What Have Conservatives Wrought???

Only the final destruction of the republic. Supposedly conservative republicans have controlled the House of Representatives since 1994, the Senate since 1996 and the White house since 2001. It took over 200 years for American government to amass a one million, million (a Trillion) dollar debt. Our current president and congress add one million, million (again, a Trillion) dollars to the debt every 18 months. They fight phantom wars against plant extracts and social methods. They can create a criminal out of thin air. They kill more civilians than they do soldiers, and call it an acceptable ratio.

How anyone can morally support such a system is beyond me. I think mostly they do it from fear. Fear makes them irrational. They won't think it through, because to do so puts them face to face with their own fear of being responsible for themselves.

Pericles once said, "Just because you do not take an interest in politics doesn't mean politics won't take an interest in you." I think that was around 430 B.C. (BCE for all you nimrods who think that changing the name of a measurement term gives you some moral superiority over everybody who wants to keep things simple) Even that statement provokes the people to try to participate out of fear.

I tend to go with the Riddick philosophy. In "Pitch Black" the Imam counsels Riddick, "Can we pray together? I have already prayed with the others. It is painless." Riddick replies that, "It's pointless" The Imam responds, "Because you do not believe in God, does not mean God does not—" at which point Riddick interupts him and firmly states... "You think someone can spend half their life in the slam, with a horse bit in their mouth, and not believe? Think he could start out in some liquor store trash bin with an umbilical cord wrapped around his neck, and not believe? You’ve got it all wrong, holy man. I absolutely believe in God. And I absolutely hate the fucker." (For those of you who don't like that word, feel free to join the nimrods against simplicity.)

Substitute state for God in the above (or maybe in addition) and you get my sentiments on the matter of conservatives and liberals and politcal parties, in general.

Lew Rockwell puts it quite succinctly...

"The problem with American conservatism is that it hates the left more than the state, loves the past more than liberty, feels a greater attachment to nationalism than to the idea of self-determination, believes brute force is the answer to all social problems, and thinks it is better to impose truth rather than risk losing one’s soul to heresy. It has never understood the idea of freedom as a self-ordering principle of society. It has never seen the state as the enemy of what conservatives purport to favor. It has always looked to presidential power as the saving grace of what is right and true about America.

"I'm speaking now of the variety of conservatism created by William Buckley, not the Old Right of Albert Jay Nock, John T. Flynn, Garett Garrett, H.L. Mencken, and company, though these people would have all rejected the name conservative as ridiculous. After Lincoln, Wilson, and FDR, what's to conserve of the government? The revolutionaries who tossed off a milder British rule would never have put up with it.

"For my part, I'm hoping that the whole conservative movement will go down in flames with the decline and fall of the Bush administration. The red-state fascists have had their day and instead of liberty, they gave us the most raw and stupid form of imperial big government one can imagine. They have given America a bad name around the world. They have bamboozled millions. They have looted and bankrupted the country."

More here...

The Bene Gesserit Littainy against Fear.
From "Dune", by Frank Herbert

I must not fear.
Fear is the mind-killer.
Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration.
I will face my fear.
I will permit it to pass over me and through me.
And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path.
Where the fear has gone there will be nothing.
Only I will remain.