Czuch:

I want to respond to your post, because it is thoughtful and articulate. It puts the best face on Conservatism and deserves a considered response. That you are not a Bible-thumper is a mark in your favor, in that you are more likely to be both compassionate (in my opinion) & open to other points of view. Nevertheless, I find the Conservatism you defend to be flawed, for the following reasons: 1. it is Antiquated; 2. it is Simplistic; 3. it is a Double Standard; and 4. it is Inadequate. I will try to prove each point, if briefly, in the remainder of this post. As to your opinion that “bible thumpers give far more to charitable concerns than you and your socialist friends ever thought about giving,” this is perhaps true and perhaps not. I can understand how you would believe it so, since Christians do stress private charity, and that is a mark in their favor. If it is true, then it is an indication to me that, on both sides of the aisle, there is room for self-assessment and growth. Now to the points.

1. The Conservative view is Antiquated.

I say it is antiquated because it does not take into account the changes in our country, and in our world, since the founding of our nation. In an agrarian society, where (1) opportunity really was more or less equal, (2) great forces were not arrayed against the common man, and (3) governments had less power to influence our lives economically, then private charities might indeed have been the best answer to alleviate the suffering of the poor. By “great forces,” which Conservatives fail to take into account, I mean primarily the rise of the modern Corporation & the establishment of a Central Bank (the Federal Reserve), coupled with astronomic advances in technology.

The modern Corporation, for example, has the legal powers of a private citizen, as ruled by the Supreme Court in the early part of the last century. But its advantages are manifold: it does not die of old age, it is allowed to trade overseas, it has far more wealth than a typical private citizen, and therefore it has better means to influence governmental policy. It also has the right to privacy of a citizen, which means its records, its meetings, its decisions, its policies, are concealed from the public, even though it is the public those decisions & policies most effect. It is the common man, the industrial worker, the small business man, who loses in the bargain. He cannot prevent his job from being moved overseas, or his small business from being undermined through the monopolistic forces & collusion of big business. He cannot prevent his wages being reduced, with only his company’s “word” that it is necessary. He has little or no recourse to the “justice system” if this Corporate “citizen” breaks the law. Finally, if the Corporation is a legal citizen, it is necessarily a psychopathic one. By this, I mean it is entirely (and admittedly), out for itself. It’s bottom line goal is to make a profit at any cost, i.e., the goal of self-preservation through continual growth. It has no higher values as a citizen, by its very nature. So it is competitive by nature, rather than cooperative, and only cooperative to the extent that it calculates such is strategically necessary to maintain its strength for future competition. Thus, if the modern Corporation is a citizen, it is a calculating little devil of a citizen who, for the betterment of society, ought to be severely restricted in its actions & powers. But the laws of the land, many written by the corporations themselves & merely signed off on by members of Congress, protect & support this devil, and increasingly enlarge its powers, to the detriment of the common man.

The Federal Reserve is a bigger enemy to the common man than the corporation. This Bank is federal only in name. It is a private bank whose shareholders remain undisclosed. Yet it has two awesome powers which render it deadly. The first is the power to tax. I am speaking of the Income Tax, which is strictly unconstitutional, since the primary definition of “income,” when the Constitution was written, was “profits from capital,” not “wages from labor;” and since the Constitution stipulates that other taxes must be equally proportioned among the people. As we know, the Income Tax is not equally proportioned, but different tax rates now apply to different individuals, depending on their wealth. However these tax rates are applied, they are simply robbing the common man of the fruit of his labor. I think you may even agree with that. And this is to the common man’s disadvantage in his struggle against poverty. An interesting point to make is that no federal law exists establishing the legality of the Income Tax. It is simply done, and enforced by the IRS, which is the policing arm of the Federal Reserve, a private bank whose shareholders are secret & unanswerable to the public.

The second awesome power of the Federal Reserve is the power to create currency out of thin air. And this is what it does, partly to regulate interest rates, but mostly to lend to the government for debt spending. In this way the government can borrow and spend as much as it pleases, by handing over the money to Corporations, again, primarily those within the network of the Military-Industrial-Complex, who supply oil & equipment to the armed forces and the secret service agencies. Now, the key to understanding how printing money out of thin air (no gold standard) robs the common man is that, for every dollar thus created, the dollar in your wallet is devalued by that much. This is because the increase is not based on capital, i.e., actual material goods. Most of you notice that inflation gives you less bang for your buck. You can’t buy what you previously could, with the same amount of money. What many of you don’t understand is that inflation is no blind “market force,” but a direct and calculated result of printing money out of thin air by the Federal Reserve, i.e., by private bankers to lend to the U.S. Government, which bankers therefore profit, FREELY, when the debts come due, because the printing of currency has cost them essentially nothing. In 1913, when the Federal Reserve was established, 4 cents on a dollar had the buying power of a whole dollar today. So that is how much the money in your wallet has been deflated through inflation. And though wages do increase incrementally over time, I think most people are fully aware that they lag far behind the costs of goods & services, in terms of real money. Furthermore, though the common man has less real wealth as a result, this does not mean that there is less real wealth in the world. It simply means the ownership of this real wealth is being transferred (clandestinely, if you will), from the common man to the mega-rich. And this is essentially why the rich man gets richer: it is not because he works harder or longer hours, or really even that he works smarter; rather, it is because he takes advantage of a system designed precisely to transfer your wealth, the fruits of your labor, into his bank account.

