We Are Not Conservatives

                            By Alex Stark

   

If there is one thing that frustrates me to end, it’s seeing white nationalists/advocates actively supporting conservatism, especially after it has proven just as destructive to our cause as liberalism on ethnic issues and vastly more destructive than liberalism on every other matter.

I find that white advocates generally support conservatism for two reasons. The first reason is that they essentially become single-issue voters because they believe that conservatives will be more hawkish in regard to illegal immigration. While white nationalist conservatives understand that mainstream conservatives still fully support third-world immigration and multiculturalism, they will settle for anyone who will do something about our demographic situation, however insignificant it may be.

This approach baffles me, as anyone who thinks conservatives are substantially better on immigration than liberals is extremely misguided. Did we forget that in 1986, Reagan gave amnesty to 3 million illegal immigrants and that his act didn’t even obligate employers to verify the authenticity of workers’ documents?

I think liberals have better reasons for their support of immigration and multiculturalism than conservatives. It strikes me that liberals actually believe that immigrants enrich our country culturally and economically, while conservatives (being good corporate puppets) support immigration as a way to get cheap labor and to weaken unions. I can’t think of a single conservative politician who has done anything to meaningfully combat multiculturalism in any way. Conservatives are truly just cowards afraid to address any of America’s demographic threats and alienating potential voters and afraid of upsetting their corporate overlords, so in the public discourse they generally parrot liberal lines about diversity being our strength and so on.

In a way, I can respect liberals for their belief that a multicultural society is a good thing, even though I profoundly disagree with this view, because they are sincere, while conservatives hide their true reasons for supporting immigration. Just look at Mitt Romney as a perfect example of conservative cowardice on this issue. In recent debates he called Arizona’s SB1070 law a model for the nation. Anyone with eyes can see that he was only trying to cut down his primary opponents by moving to their right to win the support of gullible blue-collar whites. Just weeks ago, Romney confessed at a private fundraiser that winning the support of Latinos is critical and his campaign staff has said that he’s still making up his mind on his positions about immigration reform.

The other reason white nationalists vote conservative is because they sincerely support conservative principles. This deeply rooted conservative ideology amongst many (if not most) white nationalists is, in my opinion, possibly the greatest threat to our movement gaining any traction or being taken seriously. I find that the political ideology espoused by these white nationalist conservatives betrays a profound ignorance when it comes to understanding the political questions of our time.

Conservatism has harrowed our country: its economic policies have been disastrous, it has greatly empowered corporations, it has screwed over countless impoverished European-Americans, it has pursued treasonous foreign policies and wars that our citizens have no stake in, it has fought relentless battles over non-issues like abortion and gay marriage, it has ravaged the environment, it has obstructed meaningful progress in Congress with the abuse of filibusters, it has undermined healthcare reform, and it has threatened to cut successful welfare and entitlement programs. Liberalism has the more compelling case and the greatest intellectual weight — Greg Johnson has admitted before that the left attracts the brightest minds — on almost every issue except the matter we find ourselves discussing here on Counter-Currents.

Let’s look at the records of conservative Republicans across a few of the issues and see whether their goals are really in line with those of white nationalists.

1. In 2011, the Republican-led House voted nearly 200 times to weaken, block, or delay needed measures to update laws that defend our air, water, wildlife, and lands.

2. In 2010, the Republican Supreme Court Justices held in the Citizens United case that corporations can make unlimited political expenditures. The decision also allows tax-exempt incorporated public advocacy groups to spend money on political races without disclosing their donors’ names in their FEC filings. Republicans love to decry Obama for disregarding the constitution, but is there any decision more contradictory to the spirit of the constitution than the Citizens United ruling?

3. Republican-led state legislatures across the United States introduced 2,044 provisions restricting women’s reproductive rights in 2011 and 2012. Their legislation has focused on mandating that women seeking an abortion must have medically unnecessary ultrasounds intended to scare them out of going through with their abortions and the legislation also narrows the time when abortions may be performed and limits insurance coverage of abortion.

4. Republican state legislatures have implemented right-to-work laws that cripple unions. Controlling for all variables, wages in right-to-work states are 3.2 % lower, the rates of employer-sponsored health insurance are 2.6 % lower, and the rates of employer-sponsored pensions are 4.8 % lower compared with non-right-to-work states.

The greatest horrors conservatives have inflicted on this country, as well as the rest of the West, are their neoliberal economic policies. I’ll mention a few relevant points and then wrap up my argument, but I must encourage everyone to read Timothy Noah’s series of articles about income inequality on Slate, as well as Paul Krugman’s NYT columns, and also William Deresiewicz’s recent humorous article about capitalism and psychopathy at the NYT.

In light of the current economic crisis, Hayekian/neoliberal economics should have been discredited as these theories were the driving force behind our pursuit of financial deregulation, while Keynesian economics should have been validated. However, conservative governments across Europe, showing their weak grasp of economics, decided to remain faithful to the principles that resulted in this crisis and have implemented sweeping austerity measures. Conservatives argued that we needed to reduce our deficits, bring down our national debts, undertake structural reforms, and promote growth, however the results haven’t been promising as countries like the UK have slipped into a double-dip recession.

