact opposite.

    Now get this: Republican governor of Kansas Sam Brownback decided to conduct an experiment where any business owner didn't have to pay any taxes. Imagine that! A conservative wet dream. Alas, the experiment went bad, and now even Republicans are in mutiny mode. Here's the story:

    Here's yet another abject refutation of conservative economic ideology. Wait, it wasn't just a refuation, it was a total smack-down. Kansas didn't suddenly jump to the front of U.S. economic growth... with its conservative dream no-taxation scheme, Kansas came in dead last in economic growth! But then guess what: Kansas re-elected this jackass! Ha-ha, conservatives will never give up their bad ideas. What's wrong with Kansas? Conservatives!

    Concerning the greedy greedsters: Even worse is what conservatives spend all that money on. It's not anything that actually helps people or the country, like infrastructure or health care or education or environmental cleanup, it's simply giveaways to the rich and corporations, and crazy military escapades. We the People get NOTHING out of conservative largess.

    WHO GREW THE GOVERNMENT THE MOST?
    Conservative spending and growth

    Tax cuts for the richest of the rich and for the biggest of the big corporations, and crazy military spending are the primary causes of the astronomical deficit we now find ourselves in. Reagan went hog-wild on military spending (including the infamous failed "Star Wars" missile defense system) so as to out-spend the Soviet Union, which was dying on its own anyway. But that was just a warm-up to Bush the Dumber's squandering of up to $3 Trillion (estimated eventual cost) on misadventures in Iraq and Afghanistan, the largest heist of taxpayer dollars in world history. That included $9 Billion simply lost in Iraq by Bush appointee Paul Bremer. Oops! Lost! Sorry! He-he! (Can you imagine the squealing the conservatives would do if Obama's administration had done the same?) And those lost Billions don't even include the tens of Billions that we know where they went. Doesn't it feel great to know your hard-earned tax dollars have been going to fill the coffers of wartime predators like Halliburton, KBR and Blackwater, build foreign schools and hospitals (that often were subsequently blown up by the enemy), bribe warlords and terrorists, oh, and don't forget sometimes just lost! That's conservative economic management for you.

    But hey, a few tens of Billions, CorpCons don't care about that. That's chickenfeed to them They've squandered TRILLIONS!!!!! Let's look at the actual way the past six presidents have actually managed your tax dollars:

    U.S. DEFICIT AS OF 2012
    accumulating debt, reagan, bush, bush, clinton, obama

    Conservatives scream about deficits when the Democrats are in control of the White House and/or Congress, but are mum as sleeping mice when they are running it up themselves. The ultimate admission of this inconsistency was Dick Cheney's quip as Ronald Reagan was tripling the national debt that, "Deficits don't matter."

    There are three big giveaways that fully reveal that conservatives are not serious about the reduction of the federal debt, or even year-by-year deficit spending. First, they will never cut our bloated military budget by a nickel. Huge savings could be realized through judicious spending cuts to our military without in any way jeopardizing national security. Second, they will never turn down federal dollars coming to their district of state, no matter how flimsy or wasteful the particular project may be. And most crucial of all is their insistence that all reductions be solved only through spending cuts... NEVER income increases (i.e. taxes). Think about that. If your family was falling into debt, sure you would consider tightening the belt where that might be possible, but you would also brainstorm on how to bring more money in, right? And that second option might be the far more effective strategy as it is potentially unlimited while simply cutting spending can be extremely painful and even self-defeating. Remember taxes were MUCH higher back in the "good old days" when the American economy was really humming. The wealthy and big corporations used to pay a MUCH higher percentage in taxes... and they still did quite well. But unlike a family, professional conservatives stubbornly will NOT consider income increases as part of the solution to debt and deficit reduction. Tax-cuts are their obsession. This fact along proves they are not really that interested in solving the debt problem that they, themselves, created for the most part... because of those very tax-cuts.

    Economist Paul Krugman further explains: "The premise is that there is a powerful faction among Republican members of Congress who worry deeply about budget deficits and will oppose proposals that create lots of red ink. But there is no such faction, and never was. There were and are poseurs like Paul Ryan, who claim to be big deficit hawks. But there’s a simple way to test such people’s sincerity: when they propose sacrifices in the name of fiscal responsibility, do those sacrifices ever involve their own political priorities? And they never do. That is, when you see a politician claim that deficit concerns require that we slash Medicaid, privatize Medicare, and/or raise the retirement age — but somehow never require raising taxes on the wealthy, which in fact they propose to cut — you know that it’s just an act. Yet somehow much of the news media keeps believing, or pretending to believe, that those imaginary deficit hawks are real, which is a delusion of truly Trumpian proportions."

    Forever in Error & They Don't Care: Lying and Greed come together in the conservative economic philosophy of "trickle-down." This has been tried throughout history, going back centuries. It works like a charm for the rich. It never works for the common person, or for the nation as a whole. As a way to enrich the rich, it is genius. As a way to run a nation's economy, it is bunk. Worse than bunk; it's theft.

    Most professional conservatives know it's theft and trickery, but they like getting rich, so they stick to the propaganda about cutting spending, lowering taxes, shrinking the government, and protecting the "job creators." These people are actually doing nothing illegal (usually). They don't need to. They've rigged the system just for themselves. It may not be illegal, but it is immoral. Like the pirates they are, they don't care about that either.

    Each time an election season comes around, the conservatives get back to their old tricks. The Republican Lie Machine is now trying to pin most of the deficit on Obama. Not a word about their own heroes' malfeasance. The Republicans promise to cut government spending and usher in "small government." We've heard this same baloney time and again, the same thing from Reagan, the same thing from Poppy Bush, the same thing from Bush the Terrible, the same thing from John McCain, the same thing from Mitt Romney. Every Republican running for office will read from the old playbook. "Get government out of the way!" Don't you believe a word of it! Once in power, they won't do it, and if they ever were to attempt to do it, the crushing weight would be borne by the middle class and poor, while the ultra-rich and corporations - who actually helped cause and greatly benefitted from these deficits - would continue running to the banks with hysterical laughter.

    Job creation: Conservatives are always selling their "trickle-down" snakeoil, and crowing about how they are the real party of business and know how to create jobs, while the liberals are completely out to lunch socialists who wouldn't know a job if it bumped into them at the hippie commune. It's all baloney. Conservatives are great at producing wealth for the one percent, but they are TERRIBLE at creating jobs. Let's just put aside the verbal sparring and look at the real record, shall we?

    Slice and dice it anyway you want, since after World I the LIBERALS have kicked ass when it comes to job creation, and the CONSERVATIVES have sucked the big one. The big, bad corporate titans sure know how to feather their own nests, but it's LIBERAL economic policy that spreads the wealth and cranks up the job engines.

    Why is this? Simple. Liberal economic policy favors the little guy, the workers, consumers, small businesses and entrepreneurs. Conservative economic policy favors the rich and big corporations. You don't have to be a rocket scientist to see that way more people get a fair shake under liberal policy than conservatives. Check out the scoreboard below:

    Conservatives vs. Liberals job creation, Republicans vs. Democrats job creation

    Economic Terrorism: And let us also ponder the sheer irresponsibility, spite and hatefulness of the recent Republican-sponsored government shut-downs. Conservatives have absolutely no problem throwing millions of people out of work, cutting off Social Security payments, shuttering government services, jolting financial markets, even risking national default on the debt... as they engage in extortion to get their way. In so doing, they are thumbing their nose at democracy. Such hostage-taking is really nothing short of economic terrorism. Never once have liberals have never done this to the nation! Yet conservatives seem to be embracing such jarring disruption and perilous brinksmanship into their routine political strategy. When you don't win and election, or if a law was passed that you don't like, just thrown a temper tantrum... and threaten to blow up the country's economy. Al Qaeda couldn't dream of a better ally than conservatives in Congress.

    The conservative Song-and-Dance is all hype, all the time. As the charts above and below clearly show, Democrats are FAR better at managing the American economy than conservatives are. And these charts don't even include the conservatives' biggest debacle: a little thing called the Great Depression.

    And now a word about capitalism!
    Liberals are not against capitalism. Liberals invented capitalism! Capitalism began in earnest in the Middle Ages when a merchant class began to emerge that flaunted the "traditional value" of all commerce being strictly controlled by the church and/or state, kings and the richest of lords. The conservatives were furious about this development. Remember, liberals liberate, conservatives conserve. These early merchants were liberating themselves from the constraints of the traditional hierarchy. Thus the original "free market." Yet they were despised and persecuted by the kings and lords and popes and bishops who sought to conserve the traditional way of all commerce funneling through them. But soon enough, the merchants proved their worth by bringing goods and wealth into the country. That's when the conservatives decided they liked capitalism, and sought to take total control of it, thus actually destroying the "free market" such as it existed totally without the intervention of the highest wealth and power. Ever since then, conservatives have abused it. Just like clockwork, liberals periodically have to step in and save capitalism from the conservatives... as they did in the Progressive Era, during the Depression, through the great Middle Class expansion, and now, again, through this Great Recession.

    Stock Market under Democrats vs. Republicans
    Take a look at how the stock market has done under all those Commie liberals
    as compared to the "Free Market" conservatives!

    So if this information does not convince you, maybe a Republican can. As the conservatives under the leadership of Donald Trump now roll out yet another grandiose economic plan in which the utter myth of massive tax cuts to the rich and corporations are ballyhooed yet again as the sure-fire way to create jobs and stimulate the economy, let us heed the advice of a one-time trickle-down True Believer. One of the architects of Reaganomics, a Republican, Bruce Bartlett, domestic policy advisor to Ronald Reagan, now freely admits the folly of conservative economic ideology. In a must-read acticle in the Washington Post, he explains how the conservative dogma that tax cuts directly create jobs and stimulate the economy is nothing but a myth, how Reagan, himself, turned to Keynesian (i.e. liberal) economic policy strategems such as infrastructure spending and low interest rates to achieve the jobs growth of the 1980s (which still wasn't as good as the 1970s when liberal economic policy was stronger, how Reagan was forced to retreat from tax-cutting and had to raise taxes twice to keep the national debt from ballooning even more alarmingly, how resumed tax cuts under Bush I and Bush II utterly failed to produce the jobs and roaring economy predicted by conservatives, while actual tax increases by Democrats Bill Clinton and Barack Obama were easily absorbed by the robust economies they oversaw. The results are in the pudding. Alas for conservatives, there simply is zero evidence that their economic philosophy holds water. All it does is shift more wealth and power into the hands of an elite few.

    Finally, let's take a look at one of the leading conservative financial reporters out there spewing disinformation. That would be Rick Santelli of CNBC, who loyally parrots all of the usual CorpCon economic dogma and current talking points. Santelli has been a scathing critic of Obama, predicting (as conservatives long have) all sorts of doomsday scenarios. At last, one of his own colleages at CNBC, Steve Liesman (not exactly a raving liberal himself), had had enough. On air he blasted Santelli (and by proxy almost all conservative economic theory) by declaring:

      "It's impossible for you to have been more wrong, Rick. Your call for inflation, the destruction of the dollar, the failure of the U.S. economy to rebound. Rick, it's impossible for you to have been more wrong! Every single bit of advice you gave would have lost people money, Rick... There is no piece of advice that you've given that's worked, Rick. Not a single one... The higher interest rates never came. The inability of the U.S. to sell bonds never happened. The dollar never crashed, Rick. There isn't a single one that's worked for you."

    There you have it, folks: "It's impossible for you to be more wrong!" That, in one sentence, just about sums up conservative economic thinking.

    So let's just get this straight. Liberals are the experts in making capitalism work for the average person and an overall economy. Conservatives - as always - strive to bend capitalism to benefit mainly the richest of the rich... just as they always have!

    The Conservative vs. Liberal Economy

    In late 2017, the conservatives controlling Congress and the White House were at it again, determined to double-down for the umpteenth time on "trickle-down" theory. Despite Trump campaigning on a pledge to lower taxes on the Middle Class and raise them on rich, Republicans predictably went back - with Trump's blessing - to their chestnut: always coddle the rich and the largest corporations. Behind closed doors, in the dead of night, without hearings, without public input, with no Democrats in accord, in defiance of the Congressional Budget Office's estimate their tax plan would add at least another TRILLION dollars to the national debt, Senate Republicans rammed through what has been called "the worst tax bill in U.S. history." Before the vote, members were given one hour to read the 500-page document, which included illegible hand-scribbled edits along the page margins. Democrats asked for an extension, but Republicans refused, passing their version of the bill along party lines. Republicans were jubilant in finally achieving long held goals. Their plan creates permanent huge tax cuts for the wealthiest and corporations, while offering paltry cuts to people earning less than $100,000 per year, and even those phase out over 10 years. Some Middle Class workers won't see any cut at all, as key deductions for state and local taxes, healthcare costs, tuition and student loans, alimony and moving expenses are eliminated. The lower earners? Never fans of the lower economic strata (which includes some of the hardest working Americans), Republicans propose to give them not just coal for Christmas, but a tax hike! Somehow, according to Republicans, that seems only fair as the rich and corporations have enjoyed a stunning run of prosperity over the past three decades (even with the Great Recession, which they caused). Meanwhile, there are new tax breaks for corporate jets, for golf resorts, special low rates for Virgin Island hedge fund managers, elimination of the estate tax (which will save the Trump kids billions), and while they had their hands in the cookie jar, the Republicans couldn't resist seasoning their already toxic stew further with a dash of some of the most partisan and incendiary items on their political wish-list: opening the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling, maneuvering to proclaim fetuses legal persons, tearing down the rule that prohibits tax-free churches from promoting political candidates and causes, boosting private school support while weakening public education, and, most egregiously, eliminating the mandate for the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) which is sure to spike costs and essentially cripple the program; from this last item alone millions are predicted to lose their healthcare. As always, Republicans claim that the experts are wrong, that their tax plans will pay for itself through an economic boom that will generate even more taxes. Alas, the conservatives have never been right about that before with any of their multitudinous tax follies. Yet they fully expect the American people to drink the Kook-Aid with them once again. If the conservatives are wrong, so much the better. As the national debt soars, they will come back with a solution: severe cuts to Medicaid, Medicare and Social Security. Just you watch.

