The myth of conservative strength: Several not-so-conservative conservative ideals proven wrong when given the chance

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There are many examples of the failed philosophy of neo (new) conservatism, such as the Wisconsin Policy Research Institute , the Project for New American Century, and last but not least, financial ‘innovation’ in the economy.  You can argue until you are blue in the face about philosophy and theory, but some evidence is empirical.  It just can’t be argued.  The outcome, or the results, of particular programs and policies in action speak for themselves, similar to how if you mix water, milk, eggs, and Bisquick just right you get pancakes.

The WPRI was a group that had advocated for school choice vouchers in Milwaukee.  After the program was instituted and studied, they issued this report which said, among other things:

“The report you are reading did not yield the results we had hoped to find,” George Lightbourn, a senior fellow at the institute, wrote in the paper’s first sentence. 

On the same topic of vouchers but not from the same report, I spent a day in Jefferson City speaking with a local Republican State Representative at the time named Jim Lembke.  It was a very cordial conversation on education policy in the Missouri.  However, the conversation ended quite abruptly after I said to him:

My grandfather was a conservative.  (I like to call him an Eisenhower conservative.) And as I understand it, in his day, they believed that public tax dollars should not be used for private purposes.  In relation to vouchers, what ever happened to that conservative ideal?

Then there is The Project for a New American Century, a conservative think tank formed during the Clinton Administration and whose membership included the likes of Steve Forbes, Bill Kristol, William J. Bennett, Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, John Bolton, Robert Kagan, Richard L. Armitage, Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, Jeb Bush, “Scooter” Libby, Dan Quayle, and more. They penned a letter that said some of the following (keep in mind, this was before 9/11 and a few years before W. was ever elected POTUS):

“That strategy should aim, above all, at the removal of Saddam Hussein’s regime from power.”

“Our ability to ensure that Saddam Hussein is not producing weapons of mass destruction”

“Such uncertainty will, by itself, have a seriously destabilizing effect on the entire Middle East.”

“a significant portion of the world’s supply of oil will all be put at hazard…”

“…removing Saddam Hussein and his regime from power. That now needs to become the aim of American foreign policy.”

“…If you act now to end the threat of weapons of mass destruction against the U.S. or its allies, you will be acting in the most fundamental national security interests of the country. If we accept a course of weakness and drift, we put our interests and our future at risk.

Of course, we know how all of that worked out.  $150 a barrel for oil, $10 billion a month in Iraq Afghanistan, oh, and no Weapons of Mass Destruction.  Notice how almost all of the people mentioned in the letter to President Clinton seen here ended up in the Bush Administration.

The phrase that freaks me out the most from the Project for a New American Century is an excerpt from the following paper:

Further, the process of transformation,
even if it brings revolutionary change, is
likely to be a long one, absent some
catastrophic and catalyzing event – like a
new Pearl Harbor. Domestic politics and
industrial policy will shape the pace and
content of transformation as much as the
requirements of current missions.

And last but not least, the financial market.  So far, we have talked about two of the items that the conservatives are traditionally given credit for as their strength.  Taxes, Defense, and now Finance.  It is clear that their strength in these areas is nothing more than a myth, and a very damaging myth at that.  Here is the latest from Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke:

“One would be forgiven for concluding that the assumed benefits of financial innovation are not all they were cracked up to be,” the Fed chairman said today in a speech at the central bank’s community affairs conference in Washington. “The damage from this turn in the credit cycle — in terms of lost wealth, lost homes, and blemished credit histories — is likely to be long-lasting.”

Bernanke Says Crisis Damage Likely to Be Long-Lasting (Update2) - Bloomberg.com

Prop. 8 Fix: Dump Legal ‘Marriage’ Altogether - Arts & Living news | Newser

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This is the kind of solution that probably makes too much sense for it to work out in the near future.  Even though most of us know that change is really the only constant throughout human history, change scares people.  (Hence – Conservatism.)  Of course, many things are worth preserving, like, well – marriage. 

