I've been at a loss to understand what unites the various types of conservatives. They would seem to have nothing in common ; the religious conservatives, the economic conservatives, and the neocons. Is it just as Janeane Garofalo has argued , that they are just 'mean people' ?
After all, what do these issues have in common? opposition to civil rights, workers rights, environmental protection, abortion rights, immigrants, diplomacy, taxes, welfare, regulation, and a proclivity towards authoritarianism .
These are the trees blocking our view of the forest . We get sidetracked trying to examine and combat each one without ever seeing what the animating force is behind it all.
I think that animating force, that conservative utopian ideal is truly, frighteningly, uncompromisingly medieval.
There have , of course, been many articles written about the pre-enlightenment attitudes of the religiously conservative. And while this understanding of the American religious right is true, it is also somewhat myopic.
It has been argued that they have "no conscience" , are "authoritarian" , that they have declared a "war on science" . All of these are true , as well, but equally myopic.
We'll always be confused by their rhetoric and agenda if we continue to get distracted by these ugly, twisted trees . We have to step back and see the whole forest .
We should extrapolate what the world would look like today if the 3 branches of conservatism ran unfettered throughout government (I know , I know, we're sort of in that situation today....the difference being that we've had established principles of modern liberal democracy in place that have , at least slightly, offset their goals, somewhat) .
If government was indeed "small enough to drowned in a bathtub" , and if our laws really were based entirely on christian fundamentalist understanding of the christian bible, and the if the dreams of limitless executive authority and empire espoused by the neocons were all imposed on our society in totality, we'd be living in a sort of fantasy version of Europe in the dark ages...except with computers and some other modern conveniences .
It's not just that we disagree with them about the direction of the country or our society. It's that they are coming from a distinctly pre-modern , pre-enlightenment mentality.
This is how you have a party of supposed "limited government" supporting and even adoring a president who espoused a viewpoint of executive power that was as close as we have come to monarchy. Even going so far as pulling out that old "god ordained him" right of kings.
This is how you have major political players on the right who believe in witchcraft , exorcism , and despise the very notion of modern scientific methods.
This is why you have a giant wall being constructed around our country to keep out "foreigners", no matter how illogical that is.
This is how you have economic conservatives arguing that , even now, government must shrink , let the market run wild with no intervention, and if the poor and homeless are lucky, perhaps some wealthy person will pity them enough to donate to a charity or perhaps even deem them worthy of employment (as long as they can't organize and fight for good wages).
If all of their dreams came true, government would be a monarchical ruler concerned with expanding influence and territory with force, a small number of very wealthy land and business owners ruling land day to day along with a very strong central church authority in charge of passing judgement on the everyday lives of the peasants .
It's not just that we see the world differently from conservatives.
The massive divide between us is seemingly insurmountable because we are the great grandchildren of the enlightenment and they are the reactionaries who reject modernism outright even when that rejection has a negative effect on their lives and on future generations.
Ronald Reagan and George Bush jr. didn't cobble together a disparate group of dissimilar ideologies to form the modern conservative movement, they simply discovered the common element in all branches of conservatism ; a rejection of modern enlightenment values at any cost.