    Here's what one of the few semi-honest conservative had to say about it:

    "Today’s tax cuts have no bipartisan support. They have no intellectual grounding, no body of supporting evidence. They do not respond to the central crisis of our time. They have no vision of the common good, except that Republican donors should get more money and Democratic donors should have less."
    -- David Brooks, conservative columnist

    DON'T TRUST THE ECONOMY TO PROFESSIONAL CONSERVATIVES! THEY ARE LYING, THIEVING PIRATES!



5. CONSERVATIVES SUPPORT THE TROOPS.
    This myth is a tough one for many conservatives to get their heads around. Isn't it true that many military service personnel come from conservative commnunities and mindset? Yes, it is. We thank you for that! And we know you support the troops. It's your professional conservatives who are seriously and chronically amiss in this regard... both in terms of their own service and how they treat service personnel when they are in charge of things.

    Be careful not to be duped by these phonies... either in allowing them to gin up your anger toward some external enemy that might encourage you to enlist in the first place, and certainly not by their totally fake "support" of you once you join up. Conservatives are forever wearing little shiny flag pins on their lapels and having their photos taken with the troops, and usually unfailing in a nod to the troops in their stump speeches. Unfortunately, it's a sham. They are posers. Patriotism is an emotion professional conservatives have long exploited to camoflage their real intentions. In reality, these professional conservatives are not patriots at all. The bad and sad news is that most conservatives haven't quite caught on to this subterfuge, and the disservice, disrespect and disdain professional conservatives actually render to active duty personnel and veterans.

    Conservatives abuse the troops It can certainly be said that professional conservatives support using and abusing the troops. They support sending the troops to die for various dubious causes that only vaguely have anything to do with defending America, or in some cases, like Iraq, is just plain old bullying (an American tradition, to be sure) and trying to steal natural resources. Professional conservatives have a pathetic record of supporting active duty military personnel, as well as veterans. Since the days of Valley Forge, liberals have traditionally been far more supportive of U.S. military personnel and veterans. Particularly in the 20th and 21st Century, Democrats and liberals have been far and away more supportive and protective of active troops and veterans. The common theme is that conservatives are full of macho bluster. No cool and patient diplomacy for them. No Special Ops approach to belligerents... it's full-on "shock and awe."

    Well what would you expect? It's professional conservatives who are starry-eyed over military weapons and systems, and appropriate Billions for them (often even when the military brass itself doesn't need or want them). There is no end to how much of the taxpayers' money they are willing to spend on military toys and adventures. (And, of course, there is no end to their generosity to millionaires and billionaires). Naturally, they want to see these toys in action. That means conjuring up a conflict somewhere.

    So they are ever eager to send "assets" into harm's way. But when it comes to assisting veterans, including wounded warriors, they suddenly become tighter than a sharp snare drum.

    Liberals are the precise opposite. They are inherently leery of unchecked military spending. They take seriously Ike Eisenhower's warnings about the ever-looming danger of the "military-industrial complex" taking over our national foreign policy. Liberals place heavy emphasis on diplomacy and negotations to avoid armed conflict if at all possible. They are extremely reluctant to send our precious service men and women into harm's way. Liberals don't consider them "assets," but rather someone's sons and daughters, a reality readily dismissed by professional conservatives. For liberals armed conflict is a last option, not the first option, as so often seems the case with conservatives. When armed conflict finally seems unavoidable, liberals prefer intelligent and clear strategies, unlike the foggy notions of conservatives (examples; Iraq and Afghanistan). Rather than "shock and awe," the preferred tactics of liberals will always be surgical strikes. Do everything to keep our people safe, and to minimize trauma to the innocent local populace and culture. Clinton's approach to the Kosovo War was an example. General Wesley Clark (a Democrat) oversaw NATO's strategic bombing to help end that conflict with zero American casualties. So, too, the Obama administration's careful intelligence gathering and surgical use of Seal Team Six finally found and killed Osama bin Laden after eight years of Bush's bludgeoning and blundering in the Middle East. And when conflicts have ended, liberals move to assist returning service personnel and veterans, while professional conservatives suddenly change their mind about the value of these "assets."

    For you veterans and families of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, note that the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans Association (IAVA) ranked members of Congress in terms of their support of veterans. Ninety-two percent of the D's and F's went to Republicans.

    If you are in military , or have a son, daughter, dad or mom in the service, you should absolutely shudder when a conservative becomes Commander-in-Chief. Let's examine the contrast between how things worked out for the troops and veterans when conservatives vs. liberals were in control:

    • 1777-78 - Conservatives in Congress stiff General George Washington. While camped at Valley Forge during a bitterly cold winter, Washington pleads with the Continental Congress to provide food, clothing and equipment for his army. Conservative politicians in Congress (mainly Southern, of course), propounding "states' rights," bicker, balk, cripe and delay. Over 2,500 American soldiers died of starvation, exposure, and disease.
    • 1922 - Republican President Warren G. Harding vetoed the Veterans Bonus Bill, reneging on a promised cash benefit to World War I soldiers.
    • 1924 - Republican President Calvin Coolidge again tried to veto the Veterans Bonus Bill, but the Democratic Congress overrode the veto, providing the veterans their promised benefit.
    • 1932 - In one of the most shameful episodes in American history Republican President Herbert Hoover ordered the U.S. Army to attack a camp of World War I veterans protesting near the Capitol to receive early disbursement of their bonus. The Army (led by Generals Douglas MacArthur and George S. Patton) went into the camp with tanks and fixed bayonets! The veterans at the camp thought the oncoming tanks, horse cavalry and marching soldiers was a display in their honor, and were shocked to discover they were actually being attacked by their fellows. The attackers even used poison gas on the veterans camp. Hundreds of veterans and family members were injured. Two veterans were killed. A civilian bystander was shot in the shoulder. A veteran's ear was severed by a cavalryman's sword. Another was bayonetted in the side. More than one thousand people were gassed, including policemen, reporters, ambulance drivers and residents of the city. Two infants in the camp died from the gas. This sorry episode is part of their horrible record that conservatives hope no one will remember, and it is illustrative of how conservative political leaders cynically manipulate military related patriotism while actually disdainfully abusing the troops.
    • 1933 - Democratic President Franklin D. Roosevelt puts thousands of unemployed and desperate veterans back to work with his Civilian Conservation Corps. When the veterans again marched on Washington, rather than sending tanks and bayonets to meet them, Roosevelt sent his wife Eleanor out with a pot of coffee.
    • 1936 - The Democratic Congress overrode President Roosevelt's veto to at last give the World War I veterans their early bonus.
    • 1944 - Democratic President Roosevelt signed the G.I. Bill of Rights, the first such legislation of its kind, which provided World War II veterans with college or vocational education, unemployment compensation, and low interest, zero-down payment, home loans. The bill meant that a returning World War II veteran could get a full-ride to Harvard if he qualified academically.
    • 1952 - Democratic President Harry S. Truman signed into law the Veterans Adjustment Act offering for Korean War veterans.
    • 1959 - Republican President Dwight D. Eisenhower rejected a proposed extension of the G.I. Bill for veterans, believing that military service "should be an obligation of the citizenship, not a basis for government benefits." Liberals disagree, believing that military service is the most dangerous and precious risk that a citizen can accept for his/her country, and that such "above and beyond" commitment should be rewarded with benefits above and beyond those citizens who have not so risked their all. This is a fundamental difference between how conservatives and liberals view service personnel and veterans.
    • 1966 - Democratic President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Veterans Readjustment Benefits Act, which further improved benefits accorded to veterans.
    • 1968-1974 - In one of the most traitorous episodes in American history Republican presidential candidate Richard Nixon lied to the American people by running on a platform of ending the Vietnam War, and secretly passed word to the Communist leaders of North Vietnam to avoid signing any agreements with the United States to end the war before the election, implying he would offer them a better deal afterwards. Nixon campaigned again in 1972 on a "secret plan" to end the war, another lie. Long before Watergate, he was a lying bastard. He had no plan for America or the Viet Cong. The Vietnam War would grind on for another five years and cost over 30,000 additional American lives.
    • 1975 - Republican President Gerald Ford rashly and unnecessarily sent 41 American servicemen to their deaths in Cambodia. The Mayaguez affair occurred shortly after the fall of South Vietnam when an American merchant ship was captured by Cambodia, which suspected the ship was a CIA cover, and held its crew of 39 captive for a few days. Still seething from the embarrassment of Vietnam, Ford and his conservative advisors jumped on this opportunity to display America's "resolution" to continue to meddle in Southeast Asia. Ford ordered the bombing of Cambodian ships, and the invasion of tiny Tang Island. This invasion commenced approximately one hour after the merchant sailors had been released to the American fleet, and reported they had been treated quite courteously by the Cambodians. Meanwhile, the invasion was a disaster. One third of the American force was killed or wounded, and five helicopters were destroyed, while another chopper coming over from Thailand to assist crashed, killing 23. All for precisely nothing! The Mayaguez incident is barely remembered today, but it stands as yet another stark depiction of the utter incompetence of the short-fused, testosterone-fueled conservative mindset, which service personnel and their families would do well to hold in great suspicion.
    • 1983 - Republican President Ronald Reagan cut and ran following a suicide bomber attack in Beirut Lebanon which killed 241 U.S. servicemen, including 220 Marines, 18 sailors and three soldiers. It was the deadliest single-day attack on U.S. forces since the TET Offensive in the Vietnam War, and the highest single-day death toll for the Marine Corps since the Battle of Iwo Jima in World War II. Reagan bears the responsibility for placing our forces in harm's way (the Lebanese Civil War) in the first place, with slack security, and for instigating hate toward the U.S. by firing on rebel forces. After the explosion, Reagan promised that the U.S. would stay in Lebanon. It was another Reagan lie. Shortly thereafter the Americans skedaddled, leaving the honor of the American dead in the rubble of Beirut.
    • 1983 - Republican President Ronald Reagan illegally ordered an invasion of the tiny island country of Grenada ostensibly to rescue American students after a military coup had toppled the government. In defiance of the War Powers Act that required approval from Congress before any American involvement, Reagan sent a force of nearly 8000 to counter the coup. Nineteen U.S. servicemen would die in the operation (17 from "friendly-fire"), along with 116 wounded. The military action was entirely trumped up. The students said they never felt they were in any danger, and the operation was condemned by our firm allies, Canada and Great Britain, as well as by the U.N. General Assembly. Today Grenada is a CorpCon haven, a great place to launder cash and avoid taxes. And so, again, a conservative Commander-in-Chief was perfectly pleased to shed American blood to further the interests, not of democracy, but capitalism.
    • 2002-2008 - In perhaps the most complete and utter dereliction of duty as Commander-in-Chief in American history, Republican President George W. Bush sent American troops into not one, but two dubious wars. In both operations, the professional conservatives ignored the advice of the consensus military opinion, and sent the U.S. military into dual combat theaters with no clear overall objective or exit strategy, highly dubious expectations, and shockingly ignorant and unprepared of what they would face. By all rights, George W. Bush and his puppet-master, Dick Cheney, should be regarded as international war criminals and high traitors of America. Following the 9/11 terrorist attacks (which according to Al Qaeda were primarily retribution for American military bases in the Muslim Holy Land of Saudi Arabia), the Republican braintrust of Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and a flock of neocon think-tank chicken-hawks overreacted about as badly as was humanly possible. The neocons steered America, like an enraged troll, into a pattern of reaction that Al Qaeda and other America-haters could only dream of. The neocons would squander the outpouring of goodwill and support for America from around the world following the terrorist attacks, quickly alienating billions of people with a series of clumsy and violent reprisals. It would not be terrorists, but the neocons, who would wear out America's military, waste trillions of dollars, wreck American families, and sully America's honor as they ran roughshod over both the Constitution and international agreements prohibiting torture. Completely unprepared for the reality of what they would encounter, they rushed to send troops into Afghanistan, then promptly lost interest in bombing it into the Stone Age, allowing Osama Bin Laden to disappear into the mountains, while they were preoccupied with myth-manipulating America and a "Coalition of the Willing" into war with Saddam Hussein's Iraq, which had nothing whatsoever to do with 9/11. Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, et al, floated a series of pure myths: "weapons of mass destruction," "the war will be over quickly," "America will be greeted as liberators," "Iraqi oil will pay for the war," "Iraq is a terrorist hideout." Whether they ever really believed these myths themselves or not is debatable. Depending on how you decide that question will inform your opinion on whether these professinal conservatives were simply ridiculously inept, or whether they were abject traitors and true war criminals. The important realization is that they were 180-degrees wrong on every major point of discussion. The rush to oust Saddam had nothing to do with 9/11 and everything do with second largest reserve of oil in the world, which had loomed as a neocon prize since George H.W. Bush left the job undone (in their minds) in the first Gulf War. Predictably, based upon their faulty assumptions, neither Afghanistan or Iraq worked out well for America. Just like the first Gulf War, the result was devastating for American military personnel. As merely a feign to set up a comprehensive "war on terror" cover for all manner of neocon shenanigans, Afghanistan festered into a full-blown quagmire, while the flowers and kisses the neocons assured would be forthcoming from Iraqis for their American liberators never materialized, nor did the Iraqi oil money that the neocons promised would pay for the war. Bush sent political hacks to oversee the reconstruction of Iraq and showered no-bid contracts on Republican corporate cronies, while thousands of U.S. soldiers were killed and maimed by roadside bombs. A virtual pipeline was set up to funnel billions upon billions of dollars in American taxes directly into the pockets of war profiteers, and other billions simply went missing in Iraq and Afghanistan. While the war and subsequent insurgency were going on, in order to oversee their newly-gained oil fields, the neocons were building the largest U.S. embassy in the world in Baghdad, another billion dollars! Meanwhile, overstretched troops were subjected to defending a surly and increasingly resentful populace in two occupied countries. American equipment, including trucks, humvees and armored vests proved inadequate to protect the troops. Families had to send higher-grade flack jackets to their relatives in combat. KBR, one of Cheney's hand-picked war profiteers, electrocuted at least 18 service personnel before they could figure out how to build showers correctly. Bush never raised taxes to pay for this double war, nor did he ever ask for even the minutest sacrifice from the general populace, which quickly lost interest in both wars; indeed, they were encouraged to do just that by Bush, who instead of rallying the public's support and sacrifice told everyone to "go shopping." The entire brunt of the two neocon wars was borne by military families. Family-destroying deployment after deployment, including involuntary "stop loss" retention, wreaked havoc upon the troops. Suicides and divorces among service members skyrocketed. An extraordinary percentage of soldiers were coming home with injuries, concussions and PTSD. Following a much ballyhooed "surge", the violence in Iraq diminished, but not before possibly hundreds of thousands of Iraqis were killed or displaced. Bush left office with over 100,000 troops still in Iraq, which remained violence prone and its future stability highly questionable. After all that, the neocons weren't even able to steal the Iraqi oil fields, which the Iraqis turned out to be not cowed enough to allow to be stolen. So much for shock-and-awe! Meanwhile Afghanistan has become the longest-running American war ever. Bush's ineptness and flat wrongness left our own military in shambles, is expected to end up costing over three trillion dollars, and never caught Osama Bin Laden. It all adds up to the greatest misuse of the American military in U.S. history. Liberals still seethe about the Bush years, and how the troops were so thoroughly abused. Indeed, anyone who is not outraged by this criminal break of sacred trust between the commander-in-chief and the United States military personnel is no patriot, just a dumbass brainwashed by conservative propaganda.

