I.  FRAMING THE ISSUES:

          Well…….Yes…AND No.  The difficulty with asking any broad, even rhetorical, question such as this is that there is no broad, truly all-encompassing answer.  It’s complicated.  But, if one were to look closely at the “numbers” and the demographics and make a “broad brush” analysis of the current public stance of the Republicans, “Blue Dogs”, “Tea Partiers,” Far Right  “Christian Fundamentalists“, and

other conservative “fellow travelers,” one can make a very convincing case that the answer has to be…“Indubitably.” 

 

          But, clearly, the dire situation of the current era with its:

 

i.) politics of paralysis;

 

ii.) our crumbling and financially insupportable healthcare delivery system–with a currently proposed answer that barely gives a nod to the true monster in the equation, i.e. “Big Pharma”;

 

iii.) the fiscal instability of the Country (including the very high real unemployment rate–closer to 19% than the official 9.7%);

 

iv.) the dramatic decrease in GDP over the last two years;

 

v.) the devastation of the real estate and construction sector of the economy; and

 

vi.) the very real fear that permeates much of the Country, of all political persuasions–especially as expressed by our seniors over the alleged threats to their Medicare and, their especial concerns as to President Obama’s alleged “socialism,” 

 

requires that we come up with a more refined, precise approach to these issues.  

 

 

         But just as importantly, we need to understand HOW the conservatives have orchestrated all of the support we see in the “cross-selling” of anger–which results in the “mating” of different pockets of persons in a single movement but often for different and contradictory reasons.  As one must expect from such a process, the joined forces find themselves, in effect, joining forces with others they themselves would otherwise consider the devil!!!!  Of course all of today’s conservatives are not ignorant; but many of their political and legal positions and arguments are grossly ill-considered and also out of touch with what is needed for the welfare of the Nation as a whole.

 

          If I first look at the world through the “lens” of my personal training and experience in a “macro” sense, that means I have to bring to bear many years as a lawyer involving work in politics and public service, banking, real estate and real estate development, publishing, broadcasting (radio and television), and the insurance and health care industries.  And then,

 

i.) when I test that knowledge and experience by referencing the current mood of the Country and the demographic make-up of America,

 

ii.) I reach what is to me the inevitable conclusion that the face of the broad conservative movement upon each issue of importance at present is colossally unwise and individually self-defeating to the well-being of the Nation as a whole…..which necessarily means it is adverse to the ultimate long term interest of even those persons who call themselves “conservative” or who use any of the synonyms therefor set forth above.  

 

And they do not even understand that by taking the stances they have, most of them are but acting as willing and duped marionettes jumping with the “strings” being pulled by a very deliberate group of not so nice people who are playing a very dangerous game.

 

II. THE CONSERVATIVE ORGANIZATION:

 

A. The “Herd.” 

 

          Clearly we need to go beyond the stark label, which many of us will not either understand or accept.  But this view of a vast group of persons numbering in the many millions across the broad spectrum of present day conservatism can only be fully understood when those millions are broken down and then compared to the other sub-strata of the movement.  At the very bottom of the movement, and where one finds the votes which ultimately are going to control any upcoming election, is an enormous, essentially compliant, often easily “led-by-the-nose” group (”herd”?) of homo sapiens which is overwhelmingly significant and even frightening at this time in American history.  This is because this massive group has proved itself to:

 

i.) be easily manipulated, and

 

ii.) being ignorant or uncaring of the intricacies of the forces and issues swirling about them and oblivious of the impact of the zero inertia and pro-big business, anti-personal rights “Wall Street” capitalism that will be the inevitable result from doing nothing.

 

         As a result of these broad characteristics, these people represent a very real threat of the victory of purposeful anti-intellectualism [see review of Andrew Brietbart below!]under the guise of populism.  Said another way, this would be the first time in at least eighty years–since the marching of Hitler’s “brownshirts” of the 1920’s and 1930’s–where any organized group has openly used fear, racism, misinformation and the specious notion of a particular Nation’s inherent “exceptualism” to overwhelm People’s minds and which would, if successful, elevate pure ignorance and uninformed fear over knowledge, experience and wisdom.  And the movement would then use that sinister combination to actually take over the government of a Nation.  The effort, whether it be successful or not, threatens the very stability of our democracy and the future and safety of all of us–especially those of us with the “wrong-colored” skin or even a name which sounds like it does not “belong.”

 

          There are at least two groups of committed conservatives, even iconoclasts, who have cooperatively joined forces and who are in almost absolute control of the above-referenced vast “herd” of present-day conservatives in America.  Those two distinct but relatively small groups of persons controlling the herd are not at all unintelligent or unknowing.  They know precisely what they are orchestrating, and raw power and self interest are the sole goal of most of them.

