Some of my friends are successful businessmen.\u00a0 They are, as a matter of course, conservative and Republican.\u00a0 Socially, at least, I tend toward conservatism myself, and I respect anyone who works hard and succeeds.\u00a0 Though I may disagree with my friends, I listen to what they have to say.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 They’re smart people, but too often, I hear them simply repeating conservative talking points, with no original thinking to back those points up.\u00a0 I think I know why.<\/p>\n
Talking points obfuscate the ultimate rationale behind conservatism, simple selfishness.\u00a0 For example:<\/p>\n
Some of my friends oppose doing anything about climate change because it might cost them money in increased taxes or reduced revenue.\u00a0 They obscure their real opposition by arguing that climate change is immutable, a natural cycle we can do nothing about.<\/p>\n
Others are against doing anything about the dangers of offshore drilling or our dependence on foreign oil.\u00a0 Would they but admit it, they simply don’t want to spend a penny more on energy than they are already paying.\u00a0 They instead pretend to believe that there is plenty of oil and that we can overcome all our problems by drilling more.<\/p>\n
Many are against any and all government initiatives — stimulus spending, rapid transit, education, alternative energy development, protecting the environment, or financial regulation & oversight — because you have to pay for government.\u00a0 Their cover argument is that government is incompetent and only private enterprise can address these problems (left unsaid is their certain knowledge that private enterprise won’t and never will, because it would cut into the bottom line).<\/p>\n
What it comes down to is that conservatives want more money in their own pockets.\u00a0 This outweighs everything else, including the economic health and well-being of others.\u00a0 But they won’t come out and say so — what they say instead is that corporate taxes, safety regulations, health care & pension plans, even minimum wage standards hurt business, thus our economy, thus the rest of us.<\/p>\n
Selfishness is like racism.\u00a0 No one wants to admit to it.\u00a0 Hence, talking points.<\/p>\n
John Kenneth Galbraith had it right: “The modern conservative is engaged in one of man’s oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness.”<\/p>\n
Thus endeth my sermon for today.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Some of my friends are successful businessmen.\u00a0 They are, as a matter of course, conservative and Republican.\u00a0 Socially, at least, I tend toward conservatism myself, and I respect anyone who works hard and succeeds.\u00a0 Though I may disagree with my friends, I listen to what they have to say.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 They’re smart people, but too often, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,8,29],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3993","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-class","category-politics","category-the-economy"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3993","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3993"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3993\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3995,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3993\/revisions\/3995"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3993"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3993"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3993"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}