      Veterans Day Liberal Lament


    CONSERVATIVE CHICKEN-HAWKS START TWO WARS AT ONCE!
    Here are some of the prominent neo-conservatives associated or influential with the George Bush administration who desperately wanted to invade Iraq long before Bush even took office. The 9/11 terrorist attacks gave them a pseudo-rationale for going after Saddam Hussein and his oilfields, even though Saddam and Iraq had nothing whatsoever to do with 9/11. So the neocon chicken-hawks had to first start a war in Afghanistan, ostensibly to go after Al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden for actually devising the attack, and punish the Afghan Taliban for allowing Al Qaeda to train in their country.

  • George W. Bush + - President
  • Dick Cheney * - Vice-President
  • Donald Rumsfeld - Defense Secretary
  • John Ashcroft * - Attorney General
  • Paul Wolfowitz * - Assistant Defense Secretary
  • Richard Perle * - Department of Defense Official
  • Karl Rove * - Special Advisor to the President
  • Scooter Libby * - Special Advisor to the Vice-President
  • Douglas Feith * - Department of Defense Official
  • Condoleeza Rice * - National Security Advisor
  • Tom Delay * - House Majority Leader
  • Bill Frist * - Senate Majority Leader
  • Dennis Hastert * - Speaker of the House
  • Roy Blunt * - House Whip
  • John Bolton * - United Nations Ambassador (recess appointment)
  • Saxby Chambliss * - Senator, Georgia
  • Paul Ryan * - House Representative, Wisconsin
  • Phil Gramm * - House Representative, Texas
  • Trent Lott * - Senator, Tennessee
  • Rudy Giuliani * - Mayor, New York
  • Rick Santorum * - Senator, Pennsylvania
  • Jon Kyl * - Senator, Arizona
  • Jeb Bush * - Governor, Florida

    These politicos were egged on by media types: Bill Kristol*, David Brooks*, Pat Buchanan*, Ann Coulter*, Lou Dobbs*, Sean Hannity*, Rush Limbaugh*, Brit Hume*, Bill O'Reilly*, Michael Savage*, George Will*, Bill Bennett*, along with just about all other on-air personalities at Fox News and Clear Channel Radio.

    NONE OF THESE CONSERVATIVES HAD ANY COMBAT EXPERIENCE... AND MOST HAD NO MILITARY EXPERIENCE WHATSOEVER (*) OR JUST A CUP OF COFFEE IN UNIFORM (+) ... A PARADE OF CONSERVATIVE CHICKEN-HAWKS WHO WILLFULLY, GLEEFULLY & CLUELESSLY LED THE WAY INTO THE QUAGMIRES, KILLING AND MAIMING FIELDS OF AFGHANISTAN & IRAQ.

    And don't forget that these chicken-hawks and their minions took delight in savaging actual combat veterans (who happened to be Democrats) such as John Kerry, Jack Murtha, Max Cleland, Jim Webb, Joe Sestak, Bob Kerrey, Gray Davis, Wesley Clark, and any others who dared to object to the run-up to double war.

    If you or your family member had a wonderful time in either Afghanistan or Iraq, you can thank this clique of conservative chicken-hawks.

    Click Here to read the last letter of an Iraq War veteran to Bush and Cheney!

    And yet another Iraq War veteran takes aim at the Conservative Chicken-hawks!

    • 2008 - Congressional Republicans, including 2012 Vice-Presidential Candidate Paul Ryan, unsuccessfully try to block expansion of the G.I. Bill, yet another example of a chicken-hawk Republican promoting war(s) while not having any interest whatsoever in the real lives of the troops and veterans.
    • 2009 - Present - Commander-in-Chief Barack Obama finally ends the Iraq War, removing all American troops in 2011. Also in 2011, a covert special ops mission involving just a few Navy SEALS killed Bin Laden, the type of calculated and measured response that would have been the most responsible and effective strategy following 9/11... not the Shock and Awe blundering of the Bush Administration. Conservatives refused to give the president much credit for the master-terrorist's death, but those much more informed praised Obama for such a gutsy call on the mission. The political risk was tremendous considering all that could go wrong. Admiral William McRaven, a leader of U.S. commandos, said this about Obama as commander-in-chief: "He made some very tough decisions. He was really everything the American public would expect from their national leadership. The President was at all times presidential. I would contend he was the smartest guy in the room. He had leadership skills we'd expect from a guy who had 35 years in the military." No general or admiral ever said anything remotely similar about Bush or Cheney. The contrast between the Bush administration's ham-handed, utterly inept and morally reprehensible handling of the U.S. military machine and Obama's cool efficiency could not be any more stark. Yet, actually, Bush and Cheney are just the latest to absolutely confirm that conservatives are the absolute worst to have at the helm of our national defense.
    • 2011 - Congressional Republicans unsuccessfully try to block V.A. payments to veterans affected by the use in Vietnam of the toxic herbicide Agent Orange, just as they earlier had tried to block government-provide health care for First Responders to the 9/11 attacks in downtown Manhattan.
    • 2012 - Senate Republicans filibuster the Veteran's Jobs Corps Act of 2012, that would have created jobs for veterans as local first responders, as well as conservation, resource management and historic preservation personnel on public lands and projects. All Democrats and Independents, but only five Republicans, voted for the bill, which was not enough to break the filibuster. After the vote one Republican leader said, "Well, the bill wouldn't have passed the (Republican-controlled) House anyway, so it wasn't worth our while." So there you go, soldiers and veterans... from the very mouth of the conservatives... you just aren't worth their while.
    • 2012 - Senate Republicans reject UN Disability Treaty that would assist millions of disabled Americans and veterans. Despite an empassioned plea by Bob Dole, the Republican standard-bearer for president in 1996 and a wounded veteran himself, Republican senators stiffed the aging warrior and voted down the treaty. Before the vote Dole had said, "There is no reason to be against this treaty. As a Republican, I don't want to see a headline saying 'Republicans vote against disabled Americans and disabled veterans.' But that's exactly what happend. All Democratic senators voted for the treaty but it wasn't enough to reach the 67 votes needed for passage.
    • 2013 - House Republicans, led by Paul Ryan, sought to slash VA healthcare benefits for disabled veterans. The cut would have affected 1.3 million veterans. This proposal did not make it out of committee. Instead the House cut spending for the U.S. Court of Appeals for Veterans Claims, making it more difficult to challenge claim denials. So this is how conservatives have always run, folks: start wars, send soldiers to die and become injured or disabled... then junk them like an old tire.

      Corporations or Veterans, Republicans always choose Corporations.
      Veterans... if you think conservatives spend two minutes thinking about you, you are sadly mistaken.
      Their master and mistress is ONLY and ALWAYS their corporate sponsors.

    • 2014 - Republicans block Veterans' Bill. Only two Republican senators voted to move forward with a bill which would have expanded benefits and services to veterans, including increasing eligibility for Department of Veterans Affairs health care, opening new facilities, restoring full cost-of-living increases to military retiree pensions, expanding education programs and even offering reproductive treatment and adoption assistance for severely wounded veterans. Therefore the bill died. Independent senator from Vermon, Bernie Sanders, said "I have a hard time understanding how anyone could vote for tax breaks for billionaires, for millionaires, for large corporations and then say we don't have the resources to protect our veterans."
    • 2014 - Republicans want to send more "boots on the ground" to Middle East. Proving they never learn from their mistakes, Republicans in Congress continue to advocate for U.S. troops to head back to Iraq to counter the sudden rise of the fundamentalist (i.e. conservative) militant group the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL). ISIL has captured many cities in Syria and Iraq, including the Iraqi city of Fallujah, hard-won by U.S. forces in 2003-2004. Now Republicans wish to repeat the idiocy of sending U.S. combat forces back into a region that has been a hornets' nest for 5000 years. Which American service personnel and their familes will vainly suffer for yet another chicken-hawk conservative military adventure?

    Conservatives have always shafted active duty personnel and veterans

    And just how has John McCain, the 2008 Republican presidential candidate, supported the troops? Like this:
    • VOTED AGAINST 2001 bill to increase by $650 Million the amount available for medical care for veterans.
    • VOTED AGAINST a 2003 bill to provide more than $1 Billion for National Guard and Reserve equipment in Iraq.
    • VOTED TO KILL a 2003 bill to provide an additional $322 Million for additional safety equipment for U.S. forces in Iraq.
    • VOTED AGAINST a 2004 bill that would have eliminated a corporate loophole and diverted $1.8 Billion to a reserve fund to allow for an increase in Veteran's medical care.
    • VOTED TO KILL a 2005 amendment that would have increased veterans medical care by $2.8 Billion, instead voting for an alternate Republican bill that added only $410 Million, less than 1/5 the amount of the Democrat plan.
    • VOTED AGAINST a 2006 bill increasing veterans medical services funding by $1.5 Billion.
    • VOTED TO KILL a 2006 bill that would have assured a stream of funding for veterans health care by closing corporate loopholes.
    • VOTED TO KILL a 2006 bill that would have prevented privatizing support services at Walter Reed Hospital. Such outside services were implicated in the horrendous conditions discovered Walter Reed a short time later.
    • Was one of only 13 senators who VOTED AGAINST a 2006 bill to appropriate $430 Million for the Department of Veterans Affairs for outpatient care and treatment of veterans.
    • VOTED AGAINST a 2006 bill that would have provided $20 Million to the Department of Veterans Affairs for health care facilities.
    • VOTED AGAINST a 2007 amendment calling for adequate troop rest between deployments.
    • VOTED AGAINST the 21st Century G.I. Bill that would have increased educational opportunities for post 9/11 veterans.

    Hey, how about the 2012 Republican presidential nominee: Mitt Romney? How has he supported the military? Glad you asked. Well, Mitt never wanted to serve. You see, there were just too many companies waiting to be gutted and handsomely profited from. He couldn't wait to get to all of those riches, and didn't want to fool around, you know, serving America or anything like that. And he has five strapping sons, all of service age: Tagg, Matt, Josh, Ben and Craig. Wow a lot of testosterone in that family! You would think that someone in there would be willing to step up and serve in the U.S. military. After all, they're filthy rich, they could step right in as officers. No grunt-work for these purebloods! But nope. Mitt and Sons are a continuation of the Grand Old Party's tradition of "Team Chickenhawk!" Ooh-Rah! Right? It's a corporate conservative tradition: talk tough, stir up trouble, let somebody else do the fighting. Exactly as Cheney and Bush slunk away from Vietnam service, Romney dodged the draft as a "minister of religion" and skedaddled for France to be a "missionary" for a cult, while living in a mansion with a chef and servant. No slumming around in foxholes, or even less than four-star accommodations, for Mitty. As for his five sons, Mitt explains, "My sons are showing support for our nation by helping to get me elected." Ha-ha, right Mitt, that's real service. That's easily on par with slogging around Iraq and Afghanistan, no doubt about it. Hey, Mitt, where do the rest of our sons and daughters sign up for that "service" so they can skip out on the PTSD zones? About actual, real military service, Josh, who has no plans of serving, adds, "It's just something none of us has done." Right. They had better things to do with their lives... like keep close to daddy and wallow in his glitz and glamour while you were watching your buddies get blown up (or was that you that got blown up?). And there was Team Chickenhawk in August 2012 at the Republican National Convention where good old Mitt mentioned the War in Afghanistan exactly ZERO times during his biggest speech to date and first great opportunity to tell the nation and world what he really believes in! Ha-ha, not you soldiers, or veterans. There you go: your prospective next Chickenhawk-in-Chief who doesn't give a damn about you. Oh, and look who is hiding behind Mitt's skirts as "foreign policy advisors," many of the same old neocon gang that brought us Afghanistan and Iraq. Wonder where he'll send you to die? Count on it; it will be somewhere hellish, probably smelling of oil. Iran, anybody?

    Mitt Romney and Sons - Team Chickenhawk

    Donald Trump and Children no military service for them.
    How about the 2016 Republican presidential nominee: Donald Trump? There has never been a candidate like this. We don't know much about him, because he won't give any details whatsoever. He just keeps saying, "Believe me" over and over and over again. And a lot of people believe him. Stupid people. We do know that he is the most bombastic, narcissistic, egotistical, thin-skinned, hot-headed, fact-free and divisive candidate ever to run for President of the United States. He doesn't even like the other members of his own party. He is human wrecking ball, causing a trainwreck per day. How long do you think it's going to take for Trump to get the United States into a war? Our guess is about two months. Oh, he says he doesn't like those foreign wars like the ones Bush and Cheney started. He has (rightly) called them out on those terrible errors. But who could possibly believe that Donald Trump, the Ego of the Century, as President is not going to want to play with the toys of the U.S. military? He's already asked why we don't use our nukes more often. And don't forget that he equated his time in prep school to actually being in the real military, and compared his many "sacrifices" in business to the sacrifice of a Gold Star family. Chew on those facts for a minute or two before you place yourself or your son or daughter or father or mother into the hands of this wackadoodle Commander in Chief. Yep, you brave, dutiful military service personnel and the people who love you, these are the kinds of people who the Republicans keep putting up to hold your lives in their ignorant, greedy little hands.

