Czuch: In continuation of my previous post on this topic:

3. The Conservative view is a Double Standard.

It is a double standard because conservatives claim to be opposed to Public Welfare, which they define as aid to the poor out of the public coffers, and apparently any other kind of domestic spending that can be construed, directly or indirectly, as thus benefiting the poor. Aid to the poor is a private matter, they insist, and as we have seen. If given freely in this way to those in need, it is a morally good action. But on the other hand, if a part of their tax-money is used to help those in need, they feel robbed. They are outraged. The money wasn’t freely given, it was taken from them. Furthermore, they were not allowed to choose the recipients of their charitable contributions. Thus they feel alienated from the good deed, in a sense, which perhaps even removes some of its goodness. Not only so, but they feel that perhaps the recipient who did receive the aid wasn’t worthy, in which case the money is wasted. They cannot KNOW this (that the money was wasted), though they are quick to listen to pundits who tell them this is generally the case. And it is certainly true that welfare programs in this country, in the past, have been spotty at best. The truth is, I can understand & even to some degree sympathize with the objections made above by Conservatives. Strictly speaking, what right does the government have to tell us how to spend our money? In fact, what gives the government the right to take this money from us in the first place? As we have already seen, the federal Income Tax is unconstitutional. But it is a part of the modern landscape, and has to be taken into account.

Yet, there seems to be a greater evil lurking behind Public Welfare, from the Conservative standpoint. This great evil they call “Socialism.” The chief evil of Socialism, say the conservatives, is that it steals from the Haves (the industrious) and gives to the Have-Nots (the lazy); i.e., it is a redistribution of hard-earned wealth. This redistribution is considered to be very inefficient, for two reasons: (1) the lazy man will waste this wealth without substantially improving his lot, therefore will remain a siphon off the industrious man’s wealth; and (2) the industrious man himself will lose his incentive for industry because he is not being allowed to enjoy the fruits thereof. Besides, if men are industrious, they will not be needy. And finally, Socialism is considered simply immoral because, again, it is redistribution without consent. This last argument, by itself, does have merit. In a different world (such as that inhabited by our founding fathers), it might be decisive. The first argument, that it is inefficient, is weak. Its efficiency depends on the quality of its input, as any system does. In any case, it is no less efficient than a Capitalist system which wastes incalculable resources through the destructive results of military expansionism, due to the sheer greed of its owners.

A third argument sometimes made is that Socialism is by its nature God-less. But that is not true. It is an alternative economic system, purely & simply. Contrary to the opinions of some, Capitalism is certainly not ordained by God, no matter how many so-called Christians feel a religious passion for it. The Communist governments of China & the former U.S.S.R. are/were Totalitarian regimes with Imperialistic aims. This has little to do with Socialism, per se. Likewise, the modern form of Corporate Capitalism does not reflect Adam Smith’s beneficent vision (Smith being the “father” of Capitalism, who published his “Wealth of Nations” in 1776). In the modern world, the best economic solution is probably a mixture of Capitalism & Socialism, with clear oversight of both, and provided that modern regimes (such as the U.S.A.) do not squander their wealth on bloody wars of conquest.

Be that as it may, the Double Standard among political conservatives lies in this: that they do not really oppose Public Welfare! That they do oppose it is a complete fabrication contradicted by the facts. That is, they do not oppose the redistribution of wealth which they claim is Socialism, and which they insist is immoral (for which argument, as I have said, I find some merit…but also some flaws). They do not oppose the forceful taking of a citizen’s money, without his consent, and spending it without his permission, in areas wherein that citizen would not have freely chosen to spend that money himself, and even possibly in areas wherein that citizen opposed its being spent. The robbery they rail against on the one hand, they allow & condone on the other. And this, assuredly, is a Double Standard.

What I am primarily referring to is our tax money & government debt-spending going to so-called “Defense Spending.” There are, to be sure, many pork-barrel projects in Washington, both Republican & Democrat, that use up our tax dollars. And not only tax money but, as we have seen, even more so the creation of new money by the Federal Reserve to be lent to the U.S. Treasury, thus devaluing the dollar in your wallet. Most people don’t complain about this because they simply don’t understand it. Yet by this method more wealth is taken from you than by the federal Income Tax itself. And most of the wealth siphoned off from you, either through taxes or inflation, is used for “defense spending,” i.e., it is turned over to the Military-Industrial-Complex.

