(Adapted from the Foreword to my book, HARD LOOKS, 2009.)
Conservatives were not always disconnected from reality and the larger, human community. They were honest, hard-working folks who obeyed the law and the broad, unwritten rules of decency. At times, they behaved admirably. They practiced charity toward others while refusing to “be their brothers’ keepers,” prefering that all should stand each on his own feet and carry his load, both privately and in support of public values. General well-being and safety were taken care of by police, church and a standing army. Conservatives urged minimal government be more local and state than federal, and wished their lives and businesses ruled by regulations kept simple and clear. Population kept growing and demographics got complicated. Community tended to fragment. Individuals tended to become alienated and lost as social stratification increased. Many categories of human relation grew distant, strained and impersonal. People felt lost in webs of injustice. Women rebelled for the right to vote. Workers banded into unions. Racial minorities sought equality. Those who helped such causes were liberals often branded anarchist or communist. Conservatives retreated, rigidly clinging to outmoded simplicities, until now they rebel against complex solutions and call them “socialism!” Today, Rightists “call” themselves conservative. They are really quite reactionary, but I bow to their custom.
“Conservatives” are given harsh treatment, here. They do not deserve it any more than people born with one leg deserve to be meanly scoffed at or deprived of help upstairs from the basement where, with many who have found the crutch of religious assurance, they imagine themselves to be on the roof of the world awaiting either political victory and universal adulation or rapturous transport to paradise as reward for having always been right. These good folks were either “born that way,” formed early or they encountered crippling conversion experiences after childhood. Similarly, they see people of contrasting or opposed views as folks who would be nice if they could see things clearly enough to make real sense of the world and seek the right goals in life and politics instead of only those that are “left” over after all the good things have been picked out and taken from the pile of human and national values by their conservative fellows.
Traditionally authoritarian family is the first value which most conservatives arrogate to themselves, leaving to liberals (as they wish to imagine) only wishy-washy fathers trying compassionately to give emotional nourishment and support to rebellious, self-centered children whose out-of-house, coffee-clatching mothers try manfully to break glass ceilings but inevitably break families. Liberals and Conservatives unconsciously live out different models of family which entail contrasting versions of relation to life and world. Their behavior displays incompatible ideals of authority, responsibility, parental role, gender role, purpose in society, various capacities of service and ways for making amends. So deep are these differences that on conscious levels the two can scarcely communicate about anything important. It is as if they speak divergent dialects of the same-sounding language. Hence, they find ways to evade real talk and stifle opponents. Conservatives especially do this. For instance, Rush Limbaugh emulates his own father to whom he subordinated uneasily but idealized to the point of adulation: cocksure, assertive, arrogant, bombastic. Too full of his own views to discuss things intelligently, Rush has made this mode of expression a lucrative vocation, getting feed-back from worshipful people of similar persuasion and unconsious need for absolutely authoritative-sounding instruction and direction.
We should be aware that both models of family structure and conduct extend their implications out to impact government, economy and foreign policy with often antithetical urgings on proposed programs and expected effects. Conservative family, as children mature, finds parental controls growing lighter because the offspring internalized disciplines imposed on them when small. Children obey the rules, hence, parental government shrinks. Where citizens follow rules of law and interpersonal morality, need for external regulation declines. Here, conservativism is absolutely correct. But, quite naturally, Rightist mentality wants this ideal situation to prevail in public life as if they believe least government is best government. Yet the role of government is to protect and empower people and businesses against each other’s inconsiderate behavior. One would think the Right forgets that freedom in a democracy requires an informed, well educated electorate consisting of people who take their citizenship seriously and obey the letter of the law easily because they participate in the spirit of law and in the ethic of compassionate responsibility, which is the hallmark of that liberalism which the far right despises. Is that not crazy?
Both psychological models, “right” and “left” bear certain self-contradictory elements. Much of the criticism that each side throws at the other has at least partial validity. Liberals are ready to throw public money at problems. Conservatives are unready to open up and deliberate fully without hostility and in good faith, because that takes generosity. It is not really conservative to concede, pay or give anything freely without force of law or another’s stronger position. To negotiate or discuss in good faith requires concessions of mutual respect from start to finish, no trickery, hedging or leveraging. Liberals who lack self-sophistication and understanding of the conservatives’ principles risk anarchistic solipsism and selfish abuse by the least among them who instead of properly benefiting from aid programs, exploit them, much as do some of the greatest among conservatives exploit the finances of others, as did Bernie Madoff who impoverished rich folks and charitable foundations alike with his big Ponzi scheme. Regulation? May it be that we need sufficient amounts of public governance?
Fallacies and contradictions must be challenged from now on. Repeatedly they prove unworthy of permanent standing in a forum of fact or market-place of ideas. Example: it is not inconsistent to spend billions for defense that safeguards the property and offspring of our wealthiest citizens while spending little on health security for all? Civilization, world peace and all nature suffer the ravages of unreason that stem from specious other-worldliness. Religion and Materialism equally cheat the spirit. They are mental states. Meditation needs no metaphysics. Prayer needs no gods nor idols. Feelings can be practical. Wrong ideas lead to bad conditions. Far-right views must be criticized in other than the balanced treatment advisable for critique or judgment of poetry. The far-right has plenty of believers and mercenaries to defend itself and attack everyone else. Partisan division is not mended by accepting the heartfelt fictions of all factions as equally worthy while allowing those fictions to sour and ferment together into the mess we have. Steps must be taken to foster unity without raising new conformities while we break down semantic toxins that wreck the communality that democracy needs. Those who profit from chaos must be exposed and discredited, namely: Rupert Murdoch, David and Charles Koch and all their sympathizers and paid mouth-pieces. People must waken from dreams that promote alienation and division.
Tea Party movements are easily exposed as “astroturf” fostered by corporate money and not wholly “grassrooted”. The feelings of those who hold nonsense views, invalid positions and false identities may get hurt by some of my statements. For any who feel unjustly hit by my views, please remember, they reflect a growing state of mind in this country. I contain this state within General Semantic principles of Non-Allness and Non-Identity: What I say is not all there is to a subject, nor is what I say about a thing the thing itself unless I refer only another set of words, another piece of talk.
Of the New World Dis-order? Bush and the genteel thugs behind him are only the tip of an iceberg, the point of a wedge consisting of huge, internationally connected corporations without loyalty to democracy or America. Consolidating power, they practice and seek not the old-style ideological fascism but a financial, monetary empire devoid of values beyond status and control through relative wealth, no matter that they may bankrupt whole nations or corrupt and impoverish the Third World, reducing the United States to a “banana republic”, as well. Their goal, global oligarchy, will thwart or suppress individuals save who submit and participate. Enroute to their goal they will cultivate public illusions of freedom and humane concern, keeping us in a haze until there is no more need to dissimulate. We must exert every effort to save democracy, for these reactionaries propagate national and global disorder. They will waken too late.
No Comments