All Rights Reserved © 2004 Thomas W. Day
In case you haven't figured it out on your own, the title of this rant is irony. Conservatives have about as firm a grasp on morality as Gee-Whiz Bush has on the state of the economy. The two claims to moral fame held by the religious right are non-reproductive sex (they're again' it) and forced Christianity (they're for it).
On all other issues, conservatives could care less about the poor, the underprivileged, the abused, downtrodden, good manners, or common decency. The new and old Right are for the power and wealth of those who already hold power and wealth, for keeping the rich, rich and the poor, poor. They are so inclined to bear arms against their fellow citizens that they form organizations to prevent any semblance of rational legislation controlling personal weaponry. They gloat over the fact that Amerika has stockpiled more of its citizens in prisons than most of the other industrialized nations put together. They hate freedom of the press, civil rights, habeas corpus, women's rights, taxation of the rich, and cereal with raisins. They're all about dismantling the education system and replacing it with menial labor vocational training for everyone who wasn't born leaching from a trust fund. In fact, there isn't a single positive human value that the Right would fight to protect. If it ain't about greed or power, it's not an issue for these very un-conservative conservatives.
For that matter, the two moral issues they cling to are not about morality, but about greed and power. Any group that claims to be pro-life but is so much in love with capital punishment is, obviously, conflicted. As far as I can see, the conservative dislike for abortion is that the procedure removes the possibility of a later-in-life execution. That's a power issue, not a moral point. The conservative passion for government control of bedroom activities is a combination of repressed sexual anxiety or a desire to control every non-economic human activity. You can't tell the communists from the conservatives without a conservative media to label the two.
Either the conservative gods are astoundingly stupid, or they're thoroughly disbelieved by their let's-pretend-worshipers. Conservatives hunt through whatever sheepherder tales they claim were written by the hand of whatever god for any excuse to kill, steal from, or rape and pillage their enemies of the moment. I'm not just talking about our local nutball Christian "conservatives," I mean every conservative on the planet; Christian, Muslim, Moonie, Mormon, Communist, or whatever timid person's flavor-of-the-century we're suffering at the moment. If these people aren't killing someone or planning to kill someone, they're unhappy as hell.
[As a historical aside, read John Adam's defense of British soldiers from post-Revolutionary War execution, “. . . We are to look upon it as more beneficial, that many guilty persons should escape unpunished, than one innocent person should suffer. The reason is, because it is of more importance to the community, that innocence should be protected, than it is, that guilt should be punished; for guilt and crimes are so frequent in the world, that all of them cannot be punished; and many times they happen in such a manner, that it is not of much consequence to the public, whether they are punished or not. But when innocence itself, is brought to the bar and condemned, especially to die, the subject will exclaim, it is immaterial to me whether I behave well or ill, for virtue itself is no security. And if such a sentiment as this should take place in the mind of the subject, there would be an end to all security whatsoever . . .” Now that's a liberal!]
Two unbelievably vicious examples of Right immorality demonstrated their wrongness recently, during Minnesota's 2002 Senate campaign. First, the Republicrat candidate waged a smear campaign against the only populist politician left in Washington, Paul Wellstone. When Wellstone's plane went down a few weeks before the election, the Demoplicans stuffed the vacancy with Walter Mondale. In a panic, Republicrats worried about losing the election out of sympathy for Minnesota's great loss. Conservative whackos stormed the Fitzgerald Theater where a debate was the be held between Mondale and Abnormal Coleman. Outside the theater, they paraded with signs that read "War Means Jobs."
War means jobs. Now there's a strong moral position for you. They were worried that Mondale might not let Gee Wiz carry on his war-plans-slash-economic-recovery-strategy and that resistance to rational thought might cost them precious military industrial jobs. I'd never been more disgusted by my fellow Americans.
But conservatives keep trying to set new records for immorality. In New York, there is a 30 year old Republicrat governors' legislation, called the Rockefeller Law, which puts "drug offenders" in prison, regardless of previous history, mitigating circumstances, or breakfast cereal preferences. Recently, there has been some questioning of the fairness or rationality of a law that tosses people in jail for crimes against themselves. Some famous rappers are putting themselves in between the law and common sense. They're asking why people should be jailed for life, or the majority of a life, for drug possession, especially possession of amounts small enough to barely qualify for personal use.
And the conservatives are upset. Not because they believe the punishment fits the crime, but because they are concerned that precious right-wing jobs will be lost in the prison system. Who cares if people are unfairly stripped of their lives, families, and freedom? Let's face it, it's obvious that prison guards are old fashioned conservatives and it's hard to find high paying jobs for that sort of upstanding low-tech citizen. Mostly, because the kind of person who would take a job as a prison guard is uneducated, unskilled, and otherwise unemployable. So what's a person's life compared to keeping conservative dumbshits employed?
Morality, who needs it when you can pretend to have it and the rest of the country is too terrified of you to correct your error? If we truly wanted to wage a war on terrorists, conservatives would be in deep shit. The terrorists of the world are all conservatives stumbling along behind one deeply flawed fantasy or another. A war on real terrorism would be one that could be easily conducted at home and it's a war that should be won at all costs. The future of our Constitution and world democracy depends on rooting out conservatives and putting them where they can do no harm. I'm thinking positions as sanitation workers is about as critical an industry as conservatives are capable of serving.
March 2004
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