Conservatism: The Ideology of Selfishness!

The facts, the legacy, every single current and past event point directly at this irrefutable truth. Yet few, of either political stripe, want to believe it.

Who condemned Socrates to death?

Conservatives.

Who killed Jesus?

Conservatives.

Who burned Bruno and Joan?

Conservatives.

Who imprisoned Galileo?

Conservatives.

Who was behind the Inquisition?

Conservatives.

Who burned “witches?”

Conservatives.

Who prefers myth over truth?

Conservatives.

Who bans and burns books?

Conservatives.

Who traditionally opposes science?

Conservatives.

Who traditionally opposes the expansion of rights?

Conservatives.

Who is the perennial bully of indigenous people?

Conservatives.

Which “Americans” were against the founding of the United States of America?

Conservatives (the Tories… remember them?)

Which “Americans” were determined to conserve slavery?

Conservatives.

Who started the Civil War?

Conservatives.

Who was behind the Ku Klux Klan?

Conservatives

Which “Americans” did not want poor white men, Native Americans, former slaves or women to have the right to vote?

Conservatives.

Who were the Robber Barons… and other captains of industry running roughshod over workers?

Conservatives.

Who caused the Great Depression and the Great Recession?

Conservatives.

Who were the murderous Fascists, Nazis, Communists of the 20th Century?

Conservatives.

Who started World War I and World War II?

Conservatives.

Who is against ALL governmental assistance to poor citizens, sick citizens, elderly citizens (except themselves)?

Conservatives.

Who is against ALL governmental protections of the environment, air, water and endangered animal species?

Conservatives.

Who does NOT believe in liberty, equality and justice for ALL?

Conservatives.

Who loudly proclaim their support of religion, and ever seek to force others to submit to their “faith,” but have never shown much inclination to abide its highest precepts?

Conservatives.

Who, to this day, would seek to impose a strict hierarchy upon society which rewards a few and punishes most?

Conservatives.

Who operates under a self-assumed certainty that their “superiority” entitles them to advantage, privilege and power within their society?

Conservatives.

Which nations, what religions, what ideologies have been the most violent, the most morally repugnant, the least desirable to live in or even visit, then and now?

The conservative.

Conservatives. Pick up a history book. Doesn’t matter what it’s about. Doesn’t matter what timeframe, what nations, what people are involved. Turn to any page. If it’s not sheer propaganda, what you will find is conservatives conserving… and on the WRONG side of history… in every case.

Every single major scandal in world history has conservatives as a root cause.

Every single stitch of moral progress that humanity has made was affected by the more liberal of that society, staunchly, often violently, opposed by… conservatives.

Why doesn’t everyone know this? Why isn’t this taught?

Both sides of the political spectrum are to blame. Conservatives, of course, are keen to forget, erase, conflate or distort history, as well as the contemporary narrative, to suit their immediate issues which, it turns out are generally the same old causes they have ever pursued… those of advantage, privilege and power… for themselves. Meanwhile, the more liberal ilk are too often too forgiving, too polite, too compromising, too eager to assume the best intentions of others to firmly accept the duty to truly interpret what is happening and hold the transgressors responsible for the benefit of not just their own era but for those to come.

American conservatives, in particular, have been the grand beneficiaries of an increasingly tolerant liberal society that has negligently denied and downplayed the true nature of the conservative ethos, which has never actually believed in either true American ideals: liberty, equality, justice for all… or even the proclaimed moral tenets of their own “Lord and Savior.” American conservatives have throughout the history of this republic sought to undermine its founding principles, and that project has recently reached a new level of zealotry. If you don’t believe that, you apparently weren’t paying attention when they attacked the U.S. Capitol and were bent on murder and treason with the entire Congress and vice-president inside!

What does that episode, plus ALL others, prove that conservatives believe in? The correct, and only, answer is that they believe in… Nothing. Except their own advantage, privilege and power within their society. This, and only this, is what they perennially “conserve.” Do not be deceived by their declaration of reverence for “liberty” and “rights.” It is their “liberty” and their “rights” they are referring to… not yours! Indeed, included among their assumed “rights” is the right to overrule, indeed to rule over, you and yours!