 

B.  The Super Rich        . 

 

          First, of course, we have the “Super Rich“, a slice of humanity which is primarily made up of those with an arrogant sense of class, superiority, and “entitlement”–which come not only from their so-called “blue blood” heritage but also from vast personal fortunes in the tens of Billions of dollars.  To this group, for purposes of covering the “ergonomics” at play, we must logically join–for these purposes only–those others who have aspired to and have now with their “nouveaux riche” fortunes cracked the lower tier of uber-wealthy otherwise reserved for the “blue-bloods” and now hold from several hundred Millions of dollars to perhaps merely a few Billion in real assets.  This was sufficient to garner them conditional admittance to the “club” (much like a junior membership at a fine country club) which, even with their presence, still brings the total membership of this “club” to no more than several hundreds, perhaps a thousand or so families in the United States.  This expanded group of Super Rich are the persons exemplified by those persons in the financial caste of those such as  the families Carnegie, Ellison, Bloomberg, Dell, Perelman, Bush, Harriman, Mellon, Roosevelt, Rockefeller, Romney, Ford, Vanderbilt…joined by the families such as Walton, Murdoch, Bass, Buffet, Stephens, et al.) who control the Nation’s mega-corporations of the United States and finance the operations of the Republican National Committee.  

 

C.   The “Foot Soldiers”

 

          Secondly, we have the twenty to fifty thousand (no more) “foot soldiers” who some of those in the “club” derisively term the “hangers on,” but who usually are wealthy by most definitions, very intelligent, and who fully understand and participate in the intricacies of policy and politics. They sometimes run for and achieve National and high State office; some are pundits; some are leaders (ministers?) of religious groups who want “God back in the schools” but who find themselves in league with others who want to make wealth the “god” we all worship; some have been or are in positions of great authority (where they usually follow the will and direction of given members of the club–or their controlled special interest enterprises–and many of them have run and controlled tactical aspects of the National economy and have taken great advantage of it in the hope that they, too, shall one day become part of the “Super Rich” or the uber-wealthy and powerful.  

 

          Among these foot soldiers one may well count (or have counted) Jamie Dimond of JP Morgan Chase & Co., former A. I. G. CEO’s Martin Sullivan, Robert Benmosche, and Hank Paulson (who is still in play because of his continuing major ownership of and significant leverage over the still fragile Goldman Sachs), current CEO Brian Moynihan and former CEO Ken Lewis of Bank of America, and pundits including glib, quick-witted and raucous ideologues such as Rush Limbaugh, Bill O’Reilly, Glenn Beck, Mike Huckabee, Liz Cheney (daughter of Dick “Darth Vader” Cheney), Matt Drudge, and Sean Hannity.  Included would be political organizers such as Sal Russo, Mack Williams, and Deborah Johns of the “Make Our Country Better,” the talented group behind the Tea Party phenomenon whose abilities could be better used other than as “shills” for the major special interests of Wall Street.  And, most certainly, we must include the most prominent members of this “soldier” group, which would include Richard B. Cheney, Karl Rove, Newt Gingrich, Sarah Palin, Pat Robertson, John C. Yoo, Jay S. Bybee, John Boehner and Mitch McConnell because of who they are–not because of any particular qualities. 

 

          It is because of these divisions and the process to be detailed below, and despite the innate goodness and the sense of right and wrong that most of the ninety-nine per cent “herd” have, that they are all in the lamentable position of having their will, their very goodness, over-whelmed by the top one percent, i.e., the “Super-Rich” of America, the “hangers-on” and foot soldiers and of being forced to actually support the perpetuation of the plutocracy-protectionist philosophy which is fighting to overtake America forever.  In fact, this ninety-nine per cent typically includes the fellow who goes to Church three blocks over, has children in the school around the corner, works hard for a living and feels that he is in danger of losing his job…but he never realizes how he is being used and being compelled to act against his and his family’s very own best-interest. 

 

          A phrase I borrow from Luke 23:34 expresses my feelings upon this quite clearly, i.e., “Forgive them (the ninety-nine per cent of those referring to themselves at this time as “conservatives”), for they know not what they do.”  (One need not be religious to understand the meaning of this quotation.)

 

III. CONSERVATIVE TACTICS:

 

A. Propaganda

 

          The extreme steps which foot soldiers such as this are already taking in furtherance of their collusion, or conspiracy, are well-shown by the recent activities of an early 40’s gentleman named Andrew Brietbart, a former pizza delivery boy from the ultra wealthy community of Brentwood, California, who “made good” in the restaurant business and who has since become a self-described “web entrepreneur.”  He has done web work for Arianna Huffington of the Huffington Post but more currently has close ties with reactionary conservative activist Matt Drudge and worked with the latter’s web sites before building his own panoply of conservative, racist, xenophobic and anti-government “dot.com” sites such as Breitbart.Com, BigGovernment, BigHollywood, and BigJournalism, as well as writing regularly for the conservative, ultra-reactionary Washington Times.  

