There are many conservative myths and they start at the
Revolutionary War.
Pseudo-historians like Newt Gingrich
will suggest the Revolutionary War was a conservative revolution and
Americans should return to those days of yesteryear to recapture our
spirit The founders were 10 feet tall and they wrote the Constitution
in stone just like the 10 commandments.
First, the US revolution was a liberal
revolution as was the French. The purpose of the revolution was to
throw of the shackles of monarchy and replace it with a democratic
republic. The early US democracy is hardly like the one we have
today. Women and blacks could not vote and women could not own property.
Some Tories were tared and feathered and ridden out of town on a rail.
However, there were conservatives who were
sympathetic to the crown and most emigrated to Canada. At that time
conservatives were called Tories.
The US Constitution contains the manner
in which our government was structured and some legal principals,
most of which are in the Bill of Rights. A house, a senate and
judiciary were created so that laws could be written, interpreted and
executed. The strict constructionist or originalist theory of the US Constitution has
no basis in fact. We would not need a legislative branch, an
executive branch and a judiciary if everything was in stone.
Conservatives say the US is a Christian
nation, but the First amendment makes it clear he US was established
as a secular nation. Want more proof? Read the Treaty of Tripoli
signed by John Adams and passed by unanimous voice vote in the US
senate. The founders were aware of the religious wars in Europe and
didn't want that mistake repeated in the US.
The next conservative myth is that the
Civil War was about state rights. Jefferson Davis never talked about
state rights until after the Civil war. The Civil War had a lot to do
with slavery, but not as most Americans imagine it. Lincoln never
talked about abolishing slavery when he first ran for president.
In the mid-19th century, the power of the Southern
states were declining as new territories were incorporated into the
US. The big concern of Southern representatives and senators was that
slavery was not being expanded into the new states.
The Southern economic system was
predicated upon slavery. The vice president of the Confederacy,
Alexander Stephens said this in his Cornerstone speech in 1861
"Our new Government is founded upon
exactly the opposite ideas; its foundations are laid, its cornerstone
rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white
man; that slavery, subordination to the superior race, is his natural
and moral condition."
Southern plantation owners did not want
slavery abolished or contained because it was immensely profitable.
The next big myth is that the US never
lost a war. Most historians will admit that the US lost the war of
1812, but our history books often gloss over the fact. The last war the US
won was World War 2. The Korean War was a stalemate and the US
performed a strategic withdrawal in Vietnam. We also occupied Iraq,
but eventually withdrew.
Is it possible to have a military
victory in a 10 year occupation? One Marine general thinks so.
Conservatives also like to gloss over
the Great Depression. The only Democratic president who was elected
in the period between 1900 and the start of the Great Depression was
Woodrow Wilson. Warren Harding, Calvin Coolidge and Herbert Hoover
all served prior to the Great Depression and all were Republican.
Segue to 2008 and another Republican,
GW Bush heralded another economic meltdown. Bush's Ownership Society
and deregulation of the 5 major investment banks led the US into to
the Great Recession. The GOP myth is that the great recession was
caused by Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac. Both organization worsened the
economic situation in the great Recession, but neither organization
caused it.
Another great conservative myth is
supply side economics which has been around since the 1890s when it
was called “horse and sparrow.”
The idea is that you give the affluent more society so the wealthy can redistribute it to the
middle class. Supply side economics also implies taxes should be cut
for the affluent.
Does anyone really know what the affluent do with their tax cuts? Suspect a lot of the cash ends up in the Cayman Islands or Switzerland.
In the
early 80s, the influential and multi-partisan American Economics
Association had 18,000 members. Only 12 called themselves supply-side
economists in American universities, There is no major department
that could be called "supply-side," and there is no
supply-side economist at any major department.
This
is significant, because academia in the 70s was dominated by
conservative economic theory, and conservative economists normally
welcome any ideas that make the case against government intervention.
The fact that they scrutinized supply-side theory and rejected it
wholesales gives eloquent testimony to the theory's bankruptcy.
When
candidate George Bush called it “voodoo economics” in the 1980
presidential campaign, he was doing so with the full backing of
America's economic community.
Today the
conservatives are
suggesting that America needs more tax cuts,
privatization and
deregulation, three
things that failed
during the GW bush
presidency.
Rarely do
Republicans offer any reputable
proof that their
theories about
taxes,
privatization or deregulation
work. The best the
GOP can do is
provide highly
partisan studies
from the American
Enterprise
Institute, the Cato
Institute and
Heritage.org.
When you are a
political party that I more faith-based
than fact-based, ideology
is more import that hard
facts.
A good example
occurred in FL.
Without any factual
basis, the FL legislature bought Gov. Rick Scott's
assumption that
people applying for
welfare had a drug problem. People applying
for welfare were
forced to take drug tests at their
own expense. The courts threw the law
out when it was discovered that few welfare applicants had failed the
drug test.
A similar law was
recently passed in TN. Only ½ per cent of the welfare applicants
failed the drug test there. It is hard to teach a conservative dog new
tricks.
Why do Americans
continue to elect
legislators who are
irrational because
of their half-baked ideology? Most of these people
cannot be confused
with facts.
Some
even think that
biblical values are
more important than US constitutional
values. Others think the US Constitution is
based upon the bible. America needs to get
these misfits like these
of politics.
That would be
people like Reps.
Steven King, Blake Fahrenholt, Louie Gohmert
and Michelle Bachmann. Bachman is retiring, hopefully for good.
Sources:
http://www.huppi.com/kangaroo/23More.htm
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