Conservatives Hate Government Unless It’s Used To Inject You With Their “Morality”
Ronald Reagan said it best, “The nine most terrifying words in the English language are ‘I’m from the government and I’m here to help.’”
Conservatives hate government interference in the lives of everyday Americans. And I don’t blame them. As a staunch supporter of a market economy, capitalism, and federalism, we generally need less government, not more.
The problem is that conservatives, especially modern day Republicans, have a giant exception to this ideology. One that swallows it whole.
It goes something like this:
We should have a limited central government and little to no government interference in the lives of everyday Americans, UNLESS an issue involves morality we do not agree with.
Injecting you with conservative morality
I’ve written about the theocratic takeover of America. How white christian nationalists are trying to redefine a country founded on the separation of church and state. A country where the freedom to express one’s religious beliefs is counterbalanced by the prohibition on establishing a government endorsed religion.
So much for originalism. So much for the founding fathers being deists, NOT Christians.
For today’s Republicans, none of that matters. History is how they define it. Just ask Justice Samuel Alito who hopscotched across history to conclude there’s no precedent in legalizing abortion or giving women the right to protect their own health.
Funny how he ignored that bodily autonomy has always been a protected right.
Nevertheless, conservatives, and especially today’s Republicans, are intent on pushing the government into your family planning decisions, sexuality decisions, and what books should be used in school.
They construct boogeymen to scare you. They need to operate with fear to justify the government interference in your personal life. If you don’t agree, your kids will be indoctrinated by critical race theory, turned into transexuals, and will have ten abortions by the time they’re 18.
This all comes from the same political party which operates with conspiracies galore about government. The intense distrust in government is basically a prerequisite to call yourself a Republican today. Most Republicans still deny that Joe Biden legitimately won the 2020 election. Many of those Republicans are running for election during this midterm cycle.
These are the same people who made light of or explicitly joked about Nancy Pelosi’s husband being beaten in the head with a hammer. The assailant was of course a true believer of numerous conservative conspiracies. Of course, no conservative accepted blame for inciting or indoctrinating this monster.
Instead, they constructed a new conspiracy theory. The San Francisco police were hiding something. The suspect was actually Paul Pelosi’s gay prostitute. I even had crazy conservatives arguing with me on Twitter, now owned by their new patron saint, that the police were hiding what really happened on their body cam footage.
Instead of facing the facts we currently have that Pelosi’s assailant allegedly said he was there to assassinate the House Speaker and that he shared radical far right views online, many conservatives tried to draw the false equivalence between this case and the George Floyd protests.
It’s a disgusting false equivalence. We don’t need to see body camera footage if there’s no reason to believe someone’s rights were violated.
What we do need to look at is the direct connection between conservative conspiracy theories and the political violence it encourages.
From government conspiracies about elections, COVID-19, and Paul Pelosi, to telling women what to do with their bodies and gay people who they can’t marry or adopt, conservatives intend to make you distrust government while forcing you to accept their version of it.
I remember when libertarians didn’t want government interference in ANY part of their lives
Now the libertarian party has been taken over by MAGA Republicans. The libertarian subreddit, for example, will generally silence any post even slightly critical of Trump or his cronies. This is despite the fact that modern conversative policy positions are antithetical to libertarian values of social liberalism.
The libertarian movement in America has now largely been captured by alt-right conservatives who are anti-government unless government power aligns with their political beliefs.
As a classical libertarian, I may not want to do hardcore drugs or patronize brothels, but who am I to tell you not to? The quality and service would probably be better anyways if it were legal with limited government oversight.
Those views are no longer held by many modern, self-proclaimed libertarians.
Many have traded social liberalism for political power and “freedom” from government. Unless, of course, the government power and enforcement aligns with their political ideology.
A party that tries to push morality on you is a party that will try to stay in power at all costs
Even if that means ending democracy in favor of autocracy.
And that’s exactly what the modern day conservative movement is trying to do. Call foul if they lose elections, proclaim victory and “MAGA!” if they win. Scare you into voting for them. Promise a better tomorrow while spending all their time not on policy progress, but on investigating their political opponents.
In fact, one of the first things many Republicans have said they want to do is impeach President Biden should they win back the House. They’re still not sure for what. But some have still promised to do it.
This new conservative movement has never been about making America great again. Nor has it been about removing the government from your daily life.
It has always been about power. Gaining it and maintaining it no matter the costs to America or its people.
