Appliance Repair Wisdom for the Ages

Friday, November 26, 2004

The cabal of delusional neo-cons in the Whitehouse are not conservatives at all but are just another brand of Big Government cheerleaders like their liberal cousins. Paul Craig Roberts asks a question I've been wondering, "Where have all the conservatives gone?"

You see, grasshopper, St. George of the Bush is a false prophet in the Church of Conservatism... unless you've warped the definition of "conservatism" to now mean favoring massive budget deficits and national debts (since "deficits don't matter," according to Deacon Cheney) pervasive and invasive government snooping into your personal life a la the Patriot Act, and waging imperial wars around the globe. After all, to real conservatives, war is nothing but the biggest, most expensive, and most destructive government program there is. But you neo-con brownshirts get all puffed up in your fleshly minds and declare that, "If'n you ain't with us, yer agin' us!"

Now, before you dismiss Paul Craig Roberts as some kind of wild-eyed liberal, think again. Dr. Roberts is John M. Olin Fellow at the Institute for Political Economy and Research Fellow at the Independent Institute. He is a former associate editor of the Wall Street Journal, former contributing editor for National Review, and a former assistant secretary of the U.S. Treasury. He is the co-author of The Tyranny of Good Intentions.

Let's pause from genuflecting before the altar of the Humongous Gubmint Beast with its attendant clergy of neo-cons and read how real conservatives think:

The conservative movement that I grew up in did not share the liberals’ abiding faith in government. "Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely."

Today it is liberals, not conservatives, who endeavor to defend civil liberties from the state. Conservatives have been won around to the old liberal view that as long as government power is in their hands, there is no reason to fear it or to limit it. Thus, the Patriot Act, which permits government to suspend a person’s civil liberty by calling him a terrorist with or without proof.

Thus, preemptive war, which permits the President to invade other countries based on unverified assertions.

There is nothing conservative about these positions. To label them conservative is to make the same error as labeling the 1930s German Brownshirts conservative.

American liberals called the Brownshirts "conservative," because the Brownshirts were obviously not liberal. They were ignorant, violent, delusional, and they worshipped a man of no known distinction. Brownshirts’ delusions were protected by an emotional force field. Adulation of power and force prevented Brownshirts from recognizing implications for their country of their reckless doctrines.

Like Brownshirts, the new conservatives take personally any criticism of their leader and his policies. To be a critic is to be an enemy. I went overnight from being an object of conservative adulation to one of derision when I wrote that the US invasion of Iraq was a "strategic blunder." ~ Paul Craig Roberts

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