Talk radio

I don't believe in the "Fairness Doctrine" since it is far from fair. It is anti-free market because it seeks to insert opposing and extraneous opinions (usually liberal) into successful niche market (usually conservative) talk show radio programs. If no one wants to listen to liberal talk then the market needs to weed out what does not appeal and reward what does.

Having said that, though, I have stopped listening to virtually all the conservative talk shows that I used to listen to (even when I did not agree with them I enjoyed their vigor and perspectives). Why? Because I cannot stand more negativity and that is all they offer right now. One can be faithful and patriotic "party in the opposition" yet still be reasonable, proactive and encouraging toward those who have won the elections, and who now bear the burden of producing results in this dire, dire time.

Conservative talk radio, in general, has become too unmitigatingly negative toward President Obama, those who are in office, and the majority of the USA citizenry who voted for them, such that listening to them feels unAmerican to me. So just turn the dial if you disagree, as I have.

Honestly, I cannot listen to one more moment of how awful this country is, how ignorant the Democrats are, how wonderfully pious and believing one is in God (specifically your denomination of course), how many soldiers you have entertained, and how smart you were to start collecting gold and building your gun festooned bunker years ago, and how lazy people are who do not "get a job and pull themselves up by their own bootstraps." It's like a scratch on the record that makes the needle skip and fall back into the same place over and over and over again and just won't stop. Michael Steele sure has his work cut out for him with these talk show "frontmen" making the conservatives look like they are gloating over America's fall.

Case study and reflections on subversive humor

I’ve written before about “subversive humor.” Here is another example of the positive power of subversive humor. It is a mild example, but because millions can hear it used every week, I thought I’d point it out.

I like to listen to conservative talk radio and so in the past few years I’ve listened to Rush Limbaugh. By the way, this is back to my “roots,” since I listened in the 1970’s to Paul Harvey. People need to “monitor” my “behavior” and “tastes” by the decades to actually understand me, if you know what I mean.

On Fridays Rush has “Open Line Friday.” This is where he takes more phone calls from listeners than he does on other days. Actually, the point is that he takes calls from people who wish to discuss topics that are not necessarily what Rush is focusing on that day. For those of you who don’t listen to talk radio, the radio hosts tend to put forth a number of topics in each show, and invite callers about those topics, in order to maintain the discussion. People will hold on the phone for hours, and only a few actually get through on the air, because of the number of calls. So on Friday Rush has his “Open Line Friday” where he expresses willingness to take more calls plus they can be on topics that are not those that Rush is featuring.

This is where Rush is both droll and subversive in his humor. The tag line for Rush’s Open Line Friday is something like, “Friday is when we take your calls, even if we don’t care about the topic, but I will fake it.” It is funny and droll (I’ve discussed the merits of droll humor before on this blog) because he says it in a very expansive and over the top way, as if bestowing his graciousness, which is part of his shtick. (Shtick is a Yiddish word that describes a person’s entertainment routine, either deliberate or inadvertent, but usually deliberate; it is a nuanced form of the expression “do your thing,” where your thing is how you present yourself in an entertaining way). So it is always funny to listen to him when he introduces Open Line Friday, unless you suffer from excessive earnestness and do not understand subversive humor.

Rush is being subversively humorous for a few reasons. One is that there is a form of irony (I’ve discussed irony before) because in truth, obviously still few people get through and on air, and he still, obviously, has topics that motivate the callers. So by necessity of structure and through the use of subversive humor, Open Line Friday hardly results in hundreds of callers waxing eloquent on the merits of collecting postage stamps with butterflies upon them, or the best way to cook lima beans. Rush doesn’t have to “fake it” much because obviously listeners phone in with the topics they are listening to from Rush and that they, in return, want to contribute to. So there is both ironic humor (defined as “sounds good, but doesn’t quite turn out as advertised”) and subversive humor, which is to say something that sounds wrong and unsympathetic to the shallow listener, but is actually in a contrarian way, supportive of even the “aggrieved” person who misunderstands.

So someone who is biased not to like conservative radio and who listens to the Open Line Friday shtick is likely to quiver with outrage, thinking “What a blowhard faker! Rush is saying that he will ‘graciously’ fake listening to every caller’s topic, but he ends up taking calls on the same subjects he is speaking of, and not so many calls anyway!” But that is an example of someone not understanding either ironic humor or the underlying subversive humor.

The subversive humor “joke” is that the entire show, through its gravity, attracts a population that IS calling to discuss the topics that they wish to, all the time, every day, all week. So the “wink” of the subversive humor is that while Rush’s shtick is to “deign” to accept what he describes as calls he may have to fake to listen to, the entire show and success of his enterprise would not exist if he was not already doing that, and doing that without faking. Subversive humor sounds politically incorrect to those who don’t “get it,” and they miss that the very thing that the speaker is kind of mocking is what they are doing all along. Every successful talk radio show, yes, especially the conservative ones, open the trail for all others, because they demonstrate through their success the market share of people who want to listen to those types of topics and participate (even if not all listeners agree with every single thing). So when Rush says he is deigning to grant one show as being “for the callers to talk about whatever they want,” even if he has to “fake it,” he is also being subversively funny, in its positive form, since in the free market, his entire show would not exist unless people were listening to what they want to hear, and calling in to say what they want to say, every day, every show.

So detractors of Rush, let’s say a humorous liberal, would listen to his Open Line Friday shtick and possibly quiver with their self perceived “righteous anger” at his “elitist.” LOL! But look at the success, or rather “not success” of liberal talk show radio shows. The market shows that, in general, no one wants to listen. It’s not like the conservative talk show hosts are kidnapping listeners, or blocking access to liberals’ own shows. In fact, the conservative shows demonstrate a model of how it would work, if anyone actually wanted to listen to it.

