I interviewed people around the Democracy for America booth at the California Democratic Party Convention in San Jose.  I asked people how have conservative values failed?  It surprised   me how many responded that the conservative value of greed was the biggest failure.   Here are some of the comments.

Dan Healy

Failed Conservative Values: Dan Healy on Greed & Force

In terms of the context of due process, the idea kind of broader in the sense of war, the idea that force is a value that works.  Folks that consider themselves conservative -- which one would think is restrictive – are actually the most aggressive in terms of the use of force. 

The use of force in context of how we police ourselves, the use of force in terms of how we execute our foreign policy.  That’s clearly a failure, and it’s one that people are hopefully coming to realize. 

Failed Conservative Values: Don on Greed is Good

The underlying fundamental conservative value is greed is good.  If everyone acts entirely in their own self interest, it will make the best of all possible worlds.  I’m not sure that that’s failed.  But that is the operating value.

And other things flow from that.  What about people who fall by the wayside?  Perhaps because they’re not big enough or that they didn’t act fully in their self interest, that they fell by the wayside.

That’s another conservative value that follows from the first one – that people who do not act in their own self interest do not deserve anything and should fall by the wayside.

Another conservative value is that if people band together in their own self interest and oppose the very greedy, that’s wrong, because they are overcoming the will of the strong. 

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