Thinking Big

Wow, I just got really passionate on Facebook about something political, something that will surely bite my ass.  But it really chaps my ass even more that conservative policies over the last 30 years have put us here.  In a place where we’re cutting programs that help people.   In a place where we’re shutting doors to new ways of getting around, repealing health care solutions, and giving billions of dollars in tax breaks to millionaires.  Seriously?  This is the US everyone wants to live in?  And yet we keep electing conservatives.

Oh conservatives.  Why their appeal? The Goldwater-Reagan-Buckley conservative movement started out as an idea in the 1950s, not a party platform.  It was neither Democratic or Republican at the time.  Its appeal is that it’s a thesis.

When crises hit, people needed a thesis they could believe.  Inflation in the late 1970s, the Soviet Empire, 9-11, our current budget malaise all give conservatives the crisis they need to turn their thesis into action.  They continually take a very simple idea – no taxes – and just keep yelling it over and over again. Need to solve health care … no taxes.  Need to solve energy and car dependence issues … no taxes.  Need … well, in a desert if you can’t find true water people will drink the sand.  Conservatives are pimping sand.  Because what other vision has been presented since Reagan?  Where is my antithesis?

It’s no accident that of the last two Democratic presidents, both have been triangulators, centrists.  Gallup says there are 23 states where over 41.1% consider themselves “conservative”.   Why 41.1%.  That’s the highest percentage anywhere in the US of people claiming to be “liberal”.  Washington DC.  Vermont is next at 30%.  If conservatism and liberalism are brands, conservatism is Coca-Cola and liberalism is Pepsi (literally, out of this brand survey Coca-Cola is #1 and Pepsi is #23) Both solve your thirsty-I-need-a-beverage problem, but really, they’re in two different worlds.

What people (notice I don’t say Democrats) need is an American antithesis to conservative philosophy.  It has to be born out of today,  strong and timeless so that it doesn’t wane with the ebbs and flows of the news or political cycles.  It needs to be Buckley-an in that it needs to start in one decade and grow stronger and stronger until nobody can remember when the antithesis wasn’t the thesis. 

You would think middle class plight is strong.  Not simple.  And not big enough.

Education? Progressivism? Trains? Energy?  All passing trends.  Today’s trains could be tomorrow’s jet packs. 

Conservatism says government should be small.  It should not tax it’s people.  It’s goal is to minimize the regulation on the free market to allow entrepreneurialism.  Capital reigns.  Freedom from your government.

What we need is an antithesis.  Socialism?  Yeah, that’s about as American as … well, Kalashnikovs.  Conservatives like to go to the Constitution, let’s go there. It’s hokey, but hey this is antithesis building.  We need to go big.

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquillity, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

Funny how it says nothing in here that lower taxes were given on high from God to George Washington.  But anyways, I need to get to the antithesis.  To promote the general Welfare, and form a more perfect Union, we need to build a City on a Hill.  No less than perfection is our attainment.  For a city on a hill cannot be built solely by the work of individuals.  And a city on a hill rises above the fray.  Would anyone say that Rome was the sum of its merchants? Of course not.  Health care doesn’t matter because it costs money or helps with a job; it matters because to build a city on a hill everyone must be healthy.  To be healthy for no other reason than to be healthy.  Profits are important, entrepreneurialism critical, but to the end that says this world is better, not wealthier.  It’s vital that we fund roads and libraries and schools, that we end violence, that everyone has a job and self-worth.  Otherwise, what is all this capitalism buying us?

The new liberalism must be a city on a hill.  The Blessings of Liberty cannot be attained if we are all shackled by the till.  Our Posterity needs a new thesis.  A thesis where everyone’s well being isn’t built on the wealthy acquiring capital. Where the metric of success isn’t the Dow Jones Industrial Average, but the success of Mr. and Mrs. Jones.  No less than a perfect civilization should be our goal.  It has nothing to do with money and everything to do with thinking big.

Clean air, great infrastructure, efficiency, access to knowledge are our goals, our blessings of freedom. Let government not be the end, but the means to the end.  Like our Constitution itself, a tool to build great things but not the only tool. 

If America is exceptional, let us be exceptional.

Let us align with the churches in the US who pray for a society Jesus would be proud of.

Let us align with the hipsters in the cities who protest for bike lanes.

Let us align with the seniors who want time with their grandchildren.

Let us align with the business people who can build this world.

No less than a ism will eradicate this funk called conservatism and save our country.  

Well shit, there goes an evening.