There is a brand of political
conservatism that is
growing popular but is
principally flawed and ethically
and morally destitute. Identifying
it is not necessarily easy, but it
certainly looms as conservatives
and the Republican Party are
still trying to find themselves.
It is a form of conservatism
that, now that we are in an
economic recession, has become
primarily oriented toward reducing
costs, besides which the only
other important goal seems to
be winning elections. And their
form of reducing costs is not
itself oriented toward the good
of all. At best, it wants the most
good for the most amount of
people, even if the rest are left
out.
Perhaps its root cause is cynicism.
It’s the type of political
cynicism that could be seen when
the guest speaker, Hawaii Gov.
Linda Lingle, of the Republican
National Committee’s winter
meeting said to applause, “You
can count on the Democratic
majority in the House being
toast this fall,” The New York
Times reported.
Who cares about the
Democrats being toast when we’re
in a recession and Republicans
haven’t even found themselves
yet? As Obama accurately said
in his bipartisan meeting with
Republicans, Americans don’t
care about who has scored the
most political points.
But in the Republican Party
and in some of their voting base
of conservatives, the partisan
cynicism reigns and can be heard
every day sounding from the
mouths of radio talk show hosts
who “play the media” (Rush
Limbaugh’s own words). These
Republicans talk about the costs
of health care reform but said
nothing about costs for eight
years when we were in a war
in which we never should have
been. They talk about conserving
money and reducing costs
and then turn around and bail
out banks, all while opposing
almost any bailout funds for
everyday, hard-working people.
In reality they don’t care about
reducing costs. They care about
reducing costs for people who
are important.
However, there is a group of
people who have picked up on
this and become pissed. They’re
the infamous Tea Party. I say all
the power to them for realizing
that our representatives often fail
to represent us.
However, there is still a flaw
in today’s brand of conservatism
and the Tea Party. Because of
the recession, this conservative
movement has become narrow
in scope. All it cares about is
money. These conservatives do
not even seem to care anymore
about other worthy endeavors,
like stopping abortion.
The Republican Scott Brown,
who is pro-abortion rights, filled
the late Ted Kennedy’s Senate
seat two weeks ago to large Tea
Party support. Tea Party conservatives
across
the nation
supported
him so
that health
care reform
would be
stalled.
Some thing
just seems
demented
with any
movement
that would
support the
legality of killing human life in
order to stall health care reform.
Not only does today’s brand of
conservatism oppose health care
reform and ignore the abortion
issue, it also has an obsession
with using torture and keeping
open a detention camp on the
island of a country with which
we’ve never
even been
able to get
along.
I am not
trying to
paint conservatives
with a
broad stroke,
but the tendencies
I’ve
highlighted
seem to
be gaining
steam. They
are tendencies that characterize
a branch of conservatism with a
concern for money that is often
unprincipled and an outlook
that is amoral.
Matt Watson is a graduate student majoring in Spanish. He can be contacted at [email protected].