Why Voters Should Turn From the Pseudoconservative Party of the Great Recession

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Louis M. GueninLecturer on Ethics in Science, Harvard University
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Why Voters Should Turn From the Pseudoconservative Party of the Great Recession PART I

The Pseudoconservative Radical Attack

Today's Republican Party consists of pseudoconservatives, wearers of the “conservative” mantle who repudiate conservatism. Rather than esteeming government, they disdain it. They seem to delight in ridiculing government's failings. To their candidates, one might put the question, if you despise government, why do you want government jobs? But let us leave aside their personal ambitions, and consider their views and methods.

Since the Reagan administration, Republicans have vented their dislike for government by, in their words, “starving the beast.” In this explicitly avowed scheme, they contrive first to reduce taxes (mostly for corporations and the rich) so as to deprive the federal government of revenue, then invoke the diminished revenue as the pretense for insisting that expenditures must be slashed (especially for social programs) on pain of increasing the deficit. They insist on the expenditure reductions regardless of the contractionary effect on national income, the direct increase in unemployment (as if millions of government employees weren't employees) and the indirect increase in the private sector, and regardless of the hardships for program beneficiaries.

But it is when you get into the guts of what Psuedo-Conservativism where you see it is a "Platform on Stilts" as Professor Guenin terms it. A platform on Stilts on Bullshit Mountain.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/10/25/1150062/-Today-s-Must-Read-Why-Voters-Should-Turn-From-the-Pseudoconservative-Party-of-the-Great-Recession

The pseudoconservative platform, by dint of self-contradiction, collapses for lack of a foundation. We see this by first scanning some of the contradictions.

Government is an ill (Health and Human Services, Education, Housing and Urban Development, EPA, SEC, et al.); government is not an ill (Defense, CIA, Homeland Security, FBI, Commerce, et al.). Government should not enlarge (the safety net for the poor); government should enlarge (a near doubling of defense expenditures). Government should not intrude (financial industry, gun ownership, oil exploration, corporate spending on elections, regulation in general); government should intrude (abortion, collective bargaining by public employees, same-sex marriage, surveillance and wiretapping of citizens without warrants). Government does not create jobs; there are too many government employees. Sacrificing human life is impermissible (abortion, embryonic stem cell research); sacrificing human life is permissible (capital punishment). Government should not subsidize persons who can fend for themselves (the poor); government should subsidize persons who can fend for themselves (oil companies). The federal government should not determine a matter traditionally left to the states (in general); the federal government should determine a matter traditionally left to the states (prohibition of abortion, definition of marriage). Government should not use tax incentives to induce behavior (purchase of medical insurance); government should use tax incentives to induce behavior (oil depletion allowance).



http://www.huffingtonpost.com/louis-m-guenin/pseudoconservative-great-recession_b_2003930.html