 

          I have seen Brietbart “perform,” such as in videos of the recent CPAC Convention, and I have to say that he reminds me of some crazed Neo-Nazis with whom I have had to personally deal in the not so distant past on immigration issues.  But he frightens me even more than did the Neo-Nazis because of his obvious intelligence, but more particularly the virulence and hatred oozing from his every word, pore and expression.  It is truly unsettling to listen to the thousands of CPAC people, many in hate-mongering racist gear and urging “overthrow” of the “pretenders” to power (Obama, et. al.) rapturously applauding his every word of venom and hatred of all things non-Caucasian and “non-Christian”…as if this guy were a Christian!   

 

          In his recent speech to the CPAC convention (at which Sarah Palin also appeared) he went on to criticize all of the liberal mainstream press in America (all but his beloved Fox News) and all “…Americans who fall for that ‘political correctness’ and ‘multi-cultural’ crap!”  Put a Wehrmacht uniform and a pair of jack boots on Brietbart, and he would be a perfect clone of Herman Goebbels, as he goes about proposing “Fortress America” and “…down with all of the liberals…” who came over here from Europe after World War II pretending to be the “huddled masses” (a mis-reading and mis-use of Emma Lazarus’ poem on the base of the Statue of Liberty) from Europe but who, Briebart says, are actually in conspiracy to take over “…our America!”

 

          All of the afore-mentioned are among the major political players of the conservative cause who not only espouse such hatred but who also vehemently oppose those Democrats and other progressives of the Country whose wish is to place the Nation on a solid fiscal footing, help private industry again create work for our unemployed and to make other social policy changes to favor the People and not only the lobbyists on K Street and their billionaire clients.  The plans in place and working or proposed are reforms to the failed healthcare delivery system of the United States,  exercising the publics’ right to properly regulate in the public interest those businesses (e.g.; banking, insurance, pharmaceutical, securities) whose very enterprises are “…peculiarly affected with a public interest…,” as well as stimulating the economy brought almost to ruin by unregulated greed of “Wall Street” and the President Bush’s decision to hold the regulators away (remember the George Bush, Steve Cox, S. E. C. debacle?) while the Super Rich on Wall Street were scamming the World and exercising their rapacious greed.  

 

          Many of these foot soldiers (including Minority Leaders Boehner and McConnell) act as though they actually believe (with some sort of bizzaro logic) that they are “PATRIOTIC” by adopting their “Party of No” or zero inertia policies; when in reality, they are merely assisting the oft-stated hope of their cohort, Rush Limbaugh, that “Obama fail.”  

 

          Notice that the hope is not that President Obama fail in any particular regard; it is that he fail in every regard!  That sort of logic (?) takes a very special type of person, for if that were truly to happen, America itself would fail–and, Limbaugh, Boehner and McConnell would have to check with their bosses and see whether the Country would be “rescued” by the conservatives in some sort magical, hurry-up election or more directly taken over by a coup d’ etat of the “Super Rich” and become a plutocracy (another term for despotism and tyranny of the Super Rich).  

 

          This precise approach is seen in the Republican floor speeches from the Senate and the House when the conservative ideologues label all Democratic initiatives as examples of creeping “socialism.”  (I am fully convinced they do so while knowing they are lying and are simply trying to arouse fear among the politically, intellectually and economically deprived.) On the ever present issue of “Socialism” none of them appear to understand that the United States of America is unique in Western culture in that it was “born whole” into an already capitalist economy and was fortunate enough to have totally escaped feudalism and serfdom.  We as a People made mistakes (with great help from the British, Dutch and Spanish) in establishing indentured servitude and outright slavery, but despite the horrible scars left by slavery, those practices are in “long lens” governmental and economic terms nothing but an aberration in a continuously functioning capitalist-mercantile economy which has stood staunchly in place for over four hundred years.  In this regard it is the luckiest nation on Earth.  An alternative economic system, to my knowledge and per all economic literature which I can place my hands upon, has never entered any responsible mind…nor would it.

 

 

B.  The Role of Demographics

 

          I was very intrigued when I read a few years ago that Karl Rove, George W. Bush’s Presidential Campaign Manager, had started “profiling” particular constituencies all over the Country–even down to the zip code or precinct level!  The purpose of this most complex and incredibly detailed analysis was for the purpose of determining in which states or particular parts thereof his candidate would more likely receive more “bang for the Republican dollar” when determining the allocation of the campaign funds that they already had in the bank or presumed they would have available.  Karl Rove is the first such person I had heard of who has organized this kind of underground but undeniably brilliant campaign to best utilize the power of available funds; but I cannot say that he was the first to have done it.  This sort of analysis was made all the more important, of course, because of the Citizens’ United case decided by the Supreme Court of the United States on January 21, 2010, just in time for the 2010 elections and making possible for the first time in our history unidentified contributions from the treasuries and other equitable reserves of corporations and other fictitious entities in unlimited sums–in direct disregard of the  wishes, whatever they might be, of the masses of shareholders and customers from whom those moneys actually come!  (Justices Roberts, Alito, Scalia, Kennedy and Thomas apparently forgot much of the corporation and equity law they were to have learned many years ago!)

