Compassionate Conservatism, RIP
Over two years ago, I wrote the words below as part of long piece titled, "The Opt Out Society: The GOP Threat to National Unity and the American Social Contract."
Now, two years later, with New Orleans in ruins, hundreds dead and thousands more at risk, we see the willful neglect of the Bush administration and the morally bankrupt conservative public philosophy behind it in the clear light of day.
Theirs is the Opt Out Society indeed. And in it, you are on your own:
It is American national unity itself that is under attack by the GOP during a time of war. The American people, standing shoulder to shoulder against foreign foes, are being divided and splintered by a Republican public philosophy of market worship, the privatization or abandonment of traditional government roles and services, and a radical individualism. The Bush philosophy represents an all-out assault on common national purpose in the United States. Government not only can't solve problems, it has no moral claim on its citizens' participation in a shared national effort to try. At the end of the day, you're on your own in a Hobbesian struggle of each against all; the government's role is to stand aside and let you fight it out.
This Republican program seeks to undermine the traditional American social contract and create what can be called an "Opt Out Society." That is, the GOP will abrogate the unwritten agreements that have defined the national bargain for three generations, such as hard work in exchange for social mobility, commitment to public institutions in exchange for growing personal freedoms, and those disproportionately benefiting from the American system disproportionately contributing to its maintenance. Instead, conservatives push to privatize social services like education, health care, and retirement, while rewarding Americans for withdrawing their support from their country, their government, their communities, their schools - and each other.
Compassionate Conservatism, RIP.
C'Mon, anyone who deals with alcoholics knows that trying to get an alcoholic to actually accept their own selfishness is a losing battle. Whether Bush is active or a dry drunk, his
character is the same as any alcoholic. Blame someone else for your own lack of foresight.
Most of "Compasionate Conservatism, RIP", is on target except it fails to mention the abject hypocracy of the Republican party and most of it's members. They say that a smaller government is good but the reality is you never hear any complaints from them about federal assistance for the business sector. They also have no objection to the government spending untold billions of dollars on the military industrial complex, funding for pharmasucical research, federal money channeled to virtually any corporation and not a dissenting word about the privitization of social security.
The truth is that basic dishonesty is a trait of the entire group.
There should be a picture of one of the victims floating face down in the toxic soup of New Orleans with the caption - George W. Bush's "Culture of Life" -
This uncaring dimwit dropped everything from a previous vacation to fly back to Washington to sign emergency legislation in order to placate the religious right voting base for a woman that the later autopsy showed probably had less awareness than a sea sponge.
But the people that died that didn't need to die wanted very badly to live, and could have if Mr. Bungle had taken at least same amount of interest that he gives to clearing brush on his ranch or working on his golf swing. The job has always been too big for him but it is even clear that it's too big for his puppetmasters as well.
He has (even more) blood on his hands, and so does everyone that voted for him, and every one that help rig the elections that got him installed.
This is just one big sh*t sandwich and everyone is going to have to take a bite.