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Edited on Thu Jan-05-06 12:50 AM by mike_c
...and to old school republicans. We disagree about much-- and by "we" I mean you and I-- I won't presume to speak for others on DU-- but despite our disagreements, there is much to respect in the conservative tradition, especially in its domestic incarnation. Fiscal responsibility, the importance of moral values in society, respect for the democratic republic and its founding principles, and so on. Again-- we certainly disagree on many of the details, but we also share reverence for some of the most important first principles that underlie the American experiment in democracy.
So I'm offering my condolences for the usurpation of the political party that has been your stalwart representative in American politics-- the Republican party-- by organized crime on the one hand and political radicals who have little in common with your core values on the other hand. Oh sure, the radicals are happy to share your distaste for letting gays have family values like the rest of us, and they know just how patriotic you like to feel when America is "at war," but under that veneer of patriotism they've twisted everything you really believe in. They wipe their asses with the Constitution you and your fathers fought to defend, they sell your children's' future prosperity for their pleasures today, in unbelievable excess, and they invoke your most cherished values in defense of their debasement of your core principles. But that's not the worst of it.
Worse still is the pervasive influence of venality and racketeering that has permeated the Republican party from its local roots to its national leadership. There are two faces of capitalism in America-- the "invisible hand" that Adam Smith believed worked to everyone's best interest when individuals worked to lift themselves from poverty by labor that benefited everyone around them, and the "iron fist" of the robber barons and the influence peddlers who build their empires upon the bent backs of multitudes of wage slaves, hopeful supplicants, and taxpayers. For the latter, the line between venal political maneuvering and organized crime is thin, and often hard to nail down. It gets thinner and thinner as we trod closer and closer to it, and your Republican party has trampled that line so thoroughly that no one can separate the ideologues from the criminals anymore. They have embraced one another. The Republican party, which once represented conservatism worthy of respect, even in disagreement, has become so corrupt that it no longer represents you unless you are willing to discard all decency and honor. Your party has become the party of white collar criminal thugs, the party of extortion, the party of venality, the party of individuals who succeed by tearing down their brothers and sisters rather than by leading the way toward common goals of broad prosperity for all Americans.
If the American dream means anything-- and this is one thing that I think we agree on, at least to some extent-- it must mean that every American has an equal opportunity to seek their destiny on their own terms. But the party that represents you has abandoned most Americans, including most of you. As long as the Ken Lays and Jeffrey Skillings-- and the corporations they represent-- get theirs, the Republican party believes that the system must be working. But under that veneer of the success of self-made individuals are the hundreds of thousands of Americans who MUST live in poverty, or at best desperate hand-to-mouth wage slavery, for every Ken Lay who rises to the top and illustrates the success of the system. Most of you, like most of us, are not the Ken Lays of the the world, so your political leaders shit on you just like they shit on me.
Once the Republican party became the major political institution that most wholeheartedly embraced the worst aspects of modern robber baron capitalism, it was only a small additional step to apply those principles to the party itself. The result was the entanglement of greed and power. It's an old story-- the Republican party certainly didn't originate the "culture of corruption" that Nancy Pelosi has noted, but that lack of originality is surely no comfort for conservatives who find themselves represented by organized crime bosses instead of decent Americans.
So I offer my condolences. Many of those Republican leaders and their cronies are going down. Some, like Duke Cunningham, already have. Others are either already under indictment or are revealed as so tainted by the daylight that has begun to leak into their sordid careers that they bring shame to all Americans, regardless of political persuasion. Those of you who are real conservatives, with whom I mostly disagree but nonetheless respect, deserved better than you got. I'm sorry it turned out that way.
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