A friend of mine noted that "Trump rose on GOP's 3 pillars"
[Trumps 3 Pillars], Grifters, Oligarchs and Pirates:
- racism(birtherism),
- xenophobia(build wall)&
- Islamophobia(Muslim ban).
“Anybody who sez otherwise is full of sh!t”,
....and I have to agree. But that is only part of what is going on. Conservatism might have started out "conservative" but it has become more and more authoritarian over time.
Four Pillars
If you go to one of the Conservative Websites designed to recruit students. They will tell you that the "four pillars of Conservatism" are:
- Conservative Bait:
- 1 liberty / freedom
- 2 tradition & order
- 3 rule of law
- 4 belief in God
- Source: https://home.isi.org/pillars-modern-american-conservatism
The Trouble with These So Called Pillars
Hypocrisy on Liberty and Freedom
The Conservative movement obsesses about Liberty and Freedom the same way that the Fascists did in the 30s. But they obviously don't want freedom and liberty for everyone. Like their libertarian allies, they want liberty for the privileged, but economic slavery for labor and no rights for immigrants, brown people and anyone they decide to scapegoat. In otherwords their profession of being for "liberty" is hypocritical. Freedom for the wolf is death to the lamb.
The Trouble with trying to push Utility into a Free Market hole
Likewise they push a peculiar definition of “free enterprise.”, they extol "competition", and will quote early economists who talked about the power of free enterprise to regulate economy based on supply and demand and market theory, but they know full well that for a market to regulate prices it needs the freedom of multiple venders with freedom of choice:
- Private Property: the property exchanged must legitimately belong to those making the exchange,
- Freedom of Choice: Both Buyer and Seller free to enter and leave markets,
- Motivation and Self Interest: Both Buyer and Seller benefit from the trades,
- Competition: People need to be free to go to another vender if they aren't satisfied,
- https://quizlet.com/18136377/5-characteristics-of-a-free-market-system-flash-cards/
A parent may give a child a choice between a red or a green shirt. That is not real choice. A genuine free market offers a panoply of choices. If players can't buy or sell any color, they are not free. Vital utilities cannot be governed on the same principles as a sook because both parties are not equally free. Doctors, lawyers, journalists, service workers, need to be fairly compensated and there need to be enough of them to serve everybody and to meet emergency needs. They are utilities not free markets.
Basic to free markets is good government. Judges who are fair to both parties in disputes. Laws that protect transparency so that people aren't swindled. For Profit Hospitals and medicine are a great deal for the monopolists who can offer crappy medicine for high prices, but they can never meet the attributes of a free market. Such markets are what I call "free-booting" markets. A market where weights, measures, prices can't be trusted, where there is no real competition by price, is a free-booting market. Even more so when the seller's idea of "free market" is "buyer beware" and economics as low level warfare. It's not a free market if prices are set by anyone's fiat. Those trying to turn healthcare, energy distribution or other vital services into a free market model, are conning you. It's a swindle.
The Trouble with Tradition and Order
Tradition and Order = regulation and rules. There is a tension between "liberty" and order. Even more so between tradition and liberty. Traditional societies didn't provide people with much liberty. They had to tythe to the church. They had to follow rules. Some of those rules are important. Some need to be updated to fit with current times. Many Conservatives have trouble distinguishing those traditions and things that need to be conserved from the arbitrary and convenient rules that they prefer to live under. I don't know too many bankers who take prohibitions against charging interest seriously. Paul might have prescribed women wearing head covers, but so does the Taliban. Certainly, Jesus is not recorded to have said a word about it, except when he endorsed "the Law" of the 5 books of Moses. But he broke with the letter of the Mosaic law, over it's expressed spirit.
Worse, "tradition and order" is often a euphemism for oppression and tyranny. Tradition and Order is about setting common rules and boundaries. Many things traditional now, were not 100, 500 or 2000 years ago. In some cases tradition and order is an arbitrary thing that represents dictates of long ago tyrants. Tradition and order are important. They are meant to be founded on basic principle. When they are arbitrary, they are not worth the ink and paper used to write them down, except as a template for discussing "why not" do certain things. Fearful people cling to Tradition. The wise revise and set new traditions. The trouble with "tradition and order" is that it is transmitted through very fallible people who like to set themselves up as authority -- instead of God.
Rule of Law
When a person talks about "government" they are talking about rule of law. Rule of law is massively important. There is no genuine liberty, no genuine freedom, without people under a "common rule, that all can accept." [paraphrase Locke] Private government of things that are a common heritage, like utilities, is privateering and tyranny by definition. Law that is exercised unjustly is unlawful. Unlawful law can be extralegal but it is unjustified and arbitrary. Corruption and injustice are also dysfunction. Rule of law breaks down when those who govern property and people rule arbitrarily. This is a conservative value more honored in the breach than the fealty.
Again conservatives talk about liberty and then immediately talk about:
- Tradition, order and Rule of Law,
- while protecting monopolies, privatizing utilities and other monopolies into private rule.
A Genuine Conservative respects tradition, order, rule of law; while applying the related principles reasonably and justly. It's not rule of law when judges always rule in favor of business over labor. It's not rule of law if ANYONE (like Kavanaugh or Trump) is exempt from it. A genuine conservative preserves the principles of these things, so that everyone can be free. By this definition I'm more conservative than 90% of the cons backing Donald Trump.
