POLITICS - It's Conservatism, Stupid

"It's The Conservatism, Stupid" by Paul Waldman, TomPaine

Ask a conservative what the biggest problem in America is today, and you’ll get answers like overtaxation, a sexualized culture, lack of respect for authority, insufficient church-going or big government running amok. But if you then asked the conservative what the real source of the problem was—the beating heart pumping blood to each and all of these socio-politico-cultural wounds — you’d get the same answer: liberalism.

On the other hand, you could ask a liberal a hundred questions about the problems facing our country before you’d get to an answer that placed conservatism at the heart of the nation’s ills.

And conservatives learn these messages when still young. What does a “campus liberal” do? Well, it depends what his or her issue is: fighting sweatshop labor, or environmental degradation, or the Iraq war, or any of a dozen other problems about which liberals are concerned. What, on the other hand, does a “campus conservative” do? Fight liberals and liberalism.

You can hear it in the media as well. As any fan of Limbaugh, Hannity or O’Reilly hears every day, whatever the issue is, the problem is liberals. Conservatives write books saying liberals are The Party of Death , who are Trashing Democracy, Waging War Against Christianity , ,Screwing Up America, Corrupting Our Future—and on top of it all, our whole ideology is A Mental Disorder. Liberals, on the other hand, write books about why George W. Bush is a terrible president. (I plead guilty.)

What we haven’t yet seen from the left is a sustained critique, not just of a particular politician or a particular policy, but of the entire ideology and worldview of conservatism.

As everyone knows, conservatives have succeeded in making “liberal” an epithet, something they throw at their opponents—who try desperately to dodge the label. The demonization of “liberal” has been successful in part because conservatives have effectively created what social psychologists call a “schema” with decidedly negative features around the term.

The ideas liberals would like to pop right up in people’s heads when they hear the term liberal—“wants prosperity for everyone,” “supports universal health care” or “stands up to powerful interests”—are farther away from the (conservative) schema’s center.

This didn’t happen by accident. It is the result of a relentless campaign against liberalism by conservatives. And liberals need to do the same thing to conservatism.

His article then lists 3 failures of conservatism, each with an explanation:

1. "Conservatism has failed"
2. "Conservatism is the ideology of the past — a past we don’t want to return to"
3. "Conservatives are cowards, and they hope you are, too"

I recommend reading the whole article.