Flaylo
Handsome Devil
Ira Glasser: What Are Conservatives Trying to Conserve?
Can the forum say Amen? I do, conservatives aren't conserving anything that works to the good of all Americans.
In 1980 Reagan was elected, and the modern conservative political movement began, not as a protest, but as a hegemony. The lasting accomplishments of the Reagan years may have been the changes in the tax code and regulatory regimes that had prevailed for nearly a half century. But that was not what fueled his electoral success; what fueled his electoral success was the fundamentalist movement represented by Falwell, Pat Robertson and what came to be called the social agenda. Censorship of Kurt Vonnegut, Judy Blume and others, movements to pass "creationist" statutes that attempted to elevate the book of Genesis to a branch of science; hostility to the claims of gays, women and reproductive rights all combined to generate what began to be called "the culture wars." To a very demonstrable extent, I think, the conservative movement of the last 30 years (absent the economic issues of deregulation, also supported by Clinton and Robert Rubin and beyond the comprehension or the interest of most voters) may be seen as a panic response to a crumbling world and to the rights expansions of the '60s that struck like a tsunami, washing away all the prior governing arrangements. For these people, reality itself, or at least a reality where they felt in charge, was disappearing. As always, it was the symbols of these changes that were attacked: the federal courts, especially the Supreme Court, which (unelected) had rendered many of these decisions; the ACLU and Planned Parenthood, which had brought many of the cases or performed hated services; books and magazines and films; television and Hollywood and "eastern elites." When Pat Buchanan roared, in his quixotic presidential campaign, that "we" needed to "take back our country," he was talking about a country prior to the rights revolutions of the 60s, when people who looked and believed like him ruled the roost and did not have their powers limited by the rights we had won. What conservatives were desperately trying to conserve was not the values at America's origin (the Bill of Rights was, after all, ratified in 1791), but rather the privileges and powers of 19th century and early 20th century America. This is what has fueled the reactionary politics of the past three decades, and it is what we are seeing now in the Republican base and its candidates.
Can the forum say Amen? I do, conservatives aren't conserving anything that works to the good of all Americans.