Conservatives will here remind me that the U.S. Constitution mandates that we provide for the Common Defense. Agreed. But the Constitution nowhere mandates that the United States be an expansionist nation, an imperialist regime, a meddler in the affairs of other countries, or, by any means, a belligerent aggressor against other nations in war, which nations have not first attacked us! Yet this foreign aggressive behavior, as any informed individual knows, is the very essence of the “Bush doctrine.” (Palin didn’t know it, evidently.) It is preposterous on the face of it, if I may say so, to believe that our Founding Fathers envisioned the kind of arrogant assertiveness our nation has come to display upon the world stage (or to believe their arguments morally valid, if they did). But the truth is, they could not have, and did not, foresee the kind of power our Federal Government would be privileged with, once technology and central banking tipped the scales in its favor. Indeed, America is the most powerful country in the history of the world! Which means, by the way, that it also carries the most responsibility. But instead of being benevolent, we behave like the new Rome. The money we spend on the U.S. Military & related industries, making up the Military-Industrial-Complex first warned against by President Eisenhower (a Republican!), is yearly more than the rest of the world’s spending combined. To have the audacity to call this “defense spending,” simply boggles the mind. It is not “defensive,” but clearly “offensive.”

In fact, modern Conservatism can hardly be called “conservative.” The old conservatives (such as Eisenhower, and more recently William F. Buckley) fully rejected expansionist, essentially colonialist aims, for America. And that is why Buckley, for example, rejected the Bush administration. To be conservative means, for one thing, to keep things “within the budget.” Yet first Reagan, and then Bush Jr., piled up the biggest debts in the history of our Republic. Not to worry, your kids & grandkids will pay of the bill. I care not one whit for Bill Clinton, but at least he did balance the budget. For another thing, the old-time conservatives surely understood the importance of self-defense. But they reviled belligerent nations. That kind of despicable behavior was a characteristic only of evil empires like the U.S.S.R.! Yet America has now proven itself to be just as despicable. And these so-called modern conservatives embrace the evil empire America has become.

Now, to drive the point home, if so-called “Defense Spending” is not really defense spending, but something else, then it is spending for the benefit of some class or classes of people. My argument is that it is essentially spending for the rich. It is handouts to corporations who are part of the Military-Industrial-Complex, etc., at the expense of the poor & middle classes. It is a funnel of money from the poor man’s pocket to the rich man’s pocket. Again, Conservatives have no problem with this, even if they themselves become poorer as a result. Of course, they do not want to become poorer. But when they do, they falsely believe it is the fault of some poor black woman in Mississippi or some irresponsible single mother, and that is what they believe because rich men like Bill O’Reilly, hired by other rich men to misrepresent reality, tell them that. This is not to throw the total blame on Bill O’Reilly and his masters. If this misrepresentation strikes a chord in the average Conservative’s mind, it is because he prefers the Lie to the Truth.

As we see, then, there are TWO forms of Socialism at work in modern America: welfare for the poor, which is woefully inadequate & inefficient in its current form; and welfare for the rich, which runs like a well-oiled machine. Given the choice of these two forms of Socialism, I would choose the form which builds lives, feeds & houses & schools my fellow human beings. But conservatives instead choose the form which destroys lives, here & abroad; which rains Death & Destruction down upon innocents so that the wealthy backers & planners of these atrocities can take their oil…and who will even go to the extent of bombing their own citizens with false-flag operations such as 9/11, in order to provide a pretext for their crimes abroad.

What this proves, beyond the shadow of any reasonable doubt, is that Conservatives are not compassionate, as they claim to be, but rather callous to the suffering of others. At best, Conservatives are willfully ignorant. At worst, they actually take pleasure in human suffering. They do this because they are, deep down, bigots who do not identify themselves with humanity in general, but see themselves as fundamentally superior. Nor is the so-called “Christian conservative” truly Christian. By the modern definition of Christianity, he may be. He attends church. He prays. But notwithstanding this, his own Bible condemns him, as I demonstrated by the quotations I posted a couple of days ago.

I still have not argued my final point, which is, that the Conservative view is Inadequate. Artful Dodger seems to indicate, with his recent copy-&-pastes from the Cato Institute, that poor folks in America live pretty high off the hog. I will attempt to refute that claim, and if I can do so, then draw conclusions from its refutation. But for the time being, this post is already long enough. :o)