Washblog

(1)    There is a transcendent factor vital to successful government.

(2)    Human nature is corrupt, and therefore conservatives reject all utopian solutions to social problems.

(3)    Tradition must be respected, and when change is unavoidable it must be undertaken cautiously

(4)    Governmental power must be diffused and limited by adhering to the "separation of powers" and "checks and balances" of the Constitution.

(5)    Direct democracy must be rejected because people are not well informed and are easily misled

(6)    [Conservatives believe] in States Rights

(7)    Each branch of government must be autonomous and must resist encroachment or usurpation by any other

(8)    Public support of limited government must be encourage in order to keep government in check

(9)    The Constitution's principles have permanent value

(10)    Government must be decentralized and localized so that power is diffused

(11)    Private enterprise should be encouraged.

(12)    Morality begins with the individual

(13)    Congress should be more powerful than the executive branch.

Having successfully and specifically exploited number (5) for seven years, the current Republican talking point Presidential electoral project implies that the (1) "transcendent factor vital to successful government" is FEAR.

The corruption of human nature is considerably less dim than the corruption of the  corporate nature. The abuse of corporate "personhood" identity has deteriorated to volumes of legislated non-Constitutional inequality: specific partisan legislation on behalf of non-mortal corporate "persons" at the tragic expense of human citizen persons.

Our contemporary Republican self-styled "conservatives" of this generation have no notion of change undertaken cautiously and gradually. What has become unavoidable is change based upon greed.

Invoking the fear-based metaphysics of (1) against those described in (5) above, we see a Republican suppression of separation of powers, checks and balances and all that lie in the venue. This was quite aptly expressed by Naomi Wolf last year in her history article:Fascist America in Ten Easy Steps.

Included in those "Ten Easy's "  are  

4.     Set up and internal surveillance system
   
   
5.     Harass citizen's groups
   
   
6.     Arbitrary Detention and Release
   
   
7.     Target key individuals
   
   
8.       Control the Press
   
   
9.       Dissent = Treason
   
   
10.     Suspend the rule of law.
    

Yeah, and so much for autonomous resistance of encroachment and usurpation.

States Rights.

State's Rights?

"No Child Left Behind" and the Abandonment of Common Sense?
Imperialist invasion and occupation supported significantly by National Guard and Reserves?

Limited Government?
Well, the Conservative Republican version was probably still alive in the 70's, when Goldwater and Dirkson told Nixon to get his ass out.

By the 1990's limited government merely an on-going talking point until the Gingrich-Delay Republican unwise governance.

Until of course the manipulated election of a manipulated candidate so short of wit, wisdom and maturity that he will be without peer the most incompetent Republican ever to sit in that office.

Permanency of Constitutional Values? Enter the pulpit-pounding hypocrisy of today's social conservatives who dominate a party that has included the not-infrequent talking point of Gay Marriage as the overriding issue facing this country.

Yeah, and so much for decentralized localized government and diffused power.

"Private enterprise" - in terms of small-business entrepreneurs is the talking point joke behind which big business sucks at all the biggest troughs. Under the current Republican Conservatism, the Depart of Labor should be renamed the Department of Corporate Welfare.

Morality begins and ends with the individual. It doesn't spill and splash from a pulpit nor self-promote itself as an artificial and manufactured construct entitled "Morale Values."

Congress more powerful than the Executive Branch? I think that means that legislation and policy are the purview of represented electorate. Execution of the law - putting into effect the will of the people - every four years that's what we hire (or rehire) the President to do.

If we "conservatively" applied this last notion, future candidate posturing during presidential elections would be mere taking point politics and implied influence sans a lot of the "when I'm President I will - " nonsense.

This is what John McCain and his party have come to and what they are asking voter permission to continue. If the majority vote him into office this people will confirm what most of us already suspect.

Aptly described by Oliver Lange in Vandenberg - The Journals, 1971

"We proved the lie, were served up with a gagging portion of our own vintage distillation of apocalyptic horseshit

-- all the narcissistic swill about indomitable spirit, invincibility, courage and nobility of purpose --

and demonstrated once and for all to those who looked on with interest a fact long suspected:

that this nation, through a self-administered indoctrination of spurious righteousness, larded with the false rewards of superfluous luxury,

had at last achieved the most tractable, malleable -- let's face it, spineless -- people to walk the face of the earth."