Phony versus True Conservatism

by Humphrey Stevenson

The other day I was on my way home from the gym and found myself behind a car with a Gingrich/Romney 2012 bumper sticker. My immediate reaction was, “Please, not those two.” They strike me as “phony conservatives.” Oh, not that they don’t believe what they say, just that what they say isn’t true conservatism. Their philosophy seems to be our Federal government will be fine once we change who’s in charge.

For instance, Romney instituted a health care plan for Massachusetts. Constitutionally that’s fine; if a State wants to institute a health care plan for its citizens OK, but it’s not philosophically conservative. There are many on the Right that think it is foolish to go into the elections with “Repeal Obamacare” as our mantra. They feel it must be “Repeal and Replace.” They say, “We must have a plan of our own.” If you ask a phony conservative to describe their health care plan for our country he will argue specific points of health care. If you ask the same of a true conservative, he will say, “I don’t have one.” That may sound simplistic but it’s not that, it’s a different philosophy, “Who is he that he should plan your health care for you?” The true conservative wants you to be free to choose the health care services that make sense to you, based on the free market.

The true conservative understands personal responsibility and its relationship to personal liberty. You can’t have one without the other. If you have no responsibility, you have no liberty. However, personal responsibility is difficult and the Federal government says, Oh, don’t worry about that, we’ll handle that responsibility for you. You just enjoy the ‘liberty’.” What you didn’t realize was they took your responsibility because it was necessary in order to take your liberty, which is really what they wanted in the first place.

This same conservative concept is true for the States as well. The idea of State sovereignty is nice but it’s meaningless unless a State is taking responsibility for itself and its citizens. However, our States have become far too dependent on the Federal government … and it has been by design. Federal funds to a State are one of the greatest scams in history. Think about how it works. The Federal government takes your money through taxes. Then launders it through some Federal program or other and uses the money (your money) to procure your State’s dependence.

We must return to the Federalism as outlined in our Constitution. I love this quote from Bruce Fein, Former Associate Deputy Attorney General. “Federalism creates competition in good government. If a state does something stupid, people can pick up, they leave, businesses go, and they’ve got to reform.” However, “When the Congress acts, everybody’s saddled with the same burden.” So if Congress does something stupid, we are all burdened under the same stupidity.

Is there anything this Federal government does well? I know your answer; the military. But if that is true then someone explain to me what we are doing in Afghanistan. If we’re fighting the Taliban, then let’s attack the enemy, kill the enemy, break its equipment and bring our men and women home. This is how we fought World War II; all out. We would accept nothing less than unconditional surrender. Anything less is unfair to the people who have committed their lives to the defense of our nation. Some say we’re “nation building,” whatever that means. This government is destroying its own nation at home, is this truly the government that should be building other nations?

This government has the reverse-Midas tough, everything it touches turns to excrement. It can’t execute its Constitutional responsibilities with any degree of proficiency. In spite of this, they want more; more power, more money. This is going to be the battle of our time. For example, Representative Barney Frank (D-MA) told a group of young Democrats, “Give us more authority and ability.” Yes, you read that right Barney Frank thinks that this Federal megalith of absolute incompetence should have more authority not less.

This Federal government is a living, breathing beast. It preys on individual liberty and private property. Progressives (now called Democrats) have been on a hundred year mission to feed and grow this beast. There is no middle ground now; you either favor the beast or you stand against it. The only solution to save individual liberty and private property is true conservatives committed to the destruction of the beast.