CARTOON CONSERVATISM--Why a Libertarian Conservative Voted for Obama

[civildisoBDence]

For the first time in my life, I voted yesterday for a Democrat for president. As a libertarian conservative who straddles the American left and right---I'm a fiscal conservative in favor of limited government (both at home and abroad), but also a social liberal invested in civil liberties and some degree of equality---I've been deeply troubled by the turn the Republican Party has taken during the Bush years.

Under Bush, we've seen the largest budget deficits in the nation's history, a near doubling of the national debt to a staggering $10 trillion, the erosion of civil liberties, an assault on Constitutional principles, the abandonment of the working and middle classes, a cold disregard of the lower class, a reckless and arrogant foreign policy, and a commitment to concentrating wealth in corporations and the upper class.

Over the last eight years, we've also seen the Republican Party devolve into a caricature of its former self, into what I call "Cartoon Conservatism." Led not by conservative intellectuals grounded in philosphy, but rather by political hacks and cynical infotainers driven by a shallow and self-serving partisanship, the GOP has betrayed what is best about America, what is most worthy of conserving.

A mean-spirited and ham-handed Tom Delay drained the House of Representatives of any sense of decorum or compromise. Karl Rove imbued the Bush presidency with an unscrupulous, winner-take-all obsession with political calculation at the expense of rational, farsighted governance. Congress and the White House colluded in an unprecedented spending spree that has imperiled our economic future, with almost nothing of lasting value to show for it. Billions of dollars have been siphoned upwards, filling the coffers of corporations to record levels and padding the fortunes of the wealthy with an extra layer of insulating luxury. Scandal after scandal has revealed the self-interest once masked as devotion to country, Jack Abramoff and Ted Stevens acting as ignoble bookends to an era of shame. A level of hypocrisy that defies belief seeped into the right, from homophobic homosexuals like Larry Craig to anti-drug drug addicts like Rush Limbaugh. The rabid voices of the far right have demonized and divided, their only concern seeming to be to destroy the opposition and get rich and/or powerful doing it.

What the hell does this kind of behavior have to do with conservatism? Superficiality and selfishness have overtaken social cohesion and enlightened self-interest as the foundation of the conservative movement. Rush Limbaugh is not so much the leader of this kind of philosophically rootless individualism, as its emblem. His insistence on ridiculing the increasing body of scientific evidence that global climate change poses a serious, perhaps even existential, threat shows how profoundly self-centered and short-sighted Cartoon Conservatism has become. Civilization be damned...I've got mine, that's all that counts.

Not for the first time, money and power have corrupted. One of the most unprincipled of the Cartoon Conservatives, radio talk host Neal Boortz, goes so far in an attack on Barack Obama as to equate human life with mere wealth:

...the average human heart beats around 70 times a minute. In one eight-hour work day your heart beats around 33,600 times. This is your heart beating...every beat a part of your life gone, never to be recovered. If you are a moderately successful human being Barack Obama is going to take about 13,000 (39%) of those heartbeats away from you every working day. Put your finger on your wrist and feel your pulse. Feel every heartbeat. Just count up to 100. How much of your life went by as you counted? You can't get those beats back. They're gone, for good. Remember, you only have a finite number of those beats of your heart left ... and Obama wants 13,000 of them every working day of your life. Those heartbeats – your life – being expended creating wealth. Your heartbeats, your wealth. Obama wants them. You don't need them. Someone else does.

Is that what our founding fathers risked their lives and fortunes for? Is that what our brave fighting men and women killed and died for? Has every moment you're working for the collective rather than yourself really been taken away from you?

What a cartoonish vision of conservatism. What a perversion of a philosophy designed to preserve social order, not one man's hoarded wealth.