If this type of legislation were to pass, it would not hurt the institution of marriage.  Marriage would still be alive and strong within the framework of the religious or otherwise secular traditions of which it originates.  The vast majority of Americans would still remain married, and their children would most likely wed as well.  All that would change is that in the eyes of the government (you know, that institution that Conservatives say should stay out of our business [even though we are the government]) is that for legal purposes, two consenting adults can acquire civil union status for both legal and private equality purposes.

(Newser) – Confirmations, bar mitzvahs—religious institutions mark a number of rites of passage, but marriage is the only one the government has mucked with. As the heated debate over gay marriage continues, two professors ask: Why not take the government out of the equation? Officially, any couple could have a civil union, and "marriage" would be left up to one’s place of worship, Time reports in a look at the idea.

Prop. 8 Fix: Dump Legal ‘Marriage’ Altogether - Arts & Living news | Newser

Seven Reasons Why Evangelical Christianity is Coming to an End | Christian Science Monitor

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After the results of the latest American Religious Identification Survey, Christian Science Monitor appears to blame evangelical Christianity on the reduction of believers nation-wide.

One interesting tidbit here is that strong proponents of the Separation of Church and State are strong proponents for two reasons.  1.  They want the church to stay out of the government business, and 2.  They want the government to stay out of church business.

What happens when you cross that line?  Well, perhaps the Christian Science Monitor is on to something…

Why is this going to happen?

1. Evangelicals have identified their movement with the culture war and with political conservatism. This will prove to be a very costly mistake. Evangelicals will increasingly be seen as a threat to cultural progress. Public leaders will consider us bad for America, bad for education, bad for children, and bad for society.

The evangelical investment in moral, social, and political issues has depleted our resources and exposed our weaknesses. Being against gay marriage and being rhetorically pro-life will not make up for the fact that massive majorities of Evangelicals can’t articulate the Gospel with any coherence. We fell for the trap of believing in a cause more than a faith.

The coming evangelical collapse | csmonitor.com

US Defense Intelligence Agency wastes taxpayer money with “gravity weapons nonsense”

Question for the fiscally conservative reader…is government waste only government waste when it is money and resources wasted on liberal causes?

Fiscal conservatism and fiscal prudence have come to mean two different things to me.  Fiscal conservatism has evolved in to a phrase applied to any kind of spending that does not take place on what a political conservative would consider to be a liberal or progressive cause.  (Which is hogwash.)  Fiscal prudence, on the other-hand, sufficiently describes transparent and financially sound expenditures, regardless of political ideology.

I think it is necessary to differentiate between the two because of government waste like that which is listed here by New Scientist magazine.  Typically, this line-item would fall under ‘defense’ spending, which would usually satisfy a fiscally conservative (but not necessarily a libertarian) expenditure.

As the article states, the military could have asked any astrophysicist if this was possible and probably saved enormous sums of taxpayer money.  Instead, we have to chalk this one up to government waste, or fiscal imprudence.  (Because I am sure that fiscal conservatives will not want to take any of the credit for it.)

US investigation into gravity weapons ‘nonsense’ - tech - 19 December 2008 - New Scientist

If you think the idea of gravitational waves propelling interplanetary spacecraft sounds like science fiction, you’re in good company - any astrophysicist will rubbish the idea out of hand.

However, that didn’t stop the US Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) from commissioning a report to investigate whether the elusive waves could pose a threat to US security.

The JASON Defense Advisory Group were also asked to judge whether high-frequency gravitational waves could image the centre of the Earth, or be used for telecommunications.

Gravitational waves are ripples in space-time caused by the movement of an extremely large mass, such as a very dense star.

Yet even those from huge stellar events have been too weak to trip the most sensitive detectors. The best evidence is indirect, coming from observations of how superdense, binary neutron stars lose energy.