The Enemy is at Our Gate

The election results in Massachusetts last night really frighten me.
    Republican candidate Scott Brown has been chosen to replace Edward Kennedy in the Senate, shifting the balance of power away from the supermajority of Democrats in order to defeat healthcare reform. That is what he ran on. That, and owning a pick-up truck. His opponent lost a measure of support because she was not knowledgeable enough about a local baseball player.
    The election was about more than that, of course. The salient issue, however, is that conservatism is gaining ground, and for all the wrong reasons.
    If healthcare reform fails because of Massachusetts's betrayal of the American people, how many will die because of it?
    Republicans, for the most part, don't care about the health of this nation. They are too busy fretting over guns and targeting gay people as the manufactured threat du jour, and twisting the biblical gospel to support an ideology based on greed and aggression.
    What have conservatives ever brought this nation other than greed, corruption, prejudice and war? They would have us become a backwards, belligerent nation disconnected by mindless anger from our own ideals. Surely that was not the intent of our founders.
    Conservatives fear unbiased education, science, and negatively label intellectuals as elitist. They forget how Thomas Jefferson started the University of Virginia, and George Washington tried to create a national college. The Declaration of Independence and Constitution were not written by a mob of people with tea bags hanging off their hats. They were composed by the intellectuals of their times, reflecting new and radical ideas that had sprung up all around Europe and immigrated to these shores.
    It is no surprise that today's most vocal complainers identify with the Boston Tea Party. The Tea Party was nothing more than mob induced vandalism that showed no respect for law, and criminalized what the founders were trying to do. The founders succeeded in fighting for American ideals despite these mobs, not because of them. That we need to deal with similar mobs mentalities today under the guise of a "patriotic movement" shows a terribly regressive trend. Conservatism bases much of what it stands for on regressive tendencies. We see that all the time, and they are proud to admit it. Since when is America about regression?
    Liberals have to step back a little and figure out just what they stand for. Conservatives have painted them as the tax and spend bad guys for so long, that they have lost their righteous passion and enthusiasm. They have lost the words that express their ideals, and feel defensively cornered by a vocal minority and their media propagandists.
    Another problem arises that hampers their efforts. They believe in the self-evident ideals of America so much, that they feel that they do not have to speak out about them. They feel that these ideals guide the heart of all Americans, and those who have been misled by conservatism will eventually learn the error of their ways and come around. The real benefits of freedom will assert themselves naturally. The trouble is, conservatism is pushing something unnatural that is also emotionally addictive, something that does not appeal to ideals so much as regional or religious prejudices. This proves to be a potent weapon in America, where so many people don't want to think beyond shallow clichés. Conservatives are happy to provide a never-ending loop of clichés to brainwash the unprepared.
    And now the results are happening. More and more people are ready to hand over power to the very people who created our latest Great Recession, brought us into an unnecessary and disastrous war in Iraq, allowed Afghanistan to become the major problem that it is today, worked hard to demolish Social Security, filled Congress with unprecedented corruption, gave free license to lobbyists, and deny the threat of global warming. (When it comes to global warming, it seems that radical conservatives are convinced that the rest of the world is wrong, and their anti-intellectual, anti-science leaders are the ones who are right. That so many people believe this is another frightening prospect of growing conservatism.)
    Make no mistake about it. Conservatives know that they are strategically tapping into the very worst of human nature, as advocate Rush Limbaugh rudely and proudly portrays. Satan could not be more smug about catering to greed, nationalistic fervor, paranoia, unreasonable and even baseless anger, and the lawless energy of the mob. In fact, they need to make an enemy of democratic liberalism in order to exist. They have no positive foundation. When in power, what do they offer? Lacking direction or even purpose, they wallow in corruption, deceptively stroking the ego of America while castigating its heart.
    Look who they give us for leaders! George W. Bush. Twice. Sarah Palin. Michele Bachmann. And now a male centerfold named Scott Brown who owns a truck. (For those who don't grasp the truck reference, to conservatives, that makes him eligible office. That's just about all it takes.)
    Look who they attack! President Obama has worked against impossible odds to rescue us from conservative policies that nearly destroyed our economy. He is accused of raising taxes, when he actually lowered them. They justify their attacks by pointing to how President Bush was treated. Well, that's their idea of fair and balanced alright. Bush nearly devastated the country, and is responsible for hundreds of thousands of deaths. Obama has nothing but tried to save America, and they feel justified in scandalizing him for it. The two simply cannot be equated. But conservatives don't thin that way. The response to their bad policies only make them more belligerent.
    We are not dealing with a debate, or opposing yet complimentary ideologies. We are being subjected to an assault on reason and virtue and every ideal that America stands for. We cannot reason with those who prefer lies, who use the Clean Air Act to increase pollution standards, and the Patriot Act to diminish our civil rights.
    It is long passed time for those who believe in real Americanism to speak out against this threat to human nature that has so long deceived us as being wholesome and religious and representing the good of the people. The falsehoods cannot be more obvious. We must stand up for truth and for people, all of us, and for the sanctity of law and justice and popular education. We must find a way to end all this partisan idiocy and build a democratic republic based on informed citizens of good will, not a bunch of circus performers who have no sense of history.
    We have to do this. If not us, who? Right now the barbarians are at the gates and they are winning public sympathy. People are financially hurting from conservative policies of the past, but with a liberal in office unable to repair things in an instant, they are blaming the wrong ideology! They are being convinced that the very source of so many of our national problems is somehow going to change things for the better.
    The only way to counter this is by showing how wrong they are, by holding conservatism accountable for its man sins.
    When President Obama was elected president, the rest of the world uttered a sigh of relief. The nations of Europe, who suffered terribly from two world wars based on conservative, nationalistic ideologies, were glad that America had grown up and put radical conservatism aside. It seemed that America had learned from history and avoided the worst. But conservatism in America was not dead at all. It was feeding its anger to a crescendo and took advantage of the recession that they themselves created. It lied about healthcare and Obama's birthplace. It compared Obama to Hitler. It purposely disrupted town hall meetings to make sure that a free exchange of ideas would be impossible. It uses propagandist s like Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity to spread paranoia among the gullible. It created a huge national deficit through tax cuts for the very rich, and now blames liberalism, even though the "liberal" Clinton administration was able to forecast a surplus.
    Conservatives talk a good game to their followers, but deliver the opposite of what they claim, actually supporting big government and increasing the spending of borrowed money.
    Conservatism is choking the life out of this nation, and must be stopped.

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