Small Government Except for the Conservative Agenda

It has become increasingly clear that great swaths of the public are deliberately misled rather than informed. Led by political deluders and poseurs calling themselves journalists they cling to long-held, preconceived ‘facts’ and resist anything that intrudes on their certitude about everything from health care to national security.

Sometimes it seems that callers to programs encouraging listener participation are reading from hastily scrawled notes that parrot a Beck or Limbaugh screed. If the subject is the economy, President Obama is accused of turning the country into a socialist training ground. If it’s about health reform Republicans assert that medical attention is available to all because anyone can be treated at an emergency room, where procedures undertaken could never be confused with actual health care.

If the subject is climate change, callers insist global warming is a hoax. However, since no rational basis exists for liberal/socialist/fascists to invent something like that, the right concocted a motive - - the global warming thing is a plot by Obama and other state leaders to create a giant socialist empire. What adds to the confusion about climate change is that a mixture of cooling and warming produces results that seem to defy logic. According to a UN report ‘thick clouds of soot, particles and chemicals stretch…from the Persian Gulf to Asia threatening health and food supplies in the world.’ A UCS report from the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCSUSA.org) indicates that such particulate concentrations may at times cause cooling by blocking the sun’s rays.

However the report concludes that “atmospheric…particles…do not linger in the atmosphere for long... and over time ‘long-lived global warming effects caused by excessive emissions of CO2  and other heat-trapping gases will far outweigh the cooling effect of short-lived particles.’ Global warming deniers often point to unusual spurts of cold weather as proof that global warming is a myth. The preponderance of scientific opinion is, however, that human factors cause weather extremes that produce not only drought but flooding as well though many Republicans remain unconvinced.

Newt Gingrich considered a more responsible Republican leader says Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh are “fine people” if not exactly party spokesmen. His list of “big-tent” Republicans on Sunday’s Washington Journal included Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour who, after Katrina, diverted $600 million in federal funds, targeted for low-income homeowners who had suffered losses in the storm, to spruce up the state’s port at Gulfport.”(www.southernstudies.org/2009/05) Also on the list were Louisiana Governor Jindal, Texas, we-might-secede, Governor Perry both of whom, along with Barbour, had to be ‘encouraged’ by their legislatures to accept federal stimulus money, Jindal being the only one, as far as anyone knows, to have participated in an exorcism. That’s quite a tent.

In fine partisan fettle, Gingrich declared White House “czars” unconstitutional, though some were confirmed by the Senate. In any case presidents have always used consultants to advise them and promote their agendas. Off on the far reaches of sanity are suggestions that a federal proposal to build a cross-country, high-speed train system is part of a plot to transport citizens to FEMA-run concentration camps and that data systems in cars may be used by the White House to track ordinary citizens. Usually folks who talk crazy are advised to seek psychiatric counseling but some travelers on right-wing flights of fantasy have actually been elected or become media phenoms.

Conservatives say they support smaller government and don’t want big-brother making personal decisions for them. Consider, then, that in conservative Oklahoma, new abortion regulations require doctors to describe details of ultrasounds to women who may also be forced to submit to a vaginal device that can detect a very small fetus. But for heaven’s sake, don’t mess with that government-run program called Medicare or suggest that the rights of young women are being violated in a clear case of government overreach. Meanwhile in California, land of the voter referendum, there are murmurings about a possible proposition outlawing divorce.

The Conservative/Republican mantra is a paradoxical creation that talks big about smaller government but weighs in on the most personal of decisions. Luckily for the party many followers are locked in a delusional comfort zone and fail to see the fallacy of its position on matters, in addition to social issues, that affect them most acutely.