At home, Republicans have rallied around the Paul Ryan budget plan that would have America take the same course as Europe. Republicans show no signs of possessing the faculty of critical thinking that would dictate that their economic policies must be reevaluated when confronted with the reality of Europe’s prolonged recession, but detachment from reality is a conservative hallmark. There is no reason tackle the federal budget deficit or the debt at a time when we’re facing staggering unemployment and underemployment that prevents the lower and middle classes as well as private corporations from spending and consuming regularly. Once the economy has been stimulated and has fully recovered, then it will be an appropriate time to work on reducing our debt.

Realistically, Obama has governed very center-right and all of his failings to improve the economy can be attributed to the way he has caved to Republicans any time they have pushed back against him. Obama’s stimulus was anemic not only because of its small size, but because it was full of tax cuts that Republicans had demanded.

With regards to Eric Holder, many white nationalists hate him because of how he sued Arizona over SB1070, and I agree that that was ridiculous. However, the fact that Eric Holder hasn’t prosecuted Goldman Sachs or any of the other financial institutions that were caught defrauding their clientele is even more serious. Many figures on the left, like Eliot Spitzer, have called for Holder’s resignation, however I am doubtful that Holder will suddenly grow the balls to prosecute Goldman Sachs and I certainly don’t think that a Republican attorney general would have done so either.

I haven’t said much about Mitt Romney yet, but I fail to see how any white nationalist could even contemplate voting for him. He epitomizes everything wrong with conservatism. Here’s a portrait of Mitt Romney to give you a better understanding of what kind of leader he is.

1. I deferred military service to go bicycling in France and while I was there, I lived in a 5-bedroom house with a chef and a housekeeper.

2. I’ve claimed that I lived like a poor person then.

3. I spent the duration of the Vietnam War proselytizing and converting people to my faith rather than serving my country.

4. I worked at Bain Capital where I became the CEO. I turned the company from a venture capital enterprise into a corporate raider.

5. I drove 22 companies into bankruptcy after stripping them of their assets and selling them off.

6. In the case of Ampad, I personally helped Bain reap $100,000,000 after completely destroying a profitable company.

7. I laid off more than 10,000 living, breathing people, solely to line my own pockets.

8. I enjoy firing people.

9. Of the companies I didn’t completely bankrupt, I drove tens of thousands of people with livable wages into accepting minimum wage and told every single one of them that if they didn’t like it they could leave.

10. At the same time I gave the company’s top management huge pay rises.

11. I created countless jobs on foreign shores and the people who worked for me there earned a couple of dollars a day, in appalling conditions and with no safety standards.

12. I retired and my termination agreement still sees me receiving more than 7 million dollars a year and because they are deferred payments, I pay 13 % in taxes on unhidden money, though until it became illegal in 2011, I hid it in tax havens.

13. I had the third lowest job creation rate of any state in America as governor.

14. While I was governor, I used the Heritage Foundation’s healthcare plan and created Romneycare, which lowered the insurance costs for my electorate by 1/3

15. I was proud when President Obama decided to use the plan, as I thought it would help my chances of becoming President, but when my party vilified it, I abandoned my only life accomplishment.

16. It cost Massachusetts $200,000 when I replaced all of the state’s government computers to hide my record.

17. I think corporations are people but if you look at my history, you’ll find that I don’t think people are people.

18. I have been perpetually running for president.

19. I have made $1/4 billion by destroying thousands of lives.

20. I don’t care about any of those lives, as they can’t contribute to my campaign to lower America’s living standards.

21. I spent $200,000,000 to beat the weakest and most bizarre field ever in Republican politics.

Not only is his record appalling, but so are his policies. The nonpartisan Tax Policy Center has determined that relative to current policy — that is, if you keep the Bush tax cuts in place, as Romney wants to do — Romney’s tax cutting plans would increase the deficit by nearly $5 trillion over 10 years. That’s on top of keeping the Bush tax cuts for the rich. Romney has promised to close various loopholes to pay for his tax cuts, but he hasn’t specified which ones. Until he does, the Tax Policy Center concludes his plan would cost $5 trillion — which would be added, yes, to the deficit. Romney’s plan would also cut the top corporate tax rate form 35 percent to 25 percent.

Last but not least, there is the issue of income inequality. Larry Bartels, a political scientist at Vanderbilt, has documented a five-decade pattern in which income inequality has grown under Republican presidents and shrunk under Democratic ones.

The most significant challenges America faces today include income inequality, financial deregulation, the decline of the middle class, and the loss of opportunity. When you look at a list of countries ranked by the Gini coefficient, the US has levels of income disparity comparable to China, Russia, and Nigeria. Our economic inequality has long been masked by our high per capita income. Generally, our income is higher than the rest of the Western world. However, America’s higher income generally reflects our lower taxes. And our lower taxes reflect a neglect of social services to our citizens. In the US, the cost of healthcare is nearly double that of any other country, yet we have 50 million-plus with little or no insurance at all. By contrast, other Western countries have higher taxes that are used to support robust social service programs such as healthcare.

Finally, income disparity is not just a material measure. It is also a measure of social cohesion. I fear the US will not be able to escape the same social issues that now plague third world countries. Our own citizens will no longer continue to accept third world levels of income inequality while the elite amass vast and largely untaxed fortunes.