We are not citizens of a nation founded by conservative intellectuals whose generational grandchildren prance and posture on our national stage nowadays.
To wit …
The American Revolution.
Approximately one third of the colonial population supported the English King George the Third. These conservatives wanted no disruption. Afraid or trying to hang on to what they felt England had granted them, they did not want national independence. These conservatives were not our original revolutionary patriots.
Original American conservatives supported protection of slavery in our Constitutional Convention. They wanted to count slaves in determining which states would be “slave states” but did not desire that they be citizens with voting rights. These conservatives in no way acted as Founding Fathers, rather as enforcers of their own power and influence at the expense of all others.
Our original conservatives opposed tariffs to protect American manufacturing. In their Kindergarten-ness they were not able to understand any need to develop our own industrial base. They wanted no changes to a system based on cheap slave labor. They were not industrialists, but cash croppers – planters whose profits required no economic equality.
Our historical conservatives supported “nullification”, which said that states didn’t have to enforce federal laws they didn’t like. Sound familiar?
Our original conservatives supported repeal of the Missouri Compromise so as to allow slavery in other states where votes and political clout was more vital than common good.
The ancestors of today’s conservatives opposed the transcontinental railroad, primarily because railroads carried people who might want to work on their own land and who wouldn’t want or need slaves in the western territories because it might encourage small farmers who owned no slaves in future non-slave states.
Which is why the Grandpas and Grandmas of today’s conservatives were against the Homestead Act. They didn’t want more land-owners turning the American West into a collection of non-slave states.
Those old conservatives opposed freedom of speech for Southern opponents of slavery. Perish the thought that southern adults and children might hear something other than the Konservative gospel.
And so conservatives full of pretend patriotism and self-promoting civic piety disagreed with our sacred declaration that “all men are created equal.” Their Kindergarten civic ideology was that “the black man has no rights the white man is bound to respect.” (Dred Scott v. Sandford), quite possibly the most foolish Kindergarten Konservative legal decision in our national history.
… which led to a Kindergarten Konservative support of destruction of the union rather than allow any restriction of slavery.
conservatives were opposed the earliest civil rights legislation to enforce the 14th and 15th amendments. They obstructed, intimidated and harassed newly freed slaves who attempted to exercise their Federal civil rights, including the right to vote … and considered themselves god-fearing, civic-minded moral patriots.
conservatives were against preserving the union. Back then they wanted secession and they got it.
conservatives were also aggressively and brutally opposed to industrial workers forming unions. Sound familiar?
The ancestors of today’s conservatives supported the acquisition of foreign colonies
… armed suppression of Filipino independence.
… opposed anti-trust legislation.
… opposed child labor laws.
… opposed universal free public education.
… opposed literacy for African-American citizens, in particular.
… supported the legal theory of “separate but equal”, a sham that led to the establishment of “Jim Crow” in the south.
… opposed state laws guaranteeing minimum wages and restricting working hours for industrial workers.
… opposed the right to vote for women.
These are the real Moochers among us
These are the Kindergarten worshipers of that false American Exceptionalism that has cause more global and national grief than any noble achievement in the past 60 years.
These are the believers that uncompromising anger is civic wisdom, that blind and unblinking opposition is always better than compromise.
Look where it got them.
Look where it didn’t get us quickly enough.
Curmudgeon at Work 