Up until last week I could never figure out why so many conservatives were pro-war when it came to the U.S. invasion of Iraq.
After all, I thought conservatism stood for limited government, the rights of the people, the concept that all of us have the right to peace, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Including Arabs who live in the Middle East.
Conservatives do stand for limited government, Gregg, except when it comes to four things: Gays, abortions, drugs, and war.
In other words, the concept of limited government is fine as long as "God-fearing conservatives can continue to tell people who they’re supposed to have sex with, control abortion, lock up non-violent drug offenders, and bomb the hell out of a backward country like Iraq.
Okay, I got it. Government health-care reform is bad.
That’s right. Federal government intrusion in people’s lives is bad.But government intrusion in starting a war is good?Exactly. War, and when the federal government passes the USA Patriot Act, which gives the federal government expanded powers with no judicial oversight, but that’s another story.
Getting back to war. Why is it a different form of government intrusion? Because the government intrusion in war is being done to another country entirely. Conservatives don’t mind government intrusion as long as the fed is intruding on somebody else. It’s when the feds get into American conservatives’ lives, that’s when it’s no good. That’s when the OWLS (conservative Republican ladies group) in Hidalgo County start marching, and tea bag parties start a flyin.
Think of it like this, when the U.S. goes to the Middle East and bombs the hell out of a country – Iraq – that had done nothing to this country, posed no danger to Americans, had nothing to do with 9-11, conservatives get dressed up in their red-white-and-blue attire, stick flag decal stickers to their vehicles, with some really neat plastic made-in-Communist-China American flags for their car antenna, gather at church to worship God and sing patriotic hymns and clap and say, way to go, federal government, intrude on Iraqis.
When pictures of dead innocent Iraqi kids are shown to conservatives, they wink, and shake their collective heads, and say, collateral damage. As if it’s some abstract concept instead of an actual dead child lying there.
Collateral Damage. Sounds so, so, antiseptic really. As if there’s no blood on any of our hands for launching an unprovoked attack on a sovereign country and killing innocent men, women and children.
After all, according to most American conservatives today, God hates war only when it’s Christians killing one another like they do in Northern Ireland – Protestants vs. Catholics. In other words, God only likes Christians and/or Jews, which is why it’s okay when Israel bombs the Palestinians into clouds of dust. If you’re talking about killing Muslims, conservatives claim, God’s always on the side of the U.S. A real Christian nation, of which a recent survey showed that the single group most in favor of torture (Guantanamo Bay detainees and other alleged Arab terrorists) was Evangelical Protestant Christians, praise Jesus and what time is the Pot Luck Dinner?
Up until last week I was asking myself, how can so-called conservatives get so up-in-arms over health-care reform (as they should), but show absolutely no problem when it comes to a government-led war that costs trillions of taxpayer dollars, thereby transferring trillions of middle-class tax dollars to the likes of Cheney’s Halliburton and corporate munition manufacturers?
It’s because of belief-systems, wrote a political pundit I read – Paul Craig Roberts. And suddenly, the whole thing made sense.
People are brought up to believe certain things, whether it’s left or right, concerning cultural issues such as gays, abortion, war, drugs, the right to bear arms, etc. Most kids follow what their parents believe.
Then when they’re adults, they hang around with people who share the same beliefs they do. They listen to the same radio and TV political commentators, they join places of worship comprised of like-minded people with similar racial, ethnic, and cultural identities, so throughout their entire lives, their original belief system is shored up by the people with whom they associate and follow. Their parents teach them what to think, and then so do their peers. If anyone registers an independent thought, the hammer’s lowered on them, they’re ostracized to a certain extent, and most learn to shut up, toe the line, and follow the leader. If you’re a church deacon or pastor or parishioner, instead of following the God you say you follow, in this case Jesus, you become a ditto-head, and you do what Rush Limbaugh tells you. Acceptance into social gatherings becomes more important than your later acceptance into the kingdom of God.
God will forgive you for supporting war, but not gay rights.
This concept of a belief system, that’s why there are so many right-wringers and left-wringers who are knee-jerk people. Ask any of them a question about any issue – gun control, abortion, gays, war -- and based on their political persuasion, I can tell you what they’re going to say 99 percent of the time. As a reflex, their knee jerks in the same direction when you ask them a question, without any real thought given to the question. Almost as if they have all memorized the same script while growing up and in college, which they all have. Been told how to think their entire lives, that when it comes to thinking independently, they’ve lost the ability. Or they don’t want to say anything that will separate them from the crowd with whom they hang around. If you’re in a country club crowd of Republicans, for example, you don’t want to say you think Bush is an idiot and the Iraqi war immoral.
If you’re at the ACLU, you don’t want to talk about the Glock you just bought from Glicks (sports store in Pharr).
In other words, your president and/or party or the like-minded group of people with whom you associate are never wrong. It’s always the other guy’s president who is wrong. The other political party that’s corrupt.
Why is this country in such a mess? Because there are too few independent thinkers willing to cross the belief-system line and stand with "the other guy" on occasion.
Have you ever seen a conservative stand with the anti-war liberals?
Or a liberal stand up for gun rights?
Or a conservative stand up for gay rights?
Or a liberal stand up for America when despots on the United Nations are tearing her down?
Nope, all their minds are made up. They don’t want to think. All they want to do is follow the belief system they were brought up to believe. Follow the party line. Thinking for one’s self takes energy. Takes the intelligence God gave us.
The heck with that, turn on Rush will ya? He’ll tell me what to think.
Then the liberal can turn on Keith Olbermann on MSNBC -- he’ll tell you what to think about universal health care.
Like Voltaire once said – Common sense really isn’t so common after all.