    So it should be very clear. Military personnel and families, the LAST politicians you want directing military affairs are conservatives! The notion that they support you is one of the cruelest of all Conservative Myths! They'll nickel-and-dime you; they'll use and abuse you; they'll send you off to be killed by a trumped-up enemy (while they are really after corporate profits); they'll sacrifice you to make some stupid, bravado "statement;" or sometimes they'll even turn the U.S. military against itself. Active-duty personnel and veterans... don't fall for it! Conservative politicians are NOT your friends... they are your torturers and executioners!

    We know you military families are patriotic, but if you truly love your families and your country, pray to God that a more liberal Commander in Chief is in charge when you or your loved ones are sent to war... and when you or they come back home. Remember this, only more liberal politicians really give a shit about you and your life; to the professional conservatives you are nothing more than cannon fodder to be sent off to one of their trumped-up wars, and a slacker when you get home and are discharged.

Let's let a real veteran have the last word on this subject:
Veteran to Republicans



6. CONSERVATIVES SUPPORT SMALL GOVERNMENT
    No one wants a big, bloated, inefficient government, certainly not liberals. Liberals want the "smallest" government we can have, and still maintain a modern nation. Yet there is a world of difference between "smallest" and "small." Liberals have enough sense to realize that there can be no such thing as a "small" government in the 21st Century (or any previous century for that matter). The idea of a small government is just another big conservative lie and deception. Actually, there are two huge deceptions wrapped in this one myth. Not only is a "small government" an utter impossibility for a modern, complex state, both corporate and social conservatives actually support a very BIG federal government that they can use to greedily and "righteously" run rampant all over your individual rights and welfare.

    Even though most literate conservatives are very wary of Thomas Jefferson, that non-Christian, equality-loving, Bhagavad Gita-reading, Enlightenment-inspired philosopher, the favorite quote of conservatives from a founding father is Jefferson's quip, "the government that governs least, governs best." Of course, Jefferson said that before he became president and went out and bought the Louisiana Territory without bothering to consult with Congress, more than doubling the size of the USA. If that's not cognitive dissonance, there is no such thing. It was not only perhaps the greatest incongruence of word and deed in American political history, and quite a propitious one at that, it was a power-grab par excellence and the most astounding enlargement of the government ever! That was 200-something years ago. To this day, you'd be hard pressed to find an American who would say that it was a bad thing.

    Even before the Louisiana Purchase -- when America was only a few hundred miles wide, had less than seven million citizens, had a national economy far smaller than one modern American city, and the state-of-the-art weapon was a cast-iron cannon - there was never any possibility of the United States of America having a small government. Today we are a country that stretches around the globe, with 300 million citizens, an economy worth trillions of dollars that dominates the world, and tens of thousands of American corporations (many of them actively seeking ways to get into trouble), as well as a military and weapons such as the world has never known, and that could literally destroy the planet. Whoever sincerely believes that all of this can be managed and controlled by a "small government" should report directly to a remedial civics lesson, if not the nearest psychiatry office.

    Of course such gullible true believers in a "small government" would all be social conservatives or libertarians. Even as they spread the myth, CorpCons know full well that the very concept is another conservative language trick, just like the "free market."

    the myth of small government The rich and powerful used to love government, back in the feudal days of old, when the king was benefactor to his lords and ladies, allowing them free reign over their own subjects, the serfs and little townspeople. That was when Big Government and Big Religion were rolled into one. The combined leviathan controlled every facet of everyone's life. But then came this radical new kind of government called democracy , something about "We the People", and "all men are created equal," and "the General Welfare," stuff like that which threatened to demolish the whole wonderful system the upper crust had going its way for thousands of years.

    A democracy based on equal opportunity and justice for all stands with the people -- all of the people, not just the rich, not just the powerful, in fact, not even for the majority of people... ALL OF THE PEOPLE. Now this should be self-evident to anyone who has a clue of what America is all about. Alas, such people sometimes seem to be few and far between.

    It turns out that many in America actually don't much like that democracy thing, and would like to hijack it if they could. This, of course, would be the conservatives.... both those of the rich and powerful, professional corporate type, and those sometimes lovable (sometimes not) mush-brained social conservatives.

    These conservatives often perceive a democratic government as in their way. And so is born the idea of shrinking the government. "I want a government so small we can drown it in the bathtub," conservative guru Grover Norquist (the no-tax pledge cult leader) famously said. Imagine what a utopia that would be... for the rich and powerful, at least.

    But just like the "free market" that professional conservatives proffer as the savior of economic systems is actually a "rigged market" kraken, so too the "small government" that conservatives envision is really a dragon masquerading as a flea. The conservatives would slash and burn all the ways government protects, but supersize the ways it controls and coerces individuals while enabling corporations to run rampant over consumers and the environment.

    Let's examine some of the ways conservatives encourage and enable a Big Government that helps them, while professing and attempting to actualize a Small Government that protects We the People.

    Start with the oxymoronic concept of a "small government" administering "history's largest military." If that doesn't strike you as ridiculous, then perhaps no semblance of rationality can penetrate your shield of cognitive dissonance.

    We are continually reminded that conservatives are never for even a penny to be cut from the United States military, which already is almost as large as the rest of the world's militaries combined. That's right, America has a military machine equal to all the rest of the countries of the world... and conservatives will not allow one copper penny of that budget to be touched. Not coincidently they cheerfully support military intervention anywhere in the world. Hey, we have this gigantic military and all these cool weapons; we might as well put them to use, eh?

    Just with this one issue, we have exploded the idea of a "small" government.

    It turns out that conservative support for such a humongous, bloated military - rife with more fiscal waste and abuse than almost all other government programs put together - is only partly to do with protecting the country, or even poking our "small government" nose into almost every foreign conflagration. CorpCons, with the perennial blessing of SoCons at the ballot box, love to set up government support for corporations, well, at least the right corporations... conservative corporations. There are few corporations more conservative than defense contractors. Such corporations make billions upon billions through military contracts. And this gravy train continues year after year, decade after decade. Over and above this largess, much of American militarism is, in fact, simply promotion of U.S. business interests. Hiding behind the clarion call to defend America against the boogey-man of fascism, communism, terrorism, whatever the latest "ism" might be, is the conservative desire to divide and dominate the markets of the world. In the cases of the wars in Korea and Vietnam, hatred for communism teamed up with a keen determination to protect and preserve U.S. raw material resources, as well as consumer markets in Asia. American bellicosity in the Middle East is almost solely as a result of this being the great oil pool of the world.

    Meanwhile, there is the clarion call for "deregulation." Yet this, too, is a bogus mantra. CorpCons only want certain types of deregulation... any that thwart their ability to get away with murder. Otherwise, Big Business requires a big government, if for no other reason than to sort out all of the legal squabbles corporations have with each other. Beyond that, Big Business actually likes governmental regulations and red-tape that make it more difficult for newcomers, small-fry and less dexterous competitors. The more lawyers needed, the better it is for the rich and powerful individuals and corporations. As well, the more corrupt the governmental system, the more Big Business basks and luxuriates in its innate advantages of capital and connection. A small, lean, efficient government just wouldn't be able to serve this important business purpose at all. A huge and complex government system crawling with paid lobbyists - precisely what the average citizen would describe as bloated and inefficient - is absolutely ideal for corporatists. The average citizen has not a single lobbyist, while every single big corporation worth its salt has an array of sweet-talkers (and big money dolers) prowling the halls of Congress and whispering in the ears at the White House.

    But, of course, Big Business (and, often, smaller businesses, as well) chafe at regulations that actually protect the individual, the consumer, the community and the commons. These regulations proomote and protect quality of goods and services, consumer and worker safety, environmental health, and economic fairness. Each and every one of these is a threat to a particular corporation's bottom line. Such corporations would gladly do away with the regulations that require them to build a decent, safe product and not harm the public or the environment. A corporate "person" has no scruples, no integrity, no morality, no shame. It's only reason for existence is to make a profit, the higher the better, and anything that stands in the way of ever larger profits is to be opposed. Every single day corporations make the selfish choice of padding their bottom line rather than safeguarding the public's well-being... or, often, even their own company's reputation. Some of them will try to get away with anything... including murder.

    Indeed, for many types of CorpCons, the "commons" is not something to preserve and protect, but something to exploit. It is one of the biggest prizes available, involving vast resources. This land, water, air, airwaves belong to the people, but Big Business wants it. An efficient government might effectively protect these precious resources, yet within a big, clumsy government, all manners of shenanigans can be manipulated and hidden, at least for a while, as Big Business gets its clutches on the peoples' property. From Harding's Teapot Dome scandal, to Reagan giving away the old growth forests, to Bush's attempt to allow oil companies to despoil the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, to Trump wanting to give away precious landscapes to the dying coal industry, conservatives within government are always trying to find a way to steal national resources from the public and get them into the hands of private corporations, including the public airwaves that conservative corporations have used to their great advantage to dominate the media. Today the CorpCons have their sights on the internet, as well as Social Security and Medicare, as social plums ready to be plucked. Sure enough, the Trump administration is angling to cast away "Net Neutrality" and allow giant corporate players to set up their own tiered system of internet access. We the People fleeced or shanked in all of these giveaways and takeaways of conservative-style Big Government that coddles the rich and corporations.

    The logic is always simplistic bumper-sticker logic. "Business knows best." "The government can't do anything right." "Privatization is the most efficient method." Right. Do a little deep imagining and picture Yosemite and the Grand Canyon operated by a corporation. Good God.

    So CorpCons need and want a Big Government, but one that is putty in their hands. So when they wax eloquently about "small government," it's really just code for dismantling all the elements of the government that protect the people and their assets, while expanding the ways that allow corporations to run wild.

    Of course, the eventual goal of some hardcore conservative corporatists is complete corporate control of government. This, as some of you will know, is called "fascism." It's also perfectly in keeping with the traditional conservative aim of "conserving" the Dominator Hierarchy. What they want is the end of a system of government for the people, and the start of a system of government for corporations (and the rich who control them). This may seem like a stretch, but we are moving quickly in that direction now. Just take a good, long look around at how powerful corporations have become. Why, now the conservative Supreme Court has declared them "persons," with many of the rights of an actual, you know, living human. Now that startling, sweeping decree is a great example of "small government," wouldn't you say?.

    So the biggest cheerleaders for "small government" are the CorpCons, who have a great deal to gain by cutting the government's ability to protect its citizens and the commons from incessant corporate greed.

    As for the common person, even conservatives who voted for it hate "small" government when it actually comes to their community. Click here to check in on the Great Kansas Experiment of governor Sam Brownback, who two terms ago vowed to bring that very thing to his state. HINT: Everyone hates it and "small" government has accomplished nothing except making Kansas look small in mind and heart.

    But there is another conservative segment that also would like to severely constrain the government's ability to protect. The social conservatives are mostly oblivious to the mischief that the corporations are up to. It's hitting them on the head, and they still can't recognize the real threat to America. They are too fixated on their own idea of "small government." While the CorpCons desire a brand of soft fascism, the SoCons want a "theocracy."

    The social conservatives want a government so "small" it can come through the keyhole of your own house, into your living room, bedroom, hospital room, or wherever you may be hiding, take you by the scruff of the neck and lay down the law! They want the "small" government to be able to tell each and every person exactly how to live. No, we are not talking about seat belts or handicapped ramps or the food pyramid here. This is nothing so benign as a "nanny state." This is more like the "Ayatollah state." This is major stuff. These conservatives would force their brand of religion, their form of patriotism, their idea of politics, their idea of conformity on everyone else. To do that requires a very BIG government.

    The Theocracy of America would, effectively, be a police state. Social conservatives love authoritarianism, "law and order," a huge military, plus lots of police, sheriffs, marshalls, border patrol, Texas Rangers, and it's never a bad idea to have a posse ready to go. You never know when some of those non-conformists will get uppity. So the Patriot Act, which allows spying without a warrant on American citizens is quite all right with conservatives. So, too, jails where the government can hold you without charge for months or years, or brand you a "terrorist" and just throw away the key and forget about you. All fine and good for "small government" conservatives.

    Conservatives are very fearful of the world, so they have a deep infatuation and obsession with "law and order." They believe such order should be enforced ruthlessly. So, naturally, conservatives love the idea of punishment. Especially if you are not part of their in-group, they almost hope you will do something that will break their code of conformity and enable them to call the dogs of government on you. Conservatives want the government to be able to peer and pry and intervene in your most private life, and then lower the boom if they find anything amiss. They believe their morality should be the state morality. They believe they -- and only they -- should have the power to determine whether it should be legal or illegal for you to enter the country, stay in the country, get a job, vote, build a mosque, wear a head scarf, smoke pot, have an abortion, or get married, allow your brain-dead family member to die in peace, or to be able choose for yourself to die with dignity in the face of a terminal illness. If you do happen to do anything they have deemed illegal, down you go to the courthouse where an official with the Ten Commandments looming behind him will judge you; if you are a Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, Sikh, Shinto, aboriginal or tribal, agnostic or atheist American, good luck getting impartial justice from this theocratic system. The stiffer the sentence, the better. And of course, so-called "pro life" conservatives absolutely love the death penalty, the ultimate big government, one that decides whether you live or die. They are totally unconvinced by multiple studies that prove the death penalty does not deter violent crime, undisturbed by the jarring number of state-killed inmates subsequently declared innocent, and blissfully unconcerned about the severe disconnect of their vengeful passion and the wisdom of their own lord and saviour. Only in such a state of illogic and rank discompassion can conservatives dream of such a darkly fascist state and still maintain the delusion that they support a "small government."