As to technology, I will pass this point by, except to say that it obviously increases the power of those already in power, militarily & otherwise. And That, along with the secretive (thus, anti-democratic) operations of clandestine governmental organizations such as the CIA, NSA, CPC, NSC, and DIA, all of which serve to further the interests of Corporate leaders & private bankers (under the guise of calling it the “National Interest”), provides devastating means of economic warfare against the common man that the writers of our Constitution could scarcely have dreamed of.

2. The Conservative view is Simplistic.

I have already indicated how it is simplistic, in terms of not taking into account the rise of the modern Corporation, the Federal Reserve, and technological advances. In short, there is a disconnect in the Conservative viewpoint caused by its misunderstanding of the complexity of the modern world, and its somewhat starry-eyed (yet understandable) nostalgia for the old world. Yet, it is also simplistic in two other, less pardonable ways. In the first place, conservatives argue (and rightly so) that private charity, much less public welfare, ought not to be extended to those who don’t deserve it. This is a main point of their thesis, that those who won’t work shouldn’t eat. It is emphasized & oft-repeated by talk show pundits such as O’Reilly, Hannity, Limbaugh, Boorz, etc. As far as this argument goes, I agree. Yet it stops at first base, so to speak. Nor does it exist in a vacuum. For the sake of argument, let us take 10 poor families, of 5 members each. Let us say that 50% of those households (that is 5 out of 10, an unrealistically high number in my estimation) have parents “too lazy to work.” Where does that leave us? It means that, to argue against public welfare based on the fact that even as high a number as half the adults in question would abuse it, is to deny aid to the other half of the adults, who need it & won’t abuse it. Further, it is to deny aid to the children of both sets of adults. And the children of even the irresponsible adults are citizens, and do not carry the guilt of their parents. So, in effect, this position would, and does, deny needed food, shelter, health care, schooling, to children who are guiltless. And these children need the food, shelter, health care & schooling so that they can grow to be healthy, well-informed citizens upon which our nation depends. In effect, because of the laziness of 10 citizens, 40 other non-lazy citizens are required to suffer the consequences. Now, one might argue here that it’s “too bad” for those children, especially those of the irresponsible parents; that “it’s a tough world, get used to it.” But in doing so, one surrenders one’s right to be considered a “compassionate conservative.”

In the second place, the Conservative viewpoint has a simplistic, or rather one-sided, recognition of the Sources of Evil in our society. It rightly recognizes that the lazy poor man is evil. But it fails to acknowledge the existence, or negative socio-economic impact, of the evil rich man. Yet the evil rich man has a far greater influence on the general economy, as already alluded to, than the evil poor man. And while the evil poor man’s irresponsible behavior effects mostly himself and his immediate family, the evil rich man’s selfishness has a negative economic impact on many poor families, even the ones headed by responsible adults. Nevertheless, conservatives rarely if ever admonish the evil rich man, or better yet, seek to alter the social system so as to decrease the evil rich’s man influence & impact on the poor & middle-class. To the contrary, they invariably side with the rich man, never considering him to be “evil” in any case, but rather to be an “American success,” almost by definition. Whereas they always stand against the evil poor man, notwithstanding that in doing so they group, if not intentionally, certainly in Effect, the evil poor man & the honest, hardworking poor man into a single composite entity. And in doing this, they turn a blind eye to the real needs of their fellow countrymen, many of whom are children who can in no wise fend for themselves.

So the net result of this overly simplistic view is that Conservatives, again not necessarily intentionally, but nevertheless truly, support the oppressors of the poor, rather than the poor themselves. And this in fact harms the poor, resulting in the malnutrition & deaths of children, along with other comparatively lesser evils. When examined closely, it is hard to argue with a straight face (it would seem to me) that Conservatives can deservedly bear the label, “compassionate.” This is not to say that they are physiologically or psychologically incapable of experiencing the whole gamut of human feelings & sentiments. And, even by natural instinct, a feeling of pity towards some unfortunate might arise in a conservative heart under certain circumstances. This is true of us all, or of at least most of us. Yet the Conservative mind is not, by & large, sufficiently driven by a profound pity for real human suffering, enough to cause it to expand the scope of its worldview, and take into account very relevant factors which contribute to, and in many cases even cause, this suffering. The Conservative man does not consider the alleviation of human suffering to be one of his top priorities, or even to be, strictly speaking, his responsibility. His highest moral mandate is individuality, i.e., personal choice. He therefore may, or may not, choose to extend private charity, at his own discretion. In no case can it be demanded of him. And he does not acknowledge, or perhaps even recognize, the higher moral imperative, that of altruism: that we truly are, and must be, our brother’s keeper. Such a moral law the so-called “compassionate conservative” will not be constrained by.

He will of course reiterate his argument that, surely he IS constrained by this moral law, and accepts its mandate, but only privately. It does not belong in the public sphere. I will continue my argument against this position in my next post on this subject, because I do not have time or space here to get to my last two main points, as mentioned in the opening paragraph. I will only say here that such a stance insinuates, in my estimation, a false dichotomy of thinking, a false choice or preference, if you will, which results in the de facto neglect of the poor. And this very fact, that the poor are neglected indeed, reveals that behind this false preference lies an element of hypocrisy – perhaps unconscious hypocrisy in some, yet it is conscious in others. In other words, it is a stance which masks, whether intentionally or accidentally, a fundamental lack of empathy for others who suffer. But this is an argument I will develop more fully in the second half of this essay.

Thank you for reading this far. :o)