Conservatism is, by any measure, the Ideology of Selfishness.

Through time eternal, meeting that conservative imperative head-on is the magnanimous, sharing, “liberal” impulse: to liberate.

Liberate what? Anyone and anything from the oppression of conservatives conserving.

Though the scope of both conservative oppression and liberal liberation has greatly expanded over the past several centuries, this, in fact, is the perennial dynamic in human culture. “It is ever thus,” Ralph Waldo Emerson assured us over 150 years ago. His description of the ongoing struggle between selfishness and altruism is enlightening:

“The two parties which divide the state, the party of Conservatism, and the party of Innovation, are very old, and have disputed the possession of the world ever since it was made… On rolls the old world meantime… and now one, now the other gets the day, and still the fight renews itself, as if for the first time, under new names and hot personalities. It is the opposition of Past and Future.”

Yet this is not what we are told America is all about. No, we are purportedly a two-party system, each side with good intentions and good ideas, often counter-balancing the other’s errant instincts, but sharing a common accord in devotion to the founding ideals. Sounds great. We might so wish it were actually true. But it is abjectly not. One side of the American political spectrum does not, nor has ever, believed in those bedrock values, and, in fact, has worked tirelessly for over 240 years to thwart their ever being fully actualized!

Kind of an important truth. Yet hardly a school in America is teaching it.

Obfuscating things further is that we are divided into political parties, and think of them as comprising our full political spectrum (with some fringe elements attached on either end). But these parties are not reliably consistent in their relations with fundamental conservative and/or liberal ideals. Indeed, they have effectively flip-flopped, the Republican Party originating as the most liberal major political party in American history with the singular objective of restraining, if not abolishing, slavery, whilst the Democratic Party, born of Old South white supremacy, was certainly the most conservative party to achieve substantial political power. Today they have traded places in a manner that would send their founders’ heads spinning.

For generations, the two species of conservative, the financial elite and the largely uneducated, bigoted, religious rabble, were on separate teams, distrusting if not fully despising each other. Following the achievement of eradicating slavery, the Republican Party sought a new identity, and found it as the Party of Big Business, the benefactor of the bankers, railroaders and industry tycoons. Actually older than the GOP, the Democrats catered to the “little” (albeit white) guy, whether worker, farmer or small tradesman. There remains more than a semblance of this orientation, as Republicans are still the champions of tax cuts for the rich, while the Democrats remain committed to serving workers and the average family.

It is true that most rich folk (and our largest corporate “citizens”) continue to favor the Republicans, yet, not all workers and average families are loyal in return to the Democrats. Beginning in the mid 1960s and continuing into the 1980s, something occurred which would have left old-line abolitionists and Confederates alike dumfounded. The Great Joining saw legions of former Democrats, particularly in the south and rural areas of the nation, unsettled by the Democratic Party’s expansion of Civil Rights, seemingly permissive attitude toward burgeoning culturally progressive movements such as the welfare state, feminism, environmentalism, the gay campaign, but increasingly antagonistic toward the patriotic Vietnam War effort. Even though all of this was much in keeping with the party’s progressive strides since the days of the New Deal, it was too much to stomach for traditional minded conservatives who are all too happy to accept governmental boosts themselves but bristle at that offered to any “others.” White conservatives, in particular, perceived their privileged status on the societal hierarchy, their very “way of life” (meaning their privileged status), threatened by all of these new groups seeking, and receiving, their own “rights.”

That’s the mark of the conservative. Big Government is great so long as it benefits them, but if it lifts up, much less empowers, the “other,” that’s a hard NO!

The Great Joining united all of America’s conservatives in an uneasy alliance. Imagine, the progeny of Confederates flocking to the very party that wrecked Old Dixie, the great grandsons of farmers and workers gouged by railroad and factory owners, now voluntarily uniting with the ancient gilded enemy. And consider what the elite was thinking, as this mass of religious, uneducated yet arrogant and entitled wave flooded into its halls. The union is volatile to the core, as the financial elite and rowdy rabble have virtually nothing in common and few shared values. Except one. The most primal. Selfishness. They both see liberalism, the effort to actualize foundational American ideals — liberty, justice, equality for all — as an existential threat to their advantage, privilege and power.

