Eyesight to the Blind

The modern conservative movement has 3 important blind spots, Achilles heels if you will

1.       The idea that America is in some sort of post racial environment.  Racism is alive and well in America, it can clearly be seen in some of the attitudes towards and treatment of President Obama and in many other areas on American life.  Conservatives seem to not want to acknowledge this, which is why commentators such as Juan Williams (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PWaOcJlaQvU ) becomes such an important voice, moderating intelligently between conservatism and a pragmatism acknowledging what life in American is actually like for African Americans.   

2.       While conservatives glorify and love the idea of the free markets they need to see that free markets simply do not exist in the realm of multinational corporations.  The collusion between the financial services industry, large corporations and our government has completely corrupted any functionality of the free markets.  Until crony capitalism is ended, or at least abated in some way, you cannot keep assuming that the mechanism of the free market is going to solve anything.

3.       The environment – Ronald Regan said government should only do what it has to do; protecting the environment is one of these jobs.  Due to the deadly complicity of big business and big government the “free market” cannot address the protection of the environment, therefore government (sadly) is the only player left standing.      

The Great Adjudicator

WSJ columnist Peggy Noonan wrote brilliantly about the Republican and Democratic conventions last summer.  One of the things she focused on was the undeniable warmth and sense of community that was apparent in the Democratic convention.   She accurately characterized this as a Democratic Party feeling of Government as community, the sense that my community is not my family, friends, coworkers or church but my government.  The growing liberal ideal that government, as our primary community, is also the great adjudicator of all social ills; leveling out (or attempting to) all of those nasty inequities that are part of life.  We want the warm and fuzzy comfort of knowing that our government (like parent to child) will take care of us, after all the government is the grantor of our rights (not God), it will make sure I have health care; if somebody else has more money than I do it will tax it away from them and give it to me (all under the rubric of “fairness”).  If I am a woman then the government will make sure I get equal pay and have free birth control and (hopefully) abortions.  If the fat guy (your esteemed author) is drinking to many large sodas then we will ban them so he doesn’t do that anymore, and while we are at it perhaps we need to create a “sin tax” on fast food so he doesn’t eat anymore of that.  Of course this list could go on and on until anyone with a functioning brain would want to kill themselves.

So we see ideals of our countries founders pivot from a country of free peoples with rights granted by God to a country where many of its citizens see their government as essentially in the role of parent; adjudicating all societal ills and leveling out all perceived inequities.  Thus we see government grow bigger, less efficient and more intrusive and a passive, uninvolved citizenry.  Power, influence and money is transferred to a corrupt and immoral government which then hands out favors to the powerful few who can afford to pay for it while throwing enough crumbs to the children to keep them quiet.