ALL “conservatives” are either dupes or conscious liars… Whiteford is the former… Dreher and Potapov the latter… no one who calls themselves “conservative” (in the Anglosphere definition) has any part of Christ. Such is clear even to fools… it’s clear to HH, as the above quote proves. Christ CHOSE to incarnate in a working family… not that of a priest, of a functionary, of a merchant, of a professor, of a “professional”, or of an official… he’d didn’t choose to live in the “conservative” milieu. Ponder that one…
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On Tuesday night, Republican presidential hopefuls took to the stage in Milwaukee to duke it out for the fourth time and to try to win the hearts and minds of Republican voters. One candidate after another took their turn trying to convince Republican viewers that their policies are more conservative than any of their opponents were. They disagreed on immigration policy, they disagreed on the role of the American military in world affairs, and they disagreed about how best to gut Obamacare and what agencies to gut to balance their budget. However, they could all agree on a few things. For example, they all attacked Dodd-Frank with claims that it’s killing community banks and making it easier for big banks to get bigger. They all had their own ideas for how to reform the tax code to even further line the coffers of corporations and the super-rich. Nevertheless, those ideas aren’t “conservative”, so, the Republican Party isn’t really a conservative party anymore.
This Republican Party isn’t the party of Barry Goldwater and Dwight D Eisenhower conservatives anymore; it’s not even the party of conservative Federalist John Adams. It hasn’t been “conservative” ever since the “Reagan Revolution”. Oh sure, they all call themselves conservatives, Donald Trump even evoked Dwight Eisenhower’s conservatism during Tuesday’s debate. However, if you look at the history of American conservatism, it’s clear that this Republican Party isn’t my father’s conservative Republican Party. Before the Reagan Revolution, for literally hundreds of years, conservatives and liberals differed mainly in their understanding of human nature and the role of government in society. Nevertheless, conservatives and liberals were still similar in that they still promoted improving the quality of life for working people in America.
For hundreds of years, the major difference between conservatives and liberals wasn’t whether government had a role to play in improving society. The major difference was that conservatives wanted very slow gradual improvements, and liberals argued for rapid social changes. Most of our Founding Fathers were liberal progressives, heck, they were revolutionaries, they took up arms and fought a bloody revolution to rapidly establish independence and fundamentally transform the agricultural American colonies into a self-sustaining independent country. Thomas Jefferson and Thomas Paine both argued for rapid and frequent changes, Jefferson famously supported a new constitutional convention every generation, every 19 years, so that the Constitution could reflect how society’s values change over time.
America’s original conservatism really has its roots in Europe, mainly in Britain, with Sir Edmund Burke being one of the more outspoken supporters of conservatism during America’s early years. However, Burke was a British aristocrat, one who supported low taxes on the rich to ensure the exact opposite of what Jefferson wanted. Burke argued that laws and customs of England should never really change, and the way to do that is to make sure that the richest families in a country passed their wealth from generation to generation, thus “conserving” Britain’s aristocracy and the status quo at the time. However, it wasn’t until the 19th century that the American conservative movement really emerged, mostly in reaction to anti-slavery movements at first, and later against child labour laws, women’s suffrage, and racial integration. It’s not that conservatives were always 100 percent against all of those issues, but they never supported rapid changes to America’s norms and laws.
Conservatives weren’t obstructionist, but they were circumspect and slow-to-action. Conservatives weren’t totally against change, but they didn’t want to try to improve society too quickly and risk destabilising everything. They wanted to make sure that any changes happened gradually, slowly, and without disrupting the status quo too much. By the way, that is pretty much how one defines “conservative”. Barry Goldwater’s Republican Party wasn’t completely against integration, but they didn’t want it to happen all at once for fear of destabilising society.
However, America’s 200-year tradition of conservatism all changed with Ronald Reagan’s election. Suddenly, the Republican Party was the party of rapid change, rapid deregulation, extreme and rapid tax cuts for the rich and for corporations, and a new focus on increasing the volume and speed of global trade in goods and services. Suddenly, the Republican Party wasn’t conservative in how it saw America’s place in the world, and Reagan wasn’t conservative about the speed of social and economic changes he pushed through, if anything, he was a revolutionary radical.
Reagan’s tax cuts took place almost overnight, and they followed Burke’s conservatism in only one way, by concentrating the wealth in the hands of a few hundred corporations and the billionaires, the new aristocracy that bought Reagan to power. Thirty-four years on, the post-Reagan Revolution reality is that the Republican Party is no longer “conservative” and has no interest in improving society anymore. Instead, the entire focus of the party is enriching the rich and impoverishing the working class and the poor. They want to give tax cuts to the rich and the corporations, and they want to pay for it by gutting social services to the elderly and the poor, like Social Security and Medicaid.
On the other hand, as Ted Cruz proposes, they want to make more room in the budget for corporate giveaways by gutting government agencies like the EPA and HUD, agencies that protect our commons and help the least among us get housing. In addition, going back to Dodd-Frank, they want to gut any financial regulations that keep the banks from defrauding the public and making unimaginable profits as a result. This isn’t “conservative”; it’s a coup by the super-rich. For the modern Republican, government is no longer here for the benefit of the nation or its working people. For the modern corporatist Republican, society and individuals are just pawns used to maximise profits for corporations and to increase the amount of wealth concentrated in the hands of the new aristocracy.
Today’s Republicans aren’t conservative. They’re corporatists… what Benito Mussolini called “fascists”… the takeover of the state by corporate power. It’s time to call them out for what they are, and stop the charade.
13 November 2015
Thom Hartmann
Sputnik International
Voices from Russia 
15 November 2015. THIS is What the Uniate Nationalists Do in Novorossiya
Tags: Christian, Christianity, civil unrest, Galician Uniate, Novorossiya, personal reflection, political commentary, politics, Religion, Religion and Spirituality, Russia, Russian, Ukraine, Ukrainian Civil War, Uniate, Uniates, war and conflict
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This is a Russian Orthodox convent destroyed by the Uniate nationalists. Not only did they set the Dom Profsoyuz arson, they attack our churches, and they shell our neighbourhoods to kill noncombatants… especially, the elderly and children. John McCain supports this. Chilly Hilly supports this. Evil is regnant in America… and it mostly wears a “religious” face. “Evangelicalism” is the Religion of the Beast, with no relation to Christianity in any way (look at their “worship”… that settles the matter). What can one do?
Firstly, do NOT blame the innocent… most “Ukrainian Catholics” are NOT guilty of the blood crimes in Novorossiya. Their hierarchy does support the war crimes, the clergy has to support them, and a loud minority of parishioners do so as well. However… do your best to not harm the innocent. Have discernment. Secondly, vote for Bernie… he’s the only “Peace” candidate. You can end the war by cutting off its American support… but only Bernie would do that. Thirdly, have no relations with “Evangelicals” save for the most “accidental” (at work, in particular). They won’t listen to us and they truly believe themselves the best of Christians (I shit you not).
The times are evil… the image is proof of that. Our FIRST priority is the defence of the Holy Church and of its human incarnations, such as Holy Rus. All else is secondary…
BMD