Opinions and Letters

The Truth About the Conservative Mind: Why Reactionaries from Edmund Burke to Sarah Palin Have Fought Real Liberty

From:  The Chronicle of Higher Education / By Corey Robin

Conservatism is a reaction to democratic movements, like OWS, that challenge the authority of elites.

It's been a rotten few months for the nation's wealthiest 1 percent. From the senatorial candidacy of Elizabeth Warren to Occupy Wall Street, economic elites have faced a concerted attack on their riches and power, their arrogant and unaccountable ways. And you can hear it in their voices, or at least the voices of their spokesmen. House Majority Leader Eric Cantor declared, "I, for one, am increasingly concerned about the growing mobs occupying Wall Street and the other cities across the country." Mitt Romney told an audience in Florida that "I think it's dangerous—this class warfare." So rattled is George Will that he's been forced to pull out a playbook from an older time. All but calling Warren a Communist, he accused the Oklahoma-born scholarship kid of believing that the government "is entitled to socialize—i.e., conscript—whatever portion" of an individual's property "it considers its share... When the conservative looks upon a democratic movement from below, this is what he sees: a terrible disturbance in the private life of power. "The real object" of the French Revolution, Burke told Parliament in 1790, is "to break all those connexions, natural and civil, that regulate and hold together the community by a chain of subordination; to raise soldiers against their officers; servants against their masters; tradesmen against their customers; artificers against their employers; tenants against their landlords; curates against their bishops; and children against their parents." Nothing to the Jacobins, he declared at the end of his life, was worthy "of the name of the publick virtue, unless it indicates violence on the private."

Read the whole article HERE

RE: Bain’s gain, town’s loss

These people in South Carolina, whose town has been destroyed by Bain’s looting practices, say, “well that’s Capitalism.” Is it?  Rather, should it be?

Yes, this country was built on capitalism. With the industrial revolution came people who made huge amounts of money from, for example, the railroads. They built their empires on the backs of those who worked for them, with no regard to any reward to those whose daily work made their fortunes possible. Through the ensuing years, some of those workers, with the help of Unions, and with the realization of ethical business owners that they did not do this all themselves, developed into the middle class. These were people who didn’t own the business, but who took pride in their companies and in their work.

Now we are moving backwards. Is what Bain did to the businesses they bought, destroyed, and took millions from legal? Clearly, yes. Is it ethical? Clearly, No. This election is not about socialism vs. capitalism. It is about whether we will accept this unethical form of capitalism practiced by Bain and companies like Bain. Should someone like Mitt Romney, who inherited a fortune ,  who increased that fortune at the expense of those who worked for the businesses his company destroyed,  who oversaw sending any remaining jobs overseas, and who now says that those who are not wealthy like him are simply jealous, be elected President of the United States? 

Most people in this country believe it to be and ethical country. Few people in this country want to destroy capitalism. Most of us want an ethical form of capitalism where those who work are rewarded fairly and are able to take pride in a job well done. No one should be allowed to make millions of dollars the way Bain and like companies had been allowed to do. We must tell Mitt Romney that we are not jealous of him. Rather, we hold his unethical behavior in distain.

Mary Lou Ambrose, club Secretary, Belleair Bluffs