Conservative Rhetoric Distilled

Conservative Rhetoric Distilled

A conservative is someone who reads the story of Robin Hood and thinks the Sheriff of Nottingham is "the good guy."

There is often a substantial difference between what candidates say for public consumption and what they actually have in mind. That is easily understood, however, because some policies for which a candidate or party stands would be much less popular if spelled out plainly and directly. For example, an inevitable but oft unspoken implication of better wages, benefits, and job protection, typically advocated by liberals, is higher consumer prices.

But conservatives have an even harder task, since their primary financial backing comes from large businesses and wealthy individuals, with whom the average student, wage earner, or retiree has relatively little in common. It's very hard, for example, to convince the public that it's a good idea to run up the national debt, that ninety percent of a tax cut should benefit the wealthiest ten percent of taxpayers, and that the profitability of business justifies the plundering of natural resources, the fouling of the environment, the exploitation of workers, and the victimization of consumers. Thus, a considerable amount of diversion and rhetorical spin must be applied, to give the illusion that the guy who is patting you on the back and talking up "tax cuts" and "family values" isn't really plotting with industry to permit the poisoning of your neighborhood, or to saddle your kids with the interest payments on trillions of dollars of government debt.

Here we will examine some of the conservative buzzwords in this year's campaign, and attempt to distill their true meaning to the ordinary citizen in light of the candidates' and parties' historical statements and practices.

What they say:	What they mean:
GOP: "Grand Old Party"	GOP: "Greedy Oil Producers" [In the G.W.Bush administration, both President and Vice-President have strong interests in the petroleum industry, and these are reflected in the administration's policy.]
Across-the-board tax cut.	A "fair-sounding" measure to benefit those who pay the most tax—corporations and the rich—with little to nothing going to those who already pay little or no tax—the poor—while middle-income folks get stuck paying the interest on the resulting debt.
Adequate national defense.	The ability to annihilate all of our enemies (present, former, and potential) at least twice, secured by generous offerings of pork to defense contractors located in certain Congressmen's home states and districts.
Affirmative action is unnecessary.	Now that everyone else has labored to put most of the wealth and power into the hands of middle-aged white males, let's just call everything even and let bygones be bygones.
Capital punishment.	Costly and error-prone conservative concept of the right to die.
Compassionate conservatism.	Codifying what "good" (compliant) citizens should think and believe and saddling them with government debt, while smiling and assuring them it's the moral and patriotic thing to do.
The conservative Congress deserves much credit.	During the Clinton administration, the Republican-dominated Congress set a record for initiating a continuous string of mostly fruitless investigations, to distract public attention from its failure to accomplish much of anything worthwhile.
Deregulation.	Permitting the profit motive to override the public interest.
Every American child deserves a good education.	As long as his parents can afford to send him to a private school. Otherwise, the kid deserves only as good as in Texas, whose public educational system ranks near the bottom in the U.S.
Family values.	Government values defined for diverse families by moralistic fanatics. [Conservatives talk a lot about family values, but they fail to make clear precisely what they are and how they intend to impose them on our families.]
Getting big government out of our personal lives.	Letting big business do whatever it likes without regulatory supervision. [Most conservatives actually seem to want more, not less, control of people's personal lives, from interposing government between us and our chosen doctors and clergy, to spying on our e-mail and censoring the web sites we visit.]
Let taxpayers keep more of what they earn.	Promise taxpayers a $400 tax cut in exchange for their votes, so they'll forget they're still paying $1,000-a-head in annual interest on the debt incurred to drive the artificial economic boom of the Reagan-Bush era.
The party of inclusion.	The party of wealthy white males, who will happily include anyone else (such as the uneducated and the fanatically religious) whom they can dupe into supporting their schemes for upward redistribution of wealth.
Political Correctness.	A policy of discouraging the fine American tradition of abusing anyone and everyone who isn't a minimally educated heterosexual male WASP fundamentalist.
The current prosperity is a fluke.	It is nothing short of total, miraculous coincidence, that 12 years of Republican administrations were marked by boom-and-bust economic instability, mounting unemployment, and mushrooming deficits, while almost 8 years of Democrat administration have been accompanied by growing prosperity, shrinking welfare rolls, and deficit reduction.
Restore honor to the White House.	Screwing the public gets you prestige, power, and money. Screwing the help just gets you into trouble.
Right to life.	The right of government to usurp the legitimate functions of physicians, clergy, and individual conscience in citizens' personal lives.
School vouchers.	A scheme to siphon off public resources to pay for the special education of a privileged few.
Secular humanism.	Anything which opposes Christian fundamentalist control of government and society.
Seniors should have the right to choose their health insurers.	Seniors should choose either to pay exorbitant rates for health care or to do without, leaving the insurance industry free to focus on the healthier (and more profitable) segments of the population.
Slashing big government.	Shifting funding from benefiting people to investigating them.
States' rights.	The right of a majority to use the power of state government to deprive minorities of rights guaranteed by the national constitution.
Unqualified right to keep and bear arms.	We need every vote we can get, even if we must pander to dangerous lunatics and endanger your kids.
Washington is awash in money.	Washington is awash in debt, and in politicians who can't do simple arithmetic.

Although in my tender years I was rather conservative, since my disillusionment by the flagrant abuses of the Nixon administration my bias has tended toward a more moderate, or even liberal, view. While I still esteem and respect certain thoughtful conservatives, such as John McCain, Colin Powell, the late William F. Buckley, and the late Nelson Rockefeller, since 1980 I have been repelled by the Republican Party's accelerated drift away from the Eisenhower style of responsible conservatism and toward the rabid anti-intellectual Falwell-Buchanan influence, which strikes me as a potentially disastrous course for American-style constitutional democracy.

Nevertheless, if anyone would care to offer comparable contemporary liberal buzzwords (along with common-language translations) for similar presentation, I would be glad to give it a go in the name of fairness. You can e-mail me (from FEEDBACK).

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