The Trouble with Belief in God
As a pillar of conservatism "belief in God" sounds nice. Except for two immediate points:
- The Constitution Expressly prohibits inserting Religion into Politics.
- Faith in a Higher Power/Ineffable One/"God" is individual, difficult to verify, and wouldn't be "faith" if any of us had full proof that there is a God, much less that His Attributes are what any particular religious tradition asserts they are. It is easy for a demagogue, narcissistic con artist or charlatan to pretend to speak for God and cherry pick scripture to assert what that person arbitrarily wants. Moreover, people go to war of whose definition of God is whose, and many of the worst Demagogues claim to speak for God, when all they really have is a "lying spirit" from God.
Thus this sounds nice, except the constitution explicitly prohibits inserting religion into politics, and until folks get to fighting over who owns God (no one does), which God to embrace (My God, Your God --> what makes you think you can presume to own the "ineffable one?" Thus belief in God as a litmus test is incredibly dangerous.
Worse yet, a litmus test of belief is generally divisive. There is no true catholic and orthodox religion, unless authorities can reasonably explain their authorities. So the tendency is to resort to authoritarianism, demand obedience and impose it. Religious authorities should have the wisdom to stay out of areas where their knowledge fails to be helpful.
Conclusion
But nobody can argue with concepts like liberty and freedom. Nothing is wrong with tradition & order, except that imposing it on others, arbitrarily, means abrogating or infringing on personal liberty and freedom. The reality is that tradition is something that has to have some flexibility or it becomes a source for oppression. It has to evolve!
Unfortunately liberty/freedom are in potential conflict with tradition/order -- these pillars have to balance or they bring down the table they are supporting. And unfortunately as our country transitions into Fascism, leadership is more and more con and less and less conserving anything except power and wealth. Certainly not basic conservative principles.
Conserving Things
Us Progressives argue that tradition should not be restraining on improving personal and public welfare. It should grow and evolve as people grow spiritually. We argue not with the value of traditions but with rigid adherence to arbitrary authority. Tradition should guide us not bind us.
And of course there are religious progressives and religious conservatives. So on the whole most people are fine with all four traditions and just differ on the degree to which they feel bound by #2. Progressives included!
Progressives believe that "order" should not be an excuse to infringe on people's private behavior. We are the conservatives on matters of personal liberty, mostly. To be a conservative people need to be conserving something like the Environment, or the productive livelihood of the masses.
In an ideal world conservatives would be environmentalists, conserving the traditions of public access to parks and recreation, our harmony with nature, and man's role as Gardner of the planet tending to God's creation. Conservation of Nature is a conservative value.
Instead, too many are Cons
Conserving the Public Good
In theory conserving the public good would be a conservative principle. The bible enjoins conservatives to look out for "widow's and orphans" to help one's "brother", and to contribute to the public welfare. Under a conservative regime paying tithes would be mandatory and public welfare would be administered through the churches. In our secular society it is too much for Churches, who have no one to enforce their tithes. So those advocating dismantling the welfare state are not conservatives. They look for other excuses to nullify the constitutionality of such programs -- saying the Church should do them. But upholding that tithes should not be mandatory. Thus defenestrating Churches from doing that role.
I point that out because there is nothing conservative about building giant walls, abrogating treaties, or doing away with public welfare, privatizing public services and education, or turning over our resources to rich people. All that is not conservatism.
The Confidence Scheme
So what it is is that modern conservatism is a confidence scheme. Read the offered link and you'd think that conservatism is all about liberty and tradition, upholding the constitution and establishing order over criminals and terrorists seeking to invade and trouble the country.
But the sales of conservatism are aimed at convincing people that a particular religious ideology, a particular tradition and peculiar ideas of who, what, how and why we get and keep order in our society. Modern conservatives complain about Donald Trump, but he's only pushing ideas that the GOP has developed and used over the past 50 years in order to win elections by stoking fear, paranoia and anger. I could go into detail but I won't. I have other things I need to be doing right now.
Besides, I wrote on this 2 years ago, talking about Lee Atwater:
People should read my article and it's references
But of course the 4 pillars are the bait in a confidence scheme!
The Switch
Unfortunately, the reality, the "switch" of the conservative confidence game is that the only thing conservatives are actually conserving is wealth.
Their economic distress is diverted, using scapegoating, to bigotry. Part of the con! Sell them on "conservatism" hook them with hate!
- switch:
- 1 No liberty unless white
- 2/3 order & law = authoritarianism
- 4 belief in God unless Muslim.
So essentially the "4 Pillars of conservatism" translate to nativism and authoritarianism.
Trump is the creation of Lee Atwater, Reince Priebus and the GOP
I have a lot more to say, but I need to work on some other things right now.
Further reading
- https://home.isi.org/pillars-modern-american-conservatism
- http://holtesthoughts.blogspot.com/2014/09/southern-strategy-and-war-on-poor.html
- Started back in October 2016. I never finished this due to Trump being elected.
- Trump is in no way a Conservative. He's a Confidence man.
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