I mean, where you need government is in catastrophe and emergency. I mean you don’t need the free markets to respond to a crisis. But you saw Katrina as a sort of extrapolation of this conservative value that “well, you’re on your own. Use your credit card, get in your Winnebago, and be on your way”.
Of course, that notion obviously needs to be abandoned and discounted. So, it’s been immeasurably frustrating, and I'm one that's very well-loved and embraced by the conservative movement by, you know, Michael Savage in the Savage Nation that takes some shots almost without exception almost every week, and Lou Dobbs, the new version of conservative values, sort of using the independent moniker to advance some of his perspectives and his values and beliefs.
And of course, the work that Fox News has done so mightily. I’ve seen their standard-bearer in Bill O’Reilly pontificate every single day. It’s kind of now becoming almost a caricature of these guys, and there’s a weakness, because people are not immune to demanding results. People are smart enough to say “where’s the evidence of success?”, and that’s really an extraordinary thing, because this was the dominant movement in our country for a number of years.
But they just didn’t produce results. And now people are turning the page to Barack Obama, or turning the core and reflecting that. And arguably, now, deciding that they’ve had enough and are going in a different direction.
At the end of the day, we must go forward with hope and not backward by fear and division. Jesse Jackson
Failed Conservative Values Metaphor: Gavin Newsom - Schizophrenic Tasmanian Devil
Edwin: What would be a metaphor for failed conservative values?
Gavin: Well, you know, for me, more of a Tasmanian Devil. There’s no rhyme or reason. It’s quixotic. One day it’s small government, and no government intervention. The next day it’s big government. Absolute government intervention
It’s almost a bipolar movement. Or schizophrenic movement perhaps best describes it. I don’t know that the conservative movement knows what it is. Is it about values? Or is it about government, or is it about governing? What is the core construct? What are the core values? I don’t know that the movement even knows. I don’t know that Rush Limbaugh knows, and he, of course, parrots it more than anyone else. And I think that people are just fed up with the blowviation, and they are actually interested in results.
Divide and Rule at Wikipedia
In politics and sociology, divide and rule (also known as divide and conquer) is a combination of political, military and economic strategy of gaining and maintaining power by breaking up larger concentrations of power into chunks that individually have less power than the one implementing the strategy. In reality, it often refers to a strategy where small power groups are prevented from linking up and becoming more powerful, since it is difficult to break up existing power structures.....
I find myself. . . hoping a total end of all the unhappy divisions of mankind by party-spirit, which at best is but the madness of many for the gain of a few. Alexander Pope
Some Questions for Discussion:
- How have conservatives used division to gain power?
- What are the harmful effects of the values of division?
- Is 'We're all in it together' the opposite value to division?
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