Since the Joining, the elite has been adept at keeping the rabble under control, skillfully using wedge issues —abortion, guns, God, gays, immigrants, transgenders, etc. — to bedazzle, anger, frighten and otherwise motivate the rank-and-file conservatives while generally serving their own interests with an endless series of tax cuts, deregulation and other pro Big-Business gifting, not to mention profitable wars of choice, all of which serves to harm their less affluent conservative brethren.

But things have changed since the early 2000s. An angry rabble has arisen. Betrayed by Bush-Cheney. Incensed by Obama. Demographics threatening to render them a minority. Their esteemed “heritage” and “traditions” under assault. They sought to take “their” country back. A traditional Republican would not do. They needed a disrupter. A big disrupter.

History will prove they chose very poorly. That’s nothing new. Conservatives are forever wrong.

In falling for Donald Trump they stepped right into another trap, into the convoluted aspirations of a demented Eastern elite, himself, with the integrity of Gollum. Trump represents the bane of their Democratic grand-pappies. Yet in him they see a wrecking machine, a destroyer of all that bugs them. And mind you, the vast majority of American conservatives are in agitated tizzies about nothing that actually affects them, but merely bugs them. Through their perceived horrors of Clinton, Obama and Biden, nothing much has changed about their actual lives. Nothing much would change under a Kamala Harris administration. There are no real immigrants, gays, transgenders, environmentalists, vegans or other liberal monsters actually at their door, clawing for their guns or Bibles or “way of life.” These are but strawmen or things, fictitious placeholders, boogey things, that give them an excuse to be upset about the gradual loss of what conservatives, of any rank, value the most: superiority over others in society. These folks cannot tolerate being just “Americans,” like everybody else. That smacks of “equality,” the one word they hate the most. They don’t want equality; they want advantage, privilege, power… at least over the “other.”

But Donald Trump will not be their savior. He cares nothing about them, beyond their swooning adulation. He cares about nothing other then himself. Which makes him the perfect avatar for the conservative cause. He, himself, is the ultimate conservative. And the movement behind him is, likewise, a much purer form of conservatism than anything involving Ronald Reagan, George Bush, Mitt Romney or John McCain.

Win or lose in 2024, Trump has already destroyed the credibility of his followers. If he has done anything worthwhile, he has exposed conservatives — elite and average, one and all — as having no values at all other than their own advantage, privilege and power. Trump has unveiled these “real patriots” and “true believers” as fakes, as frauds, as pretenders, as villains, as a clear and present danger to virtue, truth, justice and goodness. Indeed, they are closer to anti-Americans and anti-Christians than they are devotees of what these movements actually mean.

Donald Trump, himself, described them early in the 2016 campaign. “I could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue, and not lose any votes.”

Consider what he is saying. He is admitting his supporters have no morals. They have no beliefs. There is nothing they care about other than their own advantage. They see him as their champion. And, as long as he seems to serve their interest, he can do anything — anything — and they will cling to their “faith” in him — which is to say, what they want to believe!

Subsequent history proved him correct. A litany of Trump brags, insults, outrageous lies, actual crimes, even a coup attempt later, and he hasn’t lost a vote… he’s gained millions!

There will never be any shortage of conservatives. It’s so easy. It’s so enticing. Just believe what you want to believe. Just indulge your selfishness. Just go along with the mob. You’ll be forever wrong. You’ll be a net negative to human culture and to the planetary whole. But you’ll feel so superior — to someone at least — and that feels soooo good!

Now if we could just manage to get enough people to realize what is happening here. The Ideology of Selfishness is again running amok in the United States… and in many other places in the world. It endangers us all. Perhaps then there will be hope for a future realignment toward real values, real virtue. Until we get our heads around what is the perennial struggle, we will always be vulnerable to conservative plague.

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Check out singer-songwriter Rusty Reid at www.RustyReid.com or your favorite streaming service.

No Hate.
No Violence.
All Life is Sacred.
The Universe is Magnificent & Beautiful.
Love is the Way.

Copyright 2024, Rusty Reid