    The social conservative wars on abortion, drugs, immigrants, women's rights, civil rights, and the LGBT community are the most visible current depictions of what kind of big government they really want. The want big government to put big restrictions on all of these written into law, preferably the Constitution, and thereafter enforced by the big police state.

    A most insightful, and stunning, portrayal of the social conservative's notion of "small government" was the case of Terri Schiavo. For years Michael Schiavo had been trying to allow his wife, Terri, to die in peace following devastating brain damage in 1990 that left her lingering in a vegetative state. After a prolonged legal battle within the family and through Florida's legal system, in 2003 Michael was finally granted the right to allow Terri's life-support to be removed, as husband and wife had discussed they would do for each other back in happier times. But then in swooped conservative harpies, led by gadfly Randall Terry, maintaining that Terri's situation might not be so hopeless, and insisting that they had the right to butt into this most private and painful decision. Conservatives wrangled to quickly pass a Florida law, called "Terri's Law," that allowed Governor Jeb Bush to intervene in the case. He ordered Terri's feeding tube reinserted, and sent state cops to remove Terri from her husband's guardianship. A judge ruled "Terri's Law" unconstitutional and struck it down. The conservatives appealed. The case went to the Florida State Supreme Court where again it was struck down. Conservatives around the country were outraged... not at this big government intervention in the private life of a family, but by "activist judges" not allowing them to butt in. The affair went up the conservative chain of command... all the way to Congress and President George Bush. Both Michael and the brain-dead Terri were subpoenaed to testify before Congress! Republican congressmen and senators had a grandstanding fest, demanding the ability to take control of the case out of the hands of the State of Florida and into their own. So much for state's rights, ever only a fallback position for conservatives when they can't get their way nationally. Congress passed a bill usurping Florida's jurisdiction, and George Bush flew back from vacation in Texas to sign the bill. So this was at least twice in this case that conservatives actually changed or created new laws giving them previously power in order to pursue their determination to impose their morality and justice. It was at this juncture that an explosive memo surfaced suggesting that the Schiavo case offered "a great political issue" for Republicans that could be used against Florida Democrats. After "Terri's Law" was struck down and the U.S. Supreme Court refused to intervene (unlike when the presidency was at stake in 2000), again Jeb Bush alerted the Florida state police to take Terri and remove her to out of state (where to no one has ever said, but you know it was probably Texas). The Florida Supreme Court instructed the state police to stand down. Jeb Bush reluctantly obeyed the court order, though there was enormous pressure from conservatives in the state and around the country to defy the law. Terri died shortly thereafter, and so the sordid affair came to conclusion. An autopsy revealed that Terri's brain was severely damaged and atrophied. She really had been in a vegetative state. The conservatives were wrong again.

    But the shocking revelation of the Terri Schiavo case was the manner in which conservatives rushed to stick their faces into this very personal, very private, very painful family affair. They pulled every trick in the book, hurriedly writing and passing new laws and plucking the highest strings of government, from the president to the Supreme Court, to finagle a way to impose their version of morality upon an innocent family. This example should stand as a flashing warning to anyone who would buy into conservative notions of a "small government."

    So we see a similar compulsion to govern the most private and personal lives of others in conservative beliefs concerning abortion, gay and lesbian rights, religious freedoms, science and art, and many other facets of governmental concern. Apparently conservatives don't quite understand how contradictory their own beliefs truly are.

    Now recall, these are the people who chirp so loudly about freedom and rugged individualism and property rights... but all that goes out the window when it comes to someone not conforming to their notions of proper behavior. For that they want a Big Government to shut it down.

    Why should any of this surprise us? Conservatives have long been the champions of rigging the government to block rights. Check out some of those "small government" laws that the ideologically-driven red states, cities and towns have had on their books: Texas still lists homosexual activity as a crime; and you can only have six dildos in your possession. Arizona is even tougher on dildos - you can't have any more than two in your house; you can get 25 years for cutting down a cactus; if attacked by a criminal or burglar, it must be a fair fight - you can't use any weapons that your assailant does not have; and no more than six women can live together in a house before it is considered a brothel; in one town it's illegal to smile if you have more than one missing teeth; and in another town women are still prohibited from wearing pants. But when it comes to dildos, Georgia makes Texas and Arizona seem like Sin City; all sex toys are banned in the Peach State. In Tennessee if you have oral sex you can be arrested; no more than eight women can live together without being deemed a brothel; in one town ladies are not allowed to ask men for a date; selling hollow logs is illegal. In Alabama it's illegal to wear a mask in public; a whole bunch of activities are prohibited on Sundays, including playing dominoes or card playing; and don't flip boogers into the wind. In Mississippi, having a second illegitimate child will send you to jail; it's illegal to even teach what polygamy is; cussing is prohibited in public places; mutually volunatary sex - if considered "unnatural" by the state - can get you slapped in jail for ten years; and males may not become sexually aroused in public. Indiana is another state where men better not have any boners in public; also, no oral sex; the Hoosier State also expects all males 18-50 years old to spend six days a year working on public roads; no catching fish with your bare hands; and no car sales on Sundays. In Arkansas, a man can beat his wife, but only once a month; oral sex is regarded as "sodomy," and illegal; flirtation on the streets of Little Rock can get you locked up for 30 days. In Idaho, you are not allowed to ride on a merry-go-round on Sundays. Just across the border in Montana, it's illegal for unmarried women to go fishing alone any time, and married women must be accompanied by a male if they want to fish on Sundays; it's illegal to have sex in any way other than the missionary position; a wife cannot open her husband's mail; it's a crime to show movies in which any laws are broken; and seven or more Indians gathered together are deemed to be a war party and may be shot. In Utah, you can be arrested for refusing to drink milk. In Oklahoma, women can be arrested for doing their own hair without a license; tatoos were banned until 2006; spitting on the sidewalk can get you fined; premarital sex is illegal, as is oral sex; if you are caught with a prostitute, your name and photo will be shown on television. In Wyoming, women cannot stand within five feet of a bar while drinking; taking a photograph of a rabbit from January to April without a permit will gain you a fine. In West Virginia, shacking up before marriage and engaging in "lewd" conduct may land you both in jail for a year; until 2006 no citizen was allowed to own a red or a black flag, go figure; in one town it's OK to beat your wife, but it must be done on Sunday on the courthouse steps.

    How about all those "blue laws" that impose the religious beliefs of some over all? Almost every state still has some of these laws. Why can't I buy a car on Sunday in Colorado or Missouri, or bottle of wine on New Year's Day (or July 4th or Memorial Day or Labor Day or Thanksgiving Day or Christmas Day) in Oklahoma? Who the hell established a law that I can't go to a department store in North Dakota on Sunday? Well, of course, it's social conservatives who have taken it upon themselves to impose their strict Calvinist prudishness on all the rest of us. How abou the First Amendment to the Constitution that prohibits establishing any law "respecting an establishment of religion?" Screw that, say the SoCons.

    All of these examples are exemplary models of "small government," wouldn't you say?

    Meanwhile, the entire former Confederacy, plus a few other red states, steadfastly refused to allow interracial marriage until they were forced to by the Supreme Court in 1967. Even then it took Alabama until the year 2000 to amend its constitution. But some of these "small government" conservatives just can't stop trying to impose their racist worldview on ohters. As late as 2009 a Louisiana justice of the peace refused to officiate an interracial civil wedding. Then let's not forget the many state and local laws making being gay or transgender a crime, subject to jailing... or worse (forced castration and lobotomies were performed on not a few unfortunate individuals whom social conservatives deemed a menace to their rote conformity and black-and-white worldview).

    For a much more recent example, how about Republican Attorney General Jeff Sessions in 2017 seeking to reinstate the "federal asset forfeiture" program, and onerous practice that the Obama adminstration had shut down. "What is this?" you may ask. Well, in this scam, the federal government blocks any state laws that would forbid the practice of local police departments seizing your property if they think you have broken the law. The key word there is think. You don't have to be convicted; you don't even have to be charged. If they think you've broken a law, they can take your possessions, your money, your car, even your house... and they never have give it back. For its enabling role, the Feds get 20 percent of the take. Nice, eh? Only conservatives, the strict "law and order" party, could remotely think this is a good idea. Even a 10-year-old should be able to figure out how easily and egregiously this could be abused. And sure enough, it is abused... Bigtime! The usual suspects are for petty drug possession, and the practice targets poor neighborhoods, particularly African Americans.

    Crazy, isn't it? The CorpCons know what they want; they want a big government that is skewed totally toward their corporations. Meanwhile, the Constitutional mandate of "serving the general welfare" has been drowned in the bathtub. But the CorpCons can't discuss it openly. So they couch their true scheme in terms which appeal to the SoCons, who are so bamboozled they don't know which end is up. Besides, social conservatives are ever willing to bend (and often break) true American values to preserve their advantage and privilege... so they have no problem whatsoever with a Big Government that forces their "values" upon everyone else. Thus, a "small government" that frees them all to bully everyone else becomes the shared dream of conservatives, corporate and social.

    And a nightmare for that "everyone else."

    How is that Small Government working out for you Mississippi?
    Let's check to see how all that "Small Government" stuff is working out for the Red States that believe so much in it. Hmmmm... not too very well it seems!

    All conservatives, CorpCon and SoCon, have an agenda to create a government that has "small" ability to protect, but "big" ability to subject. The rich and corporations want a government that is powerless to protect the public commons and consumers, while allowing them to rampage around the world. Social conservatives want a government that is powerless to prevent them from imposing their values on everyone else. So neither really believes in a "small government," only in a government that does their bidding... not that of We the People, all of the people.

    Think about it. Why on earth would We the People want to give up our power to protect ourselves from our most insidious enemies? Who is that? Certainly not those on the outside, who have never been able to harm America very much. It is the enemy within that is the true and present danger. Those would be the unscrupulous, immoral, vicious, predatory, greedy rich and powerful corporatists, and the bigoted, ignorant and thuggish theocrats. Either or both would think nothing of destroying America to remake it in their image.

    The only thing standing in their way is We the People, and the robust national government that is us!

    Check out the warning of this former administrator for both Nixon and Reagan about conservative fervor for deregulation: A Lesson Trump and the E.P.A. Should Heed



7. THE "FREE MARKET."
    There is no such thing as the "free market." There never has been, and never will be. It's a fairy tale. Another conservative myth. Pure baloney.

    It might be theoretically possible for a totally "free market" to exist if the "market" itself was very tiny, such as a very small town where everyone knew and trusted each other. In anything larger, say a country of 300 million, fuggetaboutit!

    The great irony is that the very people who so aggressively promote the idea of a "free market" are the actually the last ones who would actually want such a thing. Those would be the CorpCons and the professional politicians they have bought and paid for fair and square. These schemers don't really want a "free market" they want a "rigged market," and that's pretty much what they have. But it can always get even more rigged. And that's what they truly wish for: a world where Big Business is king of the world, and government - the only entity large enough to counter and control Big Business - is small enough to "drown in the bathtub" (at least when it comes to regulating Big Business... otherwise, everybody knows a very Big Government is necessary to rampage around the world promoting Big Business).

    Economist Dean Baker puts it succinctly, "The rich and powerful have no interest in the free market when circumventing how the market works to their benefit."

    So, what professional conservatives actually mean by the "Free Market" is this:

      • Corporations should be FREE to do anything they want.
      • Corporations should be FREE to sell anything, anywhere.
      • Corporations should be FREE to pay little or nothing to their workers.
      • Corporations should be FREE to demand utter loyalty from their workers.
      • Corporations should be FREE to return no loyalty whatsoever to their workers.
      • Corporations should be FREE to extract, exploit, subjugate and monopolize at will.
      • Corporations should be FREE from taxes.
      • Corporations should be FREE from regulations.
      • Corporations should be FREE of responsibility for any damage they do.
      • Corporations should be FREE to influence lawmakers.
      • Corporations should be FREE to slaughter the competition any way they can.

    The Free Market means Corporatiosn are Free to do Anything So now you know. When conservatives politicians and economists talk about the "free market" it is simply code for Big Business Heaven, a world in which Big Business is free to do whatever it wants.

    Of course, this would be Hell for everyone else, including smaller businesses, for which such a "free market" would be a killing field. Giant corporations could swoop in, completely unfettered, and buy out or simply squelch smaller competitors.

    And for consumers and workers? Well, the "free market" envisioned by giant multinational corporations would make them hardly better than slaves. Consumers and workers in the unregulated "free market" would be "free" to like it, or lump it. Caveat Emptor, sucker! You say our product blew up in your face or gave you cancer? Prove it! You say the unsafe conditions in our factory led to you getting your hands cut off? Sue us, see if you get anywhere with your "frivolous lawsuit" in the justice system we have rigged up for ourselves.

    Parasitic banks would run wild with speculation, buying and selling without constraint, inventing all manner of financial "instruments" with which to use to dissect customers and relieve them of their money, their security, their future.

    Privatization of anything and everything would run rampant in the conservative "free market" fantasy.

    Let's just imagine what that would directly lead to:

    The goal of the professional conservative's "free market" is to assume all of the powers of government, and then take it to the limit, including total control and exploitation of the people.

    Your electricity, gas, water would not come from public utilities, but from predatory corporations, which can raise the rates, or cut you off, whenever they want. Toll roads and bridges would proliferate. Think about how corporations and the very rich could put the squeeze on the average citizen with such total and unchecked power.

    Judges and jails would be privatized, with a strong profit incentive to lock as many people away for as long as possible. Wars would be completely privatized, with a strong profit incentive to go to battle, and to use up the weapons and equipment so to create the need for more, more, more.

    Education would be privatized, with only the wealthy able to afford a decent education, everyone else shunted into "stupidity schools," indoctrinated and taught only enough to become a good worker-bee, or soldier-fodder, for the state and its overlord corporations.

    Without government subsidies, price controls and regulations, food production would become wholly predatory. A few corporations without major competition due to proprietary trademarks on genetically modified foodstuffs would dominate. Prices would skyrocket. Food quality and safety would plummet for most of us. Only the rich would be able to afford clean, healthy food. The rest of us would take our chances with every bite or drink, if we could afford to buy anything. Scavenging and begging would become a way of life for millions.

