Aquarian Weekly 11/8/06
REALITY CHECK

CONSERVATISM VS. FUNDAMENTALISM
Final Battle For The Soul Of The Republican Party

One week left for the Republicans to defend their turf. One week left before the final nail is driven in the Revolution's coffin. One week to go for the tattered remains of the Contract With America before it is likely shuffled off into blessed ignominy with every other spectacular line of steaming bullshit shoveled upon the voting public. One more week before…gulp!…the Democrats take the stage once again.

Seems like only yesterday Newt Gingrich and his charges swept into town as the power-tie cavalry and promised to clean up the corruption, trim fiscal bloating, and finish the job The Gipper began in 1980. Conservatism: Less government, more individual freedom. But, alas, the new order went the way of the old order - Meet the new boss, same as the old boss. Today, with 12 years of Republican control in two branches of the federal government, corruption abounds, pork is aplenty, and no one seems to know how to protect the borders, wage a war, or save the nation in time of national crisis, hurricane or terror.

What happened to the dream, some may ask. I will not be one of them. The dream, as John Lennon once wrote, is over, mainly because there never was a dream. Rhetorical power drives and ideological demagoguery, but not really a dream.

I don't believe in Beatles.

Exactly, Johnny.

But failure to overcome the greatest human frailty - pure greed and a lust to horde, in this case power over promise - is not the only downfall of the modern Republican surge of 1994. Nope. The Republicans went wrong because the party that claims to have a direction - and appears so primarily because the other party we're stuck with is woefully devoid of direction - has none. It is divided. It has lost its way.

How?

Conservatism vs. Fundamentalism: Fundamentalism won.

No one affiliated with this charade wants to admit it, beyond the old guard: William F. Buckley, George Will, and Pat Buchanan. But somewhere along the line the purveyors of true Conservatism bastardized it, sold it down the river for votes and popularity and special interests. Don't worry. It's not the first time this has happened in politics. It happened to the rotting corpse of Liberalism too. And it's bound to happen again.

You see, when Barry Goldwater ran for president as the first strongly opinionated right-winger in 1964, and was savagely painted as a war-mongering despot by the sanctimonious LBJ clan, he did so as a true Conservative. He wrote a book about it. He was pro-environment, pro-choice, and pro gay rights. He even fought against Jerry Falwell and his medieval Moral Majority thugs at every turn, the ones who now run this government and press their atavistic Stone Age agenda as holy war.

Truth is the Republican Party has been hijacked by religious zealots, who ignore the very tenets of Conservatism by wishing to use the Bible instead of the Constitution for a framework of civil rights and a guideline of governance.

Then there is the subject of Fiscal Conservatism, of which this Republican Congress and the present administration patently ignores.

Today, if Goldwater saw a Republican President of the United States signing off one hundred percent of the domestic spending for six consecutive years, funneled to him by a Republican Congress spending nearly half of the national budget on rebuilding the ideological face of entire regions across the globe, while getting re-elected on "moral" grounds and not from performance record, he would never stop puking.

Not since the Great Society of massive government programs has a president or a Congress passed this level of domestic spending in one six year period. Even factoring in two wars, anti-terrorist provisions, and the rate of inflation, this is still one of the most bloated federal governments in the history of this nation. What, I ask you, is conservative about that?

Okay, never mind Goldwater, what about the other Conservative sacred cow, Ronnie Reagan?

Here's what the aforementioned Pat Buchanan told me about that six years ago when he bolted the Republican Party for an independent run for president; "If Ronald Reagan ran as a Republican it would be a far different story than what they've got now."

The sad truth about Conservatism is that it is, like most isms, a lie. There is no Conservatism to speak of, not the actual original concept, but a weirdly translated coagulation of political agenda and fear mongering. Not unlike Christianity, or the neo-corporate version of it exploited by fundamentalist freaks or organized clans. Mostly, the term Conservatism, and its home base, the Republican Party, has been sold out by the Religious Right, which corrupted the party platform and got a religious fanatic elected president on the assumption that he is pure and true and takes his cue from Jesus Christ.

This is how morality puppets are allowed to attack sexual lifestyles and scream murder of innocent babies on the floor of Congress, beat the floorboards against Hollywood and South Park and video games while they funnel billions into government-created sink holes like Homeland Security and No Child Left Behind and Medicare bills which grease the palms of no-bid contractors and union creeps and pharmaceutical conglomerates that buy and sell this country from the inside, sucking our resources and jilting the populace.

I might agree or disagree with many intellectual and philosophical concepts behind Conservatism, modern or otherwise, but I know one thing, real conservatives would not support nation building, which the current administration and Republican-controlled Congress does. Nor would real conservatives tinker around with the touchy illegal immigration issue, which this lame Congress continues to do. And real conservatives certainly would not allow the Federal Bureau of Investigation to spy on its citizenry with the most inclusive and abusive laws yet known to this republic.

How in the world these performing seals like Rush Limbaugh, who claim to be conservatives but are really just interested in playing party barkers, can continue to defend this two-dimensional fraud is as perplexing as the National Organization For Women defending the actions of a misogynistic predator like Bill Clinton to promote its national agenda.

Look, this week, when the voters speak, and perhaps the Republicans lose the House and/or the Senate, many will look to the failed Iraq War, or the rampant corruption, and the malaise of a "do-nothing" Congress. But this space chooses to believe there may be, praise God, a swing in the phony fascist Holy Roller contingent whose days of influence and bullying are numbered.

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