E.J. Dionne Jr.: Conservatives used to care about community. What happened?

[babylonsister]

Conservatives used to care about community. What happened?

By E.J. Dionne Jr.


To secure his standing as the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, Mitt Romney has disowned every sliver of moderation in his record. He’s moved to the right on tax cuts and twisted himself into a pretzel over the health-care plan he championed in Massachusetts — because conservatives are no longer allowed to acknowledge that government can improve citizens’ lives.

Romney is simply following the lead of Republicans in Congress who have abandoned American conservatism’s most attractive features: prudence, caution and a sense that change should be gradual. But most important, conservatism used to care passionately about fostering community, and it no longer does. This commitment now lies buried beneath slogans that lift up the heroic and disconnected individual — or the “job creator” — with little concern for the rest.

Today’s conservatism is about low taxes, fewer regulations, less government — and little else. Anyone who dares to define it differently faces political extinction. Sen. Richard Lugar of Indiana was considered a solid conservative, until conservatives decided that anyone who seeks bipartisan consensus on anything is a sellout. Even Orrin Hatch of Utah, one of the longest-serving Republican senators, is facing a primary challenge. His flaw? He occasionally collaborated with the late Democratic senator Edward M. Kennedy on providing health insurance coverage for children and encouraging young Americans to join national service programs. In the eyes of Hatch’s onetime allies, these commitments make him an ultra-leftist.

I have long admired the conservative tradition and for years have written about it with great respect. But the new conservatism, for all its claims of representing the values that inspired our founders, breaks with the country’s deepest traditions. The United States rose to power and wealth on the basis of a balance between the public and the private spheres, between government and the marketplace, and between our love of individualism and our quest for community.


more...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/conservatives-used-to-care-about-community-what-happened/2012/05/24/gJQAsR8inU_story.html

[snappyturtle]

1. Grover Norquist. He's tied the repubs' hands. imho nt

[Moostache]

13. How in the name of all that is good and holy is HE able to do this????

Grover Fucking Norquist?!?!?! REALLY?

How in the hell has this nation become so damn stupid that TV ads and spending are enough to make it possible for 0.01% of the population to rule over the rest of us with impunity and down right stupidity?

If this nation cannot shake off a pus-bag like Grover (who in MY eyes will always be the purple Muppet and not that inconsequential boil on the ass of history) then we are too far gone to be redeemed and SHOULD be relegated to the dustbin of history with the other failed empires from Greece through the Soviets. I want to believe otherwise, but it gets harder every day...

[snappyturtle]

19. I don't understand his power but obviously he has it...a lot of it! nt

[Gidney N Cloyd]

2. This helps explain why so many otherwise decent people astoundingly >>>

>>> describe themselves as 'conservative.' They're vaguely aware of the qualities Dionne recalls and unaware of where conservatism has drifted politically over the last few decades.

[longship]

3. Dionne nails this.

Well done, EJ!

My father was a lifelong conservative, an Eisenhower Republican -- my mother was an FDR Democrat. The last Presidential election he voted in was 1992. To cut to the chase, he despised the new conservatives, especially George H. W. Bush. He voted for Ross Perot that year.

When he died, he had been under Hospice care for about a month. I remember the day the Hospice people were setting things up. The family was gathered -- we all knew his battle with cancer was over. The Hospice person asked my father if they could supply him with religious counseling. He immediately said, calmly but definitively, "No, that won't be necessary."

I am confident that my father would have turned the corner politically if he were alive today. (He'd be in his late 90's.)

Thanks for this post. It brought some good memories of my incredible father back to me.

[glinda]

4. They are in a a panic to be the wealthiest in order to buy a space trip off boiling planet.

That is my opinion because there is absolutely no logical reason for what they are doing except to be racing towards who will be able to afford to take a chance on staying alive.

[Uncle Joe]

6. I believe you nailed it glinda, they're not stupid, they know the truth but instead of trying to

change society to save humanity from itself, these new "conservative" Republicans have given up and are just trying to secure a place on a perceived "lifeboat" or shelter for themselves in the belief that a vast accumulation of money and possessions will save them.

They have basically written off everyone else except the most wealthy and powerful, with them it has already become "every man for himself" in the meantime Norquist's followers have brainwashed their believers that all is well in regards to our degrading environment.

To say these people are the lowest of pond scum is to be overly generous.

[glinda]

8. The very thing that makes them rich is the very thing that kills us all.

They are indeed in a predicament. And so are we. I want them gone......locked up....or tried.....

[glinda]

21. Some one should investigate who gives the largest sums of money to

space venture Programs and projects that are aiming to "live off of this Planet".

[Uncle Joe]

22. Don't get me wrong,

I'm not against space travel and exploration as a matter of fact I believe it's necessary for humanity's long term chances of survival.

What I am against is the obvious denial of and lobbying against the overwhelming scientific evidence of systemic environmental degradation and global warming climate change which threatens the very fabric of life as we know it, by otherwise intelligent people; using their wealth and power to deceive humanity against reality.

The plutocrats perceived "lifeboats" may not even be related to space, it could be more along the lines of Arks ie: movie "2012" or isolated fortresses.

I believe we as a species must find a balance to do both protect, conserve and prolong our Earth's natural biosphere while also developing the ability to use the resources of space and move beyond our only known home in the Universe.

[kristopher]

5. The conservative EJ refers to had living memory of the dangers of fascism.

Not the caricature that the Rushbo's have created to hide their nature, but the true nature of the social/political/economic beast that we have to always be on our guard against.

