Mr. Conservative
The modern conservative movement isn’t about being conservative at all, its about pandering to religious groups, saying you oppose anything the Democrats do while spending just as much money. There are no conservatives in Washington. A true conservative believes in the constitution. They would support the separation of church and state, the freedom of speech, the right to bear arms. They would support equal legal protections for all, meaning they would support a woman’s right to choose, and gay marriage. But again, there are no true conservatives in Washington, only partisan hacks using abortion and gay marriage as wedge issues to stay in office and keep raking in that sweet sweet lobbyist cash.
Barry Goldwater in a contemplative pose.
Here are three things Barry “Mr. Conservative” Goldwater said during his life as a politician:
“On religious issues there can be little or no compromise. There is no position on which people are so immovable as their religious beliefs. There is no more powerful ally one can claim in a debate than Jesus Christ, or God, or Allah, or whatever one calls this supreme being. But like any powerful weapon, the use of God’s name on one’s behalf should be used sparingly. The religious factions that are growing throughout our land are not using their religious clout with wisdom. They are trying to force government leaders into following their position 100 percent. If you disagree with these religious groups on a particular moral issue, they complain, they threaten you with a loss of money or votes or both.”
“I’m frankly sick and tired of the political preachers across this country telling me as a citizen that if I want to be a moral person, I must believe in “A,” “B,” “C” and “D.” Just who do they think they are? And from where do they presume to claim the right to dictate their moral beliefs to me? And I am even more angry as a legislator who must endure the threats of every religious group who thinks it has some God-granted right to control my vote on every roll call in the Senate. I am warning them today: I will fight them every step of the way if they try to dictate their moral convictions to all Americans in the name of ‘conservatism.'”
“Mark my word, if and when these preachers get control of the [Republican] party, and they’re sure trying to do so, it’s going to be a terrible damn problem. Frankly, these people frighten me. Politics and governing demand compromise. But these Christians believe they are acting in the name of God, so they can’t and won’t compromise. I know, I’ve tried to deal with them.”
Birth Control and the GOP:
The GOP is working on taking birth control and abortion rights away from women, because their religion tells them to. That’s not liberation. (If their religion says they shouldn’t take birth control, they shouldn’t take it. At that point they are exercising their rights. When they start trying to control others, they are taking away religious freedom…)
Many Republicans have gone on record to say their objective is to ban all birth control, including condoms, the pill and IUD’s, because they either prevent conception or prevent implantation of the fertilized egg. And this is ignoring the fact that, for the average women who does want to become pregnant, up to 20 fertilized eggs either abort naturally or fail to even implant for every child that gets successfully brought to term.
And it’s only myopic fundamentalists with an unnaturally and immaturely black-and-white view of things that would equate birth control (preventing a fertilized egg from implanting) with shooting a fully formed and normally born baby. The reproductive process, like so many things in this world, is a non-binary analog-like spectrum. There is no hard and clear boundary between a random collection of cells that cannot exist independently of woman’s body (like any tumor, wart or organ) and a fully developed individual that can exist outside the reproductive life support system. Rather, it is a gradual progression from a part of the woman’s own body to a separate individual, with many generally identifiable stages in between where the process can (and does, more often than not) fail.
All birth control does is add one more hurdle to the process in an early enough point in the process such that what fails is nearly always still a 100% natively-biological cast-off from the woman’s body. As such, just like removing a wart or excising a tumor, it’s the woman’s inalienable right to do this. To take away that right is no different that to impose forced sterilization on men.
Birth control freed females at last from the age-old tyranny of enforced, non-stop childbearing. But the Republicans have made their aim clear: to catapult women’s rights back by decades – and keep women enslaved as second-class citizens.
I hope to be remembered for my atrocities! 