"Conservatives"

[existentialist]

(I wrote this. I kind of feel like I'm preaching to the choir posting this on DU, but I thought I'd start here and take any constructive criticisms and do revisions before I looked for a wider audience.)




"Conservatives"


"If there is no need for change, then there is a need to stay the same."
John F. Kennedy


What is a conservative if not a person who, at all times, but particularly when confronted with the unsettling, values certainty? This is entirely understandable. Who among us does not, in the face of chaos, yearn for the comfort and security from which, if we were lucky, we first absorbed our views of the world? If we were fortunate enough to experience a modicum of stability in our formative years then it is not an ungenerous sentiment for us to hope for the same for our progeny, for our children and grandchildren.


Unfortunately, if the relative stability in which we were nurtured was rooted in times and circumstances that change quickly, and may be entirely passed and gone, and if we still cling to those passing moments as if they were cherished reality itself then we become not true conservatives, but reactionaries, and reactionaries whose "realities" are illusions. What is more, the very effort to obtain stability in an ever changing world often actually accelerates the rate of change, making the superficial "conservative" into the true conservatives worst nightmare.


If this analysis is approximately correct, then it is a mistake of the first magnitude if we, in our efforts to persuade our sadly mistaken fellow citizens, rely on reason alone, as opposed to reason allied with and supported by a compassionate understanding of the true conservative's dilemma. Things are, and rightly seem incredibly threatening to a conservative at this time. How can it not? The arch conservatives have been in power for years--long enough for the flaws and contradiction in their policies to have begun to hit home, and to approach undeniability.


Those who would continue to maintain present policies in Iraq, who would maintain present energy and environmental policies to in the face of increasing environmental degradation--most notably but not exclusively global warming, and those who continue to argue that our present economy, to the extent that it is based upon an unsustainable and increasing trend to rely on ever increasing debt of ever increasingly doubtful collectibility are rapidly losing all credibility. The list goes on. One can easily list at least half a dozen additional crucial issues on which the neoconservative policies adopted or supported by the present Executive Branch and its Administration pursue an agenda that ignores reality, and accelerates the deterioration of the conditions experienced as "reality." Things must seem threatening indeed when reality can no longer be ignored.


Given the above discussion, the extent to which the retreat to supposedly conservative values and thoughts, or paradigm, if you will, undermines our actual ability to deal with the challenges that confront us appears greatly under appreciated in the present day discussion of these issues.


The "conservative" contribution to our present cultural breakdown and the policies enacted and put in place by a "conservative" Administration and Congress in the face of reality has created circumstances under which the continued "conservative" efforts to blame their own failings on those of others is fast approaching a breaking point.


We must understand this. We must even empathize with these feelings as there are certainly threatening facts, people, movements, and phenomena with which any possible sane and coherent political ideology must cope. Therefore, instead of presenting even more threatening facts before conservatives, a truly persuasive rhetoric must present possibilities of solutions. I would say that such efforts should present absolute solutions, except that most of us know that simple, pat solutions are generally false hopes, and are in fact, the standard rhetorical offerings of the very "conservatives" whom we seek to persuade of the error of their ways.

[AX10]

1. K & R!