 

          The operating premise of this “Orwellian” and pro-Republican, yet not illegal underground campaign practice, simply for example, was that it would be a good idea to run ads against gun control, or the abolition of the Second Amendment of the Constitution, in those states or areas thereof which statistics demonstrated likely had issued the largest per capita numbers of gun permits or hunting licenses.  A necessary part of each of such ads, of course, would be to cast a negative aspersion upon the “opposing” candidate or political party as to the so-called fact that he, she, or it favored gun control, regardless of the truth of the accusation (which by law since it is “protected political speech”) is not policed or restricted in any way!), knowing that a large percentage of that particular state or area thereof would find it highly offensive.  And if many “deer hunters” so targeted did not check their facts, as sadly many of us do not, that would be “treasure” well spent in that particular demographic area. 

 

          Other easy examples of the application of this type of analysis would be to run ads, or include statements in speeches, in an area with high church attendance alleging that the opponent was responsible for or in favor of “kicking God out of our schools.”  One other especially disgusting example of this principle is now found in many candidates, or in their campaign managers, who determine that it is propitious in former slave states of the South or areas (usually large cities) of large minority populations of a “different skin color” and a relatively high crime rate, to prey upon residual racial or xenophobic tendencies or fears that still exist in some of those areas.  They exist in many areas outside of the South or major crime-ridden cities, of course, but the statistics demonstrate that these areas are a better target for using negative innuendo and even jokes based upon negative racial stereotypes, no matter how offensive such a tactic would be to most people.

 

          With that in mind, I decided a couple of days ago, to simply look to what I could find and see if I could discern with what was available to me (and Google!) what might be reliable predictors of what would make a person vote “conservative” or “progressive.”   The ultimate vote, of course, is only determined after one’s inherent philosophy and all of the campaign “ergonomics” which lead up to that day at the polls interact when the curtain is drawn.  And this I did to the extent of my ability and available information on point–using only hard and fast statistics from the United States Census Bureau, The Bureau of Economic Analysis, the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the Federal Election Commission and the Congressional Budget Office, as well as official election results from the Clerk of the House of Representatives and a few mainstream newspapers and treatises.  I recognize that voting is a very personal and sometimes agonizing experience with influences pulling from every direction; but, nonetheless, these are the figures that control the inner feelings of our voting population at large in the late Twentieth and early Twenty First Centuries.  And they are indisputable. 

 

          A factor which affects all elections to one extent or another is the good or bad status of the economy during the time leading up to the election.  If the economy is in recession or just clawing its way out of one, with still a still “iffy” job picture, a high bankruptcy rate, low housing starts, and high unemployment, it is simply human nature that many voters will simply take out their displeasure or anger at the party in power–without even delving into which party is responsible for the economic malaise.  The burden in such elections is extraordinary upon the party then in power–as it is upon the Democratic Party at present in the mid-term elections of 2010–for it is the Democratic burden this time to convince voters to overcome their own lower human nature–which is to strike out in frustration against the most visible target for their frustration.  The Democrats have the burden of overcoming that dynamic and of energizing the People to look at which Party or President did what and what motives are really behind the respective candidates.  A look at the source of their funding is obviously one of the best ways to analyze the candidates’ motives.

 

          Clearly, the statistics set out and analyzed below are all consistent with what many of us “know”–either consciously or subconsciously–but many of which we are usually afraid to say out loud.  They also demonstrate why before every election the major National parties will be out canvassing every neighborhood in the Nation to see how arguments based upon them will “play” in particular areas in upcoming elections–including any changes in the election milieu which may have occurred in the last day or two prior to the election.  Other factors such as the current “disgust with big government” or the rising national debt, the alleged burden of that debt on succeeding generations (and varied allegations and truths regarding attribution of responsibility therefor) are going to turn upon prejudices and efforts to overcome them–but the prejudices themselves will be predictable in a blanket or gross manner from the express factors discussed herein and set forth below.

 

          I would suggest that a compleat absorption of the demographic summaries set forth below will help each of us truly understand the ergonomics relative to the outcome of the 2010 mid-term elections, as well as the passage of much of the President’s agenda; but, absent some dramatic presently unknown event which might change everything, only someone who knows precisely how “people” as a whole feel when the polls open on November 2, 2010, will be able to accurately predict the outcome(s)! 

