Why I'm an Ex-Conservative

I used to think I was a Conservative.  When I was in high school in the mid-60s there was a lot of appeal to some of their beliefs and I was for Barry Goldwater (I was too young to vote then). It was like you were better and smarter than other people just by holding to those beliefs.  Even today, many Conservatives think they simply have to quote Ayn Rand to prove how smart and superior they are.  It was a simple matter to be a Conservative in the abstract.

Unfortunately, life isn't led in the abstract. After I got out of high school I started seeing where those beliefs seemed to lead.  How disappointing to discover that you disagree with most everything you were supposed to believe.  I suppose I never really was a Conservative;  I just thought it was cool to be able to say so.

Among those beliefs:

• Approval of apartheid in South Africa and Rhodesia.
• Opposition to the civil rights movement. It's almost comical to watch today's Conservatives--like Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin--fall all over each other declaring Martin Luther King their idol.  Their Conservative forebears declared him a Communist and un-American.
• Opposition to Civil Rights laws.  "States rights" was the code word then and it seems to have crept back into the Conservative vocabulary again. 
• Social Security and Medicare are bad things (even though they have virtually eliminated poverty among the elderly).
• Prayer in public schools.
• Opposition to the Voting Rights Act.
• Opposition to minimum wage laws.

These are only a handful of things that happened in my younger lifetime; the list could be made longer if one went back to the early 20th century and before.  But the point is that on all of these issues, Conservatives have been on the wrong side of the issue and the wrong side of history.  And they continue to be on the wrong side today.

I'm a Glenn Beck Celebrity

I heard that a couple weeks ago Glenn Beck singled out Credo Mobile on his show because it donates money to "evil" left wing causes and organizations.  Credo--aka Working Assets--gives a percentage of each dollar it collects to organizations voted on by its members.  Credo is my cell phone carrier, so I guess that I can proudly call myself a Glenn Beck celebrity, at least indirectly.

Christian Life Resources and Michele Bachmann

Christian Life Resources (CLR) has presented Rep. Michele Bachmann as a sort of role model for the Christian politician (see the September/October issue of their "Clearly Caring" magazine).  In that interview, she spoke hardly at all about life issues but a whole lot about the typical right-wing banalities of anti-tax, small government, states rights, blah blah blah. She is certainly entitled to whatever political beliefs she holds but I'm not sure why Christian Life Resources has to give her a forum to express these views.

The website Politifact.org has rated 13 of Michele Bachmann's public statements over the past couple of years.  Politifact classifies statements made by politicians into the following categories: True;  Mostly True;  Half True;  Barely True;  False;  and Pants on Fire.  Of Rep. Bachmann's statements, seven were ruled False and the other six were ruled Pants on Fire.  Christian Life Resources has cited these types of websites (FactCheck.org is also excellent and fair) when it serves its own purposes, so I thought it only fair to point out how Rep. Bachmann stacks up with the truth.

In "Clearly Caring" (3rd quarter 2009) Robert Fleischmann, CLR's national director, wrote an article entitled "Save Us from the Zealots".  The article contains the following sentences:

Today’s fanatic is reckless with the truth, merciless with those holding contrary opinions and articulate in appealing to the intellect and emotions. The fanatic thrives on the ignorance of others and is convinced and convincing that there are no lasting moral absolutes. As time changes, they argue, so do the moral boundaries. Like the emperor who thinks he is modeling his royal garments that don’t exist, so also do the fanatics espouse convictions that have no substance.

Obviously, he was mostly referring to people with whom he disagrees, but it's also a pretty good description of Michele Bachmann, or at least many of her public statements.  Apparently, as long as someone agrees with CLR on the "important" issues, they are free to be as reckless as they want on other issues without being held to account.