Conservatism

An admonition for those persons or person intent upon reading the ideas and tenets of conservatism I am about to proffer in this soon to be award winning literary composition. I offer a warning in the interest of mental and physical health. Liberals when confronted with the philosophy of conservatism have been known to suffer anxiety, mental confusion, hives, and irritable bowel syndrome and on rare occasions revert to a fetal position, sobbing hysterically while sucking their thumb. Having been forewarned let’s get this party started. Please hang on tight.
A common misconception when labeling conservatives is that we are all racists, sexists, bigoted homophobes. In short we are bible thumping rubes driving pickup trucks with a shotgun rack in the window, along with a rebel flag sitting next to our fourteen year old spouse who also happens to be our cousin. We are illiterate tobacco chewing, Hee Haw watching, toothless, poor white trash. These are but a few of the insulting stereotypes in the vast array of adjectives, used to discredit conservatives. Most are untrue. Well, some are untrue. These assertions are put forth by the left in order to marginalize us as extreme right wing kooks who should not have a forum. The liberal left in this country can ill afford a debate in the arena of ideas with true conservatives. Instead we are labeled as the right wing fringe and until recently have not been seriously included in the national debate. For decades in this country the conservative voice wasn’t just marginalized it was completely ignored. In 1985 that all changed when Rush Limbaugh got hold of a microphone and the national monologue became a dialogue.

Though Limbaugh’s audience share in the beginning was sparse he has turned his, EIB network comprised only of The Rush Limbaugh show into the Top radio show in the country with a dedicated weekly audience of 13.5 million regular listeners and up to 22 million part time listeners. Limbaugh is widely credited with saving talk radio when many experts believed it to be a fading medium. He was inducted into the Radio Hall of Fame in 1993. In 2002, industry publication Talkers Magazine ranked him as the greatest radio talk show host of all time. Liberals have put forth the argument that the vast audiences of The Rush Limbaugh show are mind numbed robots who haven’t the necessary capabilities to analyze current political events or the intellect to think for themselves. This is complete sophistry.

As evidence I provide the following reasonable conclusion based on a Pew Poll recently released. Judged by the respondent answers to three knowledge questions, the most informed audiences belong to the political magazines, Rush Limbaugh's radio show, The O'Reilly Factor, news magazines, and online news sources. Rush Limbaugh isn’t the only star in vast cavalcade of conservatism. One of our best known, most respected in conservative circles and most controversial keeper of the torch, is the brilliant, witty and extremely direct in her prose, Ann Coulter, celebrated author and speaker.

I offer this back round knowledge of our two most prominent conservatives only to present this insight, bonafides, as a walking, talking, gun toting conservative in good standing, able to enunciate a true conservative point of view.
Probably the most recognizable descriptor attached to conservative thought would be anti- abortion. Though apt, it is often misunderstood by those unfortunate souls who happen to be liberal. Conservatives do oppose abortion on moral grounds but we are equally offended by the adulteration of our constitution. To conservatives, the constitution of the United States is sacrosanct. In the case of Roe V. Wade, the United States Supreme court found a general right to privacy in the constitution where one did not exist. The constitution does not explicitly mention any right of privacy. Simplistically the United States Supreme Court did not interpret law but made new law. The making of new law is the explicit domain of an elected congress. Abortion is a social issue and not a legal conundrum. As such it should be the decision of the people through their elected representatives.
What is so frustrating to conservatives is the hijacking of our constitution by the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court consists of nine lawyers with all of the foibles and flaws shared as mere humans. They do not reside on Mount Olympus nor do they walk on water, contrary to their personal beliefs, though distasteful to conservatives, legal constitutional abortions could be performed in this country without subjugating the constitution to the Supreme Court. Before the Roe case, abortion was legal in some states and illegal in others. The populace of the state through their representation decided that question after a public debate. Effectively what the Supreme Court did was to end the debate about abortion, or so they thought.
A stark contrast between conservative and liberal thought, can also be found in the arena of just what is the government’s responsibility to its citizenry. Liberals proudly articulate the vast numbers of Americans, “legal and illegal” that their sponsored programs have helped. Conservatives on the other hand measure successful governance by the number of people who no longer need help. Contrary to popular opinion, cold hearted, evil conservatives do believe there is a place for government in helping its electorate yet that help should have defined and measurable goals with the ultimate goal of self sufficiency. Conservatives believe strongly in the traits that make us distinctly American, self reliance and personal responsibility.
As an example of good conservative governance, I cite Bill Clinton’s Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996. Since 1996 welfare rolls have been cut by almost 60%, 1.6 million fewer children live in poverty, and more single mothers are employed than ever. While republicans and conservatives, “not always equivalent” were torturing puppies and robbing from the poor to further endow the rich, Bill Clinton was saving the world and reforming welfare. On the tenth anniversary of the welfare reform act Bill Clinton wrote in the New York Times, “TEN years ago today I signed the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act. By then I had long been committed to welfare reform. As a governor, I oversaw a workfare experiment in Arkansas in 1980 and represented the National Governors Association in working with Congress and the Reagan administration to draft the welfare reform bill enacted in 1988.Yet when I ran for president in 1992, our system still was not working for the taxpayers or for those it was intended to help. In my first State of the Union address, I promised to “end welfare as we know it,” to make welfare a second chance, not a way of life, exactly the change most welfare recipients wanted it to be.” Pause for laughter. “Author inserted”
Welfare reform did work and was applauded by conservatives, after all it was the republican congress that sponsored and passed this bill, three times. President Clinton vetoed the bill twice and only acquiesced as he faced an upcoming election. As reported in Investors Business Daily on 8/23/06. It was a Republican bill passed by a Republican Congress, signed after 30 Republican governors sent Clinton a letter urging him to sign it, saying: "You have consistently said that we must 'end welfare as we know it.' The time is now. This is the bill. The rest is up to you." The welfare reform act is a good example of conservative legislation.

