Conservative Train Wreck-by Bill Press

Press' central theme, in his new book, is that conservatism started with Russell Kirk and William F. Buckley Jr., and that it failed to deliver what it promised. In fact, both themes are demonstrably false as follows: The conservative revolution against big gov't started with the American Revolution - a revolution against the big oppressive gov't of England. The next significant piece of our history was the second American Revolution of 1800 wherein Jefferson established that the American Revolution was not only a revolution against the oppressive big government of England but also a revolution against any would-be, anti-freedom, oppressive, Federalist, big governments that might develop in America.

The Jeffersonian view prevailed and became the traditional American view until Communism and the Great Depression conspired to gave rise to the idea that American tradition wasn't working. Only at that point did Kirk and Buckley take up their swords and begin the third American Revolution that largely defeated liberal, socialist, and communist thinking in the U.S., Eastern and Western Europe, USSR, Communist China, and South East Asia.

Press wants you to adumbratively believe that conservatism was a tiny movement in the second half of the 20th Century concerned largely with the tactics of domestic issues and politics, when really it is the embodiment of ineluctable human progress. When Press talks about how conservatism didn't deliver, one can only scratch one's head in bewilderment at such willful blindness. When he gets specific he talks only about domestic issues, from a tactical, political point of view, such as the conservative failure to deliver smaller, balanced budgets. Even in this tiny arena what he fails to say is again infinitely more important than what he does say.

Firstly, Newt Gingrich tried to shut down the gov't rather than allow it to grow and spend more. Secondly, conservatives ended "welfare as we know it " which, despite being the heart and soul of the Great "caring" Society, amounted to a war on blacks that destroyed their families, put more men in prison than college, and gave us hip-hop culture. Thirdly, conservatives proposed a Balanced Budget Amendment to the Constitution that, once and for all, would have transformed and shrunk American government. Fourthly, conservatives always proposed tax cuts to free us from big gov't. Fifthly, even George Bush (the least conservative of conservatives) proposed privatization of Social Security, health care, and education. Had it not been for Democrats, Republicans would have easily won a fourth American Revolution for freedom.

Press' "idea" is that since Republicans failed to deliver the fourth tiny revolution we should abnegate conservatives as hypocritical and incompetent, and permanently replace them with liberal, progressive, socialist types who loath the basic Jeffersonian Republican concept of the American Revolution. It is impossible to describe how irrational that is, but that is what passes for publishable in modern America.

Ted Baiamonte
thedumbdemocrat
The Intellectual Republicans
bje1000@aol.com
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