The Conservatives

A conservative is someone who wants to keep things the same, conserve things, slow down the pace of change, although changes are inevitable. We are all conservative on some issues. I want to conserve the redwoods.  This country has a few dedicated conservatives (David Frome, for example) but has never had a conservative party. What we have are two quite different liberal/  capitalist parties. The Democrats tend to favor a capitalist system that provides basic help to those who need it--if people have enough to eat and drink and a safe place to sleep, most of them are satisfied. The Republicans favor a tilted business system, an older form of liberalism that helps the rich.

For a long time I have been saying that the Republican party has many facets and goals, but the central goal is to help transfer money from the multitudinous poor to the rich. That does not make a good campaign slogan, so the Republican Party lies during political campaigns. Yesterday Paul Krugman published something similar. He was quoting historian Rick Perlstein.  Perlstein wrote that movement conservatism was "an interlocking set of institutions and allegiances that won elections by stoking cultural and racial anxiety but used these victories mainly to push an elitist economic agenda, meanwhile providing a support network for political and ideological loyalists."