 

C. Context In The Year 2010

 

          To see how any issue will generally “play” in any particular state (remember that Rove, Cantor, Boehner, McConnell and their “ilk” have data down to the precinct level), the most relevant data now available to anyone outside of the beltway comes from the overall characteristics of those states as displayed by a review of them by particular characteristics at large.  To get started, we must first set forth two columns of states, i.e., the twenty-nine states which went “Blue” in 2008, and the twenty one states which went “Red,” viz.:

 

                   Blue:                                                 Red:

 

1. Connecticut                                                      Alaska

2. New Jersey                                                       Nebraska

3. Massachusetts                                                  Georgia

4. New York                                                        Kansas

5. Maryland                                                          Texas

6. Colorado                                                          Wyoming

7. Illinois                                                              Tennessee

8. New Hampshire                                                Arizona

9. Delaware                                                          South Dakota

10. Minnesota                                                      North Dakota

11. Nevada                                                          South Carolina

12. Washington                                                    Idaho

13. California                                                       Utah

14. Rhode Island                                                  Kentucky

15. Virginia                                                          Alabama

16. Pennsylvania                                                  Oklahoma

17. Florida                                                           Louisiana

18. Michigan                                                        Montana

19. Hawaii                                                            Arkansas

20. Wisconsin                                                      West Virginia

21. Oregon                                                           Mississippi

22. Ohio

23. North Carolina

24. Missouri

25. Indiana

26. Vermont

27. Iowa

28. Maine

29. New Mexico

 

          1.  Per Capita Income of Residents.

 

          The United States Census Bureau reveals that as of 2007 eight of the Blue states were listed in the top ten vis a vis income level; and seventeen Blue states were listed in the top twenty.

 

          Conversely, nine of the bottom ten were Red states, and fifteen of the bottom twenty were Red states.

 

          One logical assumption that may be drawn from these statistics is that Republicans are apt to be more anti-government, anti-establishment, more concerned about jobs and economic conditions such as plunging home sales and a sluggish economy, yet less likely to wish government assistance in correcting such.

 

          It has to be noted before leaving this topic that the “Super Rich,” who are described by the New York Times Magazine on May 21, 2005, as the top one per cent of wage earners in the Nation, held sixty-one per cent in the total wealth growth in the United States from the period of 1983-1989, i.e. during the Administrations of Presidents Reagan and George H. W. Bush.  The writer of article humorously added, “a whole lot of them live around here!” (He means, of course, the many Super Rich who live in  ultra luxury in New York and its environs.)

 

          And a Congressional Budget Office Release in the week of December 13, 2007, revealed that in the period from 2003 to 2005, i.e., when President Bush and the Republican Party decreased income taxes so dramatically for the very rich, the top one per pent of wage earners saw their after tax income rise by two hundred and twenty eight per cent! 

 

          These last figures are relevant for two reasons, i.e., it is no wonder that persons living in or near poverty are upset that “the government” BAILED OUT” WALL STREET despite all that was done by the executives thereof; and, also, it demonstrates the hypoccrisy of the conservatives who snidely and contemptuously urge that they are protecting the common people (”Main Street”), while these figures, taken all by themselves, demonstrate all they care about is the “big money” power on Wall Street and K-Street and which finances their party!!!!  Which will do anything to sustain the status quo–including opposing financial reform on Wall Street, refusing to reign in wasteful health care expenditures–despite the danger such positions pose to the Nation as a whole.  

 

          2.  Education Level of Residents.

 

          The United States Department of Education has, as of 2008, calculated the percentage of all students in every state who has a.) graduated from high school, and b.) received a bachelor’s degree from college.  Six of the top ten as to graduation from high school are Blue States, while fourteen of the top twenty were Blue states.     

 

          Conversely, eight of the bottom ten were Red States, and twelve of the bottom twenty were Red states.

 

          With respect to receipt of a bachelor’s degree or higher, ten of the top ten in terms of percentage were Blue states, and fifteen of the top twenty were Blue states.

 

          Conversely, eight of the lowest ten in percentage of college gradates were from Red states, and fourteen of the lowest twenty were from Red states.

 

          Abraham Lincoln is noted to have said that, “I don’t think much of a man who is not wiser today than he was yesterday.”

 

          W. Edwards Deming, the great automotive and industrial engineer, wrote that: “Learning is not compulsory…neither is survival.”

 

          Confucius concluded that, “Learning is a treasure that will follow its owner everywhere.”

 

          One could properly conclude then, that the statistics show that the Republican Party and other conservatives take advantage of the least educated persons in America to fill their own pockets.  At this point, since the conclusion is patent, I will reference a comment a friend of mine often makes when the discussion of an issue is over, i. e., “Nuf said.”

 

        3.  Rate of Unemployment Per State.*

 

          According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, as of December 2009, seven of the highest ten states in per cent of workers unemployed were “Blue” states, while fourteen of the top twenty in unemployment were “Blue.”

 

          Red states accounted for seven of the lowest ten in unemployment rate, while having eleven of the lowest twenty.

