I live in Utah. For the last five years I've had a single goal. of either attending or hosting a meeting that discusses free market health care reform.
The chance to repeals PPACA is past, and I am left in the darkness wondering why these people called "conservatives" failed to stand up for health freedom when it was clearly the single most important issue of our generation.
Utah is by far the most conservative state in the union.
Living in the most conservative state of the union taught me the valuable lesson that, contrary to their claims, conservatives are not the defenders of freedom. They use freedom rhetoric to gain power, but once in power they simply lock everyone out.
To understand the nature of Conservatism, I think it wise to study the most conservative of the conservatives in the most conservative of states. I am talking conservatism on steroids here.
The most conservative group of the most conservative state of Utah, of course, is the fundamentalists.
The Salt Lake Tribune has a typical life story of people living in the wonderland of Fundamentalist Conservative Utah:
At age 16, Ruby Jessop was forced to marry her cousin Harlow Barley. She pumped out 6 kids in ten years. At age 26 she escaped her captivity to a safe house run by Help The Child Brides.
Most people born in cults take to the indoctrination. Those who don't embrace the indoctrination are usually so poorly educated that they fear going out in the real world.
I've met women who cannot read. When conservatism reaches its absurdity, conservatives don't even teach women to read because that might disrupt the social order. Imagine the embarrassment you would face in life if you had to approach strangers to read signs because the conservative leaders who control every aspect of your life prevented you from learning to read.
If
you are a conservative, then you really should spend time looking at
what the fundamentalists do because fundamentalists are the most
conservative of all conservatives.
How can Republicans be so completely blind. The Taliban is a conservative group. Al Qaeda is a conservative group.
Conservatism is not the path to freedom.
IMHO, the Tea Party was an authentic freedom movement. It was quickly infiltrated and captured by conservative activists. The activists stopped the wonderful discussion about freedom and immediately set about grubbing power for conservatives.
These
conservatives effectively killed the Tea Party. Because of these
conservatives we are forced to deal with 4 more years of a social
progressive presidency.
Yes, I know. Pundits like Sean Hannity and Limbaugh play a word game in which "liberal" means "socialist" and "conservative" means "liberal." This game of sublating the term liberal was started by the an arch-conservative named Hegel (1770-1831).
Quite frankly, the argument that Hegel is the father of modern conservatism is stronger than the argument that Marx is the father of the modern liberalism.
I love the ideals of liberty that were at the heart of the American Experiment in self-rule.
Unfortunately, this experiment is coming to an end because fools like Sean Hannity and Riush Limbaugh who drown out rational discourse with the stupid little name game in which "conservative" means "liberal" and "liberal" means "socialist."
The funny thing about this system of argumentation is that "socialism" is far closer to conservative ideals than is the free market established by the US Founders.
If you study the history of ideas, you will find that modern socialism was created by royalists who were seeking to restore the ideals of the monarchy.
The Hanoverian Kings of England were from Hanover Germany. They funded the German Universities that produced Hegel and kin. These philosophers simply sifted through all of the ideals of feudalism in an attempt to reframe the ideals of feudalism as revolutionary and progressive.
The key to the classical liberal ideals of the US Founders is ownership. In The Wealth of Nations, Adam Smith argued that individual owners seeking to maximize the return of their personal resources would maximize the wealth of the nation.
Feudalism was a power based society. In feudalism, the lords and ladies did not actually own anything. They gained their position by ruling over the land and the landless serfs.
The serfs were just workers who were entitled to the bounties of the land, but did not own anything and were effective slaves.
The arch-conservative Hegel spewed forth with arguments that freedom is slavery and slavery freedom as his way of defending the social order of the monarchy in a time of revolutionary change. The heart of Hegel's argument was a new method of discourse called Modern Logic.
Fox News is probably the best example of Hegelian thought in action.
Karl Marx is from a generation called "The Young Hegelians."
Hegel sought to conserve the social order of the monarchy. Marx used Hegel's modern logic to argue for radical social change.
Hegel is the father of Modern Logic. Modern Conservatism came from Hegel. Modern Liberalism comes from Marx.
Both paths of this modern philosophy lead to a society with dictators and an oppressed people.
(I also need to point out that the dialectical center is also part of the problem).
If you are a conservative, I wish you would take a step back and look at the fate of the people living in the most conservative areas of the world. Ruby Jessop is an American citizen. She was forced to marry her cousin and pound out 6 babies in 10 years before she finally escaped the horrors of living in the most fundamentally conservative area in America.
The Taliban and Al Qaeda are conservative. The faith people keep placing in this stupid word "conservative" is completely misplaced. It is a bankrupt, paradoxical system of thought that leads to oppression.
We need to find a way to restore and promote the ideals of the US Founders. Conservatism leads away from this path.