Being A Conservative

Principles of Conservatism

You don't like government regulations or taxes? You call yourself a conservative. So you want to eliminate worker protections, discrimination protections, environmental protections, and free K-12 education. You want bigger banks, bigger tax cuts for the rich (including dropping capital gains taxes to zero), no financial or consumer safeguards, no Pell grants or free college for students. You want there to be no minimum wage, even though a worker getting assistance is essentially a company on welfare.

You are okay with no heating assistance for the poor, no Head Start for preschoolers, no community block grants, no infrastructure spending bills, no healthcare insurance assistance, no insurance protections, but yes to a budget increase for our ridiculously massive military. No libraries or public roads or bridges or dams or well-funded public schools. You have no problem with companies stiffing contractors and employees and defrauding students. Let the buyer beware.

Your Second Amendment

No one is advocating the seizure of all guns. But background checks, restrictions on weapons of mass murder, gun safety features, closing gun sale loopholes, mandatory safety training--these all equate in your mind to jack-booted thugs invading your home and taking away all of your weapons. To you, the Second Amendment is truncated, with that pesky militia clause removed. Never mind states' National Guards; to you, one drunk with a machine gun is a militia.

Conservatives and Business

No penalties or restrictions on unsavory business practices because somehow in a nation of over 300 million people the free market will do the job of regulating business and weeding out predatory companies (the sophomoric philosophy of Ayn Rand). Even though consumers have next to no information on companies' practices and operations and financial shenanigans. Basically, you want freedom from ethics, oversight, responsibility, justice, fairness, and equality.

Conservatives on Justice

You are okay with collection agencies taking people to court where a judge can legally charge a debtor with Contempt of Court and throw their butt into jail. That's not a debtor's prison, right? You are okay with one set of rules for the wealthy and another for poorer people; that's okay where justice is concerned, right? Oh, and an even less favorable standard of justice for people of color. Assuming, of course, that they even survive to see a courtroom.

Conservatives and Elections

You see no problem with removing 329 voting machines in a minority district, leaving just one. Gerrymandering so that a 49% Republican constituency results in a two-thirds majority in state legislative houses; that's just protecting against socialism and communism, right? Paid your debt to society? Great! Just don't try to vote. Got a Hispanic name? Step right up and cast a provisional ballot, cause your name has been removed from voter registration rolls; just come back during business hours to a courthouse near (or not so near) you to prove your vote should count. After the election, of course. Your opponent had 3 million more votes than you? Just claim that there were 3 million instances of in-person voter fraud, an occurrence so rare that, in 10 previous years out of one billion votes cast in recent elections, there were only a handful of cases.

Conservatives and Social Security

You think we should unleash the free market on Social Security? You are okay with financial advisors no longer (by executive order) having a fiduciary responsibility for people's retirements. You're okay with retirements being vulnerable to stock market crashes, theft, bankruptcies, and fraud (hint: Bernie Madoff, Enron).

You think you can balance the federal budget by cutting Social Security benefits and increasing the retirement age, even though Social Security is self-funded and is separate by law? Even though the only effect cutting benefits or raising the retirement age would have is to slightly alter the date that the Trust Fund zeroes out (currently 15 years from now).

Social Security is not the Federal government's biggest expense. It is not an expense at all. Social Security is not going broke. There is almost $3 trillion in the Trust Fund in the form of interest-bearing U.S. Treasury Bonds. The Trust Fund was designed to handle baby boomer retirements, and deficits in revenues were planned, just as the surpluses were.

You think that Social Security is massive wealth redistribution and a socialist scheme even if only $28,000 is taken out of someone's $1 million in income. After all, it's their money.

You want Social Security Disability? Well, first you will have to get coverage through your state's disability program with its $203 cash per month and $200 food benefit per month (Minnesota figures), for a grand total of $403 per month to live on until in 18 to 24 months your Social Security Disability application is approved. Yeah, people say it's really easy to do that. Oh, and the Republican Congress keeps cutting the payments for administrative expenses (an overhead of less than 2%), so your Social Security offices are understaffed and under-equipped.

