Conservatives:Lovers Of Sabotage(Wrecking Crew-Thomas Frank)

Republicans,with their conservative ideology,want to destroy our government like the wrecking crew they have become. They believe the government to be an ideology of Western suicide with its insistence on equal rights for everyone(fatal weakness). James Burnham,conservative theorist, stated way back in 1964, that liberalism must extend the freedoms to those who are not themselves liberals and even to those whose deliberate purpose is to destroy the liberal society.It must grant a free hand to its assassins or liberalism must deny its own principles,restrict the freedoms,and practice discrimination.Liberalism depends on fair play by its sworn enemies,making it vulnerable to assassination,hijacking and sabotage.

Liberalism has proven vulnerable to the tactics of its swaggering, bullying foes.They have vandalized all departments of government.The conservatives have looted the Treasury(regressive tax policies,offshore accounts),dynamited the dam(government programs for the disenfranchised poor),takes a crowbar to the monument(privatizing Social Security,cutting medicaid and medicare,backing for- profit health care) and throws a wrench into the gears(deregulating banking and energy).Liberalism arose out of a long-ago compromise between left-wing social movements and business interests.It depends utterly on efficient functioning of certain organs of the state,and it does not call for some kind of all-out war on private industry.(Socialism doesn't exist anywhere-state controlling all aspects of production).Conservatism,on the other hand,speaks not of compromise but of removing its adversaries from the field altogether.While no one dreams of sawing off those branches of the state that protects conservatism's constituents-military,police,the legal privileges granted to corporations,they openly fantasize about doing away with those bits of "big government" that served liberal ends(public schools,safe working/living environments,affordable health care,social service agencies,unemployment benefits,job training,increased minimum wage,consumer protection,banking/energy regulations,low income housing,public parks and transportation systems,food safety,collective bargaining etc.).

Dramatic economic inequality of the kind conservatism has engineered has inevitably brought political inequality with it.The rich vote at higher rates than others,they contribute greater amounts to candidates,and,should they choose,they are able to afford today's expensive campaigns for public office.They can also subsidize authors,newspaper columnists,academics,magazines and TV shows.They can fund the careers of friendly politicians and buy off dubious ones;and they can reward right-thinking regulators and bureaucrats when these worthies' stints in government are done.They can launch cable TV networks,buy newspapers and bankroll think-tank operations charged with making their idiosyncratic personal ideas into the common sense of the millions.

In 1965,American GNP grew by 6.5%-today in the glory days of the billionaire it barely gets over 2%.The greatest periods of prosperity came with the greatest period of collective bargaining.Presently, conservatives swagger across national stages wrecking and smashing with impunity,secure in the knowledge that a little bit of scoffing toward big government would always get them off the hook,save them to wreck again some other day.They elevate bullies, gangsters and CEOs above other humans,which tells us to get wise and stop expecting anything good from Washington,Whenever there is a choice between free markets and free people,between money and the common good,the conservatives chose money.

I read this book last summer and wanted to share some highlights between additional chapters from "Illegal People".