Public education is one of the most argued and divisive subjects on our collective social radar. The debate on this subject always becomes more heated during an election year due to the diverse opinions on both sides of the spectrum. Common ground in theory if not action is that we must have more funding for public education and our public school teachers are pitifully underpaid. Both Republicans and Democrats will recite this mantra on cue as this is what the public has been brainwashed to believe. Conservatives need not engage in this debate because the debate is over. What debate I rhetorically ask. The trifecta is to add class size to the non-debate and look sad.

We constantly hear that in some schools class sizes are as much as twenty five or more students per one teacher, a ratio that critics claim, “liberals or pseudo liberals” causes little Timmy not to read. Japan, Korea and Brazil have average class sizes of fifty students or more and yet these three countries continually mop the floor with us in international scholastics competition.

We are also forced to listen to the constant harping of the underpaid public school teacher. My first question is this, if we paid teachers more would our children graduate school better educated? The national average salary for a public school teacher is $45, 930. (5) When you consider public school teachers get summers off and go home at 3:00 everyday perhaps we should all get a teaching certificate. Before I forget, my Robert Morris College instructors are woefully underpaid and I will testify to that. Surprisingly recent numbers haven’t been released but as of 2003 as a nation we spent an average of $7500 per student enrolled in our public schools. (6) In New York they spend $11,474 per student only to be eclipsed by Washington D. C. (7) I would point out that what our public school system lacks is not funding, but competition. Student test scores and graduation rates have never been correlated to an increase in funding. Most American workers are compensated based on factors such as production, ambition, attitude, performance and results. If we introduce competition into our public schools and our public school teachers, the benefits will be reaped by our children. After all, it is our tax dollars that support theses scholastic endeavors. The governmental bureaucracy attacks the problem of public education with its usual aplomb. Raise taxes and spend more. As conservatives we believe we are overtaxed and under served. Taxes are the lifeblood of government, the crack cocaine to the politico and many of us right wing rubes think it’s time to twelve step our addicted electors.

One of the biggest frauds perpetrated on the public is that the rich don’t pay taxes and the poor get hosed. To the contrary, the poor of this country do not pay taxes and it is the rich taking the hosing. I say this as one of the poor, irony inserted. For one side of the political spectrum to carp about tax cuts for the rich at the expense of the poor is not only sophistry but fraudulent. The latest data from the internal revenue service indicates the top 50% of wage earners pay 96.54% of all federal taxes and unbelievably the top 1% of wage earners pay 34.27% of all federal taxes. (8) For those who matriculated through the public school system these percentages might seem inconsequential, yet when combined with the class warfare arguments promulgated from the left, one can only conclude an attempt at public deception. Liberals argue against tax cuts for the rich and in the same breath whine about job creation. Has anyone ever gotten a job from a poor person? Good government should create an environment that is conducive to business and get out of the way. The extolled myth that the wealthy do not pay taxes needs to finally be scrapped, along with others urban legends, “manmade global warming, evolution, a general right to privacy, dangerous second hand smoke and the innocence of O. J. to name a few.”

Simply put, conservatives believe in lower taxes, smaller government and personal freedoms. With personal freedoms we also expect personal responsibility. We know that our constitution does not have any language that separates church and state. We believe as Ronald Reagan did that government is not the solution to our problems but that big government is the problem. We believe in American exceptionalism and manifest destiny. We hail Ronald Reagan as one of our greatest presidents and ask ourselves what we can do for our country. We believe in God. We believe there is no moral relativism between us and terrorist. We believe that capitalism is simply freedom to engage in commerce. We believe the United States Constitution to be the greatest document ever conceived and consider it sacrosanct. We believe that this country offers more possibilities to it’s citizenry than any other country in the history of time. We believe that any citizen can go as far in this country as their aptitude, ambition and energy will take them. We believe that all men and women are created equal, but not the same. We believe the people should decide issues of social policy and not a judge or judges. We believe in personal property rights. We believe in law and order and demand that those who break our laws pay full price. We believe we have dominion over the earth and a responsibility to it. Conservatives are eternal optimist, because we believe.
Conservative Springfield Staff Writer