 

          There is no stark contrast in the numbers, but it is safe to say that states with relatively high unemployment will generally have voters who are “fed up with Washington and Wall Street.”  Regardless of who occupies any particular office or where he or she works.  If such numbers are correlated with low income levels and low education levels the “Karl Roves” will find the correlation and a lead on how to campaign in these states, i.e., which issues to hit hardest.

 

*  The National unemployment rate as of December just past was roughly ten per cent, while the Congressional Budget Office reports that without the approximately two million jobs produced by the joint Republican and Democratic “stimulus,” the rate would have exceeded eleven per cent. 

 

          4.  Elderly Population.

 

          Florida, West Virginia, North Dakota, South Dakota, Pennsylvania, Iowa, Maine, Rhode Island, Arkansas, and Montana constitute the top ten of states with the highest per cent of elderly population.  Six of the ten are “Red” states.  Only an additional three of the next ten are “Red.”  But the point is that persons in these states, especially in the top ten, are going to be especially vulnerable to Republican claims that the Obama Administration intends to take away their Medicare, and other similar lies.

 

          5.  Church Attendance.

 

          A Gallup Poll released on April 27, 2006, broke down by state those persons who are “regular” Church attendees, and the study revealed that nine of the top ten were Red states and fifteen of the top twenty were Red as well.

 

          Blue states comprised ten of the lowest ten and seventeen of the lowest twenty.  This is pretty striking, certainly, but in political terms it is pretty clear that in the Red states religion is taken much more to heart and seriously than in Blue states, and , too, issues such as “God in the Schools,” Christ in the manger displays on public property, and Abortion issues are going to be very strong deciding factors in such states.

 

          The tragedy that jumps out from these statistics is that so many conservatives use their real or feigned belief in God as a reason for destroying the lives of young women who need abortions for medical danger to their lives, or even if the conceived child is the result of rape or incest–which is the precise way these laws are always written.  They, to my mind, are using their religion as a “blindfold” to keep them from being human and caring for their fellow man–and in the process forgetting the most important Christian teachings of all contained in the “Sermon on the Mount” as set forth in the Book of Matthew, Chapters four, five and six.

 

          6.  Persons Living Below Poverty Level.

 

          A United States Census Bureau Report of 2007 concluded that nine of the ten states with the most people living below the poverty level were southern Red states, and thirteen of the top twenty were Red as well.  These are the same states with relatively high Church attendance and low wages.  This is another of the problems.  Why cannot the highly religious understand that religion is not an excuse to condone practices that hurt one’s “brother.”  Or let him or her starve.

 

          7.  Lingering Racism.

 

          I wrote an article a year or so ago for some newspaper to demonstrate that for so many reasons the election of Barak Obama as President did not at all represent the entry of the United States into a “Post Racial Society,” as some political groups in the Northeast were propounding.   One of the several points I made was that in the two months after the election the sales of guns (revealed by registrations for gun permits) increased by forty two per cent over the previous year!   The National Rifle Association issued a news release in this period asking the suggestive rhetorical question: “Is the Obama Administration going to take out guns away from us?  Which, of course, helped cause sales to literally “boom.” 

 

          There are no publicly available statistics showing how many weapons are owned by private individuals in particular states, but I would simply expect that those states would at least roughly correspond with those of low population density–since those are the states in which there is more hunting of game than in more densely populated states.  It is certainly noteworthy that eight of the ten states and thirteen of the top twenty states with the lowest population density voted against President Obama in 2008, i.e., they are Red states. 

 

          And of the Red states, Louisiana, Tennessee, Georgia, Alabama, South Carolina, Texas, Arkansas and Mississippi were all members of the Confederate States of America, and both Kentucky and West Virginia were slave states which did not fight against the Union.  These are also all low density and presumably high gun sale states.

 

          And a quick look at the U.S. Census figures for 2007 shows that of the top ten states with the highest minority population by percentage as opposed to Whites, seven are Republican Red states.  But, most importantly, I live in the South, and except for the time I spent in New Hampshire at Dartmouth College, I have spent few days when I did not see some signs of lingering racism.  It has always troubled me, too, that even all of the churches are segregated in fact…although not by dictate.         Hunting states and states with a long legacy of racism are highly susceptible to influence by racial innuendo and by the use of demeaning cartoons of black people such as constantly used by the CPAC and other conservative groups—and such actions cannot be coincidental.

 

IV. THE COMFORTABLE “DUALITY” OF CAPITALISM AND REPRESENTATIVE DEMOCRACY

 

          The United States has also been so very fortunate to have had incorporated the liberal foundation of representative democracy and humanism into its very Constitution in 1787 and its only twenty-seven amendments over the period therefrom.  Every living American owes his great fortune in this regard to persons such as Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, Edmond  Burke, Thomas Paine and many, many other great liberal thinkers (including most recently both Theodore and Franklin Roosevelt!) who form a part of the very fabric of who we are as citizens of the greatest country on Earth. 

