Why Are Conservatives So Destructive? It's Everyone Else's Fault [View all]

[babylonsister]

Why Are Conservatives So Destructive? It’s Everyone Else’s Fault
by Mike Lofgren | August 27, 2025 - 5:33am


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All the supposedly vibrant ideas of present-day conservatism always reduce to a handful of notions that the Republican Party has been pushing for decades. The vision that the state can make life better for its citizens, meaning healthier, more economically secure, better educated, and with better infrastructure, is something conservatives have fought tooth and nail against since Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal.

What they want is a weakened state that will do nothing for the citizen; instead, they want a strong state only when it comes to punishment—hence the money they throw at militarizing law enforcement and constructing a society of incarceration. Take a good look at Washington, DC—it’s coming to a city near you.

Conservatives believe in human inequality, whether in the economic, social, or racial spheres. Depending on the circumstances, they go to some lengths to conceal this belief, but the major voices of post-World War II conservatism were quite open about it. Buckley said “Unless you have the freedom to be unequal, there is no such thing as freedom.” Except that when conservatives are in power, inequality will indeed increase, but there is no corresponding increase in freedom, as anyone paying attention during the last seven months will have noticed.

Why are the rest of us supposed to respectfully indulge people who believe the Earth is 6,000 years old? Should we invite young earth creationists to rewrite geology textbooks to demonstrate how tolerant we are of their opinions? Is there really a legitimate difference of opinion on whether anthropogenic climate change exists, suggesting that scientists all over the world got it wrong and right-wing ideologues got it right? Should we thoughtfully examine the evidence that Jewish space lasers caused wildfires in California or that the Covid-19 vaccine is actually an injectable microchip just to show what good sports we are?

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http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/mike-lofgren/114738/why-are-conservatives-so-destructive-it-s-everyone-else-s-fault