We're sorry that the politicians liked lumping together budgets and Social Security figures, even though they are completely separate. But those surpluses sure made things look good, didn't they? No, Congress did not steal from Social Security. Not unless you think that the bonds sold to grandmothers and the Chinese government also constituted theft.

Conservatives and Healthcare

You think that the ACA was a socialist takeover of health care. Even though it is a Republican free-market insurance plan with 170 changes that Republicans demanded including the elimination of a public option. Even though not one hospital, clinic, pharmacy, lab, drug manufacturer, or medical equipment company has been taken over by the government (nationalized).

You want to go back to insuring only healthy people. You are okay with a pharmaceutical drug that was developed with government funds having its price raised by 5000%. You are okay with Medicare being unable to negotiate drug prices. You have no problem with high premiums, co-pays, deductibles, limits,  and restrictions. No problem with unaffordable health care. It's no problem that access to health care at the cost of financial catastrophe is not realistic access.

People should not have to fight insurance companies for coverage that they were promised? Too bad, that's experimental. No, we don't cover those procedures. Sorry, we routinely deny expensive medical care and will not pay until and unless you go through our appeals process. No, you are no longer insured because you lied on your health history when you did not reveal that you had acne as a teenager, even though it was outside of the 10-year history we asked for.

Sorry, your income is too low to qualify for coverage through the ACA. We're sorry (not really) that you don't qualify for your state's Medicaid because your income is too high.

Do you also think that poor people are lazy and that their circumstances are the result of poor choices? Just like sick people have only themselves to blame? So you think that the poor and sick are moochers and are less worthy and the wealthy should not have to shell out their hard-earned money to help them. And why are you opposed to assistance? Because it would encourage dependency and deprive people of the opportunity to have self-esteem that working (even if you can't or are retired) provides.

Conservatives and Wealth

Does your notion of fairness encompass the ever-increasing flow of wealth to the top .1% at the expense of the people who actually do the work that enables profits and investment returns? The same people who may not want to or are unable to be company executives or financial managers or investors. People who are not more interested in wealth than in pursuing work that they find fulfilling. People who don't want their job overshadowing or interfering with family life. And you think that people who send their money to work should be taxed less than people who work. That a rich man's money is worth more than the sweat of a worker. How conservative.

Conservatives and Morality

You don't want corporations being regulated but you're fine with policing people's behavior and enforcing your notions of morality on others. If you don't like gay marriage, here's a tip. Don't marry someone who is the same sex as you.

You think the GOP is the party of fiscal conservatism even though they want to drown the federal government in a bathtub and are starving it to have an excuse for cutting programs. You think the rich need tax relief. And you think greed is a virtue.

Conservatives and Religion

You think we are a Christian nation even though the founding fathers specifically kept religion out of The Constitution. They were familiar with the Church of England and the perils of a state religion. The founding fathers did not even practice the same religions. Yet, with historical revisionism, conservatives are fine with making laws concerning religion. But if you want a church to be tax-exempt, shouldn't it be based on its status as a charitable organization, not because of the approval of politicians and tax officials for a religion they decided is legitimate?

Conclusions

So, you are a conservative? Feels intellectually satisfying, doesn't it? No namby-pamby feel-good bleeding-heart sympathy from you. Just an honest philosophy with no legislating based on feeling sorry for people. No, ours is a merit-based society with no consideration given for family wealth or connections or educational opportunities or good health or fine neighborhoods, or political influence or money to lobby for laws favoring successful capitalists. Work hard and you will be successful. A just society with the freedom to be your own master.

Unless, of course, you are sick or prefer manual labor or can't afford good schools or are a person of color or a victim of a natural disaster or can't afford health care or are scammed out of your savings with promises of a good job. But that's just business, right? Not your fault that you don't pay a living wage, or that you don't support a health care system that does not depend on an employer having to pay for your full-time-work-only insurance, or that jobs are sent overseas where the standards are lax and labor is cheap. Sure, you believe Climate Change is a hoax that scientists are banned from even mentioning, but don't worry because it won't affect you if it turns out to be real. And it snowed last week, so that proves it's not true because there is no difference between weather and climate, right?

Isn't conservatism wonderful?