 

          I do not pretend to be a full blown “political scientist”, but I do understand that many Americans get “hung up” and confused by our conjoint spheres of representative democracy system of government (which we really invented!) and our capitalist economic system which has always been constrained (sometimes too harshly, sometimes too laxly) by our humanist foundation and our recognition of the individual rights of Man.  It really is as if the “herd” members believe that capitalism is the form of government as well as economy and that our “democracy” is extraneous—not understanding as do the rest of the world that the government, our democracy, is the controlling apparatus formed by us and chosen by our ballots to protect us and serve our will.  That sort of thinking might well be applicable to socialism and communism where the State, the Nation, owns all of the means of production, chooses who will be in charge of which industries as a highly paid top “party official,” and there is no individual freedom or opportunity.  But in our system of duality–this fear is fully irrational.

 

          Adam Smith, the Scottish Philosopher, Moralist and Economist (1723-1790) was likely an accidental originator of the self-regulatory Invisible Hand “tag” which conservatives try to place upon the totally free market, i.e., unrestrained capitalism.    The idea attributed to Smith was that in his economic treatise The Wealth of Nations he adopted the unrepentant and unconditional premise that “…the individual’s rational self-interest in a free market economy would always lead to a state of economic well-being.”  This was a concept that big business had no trouble holding onto, even though it was not truly what Smith meant and was premised upon an idealized metaphor of man being rational at all times.   You see, Smith was, first of all, a moralist and a lecturer in such at the University of Glasgow–and only secondly and from curiosity an economist.  He rested his economic hypothesis upon his coincident assumption of the state of man as a benign entity–purposefully setting aside the true nature of man (cf. Acts 5, vs. 1-11; Genesis 3) as Homo Economis, i.e., the Economic Man, who is not benign at all but who, in fact, has a totally different concept of self-interest.

 

          John Maynard Keynes, 1883-1946, was the British economist who established the theory that turned the misbegotten “Invisible Hand” principle attributed to Smith into a practical economic theory and placed the study and application of economics into a real world perspective.  Among his many achievements was his prediction in his 1936 book entitled The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money that whenever a Nation found itself in a deep recession or a Depression, such as existed upon the book’s publication, the traditional capitalist orthodoxy, supply vs. demand, and “if only the government would get out of the way” etc.  would not work!  He held forth with the idea that free markets could not be counted upon to provide full employment in such times–and thus was born a new rationale for government intervention in the capitalist economy by way of stimulus spending. 

 

          We all know that Keynes’ ideas, adopted by Franklin Roosevelt, did not have time to work with the Great Depression and that it was really the onset of WW II that, ironically, remedied the Depression.  But, clearly, according to orthodox Keynesian Theory, the concept of stimulus is the way out of a recession such as we are now experiencing.  Conservatives have never liked anything about Keynes, since they do not like government participation in any context, and when we have a situation as exists in 2010, i.e., when we are on the very cusp of mid-term elections, and the conservatives are fully willing to sacrifice the well-being of the Nation in the interim in favor of possible reactionary electoral victories in the November election, it is especially easy to see why the conservatives (under whatever alias) do not now want government participation.  

 

          What the leaders of the conservatives and their “herd” ignore is that: 1.) private business has not even proposed a way to job creation; and, 2.) some job creation has resulted from the stimulus–which was actually started by their own president, George W. Bush and their Secretary of the Treasury at the time, Henry W. Paulson, i.e., formerly Chairman of the Goldman Sachs investment bank on Wall Street, one of the private almost unregulated entities that, with its self-interested proprietary trading and credit default swap “insurance activity” with A.  I. G., was a major cause of the collapse of the real estate and stock markets!!!!  The conservative strategy and hope, of course, is that very few of the members of the herd will bother to think very much about these realities; rather they hope they simply follow one aspect of base human nature and “lash out” at whoever is “in power” when the ballot is completed.  This is how, of course, the marionette string-pulling is designed to work.

 

          It is fascinating to study the great conservative laissez-faire and Nobel Prize winning economist Milton Friedman, friend of Ben Bernanke, among other highly important economic theorists of today on the World stage.  Friedman was, insofar as the running of an economy is concerned, a “conservative’s conservative,” but most importantly, he was a laissez-faire political scientist of such a conservative stripe that no one who calls himself a conservative and knows anything whatsoever about economic theory and practice can question his credentials or conclusions or: that he was able to see the “duality” of America’s economy and its government from both sides and conclude that unless both sides were protected, America would fail.  Just for example, he once said,

 

          “The question is, do corporate executives, provided they stay within the law, have responsibilities in their business activities other than to make as much money for their shareholders as possible?  And my answer is, no, they do not.  New York Times Magazine, September 13, 1970. (emphasis added)

 

