Washblog

It seems that the national Democratic Party is asleep or simply doesn't know the true extreme conservative objective of government, and that objective is depicted by the national Republican Party advertisement in the Reichert-Burner House race in Washington's 8th congressional district.  The GOP advertises that democratic candidate Darcy Burner wants to raise everybody's taxes without offering any documented evidence that that is the case.  What is more problematic is that the Democratic Party offers no rebuttal to the charge.

This preoccupation with "low taxes" offers a clue to conservative politicians' objectives because their "low taxes" have put the democratic American experiment at risk of financial ruin with a debt approaching $9 trillion and rising because the GOP Congress and President refuse to address the problem; even wanting to make those destructive tax cuts for the wealthy permanent.  To understand the conservative Republican objectives, we need to have a clear knowledge of  conservatism in America and its political history.  And we need to keep in mind that the hallmark of the conservative mind is that it never wants to tolerate change or advancement.  What change it may accept is to retreat to "the good old days" that exist only in the minds of those who didn't experience them.

Ever since mankind departed Eden, government has existed as organized toughs to keep a small elite segment of society in charge of everything and to oppress everyone else.  

That started to change with America's Revolutionary War that the political right opposed.  At that time, the 13 colonies had a population of 3.9 million - about half a million were hard-core conservatives, known then as Tories.  The most famous right-winger of the time was Gen. Benedict Arnold.  About 10% of the Tories followed Arnold and turned against the revolution, many taking up arms to battle colonial "freedom fighters."  Their efforts to prevent independence failed and Americans are better off because of that failure.

What few conservative who were left a decade later, stood in opposition to the proposed Constitution.  They wanted to prevent one unified nation and have two or three separate nations in order to preserve slavery in at least one of those nations.  Again, they failed and the nation is better off with that they failed.  

Not to give up hope, the political right opposed the Bill or Rights and again failed.  The nation is better off because of that failure.

Conservatives rose anew to launch the Civil War tying to break apart the union, again to preserve slavery.  Once more, they failed and the nation is better off because slavery was abolished and the union was preserved.

Conservatives saw opportunity to destroy democracy again in the Great Depression that grew out of the corruption of Warren Harding and economic policies of Calvin Coolidge (using tax cuts to feint prosperity while building momentum for destruction).  Conservatives then and now have hated Franklin Roosevelt and his New Deal, which is credited with saving capitalism when much of the world was flirting with communism, as an alternative to a failed capitalism.   One would think right wingers would appreciate the rescue of the capitalism they claim to adore.  But they hate FDR because his programs also saved and strengthened democracy, and the nation is better off for that.

It doesn't matter that those on the political right were Tories during the Revolutionary War era, were Democrats between the Civil War and World War I and have been Republicans since the civil-rights struggles; they have always hated democratic progress and decency.  Their hatred is  based in the fact that democracy is a product of  progressive free-thinking intellectuals, also known as liberals, whom they also despise.

Conservatives have long credited Ronald Reagan - and only Reagan - for the destruction of the Soviet Union by forcing it into bankruptcy with an unparalleled arms race.  Now extreme conservatives are trying to use the bankruptcy tactic to destroy the other nation they have so violently hated for more than two centuries - the democratic United States of America.  What should be clear to all Americans is that conservatives have never given up on their dream of destroying the democratic United States and reimposing the aristocracy that our Founding Fathers revolted against - with conservatives as the aristocrats, of course, and the rest of us their servants and serfs.  Their hatred of the inheritance tax is symbolic of conservative desires because aristocracy depends on inherited wealth, position, prestige, power and class.

The new effort to destroy democracy began with Sen. Barry Goldwater, got into the political mainstream with Reagan and George H. W. Bush and hit its peak with George W. Bush.  

The tactic of choice by the GOP is to use Enron Economics.  Enron, the giant Texas energy company, destroyed itself by borrowing hundreds of millions of dollars and listing the borrowed money as income and profit to keep its stock price high so that top executives could sell the stock they got as options at cut-rate prices or use it as collateral to borrow from the company and enrich themselves.   Since Enron didn't pay income taxes - the GOP has given free passes around taxation to its supporters - it got away with this deception until it was too far into debt to continue hiding the problem and the company collapsed.  The Reagan-Bush-Bush tactic is to borrow hundreds of billions of dollars each year by the government, putting the borrowed money into the economy and claiming that as economic growth, knowing full well that the debt burden will eventually be too huge to sustain the nation any longer, at which time the democratic United States will go the way of the late Soviet Union.  But before the US collapses, would-be aristocracy insiders will feed off the government in the form of tax breaks or holding Treasury instruments to line their own pockets just as Enron executives lined theirs.  This is a modern wrinkle of the pre-Revolutionary War British practice of taxing commoners to support the aristocracy, exactly what our Founders revolted against.

Conservatives have long claimed to represent "small government."  That is not true because they have always used government to benefit themselves and have practiced Big Brother or self-interest government.  They have even advertised their true motives, such as tax activist Grover Norquist's noted dictum that the political right's objective is to shrink government to a size it can be "drowned in a bathtub."  That is not a statement promoting "small government," that is saying the  goal is to destroy that government and to use taxes as the weapon.  That is subversion.

Conservative extremists have no shyness about suppressing voting or cheating on elections - even using blatant crimes to do so - because elections that are fair and open to all are vital for survival of  democracy.  How best to destroy democracy than to destroy fair elections, bankrupt the country and oppress its citizens hoping to start over with the system the Founding Fathers dispatched more than two centuries ago.

It should be painfully clear that the Reagan-Bush-Bush extremist cabal has been overwhelmingly competent in camouflaging its visions and has been effective in advancing its goals by pursuing an anti-democracy philosophy.  It's not Bush the man who has been so harmful, it's the extreme conservative agenda pushed by Bush.  

What is troubling is that the Democratic Party doesn't seem capable of recognizing the true GOP agenda and trying to combat to it by alerting the population.  And the only way "the media" could be considered allied with progressive politics is that the media have also been asleep as to the true motives of regressive politics and a reluctance to say anything derogatory about the political right even if its truthfulness is unquestionable.  Should conservatives continue in power, future right-wing leaders will  continue the Reagan-Bush-Bush drive to destroy the democratic America.  They must be stopped once again.