    Likewise, health care would only be affordable for the very wealthy. With no government assistance, no government health programs, illness and disease would explode into pandemics. The wealthy would simply cut themselves off from the general population, as plague raged across the land.

    As you can see, very quickly this model collapses in on itself. Unregulated capitalism eventually eats itself alive. But before that happens, billions, trillions of dollars are to be made by the greatest pirates the world has ever known: corporate pirates!

    This is the "free market," recipe for utter disaster if it could ever come to fruition. A "free market" would quickly tear the goose that laid the golden eggs to pieces

    Little by little, over the past 30 years, CorpCons have managed to slip us ever further in the direction of their slimy wet dream. Since Reagan, the mantra that "government is not the solution; it is the problem," has become an accepted axiom. According to this philosophy, the answer to this "problem" of government is the "free market." This axiom has been shrilly pounded, ad nauseum, by conservatives for decades, and millions upon millions of people believe it. As the Nazi propaganda minister, Joseph Goebbels, correctly realized, "people will believe anything if it is repeated often enough."

    This has been the tactic by the very richest to gain support for their nefarious intentions to cripple the one and only force that can control them: a government of We the People.

    Indeed, the proof is in the pudding. Since Reagan, this coddling of the rich, this release of the "free market" kraken has had 30 years to produce the results that CorpCons perpetually promise: great wealth that would "trickle down" to everyone, jobs galore, an ever-improving quality of life for all. That has not happened. For three decades, taxes have been slashed for the richest Americans. Deregulation has swept across government, dramatically loosening safeguards in sector after sector. Competent government regulators have been replaced, in both Republican and Democratic administrations, by capitalist wolves supposedly protecting the henhouse. So the "free market" ethos has been applied to an extent that would have stunned and dismayed those who crafted the New Deal pathway out of the Great Depression.

    And this same formula has been applied not just in America, but around the world, as other countries followed our lead in dismantling many of the regulations, protections and higher taxes on the wealthy that existed prior to the "Reagan Revolution."

    What has actually happened is the reverse of what conservative "free marketers" promised. Real wages and earning power of average American families have stalled or gone backwards. Prices for most things have zoomed upwards to the point where decent housing, good health care and higher education are beyond the means of upwards of half of the country. For the first time in American history, vast portions of the American people face the prospect of a lower quality of life for their children. This is the result of the low, low taxes and the deregulation of the "free market" that has swept this nation. Imagine how much worse it would be for most of us - and how much more glorious for the rich - if the market were even "freer."

    How much further do we have to go down this awful road of coddling the rich and corporations before the people stand up and fight for themselves? Instead of a "free market," workers, consumers, citizens should be demanding a "fair market." A fair market takes care of its workers, consumers and communities FIRST, and the profit of any corporation comes second.

    Only a "fair market," can sustain. A "free market" will eventually consume itself. And that is what we see happening in America as jobs are sent overseas, rich capitalists hide their wealth overseas, manufacturing collapses, the tax base shrinks, infrastructure crumbles, crime soars. The community is systematically manipulated, exploited, and then destroyed by predatory capitalism.

    Unrestrained capitalism, what CorpCons call the "free market" is the greatest threat to America.

    Thomas Jefferson hit the nail on the head when he stated that banks were more dangerous than armies, and "I hope we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our moneyed corporations which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength and bid defiance to the laws our country."

    The "moneyed corporations" are doing more than just challenging our government to a trial of strength, more than bidding defiance to the laws of our country, they are grabbing for control, and consolidating their hold. The end-game of this trend is Fascism: where corporate power completely controls the government, and can then demand of the people what they will. When that happens We the People will be crushed. The labor movement, small businesses, local communities, freedom itself will be expunged.

    You think it can't happen? Well then continue to buy into the conservative myth of the "Free Market" and watch the kraken rise.

    For more thoughts on the Free Market, Click Here.



8. THE MEDIA IS CONTROLLED BY LIBERALS.
    A Gallup survey in 2011 showed that a majority of Americans think the media is biased: with 47% saying it is too liberal, while 13% say it is too conservative. Of these respondents, 78% of conservatives said that the media is too liberal; 53% of liberals say it is too conservative. According to Gallup, ever since 2002 more people have believed the media shows a liberal bias. Who is right?

    Well, of course, it depends on what "media" one is referring to. The "media" is certainly not a monolithic institution. The overall media is factured and fragmented, with no true cohesion to speak of. Some media outlets are most definitely skewed one way or the other; others, including the so-called "mainstream media," try their hardest to be completely impartial - sometimes going to ridiculous excess when they give actual facts and non-fact based opinion or belief equal weight in a misguided attempt to present "both sides of the story."

    This practice is known intellectually as "false equivalency." It goes something like this. Announcer: "We're here with a scientist who claims that the reason the sun always rises in the East is because the Earth rotates counter-clockwise - as seen from above the North Pole. But some disagree, and there is a state of controversy. We have here a Reverend Jones who claims it is merely God's decision each day which direction the Earth or sun will rotate, thus there is no absolute reason why the sun must always rise in the East. Clearly all the facts are not in on this matter."

    As well, the media doesn't ever seem to have any actual facts of its own to share. So the fact that social conservatives have been wrong-headed on just about every social issue in American history is never brought up. Nor does the media ever critique corporate conservative economic policy, which, in fact, has never worked in human history, but does have hundreds of economy crashes to its credit. You would think that a true liberal media would be keen to point these salient facts out... again and again, if necessary.

    This sorry state of journalistic credibility has grown in prevalence right along with the wing-nut craziness of the political right.

    Taken as a whole, American "mainstream media" is actually a CONSERVATIVE juggernaut! Yet, there are two points to consider here.

    1) The media is certainly NOT controlled by liberals as conservatives love to complain. Once again, the truth is precisely the opposite of conservative demagoguery: The "mainstream media" is actually thoroughly and innately dominated by gigantic, very conservative corporations. Eighty percent (by viewer/readership) is controlled by just six corporations. Let's call it what is is: mainstream/mass media = corporate media. In general, corporations are conservative entities, with a definite bias in support of the conservative stance of low taxes and deregulation. Moreover, almost all media is supported by advertisers, which are most often conservative corporations themselves, likewise having a self-serving bias toward conservative tax and regulation policies. So the relationship between media and advertising sponsor becomes a closed system, conservative-affirming feedback loop. Moreover, both media company and advertising corporations do not want to alienate the significant (and most loyal) share of their viewers/readers/consumers who are socially or politically conservative. Now another feedback loop affirming conservative values is created, and so the corporate media has a triple impetus to skew conservative: their own financial interests, their advertisers' financial interests, and the sensitivities of the conservative (and most loyal) share of their audience. A trend in corporate media is to project that a larger share of their audience leans conservative than liberal, which may not always be entirely true (See Myth No. 2) but is reinforced by the more vociferous feedback they receive from conservative audience members (people complain more when they are angry, and conservatives are generally angrier than liberals). So, as a rule, corporate media is more afraid of offending its conservative audience than its liberal viewers/listeners/readers.

    Revealing examples of this trend are the mainstream media's propensity to practice "false equivalency," i.e. to give equal weight to both sides of a politically hot topic, even when one side is bereft of factual evidence and/or espoused only by a noisy minority. Because they are so often at odds with science and with actual universal values, this noisy but factually bereft side is most likely to be of the conservative persuasion. In presenting both viewpoints in the manner of, "Senator A says this", and "Senator B says that," the media outlet can't be accused of partisanship. Alas, they also cannot be credited with furthering the quest for the real truth or crucial education of the populace, either.

    But perhaps the greatest evidence for the mainstream media leaning conservative is the manner in which it steadfastly refuses to fully recall and articulate the pattern of utter failure of conservative ideas and policies historically, most particularly economic policy, but also social ideology. The mainstream media mindlessly ignores this legacy and litany of disastrous positions, fostering contemporary debates between "right and "left" (or today's more common "far-right" and "center") as if so many of these issues had not played out over very long periods of time, with an historical record and empirical data to factor into an objective discourse. In this way, the mainstream media is an accomplice in lulling the people to forget what a very bad record conservativism actually trails behind it.

    To this basic, inherent conservative lean of media corporations, stir in the concerted, coordinated and extremely well-funded coalition of right-wing capitalists who over the past 50 years have increasingly expanded their control of the corporate media. This effort was enabled by deregulation of the media industry by Reagan and Poppy Bush, and even Clinton. Laws that once restricted a single person or corporation from owning many different newspapers, television and radio stations were abolished, opening the way for gigantic corporate interests to take firm, monolithic control. Now, the media industry is a notoriously risky financial bet, which has become even more so with the increased competition of the marketplace (which now includes such things as cable and satalite channels, as well as the internet). The entire newspaper industry is barely hanging on in the face of this onslaught of competition. However, certain individuals and their corporations were keen to jump into the deregulated fray with something more than profit in mind: they wanted to propagandize their self-serving political message. If you could manage profit and propaganda at the same time, all the better! And with deregulation, the way was clear for them to have just that. Almost all of the individuals with this goal have been conservative, including Rupert Murdoch, the Koch Brothers, Philip Anschutz and others. There are none - zippo - nada - liberal media moguls remotely in the same ballpark as these conservative titans of conservative disinformation.

    Truth has a Liberal Bias 2) However, there is another aspect in play here that is the source of so much conservative angst regarding the media. The horrible fact of the matter for conservatives is that truth itself seems to have a decidedly liberal bias. Of course, "truth" doesn't know liberal from conservative, but it turns out that liberals base their ideology on science, empirical evidence, actual facts (truth), while conservatives base their ideology on faith, dogma, mythology. Therefore media outlets that even remotely attempt to report actual facts end up promoting a liberal worldview. The truth-oriented dictionary and thesaurus and encyclopedia and history books and art and science do precisely the same. So it's not actually "liberal bias" of the media but truth that drives conservatives crazy.

    There is a corollary: if truth has a "liberal bias," then seekers of the truth are going to have a "liberal bias." We find this to be absolutely true. The most educated, wordly and aware people are usually liberal. A strong majority of scientists, professors, teachers, artists, writers AND journalists describe themselves as liberally-oriented. A 1997 study by the American Society of Newspaper Editors indicated that 61% of reporters stated they shared the beliefs of the Democratic Party. Some 24% claimed to be independent. Only 15% said their beliefs were best represented by the Republican Party. There's your "liberal bias" right there: the people who are out there in the trenches gathering information about the real world don't buy into the worldview the conservatives are selling.

    Of course, just because you are a "liberal" reporter doesn't mean your reporting is "liberal." In fact, if the corporation you work for skews conservative, overtly or covertly, then as an employee (if you want to keep your job) you make sure you present whatever "bias" the corporate master dictates. You'll present the "truth" only so far as you can... while sometimes bending over backwards (and gritting your teeth) to blend in some "balance," which is to say the conservative viewpoint, or "untruth." One has to wonder how many of Fox News' employees are closet liberals.

    Oftentimes, however, even a smidgeon of truth is too much for conservatives. Conservatives love to be mad at people, things, ideas, whatever... so when huge chunks of their cherished worldview are not upheld by the media - whether news media or entertainment media - they lash out at fictitious monsters, the "liberal media," the "Hollywood elite," etc. Demonizing some nebulous "other" - including liberals - provides them with a ready excuse to continue believing in fairy tales. And there's no more prominent, more glamorous and more inviting target for their ire than the media.

    And so conservatives turn away from the truth and toward whatever media outlets offer ressurance of their mythology.

    Roger Ailes and Fox News News Corp is the ideological spear-point of right-wing propaganda. It is owned by uber-conservative Rupert Murdoch, and includes Fox News, where former Republican spinmeister Roger Ailes controls the show. The conservative Death Star that is News Corp also wields a battalion of other right-wing propaganda spewing local television stations, a squadron of other cable channels, newspapers (including the Wall Street Journal), magazines (including Barron's), book publishers (including Harper-Collins) and movie and television studios (20th Century Fox). Fox News betrays the malevolent willingness to propagandize of Murdoch and News Corp with the slogans, "Fair and Balanced" and "We Report, You Decide," along with the Bill O'Reilly show's self-description as a "no-spin zone." In the history of American broadcast media there has never been a less fair and balanced or more spinning "news" channel than Fox News. Fox News slathers on the slant to brainwash its listeners, and millions of American viewers tune in. Households and businesses all over the nation leave Fox News playing exclusively. Multiple surveys concur that these viewers are the most ill-informed of all regular television news viewers in the nation. It seems you can be informed (by the truth) or have your conservative worldview affirmed... but not both.


    Fox News distortion
    FAIR & BALANCED? or UTTER DISINFORMATION?

    Fox News Lies The graphic above is Fox News' "fair and balanced" explanation of what will happen if the Bush tax cuts expire for the wealthy. As anyone can clearly see, the taxes on the "job creators" will drastically inflate if this terrible thing happens. Why, their taxes will explode all the way from 35 percent to 39 percent! Only liberals could think up a tax scheme this diabolical and punitive toward our beloved job creators.

    But wait! Where is the rest of the chart? Why is Fox only giving us the upper 1/10th of the picture? Well, sorry to break this to you, but Fox News is wholly partisan, and deeply engaged in brainwashing its viewers. The chart at right is the full and real story.

    Considering that our staggering national debt is in large part due to the Bush tax cuts on the very wealthy, and considering that most, if not all, wealthy people pay closer to 15% in taxes, rather than the official 35% rate, then a return to the very modest 39% rate for the wealthiest Americans is quite the most reasonable - and patriotic - course of action.

    But Fox disagrees because Fox News, and all conservative media, are all about coddling the rich and corporations, and they are determined to confuse and befuddle you so that you won't figure it out. This telling graphic is proof positive of Fox News malicious intent to distort the truth. If you don't believe your own eyes and mind, then, sorry, we just can't help you.