          But he also had the wit, wisdom, and all-too-common disdain for government employees to also wryly observe that,

 

          “If we put the Federal government in charge of the Sahara Desert, in five years there would be a shortage of sand!   (Secondary attribution: Peter S. Goodman; New York Times, April 13, 2008)

 

          In his treatise Capitalism and Freedom , University of Chicago Press, c. 1982, 2002, Deluxe Edition, in Chapter One entitled “The Relation Between Economic Freedom and Political Freedom”, at page 10, he points out with great clarity this duality necessary to create a truly free society, i. e, democracy and capitalism, viz.:

 

“Because we live in a largely free society, we tend to forget how limited is the span of time and the part of the globe for which there has ever been anything like political freedom: the typical state of mankind is tyranny, servitude, and misery.  The nineteenth century and early twentieth century in the Western world stand out as striking exceptions to the general trend of historical development. Political freedom in this instance clearly came along with the free market and the development of capitalist institutions. So also did political freedom in the golden age of Greece and in the early days of the Roman era.  History suggests only that capitalism is a necessary condition for political freedom.  Clearly it is not a sufficient condition. (emphasis added)

 

  My point, of course, is that the most widely respected conservative economist of our time (he died in 2006) understood that if the individual even in a capitalist society is to be “free,” in any sense other than simply “free” to offer his labor, he or she must live in a society with a humanist form of government, i. e, one characterized by a “raison d’etre” other than anarchy, and other than one ruled by tyranny and despotism of whatever form.  A “just” government, unalienable and “self-evident” rights combined with a genuine care for the rights of the minority and care for the individual only comes with an economy that incorporates free competition (not monopoly) and from reasonable regulation that attends to the “oversight” of businesses that are “…peculiarly affected with a public interest” (German Am. Ins. Co. v. Lewis, 233 U.S. 389 (1914).  Zilisch v. State Farm, AZ, 995 P 2′d 276, 276 (2000)); and that does not even address the functions that must, by reason of their sheer size, enormous expense, complexity and importance be left entirely under the control of our elected representatives, e.g. National Defense, masive public works projects–dams, flood control, etc., Securities and Banking regulation, insurance practices regulation, enforcement of the Occupational Safety and Health Act, the Justice and  Courts system to carry out the laws established by the Legislative…just to name a few.   

 

It is axiomatic that a true democracy does not simply sustain itself, nor does any government, of course, simply by having some abstract “inalienable rights” scratched in quill pen upon a piece of parchment.  Citizens have to practice what the parchment “preaches,” respect minorities, let all citizens speak their mind, respect the lives and properties of all, etc.  And key to this is the understanding that no one, politician or capitalist, is perfect and that on occasion the government itself may overstep the individual rights of its citizens, and some of its citizens may, as in the capitalist-based Wall Street and real estate debacle of the mid to late 2000’s, do the same.  In the latter instance we may say that the unattended capitalist system failed and needs some fine tuning.  That is what the “wing nuts” on both sides of the “duality” of capitalism and democracy forget.

 

          Although I have many friends and acquaintances who will loudly object to this characterization of them, I truly believe many of them have made a conscious decision to go along with the Limbaughs, Boehners, McConnells, Cantors, Becks, Alexanders and other Fox News/Rupert Murdoch-Robert Ailes types because they are doing well financially and the current recession has either not hurt them, or if it has, they are convinced that the conservative “Invisible Hand” represents the best way out of their malaise–and obtain a larger piece of that pie for themselves.  I would suggest that they misperceive the nature of the problem, i.e., it is not that President Obama is a socialist or a communist and is trying to re-distribute the wealth as is so often obscenely alleged.  All evidence demonstrates he is a conscientious capitalist who is, in the tradition of President Franklin Roosevelt, using the power of the Presidency and the Executive to adopt a short term public policy to rescue the Country from the chasm into which it has fallen.  The Nation fell, of course, by reason of the excesses of those in charge of the private financial sector and the determined decisions of the Bush-Cheney Administration to release “Wall Street” from essentially any meaningful regulation or oversight–going directly against the liberal tradition of America and the roots of our democracy…the other side of the duality.

         

          The current democratic/Democratic Administration has never been a threat to Capitalism, as the mercantile/capitalist system has been in place in America since the seventeenth century and has proved to be the most sound way of raising capital in the world.  I could quote from as many as a dozen great statesmen and economists confirming the wisdoms of capitalism and democracy, each in their respective spheres, as long as capitalism is checked with regard to the rights of the individual.  But I feel I will just conclude by noting my own heartfelt and equally telling conclusion,

 

“I so tire of the false notion that the desire of some, actually a majority, to help or protect one’s fellow man is somehow taken by the minority as akin to abandoning capitalism and adopting a statist government and economy.

 

Don Switzer

Rogers, Arkansas

WWW.PoliticsandWhimsey.Com

(c) March 15, 2010