Wednesday, December 22, 2004
Conserve What?
"Conserve: (1) To protect from loss or harm; preserve: calls to conserve our national heritage in the face of bewildering change. (2) To use carefully or sparingly, avoiding waste: kept the thermostat lower to conserve energy."
By a simple dictionary definition, thus is the word "conservative" revealed as an utter misnomer. Our so-called conservatives are in fact radical beyond description, and they intend to conserve nothing. They're supposed to be so great at economic policy, but they're taking the country down the road to default; they're supposed to be experts in national defense, but they're getting whipped by the insurgency in Iraq; most of them in government are in flat violation of the oath they took to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution. Over at Best of the Blogs, Leftcoast takes the critique further: "Bush and his merry band of incompetents neither generate new capital nor constructively leverage any of our existing resources. They either squander what we have, or worse, unilaterally appropriate what they want. In other words, steal." International capital, financial capital, human capital, environmental capital--all resources worth conserving, and spending carefully, and taken over by the Bush gang for purposes that have little to do with the best interests of the American people as a whole.
That they call themselves "conservative" is only half of the hypocrisy, of course. The other half is the way they say one thing and do another. They're for states' rights until a state does something they don't like; they're against abortions until their daughters need one; and so on. And they're never more hypocritical than in matters of religion. The lefty blogosphere gleefully noted this week that Bush wished the press corps and the American people "happy holidays" at his press conference on Monday, thus buggering the meme that the phrase is anti-Christian. But the Gadflyer reported yesterday on an even more interesting bit of hypocrisy: the Bush family's support for an association of pastors who sponsor something called "Tear Down the Cross," which has as its goal taking crosses out of churches. To a blue-stater such as myself, I read the article with my mouth half-open, wondering A) what a group of Christian pastors could possibly have against the cross and B) how come the morally righteous citizens of red-state America aren't losing their minds over the fact that God's President supports what this group is doing. And I don't know the answer to either A or B.
"Conserve: (1) To protect from loss or harm; preserve: calls to conserve our national heritage in the face of bewildering change. (2) To use carefully or sparingly, avoiding waste: kept the thermostat lower to conserve energy."
By a simple dictionary definition, thus is the word "conservative" revealed as an utter misnomer. Our so-called conservatives are in fact radical beyond description, and they intend to conserve nothing. They're supposed to be so great at economic policy, but they're taking the country down the road to default; they're supposed to be experts in national defense, but they're getting whipped by the insurgency in Iraq; most of them in government are in flat violation of the oath they took to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution. Over at Best of the Blogs, Leftcoast takes the critique further: "Bush and his merry band of incompetents neither generate new capital nor constructively leverage any of our existing resources. They either squander what we have, or worse, unilaterally appropriate what they want. In other words, steal." International capital, financial capital, human capital, environmental capital--all resources worth conserving, and spending carefully, and taken over by the Bush gang for purposes that have little to do with the best interests of the American people as a whole.
That they call themselves "conservative" is only half of the hypocrisy, of course. The other half is the way they say one thing and do another. They're for states' rights until a state does something they don't like; they're against abortions until their daughters need one; and so on. And they're never more hypocritical than in matters of religion. The lefty blogosphere gleefully noted this week that Bush wished the press corps and the American people "happy holidays" at his press conference on Monday, thus buggering the meme that the phrase is anti-Christian. But the Gadflyer reported yesterday on an even more interesting bit of hypocrisy: the Bush family's support for an association of pastors who sponsor something called "Tear Down the Cross," which has as its goal taking crosses out of churches. To a blue-stater such as myself, I read the article with my mouth half-open, wondering A) what a group of Christian pastors could possibly have against the cross and B) how come the morally righteous citizens of red-state America aren't losing their minds over the fact that God's President supports what this group is doing. And I don't know the answer to either A or B.
