Guest Review: The GOP

My resignation, from the right in general, and the GOP in particular:

I have never considered myself a liberal, nor is that a title I am currently applying for. I helped found the YR chapter at Berkeley High in the 80's, fought to get military recruiters onto campus, campaigned for Reagan, and became a Marine at 18. I believe in single income families, middle-income property owners, well trained dogs, and skillfully employed firearms.

What makes me a conservative, as opposed to an anti-american radical, is that I understand government is the necessary path to those things. Strong public schools, progressive taxation, judicious regulation, muscular infrastructure, minimum wage, unions, social security, and the occasional protective tariff; these things are the bulwarks of the american high-wage working class. This class did not exist prior to the implementation of these programs, and has withered with their dismantling.

Unfortunately, the modern GOP, with it's libertarian and tea bag wings, believes in none of this. It has ceased to be conservative at, instead adopting the anti-government and ego-centrist philosophies of the late 60's youth movement. A philosophy in which a nation is just a place and a society is just a collection of individuals. A philosophy which dismisses the founding principles of the original colonies and pioneer communities as leftist looterism.

The last decent conservatives (such as G.H.W. Bush) have retired, leaving four kinds of people in the GOP: traitors (e.g. the Kochs), messianiac dominionist nut jobs (e.g. Michelle Bachmann), useful idiots (aka: tea party), and geriatric bigots on holiday from the John Birch Society (also tea party). It's true, as some liberals charge, that we always had them with us, but we made them wear shoes and keep quiet in front of company. These people are not conservatives; they are dangerous, bomb-throwing radicals, and if Joe McCarthy were around today he would drag them before HUAC. It's a safe bet that Ike would have no truck with this kind, and I have begun to wonder if even The Gipper would recognize them. Lincoln would stalk away in disgust.

A Nation, as opposed to a Country or a State, is large, extended community. While individuals within it should be personally conservative, seeking self-reliance and ultimately self-mastery, that community must assist it's members to find their place within it, and be prepared to catch them when they fall. This is a difficult balance to strike, but it has been, and can be, done. The alternative is societal failure, collective consignment to the dustbin of history. The current "conservative movement" has become the looters it so despises, building nothing, prepared to raze civilization for a few shiny baubles.

Thus I must, regretfully, resign.

PS: Please stop using the title "conservative." I'll hold onto it until you remember what it means.