    THE 2012 ELECTION: A ROMNEY LANDSLIDE!
    The 2012 elections were another crystal clear illustration of why Fox News might more accurately be named Faux News. Leading up to the election, most polls showed Mitt Romney in a virtual tie for the popular vote, but Barack Obama consistently leading in the vastly more important battleground states which would decide the electoral college vote and thus the presidency. The New York Times poll guru Nate Silver, using weighted statistical algorhythms (in other words, math) to compile the predictions of all of the trustworthy polls, had Obama with a 70 percent chance of winning reelection through much of the summer and fall, and that margin jumped to 90 percent in the days before the election. Fox News anchors and pundits (as well as Rush Limbaugh) fell all over themselves to debunk the polls, most particularly Silver, whom they attacked personally (Silver is openly gay). The conservative media didn't like the message, so they attacked the messenger. Meanwhile, the conservative media was predicting a Romney victory... most of them a landslide for Romney.

    Of course the conservatives had their own poll "guru," the twats at UnskewedPolls.com, who relied not on actual math and statistics, but "gut feeling." These geniuses were among those predicting a Romney landslide, with 359 electoral votes for the conservatives. Fox News' prime election forecaster and former political consultant As late as the night of the election, Fox News viewers and Rush Limbaugh listeners were confident of a Romney win... while viewers and listeners of more mainstream and/or liberal news sources were well aware of the truth: the popular vote might be close, but Obama was a heavy favorite to win the election. Again, conservative media consumers, certainy including Fox News viewers, were the least informed in the nation!

    Fox News equals Faux News

    We could leave the last word about Fox News to one of its former bombastic voices, Glenn Beck. Beck now laments that on his Fox show "I think I played a role, unfortunately, in helping tear the country apart." Perhaps Glenn still doesn't understand that that is the whole point of Fox News.

    Aside from Fox News, the other major news channels: ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN are owned by those aforementioned conservative corporations. MSNBC? The pipsqueak liberal "equivalent" of Fox News is owned and controlled by conservative monster Comcast.

    The Liberal Media Myth

    The largest radio station owner in the country is Clear Channel, a decidedly conservative operation, owned in part by Bain Capital (yes, that Bain Capital, Mitt Romney's mosh pit) which coddles Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity. Clear Channel owns 866 radio stations and Premiere Radio Network, all overwhelmingly conservative-oriented, something that would have been impossible before the Reagan revolution deregulated telecommunications, opening the door for conservative corporate shenanigans. Conservative CBS Corp owns another 130 stations.

    As far as talk radio goes, a recent survey discovered that 91 percent of politically-oriented programming is conservative, 9% liberal. Many American markets receive no liberal oriented talk radio at all. This also would have been illegal before Reagan's dismantling of the "Fairness Doctrine," which required honest, equitable and balanced presentations of public importance. The Air America experiment to see if liberal talk radio could compete in the marketplace failed, in no small part because corporations (being innately conservative, remember) refused to support it by advertising.

    Like radio, American newspapers are decidedly conservative. As with the radio landscape, many markets have little or no liberal voice within their papers at all, while the "liberal" papers always feature a "balance" of conservative (often "severely" conservative as Mitt Romney would put it) vs. moderate viewpoints.

    It's all so easy these days. B.R. (Before Reagan) there were over 50 major companies providing news content through television, radio, newspapers and magazines. As a result of deregulation of the media industry, something conservatives desperately wanted, today only five corporations control over 80 percent of media sales in the United States. Now we can see why conservatives desperately wanted deregulation of the media industry, so they could buy up and control the majority of "voices" available, and thereafter work to curtail alternative voices and ideas.

    Meanwhile, the so-called "balance" generally offered by the "mainstream" media usually runs from far right wackadoodle Republican all the way across the spectrum to a centrist, corporate Democrat. True left-leaning, non-corporatist liberals need not apply. And, as the chart below depicts, the viewpoint of the white, male, conservatives rules supreme.

    The liberal media myth

    There are a few truly liberal media outlets. You can find some of them on our Links Page. But many of the large corporate media outlets singled out as "liberal" wolves by conservatives are actually timid sheep. The New York Times and Washington Post head up this list, supposed defenders of the public's right to know, that utterly capitulated to George W. Bush's faux-patriotic rampage to war(s). The Times' Judith Miller beat the drum for Bush as loudly as anyone, and is now - surprise - a Fox News pundit. Newspapers and broadcast stations across the country rushed to jump on the Iraq War bandwagon. With 20/20 hindsight the collapse of the Fourth Estate during most of the Bush reign of terror abroad and trampling of American rights at home is deeply embarrassing and troubling. The pips and peeps of the small smattering of tiny, true liberal outlets were the only lifeline to trustable truth that tens of millions of blue-hearted Americans had through the dour and sour Bush-Cheney near-decade, one that began with a stolen election and ended on the precipice of depression. Such "alternative," actual truth-providing media outlets were mocked and derided as traitors throughout the entire Bush-Cheney reign of terror, while all through the long, dark night the "liberal" mass media was just a step behind Fox News cheerleading for un-Americanism.

    In 2004, with the war(s) going badly and the economy misfiring, the mainstream media was nevertheless loathe to criticize too sharply the sitting "war president," and largely let slide the slanderous barrage the Republican slime machine dumped on John Kerry. Bush and his "boy genius" Karl Rove barely won another election, this time by possibly rigging the electronic voting machines in Ohio. The mainstream media looked the other way, just as it when the Bushies stole the presidency the first time around. As we enter another presidential campaign the Republicans are up to more shenanigans, trying to disenfranchise as many likely Democratic voters as they can in state after state. The "liberal" corporate media is fast asleep on this front. In stark contrast, if Obama's dog Bo is spotted pooping, the entire coordinated conservative media goes into high alert, smelling a scandal and conspiracy.

    The corporate media never fails to hold a finger to the wind to sense the mood of the market. And it caters its delivery accordingly. That the public in 2008 had wearied of the Republicans (and John McCain was a dud of a candidate) featured prominently in the media's seeming fascination with Barack Obama. Obama's eloquence and novelty stirred real, passionate support, and the media hopped on a new bandwagon, but saved tons of airspace and column inches for the equally celebrity-like Sarah Palin, daring not to too sharply disparage her glaringly unpreparedness. Aside from comedians, the harshest media critics of Sarah were conservative columnists and pundits!

    Liberals can fully agree with conservatives about the "lamestream media," but for completely opposite reasons. Conservatives object that what IS being reported is too liberal, but don't have any real facts to back that up. Generally what they don't like turns out to be just plain truth that grates against their worldview, and their conspiracy theories run into the hard wall of conservative corporate domination of the media. Liberals object to what is NOT being reported, and have sheaves of evidence of the corporate media bias toward, fear of and kowtowing to their conservative audience. When a news "debate" features two conservatives, plus a conservative-leaning host, against a centrist Democrat (no real liberal included), this is not "fair and balanced," whether it's on Fox or any other channel. When newspapers run only conservative and centrist editorials, this is not fair and balanced. When conservative voices outnumber liberals on the radio 90 to 1, this is an avalanche of inequality, in favor of conservativism.

    Some of the largest coroporate media recognize that avoiding politics as much as possible is the safest bet. For these - and the major television "news" networks (ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN) are included - the main concern is not real news and information at all, but serving as the lead shills and sluts of consumer culture, keeping us craving all manner of stupid things, while at the same time dazzled and mesmerized by... beautiful, fluffy, ego-boosting, vacuous, empty nothingness, cheap programming that reaps a profit... entertainment, sports, video games, "reality TV"... which divert our attention from real reality, including each other. This is the age-old professional conservative ploy of keeping the masses satiated, distracted, divided, dazed and confused while concurrently picking their pockets.

    A truly liberal media would provide mostly relevant, meaningful, enlightening, elevating, and UNITING content, while instructing - as have all the great teachers of history - that the best things in life are free, and the less you need to be happy, the happier you will be. Why, it would be a lot like PBS.!

    By that same token, the more liberal someone is the less reliable consumer they are for the media, at least the corporate media. Liberals are far more individualistic and discriminating in their worldview, and therefore much less susceptible to the attraction and addiction of the "mass" media. This is why Fox News targeted directly at conservatives can be a phenomenal success, while there has never been even the remotest liberal counterpart. This is precisely why talk radio is overwhelmingly dominated by conservatives, and another key reason the liberal-oriented Air America fell flat. This is why so many channels and tabloids grab a sensational story of a beautiful, young white girl being abducted or murdered and flog it to death for weeks or months. Non-discriminating conservative audiences eat that stuff up. So, of course, corporate media is going to lean in the direction of their most loyal, mesmerized conservative viewers, not flaky liberals who are off doing yoga or organic gardening or something.

    And so we see that from every angle the "liberal media" is a complete myth. Conservatives have, by far, the loudest megaphone in the media; centrists would come next, while the actual liberal voice is a soft whisper amid the shrill cacophony of the whole. The "lamestream media" is certainly real enough, but it is conservative through and through in its bias, its omissions, its predatory capitalism, its preference of audience, its complicity in the dumbing-down of America and the egging-on of rampant consumerism, and in its dereliction of duty to defend truth and virtue. Once in a while a bit of truth gets through, and that's when conservatives howl. They want the media to retort, contort and distort as much as needed to affirm their worldview. In general the lamestream media delivers exactly that, with Fox News leading the charge. And PBS is an endangered species.

    Fox News is a Cult




    CAMPAIGN 2012: THREE WORDS THAT PROVE THE MEDIA IS NOT LIBERALLY BIASED

    If you want more proof positive that the media is certainly not biased toward the liberal ideology, consider that in the 2012 campaign season there are three words that seem to be off the table for so-called "mainstream" broadcasters. Those words are "Global Warming" and "Mormonism."

    For the past 10 years extreme weather events have wrought havoc around the world, from north to south, from sea to shining sea. Tornado swarms in February rampaging through the Midwest and even into New England. More powerful hurricanes, including those threatening Boston. Freakish ice storms. Deadly heat waves. Record rains and floods. Record droughts. Record wildfires. Melting glaciers and ice caps. These extreme weather events lead the news on many an evening, yet you will almost NEVER hear any of the mainstream talking-heads whisper the words, "Global Warming." They'll report all about what is happening, and where it's happening, but won't touch the question of why!

    Now "Journalism 101" requires inquiry into the who, what, where and why of a story. Why no why in the reporting on these extreme weather events that keep on coming at us?

    It is certainly not because there are no answers to why these events are occuring at alarmingly more frequent and more terrible rates. Almost all credible climatologists now agree that Global Warming is NOW a serious threat... that the rate and severity of these events are part of this warming trend... and that the primary cause is the tremendous increase the amount of greenhouse gasses (principally carbon dioxide) released by humans into the atmosphere for the past 230 years (since the Industrial Revolution).

    These extreme weather events actually add up to THE MOST IMPORTANT NEWS STORY OF THE MILENNIA! But the mainstream media continues to act as if there is no connection whatseover between any particular ice storm or heat wave or raging wildfire or tornado swarm or monster hurricane or sweeping drought or melting glacier or ice shelf the size of a state breaking off of Antarctica and the looming disaster of Global Warming.

    They refuse to ask the "why" question. Why won't they ask why? Because they are terrified of offending their conservative viewers/readers/listeners.

    And so, on the all-important subject of Global Warming - which should not be a liberal or conservative issue (though it is most certainly an issue that the fossil fuel and factory farm industries wish to debunk and minimize... because they are the principal sources of the greenhouse gasses) - the mainstream media is thoroughly and unconscionably biased toward corporate conservative ideology.


    Meanwhile, the 2012 election is upon us and for the first time in American history a person is the nominee of a major political party who not only professes to be a Mormon, but is actually a bishop in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, has given tens of millions of dollars to the church, and plainly states that his religion informs who he is and every decision he makes. This would seem to be very big news, and the subject of a great deal of scrutiny. But no, the mainstream media seems to have determined not to touch the subject.

    Again, why? In the 2008 election, conservatives made the biggest ruckus they could muster about Barack Obama's religion and his pastor (Jeremiah Wright). Accusations flew, lacking the slightest shred of evidence, that Obama belonged to a church that was un-American. Other conservatives wildly claimed that Obama was not really even Christian but was a secret Muslim (despite the fact that Reverend Wright, a United Church of Christ minister had officiated Obama's wedding and baptised both of his children). The mainstream media dutifully covered the "controversy," keeping the story alive and hot for weeks.

    Yet this time around, religion, for the conservative candidate, at least, seems off the table. The word "Mormonism" shall not be spoken or printed, the mainstream media seems to have agreed.

    Now it is impossible to imagine that if a liberal candidate for President was Mormon, evangelical Christians would not be writhing in angst and horror at the prospect of such a cultish, wacked-out, un-Christian, un-American believer in multiple gods and "latter day saints," coming within 100 miles of the Presidency. Why, they would probably inform us (rightly) that even a Muslim has more, MUCH MORE, in common with real Christians than do Mormons! The alarm would ring from every conservative bastion. The nation is at peril! The election of a Mormon President would legitimize this cultish religion in ways that nothing else could, and would go far toward destroying America as a so-called "Christian nation." The election of a Mormon President would be the end of America as we know it!

    Such would be the conservative assault on a liberal Mormon Presidential candidate. And surely the mainstream media would relish following the "controversy."

    But apparently conservatives will easily surrender their most dearly held religious and nationalistic beliefs to defeat the liberal black guy. Now THAT, in itself, is a remarkably newsworthy story. But you won't find it anywhere in the mainstream media. Nor will you find any summary of Mormon beliefs... which range from the hardly likely to bad science fiction.

    As far as the mainstream media is concerned, apparently, Mr. Romney's belief in millions of gods on millions of planets, where he, himself, will someday rule as a god in the afterlife, along with his multiple wives, and the fact that this core religious belief guides his everyday decisions, is not even a subject for the slightest mention before he takes over as President of the United States of America.

    Once again, the reason for the stand-down by the mainstream media is clear: they are afraid of losing their conservative audience. And so, again, the mainstream media kowtows toward conservative ideology, and in the process abdicates its sacred duty to serve as the all-important "Fourth Estate" of the American governmental process, educating and protecting the citizens of this country with information that is biased toward facts and truth, regardless of which political party this may favor.

    The failture of the mainstream media to adequately explore, address and educate the American public about the beliefs and eccentricities of Mormonism prior to a true believer in this religion becoming President of the United States is surely dereliction of duty, and may haunt America for generations to come.