Their obvious misuse use of the words/concepts "communist" and "socialist" for centrist thought is one of their shields against proper identification of the well trod fascist path they are following.

[Stuart G]

18. They also had a "living memory" of the great depression. 25 to 33 percent out of work...nt

[pnwmom]

7. The problem he doesn't name is that economic Libertarianism has completely taken over the GOP.

The growing Libertarian movement has given mainstream acceptability to extreme selfishness and individualism.

Economic Libertarians can now attract two very different types of people to their cause. The Libertarian party itself is full of people who believe in economic individualism AND personal freedom. The Republican party is now full of people who believe in economic individualism but think the government should be intruding in people's private lives -- especially for religious reasons.

[Zoeisright]

9. When did conservatives care about community?

I haven't seen that in my lifetime.

[LibDemAlways]

11. I'm with you. The conservative R's when I was

growing up were fighting Medicare and Civil Rights. No evidence that they gave a damn about the good of society.

[Zoeisright]

20. They have always been on the wrong side of history.

And always, always only cared about themselves.

[McCamy Taylor]

16. They cared if Sears had enough customers. They cared if Detroit could sell cars.

That meant keeping a solvent middle class.

Now, the GOP's masters make money by turning the middle class poor and the handful of billionaires who run the party could care less what happens to Sears, Krogers, Ford, GM. I am surprised that the business community which has been left out in the cold does not rally behind the Dems. There won't be much money to be made in retailing if we are all broke.

[Demeter]

17. Point well made

(but then, you always are dependable like that. Good to see you are still around!)

[Art_from_Ark]

25. The conservatives in my community were more concerned about destroying it

through a combination of wanton use of eminent domain for stupid road projects, razing historical buildings, and shifting city facilities and schools farther and farther away from the old part of town.

[muriel_volestrangler]

10. it's the spread of Randism

So much for ancient history. If the term “job creators” is no new addition to the lexicon of American politics, it has enjoyed quite a renaissance since President Obama took office. A Lexis-Nexis search of U.S. newspapers and wire services turns up 1,082 individual mentions of “job creators” in the month before the debt ceiling deal was reached, or just 175 fewer mentions than for George W. Bush’s entire second term.
...
As an intellectual matter, the Visible Hand of Capitalism has enjoyed support from figures as disparate as Destutt de Tracy, the French philosopher and economist whom Thomas Jefferson championed, to the steel baron and indefatigable philanthropist, Andrew Carnegie. As a rhetorical matter, however, the phrase “job creators” appears to come directly from the work of Ayn Rand. She favored the term “creators” to describe an elite caste in society and her highest human ideal.

John Boehner made reference to “Atlas Shrugged,” Rand’s most famous novel, in a speech he gave recently to the Economic Club of Washington, D.C. “Job creators in America are essentially on strike,” he said, in an obvious nod to the decision by the “creators” in the novel to go on strike in defiance of an intrusive federal government. The nation immediately begins to falter, and the books concludes with its hero, John Galt, giving a marathon address in which he explains to the rest of the country why America is crumbling. The nation, in brief, has scared away the very people who keep the economy working, leaving behind those who are ill-equipped to fend for themselves. Describing the economic and social theory underpinning this vision, Galt says:

In proportion to the mental energy he spent, the man who creates a new invention receives but a small percentage of his value in terms of material payment, no matter what fortune he makes, no matter what millions he earns. But the man who works as a janitor in the factory producing that invention, receives an enormous payment in proportion to the mental effort that his job requires of him. And the same is true of all men between, on all levels of ambition and ability. The man at the top of the intellectual pyramid contributes the most to all those below him, but gets nothing except his material payment, receiving no intellectual bonus from others to add to the value of his time. The man at the bottom who, left to himself, would starve in his hopeless ineptitude, contributes nothing to those above him, but receives the bonus of all of their brains.

For all that it lacks in human decency, Rand’s vision of who makes capitalism work at least has the advantage of isolating a group of people who actually create something. By contrast, the current “job creators” rhetoric seems to elevate a group of people whose shared tax bracket is their only outstanding trait.

http://www.salon.com/2011/09/28/job_creator_myth/singleton/

Of course, the idea that the 'inventor' is also in charge of a company, and stands to profit from its success, only really applies in new technology. There's an argument to be made that Gordon Moore and Bill Gates were 'creators' or 'job creators'; but not the investment bankers who just re-arranged the finances for their own profit. If you want successful capitalism, you need high taxes on high earners, with incentives for genuine investment in new production, as opposed to a tax structure that encourages leveraged debt.

[Demeter]

12. Dionne is Delusional

Conservatives never cared about "community"--they cared about excluding anyone they didn't like and agree with, to form their little enclaves, and called that "community". What it was, was CONFORMITY.

[McCamy Taylor]

15. When the GOP represented all business, not just a handful of venture capital predators

it had to look after Main Street. Not exactly the same as compassion, but it was a lot closer to sane than the party's current flirtation with Banksters, Big Pharm, oil price speculators and people who make money exclusively through white collar fraud.

[McCamy Taylor]

14. Gore Vidal said we have one party--the Money Party. But that was before Citizen's United.

The SCOTUS allowed the mega rich to put all their campaign dollars into a single teapot. Now we have the Money Party (the GOP) and everyone else. If a handful of billionaires control a party, the party will be about as humane as the average billionaire.

[blkmusclmachine]

23. No money in "Community."

n/t

[WriteWrong]

24. The conservatives are all in the Democratic party. Neocons are something else entirely.