Posted on 06/26/2003 7:26:07 AM PDT by Sir Gawain
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Redefining Conservatives
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By John Bender
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| George Bush is getting credit for redefining the Republican Party and taking issues away from the Democrats by advancing their agenda and taking credit for the advances. He is not getting credit for an even bigger accomplishment, redefining the political labels in use for about 100 years. By calling himself a conservative, Bush is redefining the term. Since at least as far back as Woodrow Wilson's administration, the word conservative meant someone who favored smaller government, less government spending, and a belief that it was not the government's job to redistribute wealth from those who earned it to those who wanted it. Bush shares none of these principles. He never saw a government program he wanted to reduce or eliminate. He strongly believes in the nanny government and redistributing wealth. Under Bush discretionary, non-defense spending grew more than under any president since Jimmy Carter. Bush worked against hard won Republican victories such as the Freedom to Farm Act, passing the most socialist farm bill since the New Deal. He worked with radical leftists against conservative Republicans to pass an education bill that vastly increases the federal government's power over local schools. Bush calls this accountability. It is a smoke screen, setting the stage for federal bureaucrats to mandate what is taught in our local schools by writing the test the students will be required to pass. He expanded the failed Head Start program, increased welfare to people calling it a tax cut for people who don't pay taxes. Congress cut AmriCorps and Bush worked with liberals to restore the cuts. Now Bush is pushing the biggest new entitlement in 40 years, a socialized drug plan for seniors. The list goes on and on, but the point is, Bush is for everything conservatives have historically fought against. This new definition of "conservative", of necessity, brings a redefinition of other political labels. People who were liberals only 3 years ago are now moderates. Far left extremists are now mainstream liberals. The rise of Nancy Pelosi to the position of House Minority Leader best illustrates this change. Pelosi is a radical leftist who was out of the mainstream of even the Democrat Party just three years ago. In fact her challengers for the office pointed out that Pelosi is a radical leftist. Harold Ford and Martin Frost ran against her as moderates. Both Ford and Frost are only moderate if Pelosi is mainstream and Bush is conservative. These men have a long history of aggressive liberalism. Both men chided Bill Clinton for not being liberal enough. Now they are moderates. Bush made this shift happen. He co-opted the label "conservative" and applied it to his big government agenda. It is his greatest accomplishment to date. And his accomplishment isn't just shifting the definition of "conservative" 180 degrees. He also redefined the full spectrum of political labels. If one is willing to allow Bush to claim the label "conservative" one must then redefine those slightly to his left as "moderates" and those to their left as "liberals". One can only guess where we now define the radical left. By defining Bush as a conservative one must also relabel those on his right. Conservative statesmen like Tom DeLay, Bob Barr, Dick Armey, Jim Inhofe, Ernest Istook, etc., must now be defined as the far right wing. If one takes this new definition back a few years, he has to also redefine LBJ and Jimmy Carter as "conservatives", and the great Ronald Reagan as a right wing extremist. LBJ and Carter were much closer to Bush's example of a "conservative" than President Reagan was. Under this perverted definition of what a "conservative" is, Bush is buying the votes of the greedy, selfish, irresponsible, people with money that will be taken from our children and grandchildren. Our children and grandchildren will live in a socialist cesspool like France or Germany because no president will ever be able to wean the leaches from their dependency on the subsidies stolen from the productive. The greedy, selfish, underachievers will never be satisfied. They will demand more and more be taken from the producers to pay for their wants. The socialist utopia Bush is creating will be no more economically viable than any socialist society has been. But hey, why should we worry about that? Let our children and grandchildren figure out how to get by in the socialist muck. It's not our problem. John Bender is a freelance writer from Dallas, Texas. His columns have appeared in The Dallas Morning News, Ether Zone, Right Magazine, The Sierra Times, USA Daily and other print and online publications. |
Same place we have been defining them for 60+ years... in the Nazi and Marxist sewage where they spring from.
Thanks to some semen on a blue dress, the socialist left had to abandon the demoncratic party and move on to greener pastures to the right by driving out the actual conservatives into never-never land...
It is probably true that on average, conservatives are smarter than liberals and the general population. But it is not true that everyone who call themselves conservative are in fact either conservative or smarter. There are a bunch of ill educated ignoramuses who call themselves conservative, have heard of the Free Republic and that it is a conservative site, and have decided to post here. That said, the level of intelligent discourse is WAY higher here than on the evil mirror DU site. (Half the posters there are probably computer viruses using a profanity generator, a Marxist logic structure, and stock Leftist phrases.)
Foolish "conservatives" imagine that they can have their wars, and small govt. NOT!
The "war on terror" is like the "war on drugs" and "war on poverty." Just another opportunity to increase domestic State powers and spending.
Instead of a bogus "war on terror" we should treat individual terrorists as criminals, and return to a policy of small govt and foreign non-intervention (the two go together).
Their issues are abortion, family, vouchers (education), guns, and religion.
Keep them happy on those, and you'll be face to face with the fact that they all came from NewDeal families.
MY sense is that Bush firmly believes that the pro-America, pro-family, pro-social program, pro-self-defense position of the old Democratic Party is where most Americans really are. I will NOT be surprised to see Bush turn in a pro-Union direction.
Then he will have successfully rebuilt the old FDR coalition under the name of Republican. And that ALL because the Democrats are stuck in anti-life, anti-family, anti-America world socialism.
What it will mean is decades of victories for the Republicans, increasing social programs and deficits, BUT changes in abortion, family, and separation of church and state.
Actually, it's ingenious. But it isn't either traditional or libertarian conservatism.
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