    But the failure of the mainstream media to seriously broach the subject of Global Warming may be the greatest failure of the "news" industry in history. This lapse of judgment and honor may facilitate and hasten the devastation of not just American but world culture if the trend toward ever-increasing fossil fuel emissions - that conservatives still cheer on - is not reversed quickly and decisively before it is truly too late.

    Meanwhile, these three words that shall not be uttered stand as stark testimony of the mainstream media's shying away from real reportage of facts and truth, and toward conservative disinformation.

    What Mormons Believe

    And finally... a word about the "War on Christianity"





9. THE GOVERNMENT IS NOT THE SOLUTION; IT'S THE PROBLEM
    Governments make mistakes. Government is not always the proper solution, of course, and hardly ever the entire solution, and certainly does manage to botch things up on occasion (especially when Republicans are in charge: this has been known throughout history as the Conservative Self-fulfilling Prophecy). However, the government is very definitely the only entity large and powerful enough to solve many issues, and to stand up to, and stop, abuses of democracy and other American ideals by those who would attempt to dominate, subjugate or exploit the interests of We the People. In this sense, the government, especially the federal government, is, very definitely, the ultimate solution.

    Carping about the government has a very long tradition, probably dating back to the very first governments in ancient Mesopotamia. "Damn that Sargon!" likely went a complaint from someone complaining about potholes four thousand years ago.

    Government is the Problem, a conservative self-fulfilling prophesy Before the modern democratic state, someone who was wary of the government would typically be someone disenfranchised: the poor or otherwise downtrodden. The rich and powerful generally loved the government; they were the government! For the disenfranchised it was wise to keep your grumblings about the government rather quiet and subdued, especially back in the day when state and church were conjoined. Complainers could not only be thrown into the dungeon or put to death, they could be condemned to hell for eternity.

    This all changed with democracy, first in America, then in France and from there all around the world. Suddenly the age-old tradition of the government being a plaything of a tiny group of rich and powerful was completely flipped. A democratic government was (theoretically) controlled by the People!

    You can see how this did not set well with government's former owners. They knew they couldn't stand for this development, and so they came up with two strategies. First and foremost, they try to buy it back. Politicians, judges, officials of all stripes are generally quite amenable to this arrangement, selling off to the highest bidder their time, attention and loyalty. So this strategy can pay immediate and significant dividends.

    But it's not enough. Try as they might, the rich and powerful can never seem to fully complete their retaking of the government and conquest of the pesky People. And so a second and complimentary strategy is needed. This involves dividing and conquering. If they can persuade a bare majority of voters to go along with them, they can tighten their grip on the reins of power.

    There are many ways to divide. Race and religion are two of the all-time classics; and these are certainly put to good use by the oligarchs in their effort to divide the People. Concurrent with the rise of democracy, however, has come a new tactic: purposively promoting distrust of the government so as to lessen its legitimacy, as well as its citizens' sense of affection for, investment in and ownership of the government. A disenchanted and apathetic citizenry that doesn't think government works, and doesn't think their vote counts, will tune out and not exercise their power of control of the government, thus opening a much wider opportunity for the oligarchs to grab control with only a small percentage of voters helping them do it.

    Conservative Governance, a vicious circle of deceit and ineptness.
    Conservative Governance, a vicious circle of deceit and ineptness.

    This is truly a diabolical tactic, for it intentionally runs the risk of utter calamity for the country. The wisest leaders know that citizens loving and believing in their government is crucial to the strength and well-being of a nation. Professional conservatives are willing to abuse this ancient axiom to gain political and economic control. They rationalize that it is they who will save the nation. Of course, they have no interest whatsoever in a nation for We the People, but rather one of, by and for the economic elite, just like in the good old days before there were democracies.

    With the faith of the People in their government wrecked, the oligarchs can do whatever they wish. They can slash taxes for themselves. They can deregulate their giant, predatory businesses. They can write laws and appoint judges who will favor them. They can loot the treasury. They can go blustering around the world, subjugating and exploiting. They can propagate their fundamental philosophy: "Greed is Good." They become what they crave: "Masters of the Universe."

    The ruin of the nation is not far away when such a philosophy, bereft as it is of virtue, gains the upper hand. The less the People believe in their government, the weaker their will, the better the oligarchy likes it.

    Concurrently, the people who will support the oligarchs in their take-over of the government are those who share some of the anger and bitterness of governmental control over their "freedoms." Again, just as with the oligarchs, it is their "traditional values" that are being threatened by the government, their "freedom" to perpetuate ancient hierarchies, institutions and customs, which include their "freedom" to dominate, subjugate and exploit others. This is why social conservatives so readily buy into the "government is the problem," ideology. They see a government spreading and enabling equality, liberty, justice for all, and pursuit of happiness... or, in other words, a government trying to live up to its own ideals... they see precepts of science and modernity and multiculturalism being applied to the art of governance... and they don't like it one bit. Why? Because all of this chips away at the advantages and privileges they and their clan (i.e. their race, religion, sex, socio-economic status) have enjoyed for generations. The actual, perceived or potential loss of this preferred status infuriates them. Thus they become ripe henchmen for the oligarchs' siren call of "government... bad!" Many end up joining the zombie army of the CorpCons, aiding and abetting the theft of government from We the People.

    Of course, the concept that "the government is the problem" is not just a myth; it's an utter lie.

    Even the most cursory glance at American history reveals this idea to be nothing more than political devilry. We the People of the United States, organized in our shared objectives in the form of the federal government, have soared to achievements that have stunned the world since the inception of the nation. From the Continental Army to Seal Team Six, the American military has done a heroic job of keeping America safe. From Lewis and Clark to Neill Armstrong, American explorers have set the bar for courage, fortitude and character in opening up new worlds of wonder. Federally-funded American scholars, scientists and researchers have blazed the pathway in every facet of modern science. America's national parks are the envy of the world. Our dams and bridges and highway system (now fallen into disrepair due to "supply-side" neglect) were once the crowning achievement of human engineering. Much the same could be said for our public educational system and universities. The American post office showed the world how to create a modern mail system. When calamity strikes anywhere around the world, victims look to the United States government to rush in to help. That holds true for domestic natural disasters when some of those crying the loudest for assistance are those who formerly bad-mouthed the government.

    Oh yes, and that internet thingy you are using right now? Invented by the U.S. government.

    Most everyone (except libertarians) can agree that these examples show the American government at its finest. Yet even more important than these instances of proficiency are those times when only the federal government stands between some component of American culture and the corruption of our true ideals. In these cases, not everyone likes what the government is mandated to do, particularly those who are asked... or forced... to back down.

    Equality. Liberty. Justice for All. Pursuit of Happiness. That's what it's all about. There are those out there who would love to thwart these ideals for other Americans. Only the federal government stands in the way.

    Chauvinists didn't like the 19th Amendment. Racists didn't like the outcome of the Civil War or civil rights legislation. Polluters don't like environmental protections. Religious zealots don't like being told they can't bully everyone around any longer. Homophobes can't stand the thought of granting full citizenship to LGBTQ individuals. Banks don't like being told they can't run the economy like a casino. Insurance companies don't like being told they can't deny or cancel their customers at will. Some people still grouse because there are laws requiring them to use their seat belts and wear a motorcycle helmet.

    It's always something. There's no limit to the carping and griping that goes on in America about the government. Sometimes the griping is warranted, as during the Bush administration's entirely inept preparation for and subsequent management of the War in Afghanistan, the Iraq War, Hurricane Katrina, the housing bubble, the bank bailouts, well, actually everything Bush tried to do).

    Still, it's a long way from recognizing that a particular governing entity (i.e. the Republicans) are very bad at governing, and the maxim that "government is the problem."

    Finally, consider this. If the government is the problem, how come conservatives never question leaving the No. 1 most important job in the world up to the government? That would be protecting the country. Instead, conservatives loudly proclaim their enduring love for all things military. The bigger the better. No opportunity for war ever wasted. They never argue that the military should be privatized. Well, at least not completely. They did dally with that very concept during the Iraq War when America was paying $1000 per day private mercenaries to guard camps full of $100 per day soldiers. With their flag pins shining on their lapels proving how patriotic they are, conservatives are 100 percent supportive of the idea of the government-run American military and supremely confident in its ability to meet the toughest and most dangerous situations. But all lesser challenges quickly swamp our poor, inefficient, clumsy government. Such a mindset is what is known as "cognitive dissonance."

    American history shows that the federal government actually works pretty well, and with less drama and trauma, under liberal control. Under conservative rule? Well, not so much. Time and again through American history, conservatives have made a mess of things, which liberals then had to come in and clean up. Conservatives pout and hide for a while, but soon enough, they've "conned" enough people into believing, again, that government is the problem, and that they should be returned to power. Whereupon they get right back to causing another mess. For recent examples, we present Exhibit A: George W. Bush, and Exhibit B: Donald Trump.

    So that old, conservative saw about the government not being the solution, it's the problem... is not inherently true, but does become a self-fulfilling prophecy when conservatives take charge.



10. WE'RE NO. 1! USA! USA! USA!
    Sure we are... in bullying the world around. We spend more on warmongering than the rest of the world combined, and we crush the world in arms sales. Seventy-eight percent of arms sales are from the good old USA (in second place is Russia with 5.6%). Not surprisingly, we're the perennial and virtually unchallenged No. 1 in gun violence. And, not entirely coincidently, we lead the world in the number of people we throw in jail (though tens of thousands are incarcerated for non-violent petty drug offenses). We're No. 1 in highest health care costs, the most number of uninsured people (prior to Obamacare), heart attacks, and the highest anti-depressant usage. We're No. 1 in total crime, number of rapes, divorce rate, teen births, plastic surgery, CO2 emissions, and wealth disparity. Very importantly, we have more McDonald's restaurants than any other country... which helps keep us No. 1 in obesity rates. We're at the tippy-top, by far, nobody even close, in overpaying our corporate CEOs. And we still dominate the Summer Olympics. Whoo-hoo, we're No. 1!

    USA, No. 1 in War But not where it counts... in quality of life. Despite what many Americans believe, the good old USA is an also-ran when it comes to the most virtuous and livable countries. Check it out:

    In overall quality of life, we're No. 31. Hey, wave those pom-poms! We're like the Baskin-Robbins of nations! Totally chillin!

    In overall economic competitiveness we're No. 7, behind six European nations. Imagine that, the champion of capitalism bowing down to those bastions of socialism when it comes to economic strength!

    Infrastructure? No 16.


    How's that Conservative Economic Ideology working out for you, America?

    Overall health? No. 39. Boom! Take that Cyprus and Costa Rica! Serbia, we'll take you down next year. Maybe.

    Overall education? No. 22. Hey, Slovenia, don't look behind you... we're on your tail.

    Wealth per capita? No. 20. What? No style points for level of greed?

    Democratic rights and liberties? No. 15. Even with a head-start we're running with the nags.

    Women in political offices? No. 97. Behind Venezuela, Iraq and Afghanistan.

    Work-Life balance? No. 23. Behind former Soviet minions Hungary and the Slovak Republic.

    Overall gender equality? No. 20. Getting slapped silly by such as Nicaragua, Rwanda and the Philippines.

    Peace (security from crime, repression, and/or armed conflict)? No. 81. Well, it's hard to be No. 1 in the manufacture, use and sale of weaponry and do well in this category. Hey, priorities are priorities.

    Global Peacefulness Index? No. 101. Stand back, Angola, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan!

    Environmental Quality? No. 52. And that's with the EPA. Imagine how much worse we could do without it, as conservatives propose!

    Now mind you, the USA used to be No. 1 in many of these categories (OK, never in peacefulness). That's what people remember from the 1940s, 50s and 60s. That's when the "We're No. 1" chant began. It all began to go to hell when Mr. Reagan's "trickle-down" scheme kicked in. That was when America turned its back on quality and gave the CorpCons a green light to concentrate on quantity... for themselves... and the situation has only worsened over the past 30 years.

    Yes, America started going downhill fast as the "Reagan Revolution" took hold with its clarion call for low, low taxes, even lower regulation, and the legal system skewed in favor of the rich and their corporations. Corporations are even "people" now... as America has essentially become a corporatocracy. But corporations don't really care about real people. They only care about profit.... and profits are lowered when expectations of something as mundane as quality of life.

    Take something that might affect millions of American families: family leave from their jobs to take care of higher priorities. Most Americans would heartily approve of that idea, but corporations are against it because it would cut down on their profits. So America ranks in the bottom seven nations in this category.

    Now the CorpCons, who have gained so much by running America into the ditch, will put the word out to their minions, the social conservatives, to whine and kvetch that this is all a hoax, just some liberal conspiracy to "blame America first." In so doing, they reveal exactly how they are a big part of the problem. The party of personal responsibility doesn't want to take responsibility for how much they have screwed up this country. They'd rather put their heads in the sand, and let the United States continue its downward spiral. The CorpCons just want to continue the gravy train, and SoCons will continue to spout their empty patriotism while not lifting a finger to get America back on track again. After all, that would entail figuring out who the real culprits are who are wrecking this country, and the finger would point directly at conservative ideology.

    Meanwhile, liberals can well believe these statistics - we see it clearly all around - and are aghast. This is not what America is supposed to be all about. Fifteenth in democracy? For crying out loud. George Washington is rolling in his grave. Fifty-second in environmental quality? So much for America "the Beautiful." Thirty-ninth in health care? How sicko is that? Just a nudge above Angola in peace quotient? Hey "Christian Nation," when are you going to start walking the talk?

    Those who refuse to acknowledge this critical malady of conscience and purpose in this country are doomed to continue or worsen it. Anyone who really loves America is shocked and dismayed by this crap and shouldn't be willing to stand for it. To reverse this 30-year legacy of shame, we must reverse course and start prioritizing real American values, and delegitimize the false values of the CorpCons who will just move to Monaco or Switzerland when they have completely trashed the United States of America.



    OK. We have our definitions and synonyms handy, as well as a comparison chart of the ways conservative and liberal ideologies differ and manifest. We've also examined some of the primary myths that conservatives base their worldview upon. So now let's go meet those crazy conservatives, shall we?