"The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest excuses in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness."
--John Kenneth Galbraith
Galbraith nailed it. This rapaciousness is at the heart of everything a right-winger holds sacred. Just listen to Republican mouthpiece Rush Limbaugh ranting about how Obama's stimulus package is ruining initiative and punishing producers. He sees America as a place where it's every man for himself. We are not our brother's keepers (even though the Bible says we are and fundamentalist preachers pound the Bible at their congregations every week). And if businesses fail, workers get fired, families are foreclosed, people go bankrupt, and the nation falls into financial ruin...so what. It doesn't affect Rush and other wealthy Americans.
They have theirs; let others fend for themselves.
Who are these people Limbaugh calls "producers"?
They're not the rank-and-file workers because he hates blue collar laborers, especially unionists.
They're not the middle class which nearly got legislated into oblivion by Bush's tax cuts for the wealthy.
They're not the richest of the rich...most have inherited their wealth...or got lucky or have simply used their existing wealth to buy and sell enterprises and workers as if they were cattle; enriching themselves further at the expense of those workers, they have in fact produced nothing.
"Producers" is just an empty phrase used by the wealthy and their mouth pieces obfuscating the fact that all they are doing is trying to protect their own wealth.
In fact, that is the central motivation of all conservatives--protect what I have--.
That's why the wealthy want those who do not posess wealth to remain uninformed, divided, without representation, diverted by gadgetry, and sedated by religion. It makes the masses more pliable. And the idea that conservatives have convinced themselves that they are in fact, temporarily embarrassed millionaires makes the delusion complete.
Yet in their heart of hearts, conservatives are evolutionists. They know it's a jungle out there and only the wealthy survive. It's always been dog-eat-dog and every man for himself in American conservative dogma.
That's its ultimate hypocrisy. The conservatives who claim God is at the center of the American dream are the same conservatives who practice Darwinism in their daily lives.
All while ignoring or simply refusing to acknowledge the help, the support and the infrastructure they enjoy from the community and the society they are pretending not to be a part of.