Ironically, I don't think John McCain in any way represents what conservatism has become. He's a national treasure, a man of integrity willing to sacrifice everything for America, and a free-thinker whose refusal to submit to the domination of Cartoon Conservatives nearly destroyed his candidacy. His greatest misstep may have been to compromise with the base (in both senses of the word---the conservative base, and the baseness of its corrupted leadership). His embrace of George Bush and his choice of Sarah Palin demonstrate that the maverick, that which is best in John McCain, was broken just when a little wildness was most needed.

David Brooks, who I think is next in line to take the mantle of intellectual conservatism from George Will, believes the right has ceded the center to the left. In a brilliant analysis of the impending defeat of a moderately conservative presidential candidate by a staunchly liberal one in a clearly center-right nation, Brooks puts the ideological landscape in stark relief:

There are two major political parties in America, but there are at least three major political tendencies. The first is orthodox liberalism, a belief in using government to maximize equality. The second is free-market conservatism, the belief in limiting government to maximize freedom....

But there is a third tendency, which floats between. It is for using limited but energetic government to enhance social mobility.... Members of this tradition have one foot in the conservatism of Edmund Burke. They understand how little we know or can know and how much we should rely on tradition, prudence and habit. They have an awareness of sin, of the importance of traditional virtues and stable institutions. They understand that we are not free-floating individuals but are embedded in thick social organisms.

But members of this tradition also have a foot in the landscape of America, and share its optimism and its Lincolnian faith in personal transformation. Hamilton didn’t seek wealth for its own sake, but as a way to enhance the country’s greatness and serve the unique cause America represents in the world.

Members of this tradition are Americanized Burkeans, or to put it another way, progressive conservatives.

The first President Bush, a liberal Republican, is of this ilk, as are conservative Democrats like Sam Nunn. Both of these statesmen follow in the even footsteps of some of the greatest Americans---from Alexander Hamilton to Abraham Lincoln to Theodore Roosevelt.

Brooks hits the nail on the head when he writes that, unlike McCain, Sarah Palin, whom 60% of the electorate judges unready for the vice-presidency, "represents the old resentments and the narrow appeal of conventional Republicanism."

Moreover, writes Brooks, praising the man's progressive conservatism, "McCain would be an outstanding president. In government, he has almost always had an instinct for the right cause. He has become an experienced legislative craftsman. He is stalwart against the country’s foes and cooperative with its friends. But he never escaped the straitjacket of a party that is ailing and a conservatism that is behind the times."

What has happened during the last eight years richly deserves repudiation. As an Obama victory becomes more and more likely, more and more conscientious conservatives are making their true feelings known. Some, like Lawrence Eagleburger, are admitting that Sarah Palin simply isn't qualified to be president. Others, like Peggy Noonan, are giving Bush the condemnation he so richly deserves. Still others, like Colin Powell, have made the leap and are endorsing Barack Obama.

My mind wasn't made up until five or six weeks after McCain chose Sarah Palin as his runningmate. While I respect her and see a bright future for her, I can't in good conscience cast a vote that could put a neophyte and backwards-looking ideologue in line for the presidency; she represents a return to the Cartoon Conservatism we've suffered under since 2001.

I agree with little of Barack Obama's philosophy. But I see in him a keen and subtle intellect and a steadfast character. His performance since announcing his candidacy in Springfield, Illinois, in February of 2006, demonstrates the quality of that intellect and character. He promises change at a time when nine out of ten Americans believe we're on the wrong track, and healing at a time when we are divided within and at odds with our allies.

My vote is, in part, a protest vote; but I'm also very impressed with Obama, a man who could be one of our great presidents just when one of our worse, if not the worst, has left us in the lurch. Obama, like Bush, promises to unite the country. Obama, I believe; I hope he doesn't betray us the way his predecessor has.

Half a century ago, Barry Goldwater wrote The Conscience of a Conservative in part to sketch out the intellectual and moral underpinnings of conservatism. When John Dean wrote Conservatives Without Conscience, his wish was to begin a conversation about the ongoing erosion of those underpinnings.

That conversation is long overdue.

Newsprism

[Max_powers94]

1. Hold up........

"I'm not reading all of this."