Further and more essential to understanding subversive humor, one must understand that the humorist seems to mock the very persons they most value. Rush would not have a talk show if he did not value his listeners. Having a talk show is much more work and preparation than people think, and much energy and sweat goes into it. Rush could not fake it, even for that money, year after year, if he did not genuinely enjoy the audience. I speak from experience because preaching is something that is also based on a foundation of genuine liking, if not effusive love, for one’s entire audience. It really is impossible to generate the energy and sincerity if one does not like one’s audience. It is different from manufacturing, for example, where one can manufacture goods for faceless consumers that one may or may not like… but if you think about it, even that tends to fail if one does not at least understand and respect one’s customer base. So subversive humor often takes the form of sounding like one is being politically incorrect, or even insulting, to one’s own base, and it is only understood as a kind of “inside the family lingo.” Let me give you a variety of examples, some firmly subversive humor and some marginally subversive humor.

I had an older cousin, who was an adult when I was a baby. I hated to be grabbed and kissed by him when I was a toddler, even though I loved him, since I was a very shy and self contained child, so I would hide under the kitchen table when he first arrived to visit, so he could not reach me. He therefore got the nickname of “Kissing Cousin.” LOL. Now, someone all earnest and anal would think that by calling him “Kissing Cousin” we were “glorifying” “child abuse.” But that is classic subversive humor, where you call someone a nickname that seems to glorify something that is wrong, but is actually a family lingo type of thing that expresses not only affection but acknowledgement of an “awkward reality.”

That is why subversive humor is such a powerful political force. Subversive humor is not “taking the wrong side” but bringing into the air, in a shorthand and sound byte form, an awkward reality that is not endorsed by the speaker. Here is an example that blew up in people’s faces. Some Afro-Americans sought to destroy the sting of the “N-word” by using it among themselves as that kind of family lingo. But that never really worked because it was not directed into the general sphere of discourse. In situations like the N-word, one must both stop using it and denounce it completely (what I would recommend) or one must be subversive and use it loud and proud in private or public discourse, in order to rehabilitate it and remove the sting. The singer Patti Smith actually tried to do that with a song that linked the N-word to everyone she considered revolutionary, including Jesus and her grandma. It’s an interesting song from an album of hers that I like, and once in a while the tune runs through my mind. If everyone sought to use that model, then everyone should have been calling everyone else “N-word” in everyday conversation in every topic, until those who did use it for the shaming reason (the genuine bigots) would have been flooded with hearing “N-word” in everything from fashion shows to auto sales rooms, LOL. Then it would have died away as an incredibly overused word of slang. THAT is how subversive humor is defined, and its proper use.

I was married to a secular Jewish man, who belonged to a secular Jewish family, one extremely liberal in their politics. But despite being very liberal, they used two certain Yiddish terms to describe Afro-Americans that were not complimentary. So what did my ex-husband and I do? We used those two terms with glee, among each other and in conversation with his family. It works, let me tell you. It is very enlightening and shaming when one floods the airwaves with a term that is like those I am describing, reflecting it right back to those who use those terms. They stopped using those terms (at least in our presence) much faster than earnest politically correct lecturing would ever have accomplished. We continued to use those terms among ourselves because when one is a culture warrior, one continues to self reference where one comes from and what one has achieved. Those terms, like “Kissing Cousin,” remained affectionate and past success laden family lingo, not denigrating. We used the terms with glee when a wonderful Afro-American family moved across the street from us and our elderly neighbor worried if they would be “clean enough.” Yep, it’s rare that subversive terms ever get a rest and a chance to be shelved, in even these times.

Now, imagine my surprise, hurt and dismay when I found that my private conversations with my ex- were wiretapped and monitored, and the use of subversive humor as a positive for change was willfully misinterpreted and shared with others as “evidence” of our supposed “prejudice” and “past life karma.” When I discovered that this had happened, I left the Civil Rights active roster, because I became pulverized and humiliated, for reasons never given to my face, by the very people I have stood beside throughout it all. What they did to me is just as bad as if they took sound clips of “Kissing Cousin,” and used it to promote infant sex.

So even though it is too late, still I try to educate and correct people in their misperceptions. While the affection is gone, I do not give up in my efforts to get people to see the truth, and abolish the lies of genuine hate and prejudice. That’s why I have had this blogging on my mind for a while, and why I even bother. I hope that you have found this helpful, especially those of you, young people, who are not to blame for this situation.

Political tutorial: Part 2 Liberalism

Here is the tutorial about what it means to be a true liberal. I hope that you have read the Part 1 tutorial about being a conservative since I will reference the same concepts and analogies.


A genuine liberal is content with the faith structure, the government structure and the economic principles of his or her country. Thus in the United States that profile would be a liberal who believes in and loves America, validating that it is a nation of believers (though belief is not required), that it is a republic that is informed by democracy (the United States is not a democracy) and that the capitalism which fuels the economy is a valid and good model for this country. So, actually, a genuine liberal starts out with endorsing the same principles as a conservative regarding being in approval of the goodness of his or her country and its people. If the liberal does not believe in the goodness of the country and its people, then he or she is not a liberal but an alienated revolutionary. I’m not being insulting; I am helping you expand your vocabulary and understanding of people’s motivations, including your own. There is nothing wrong with being a revolutionary in the right place at the right time. For example, the United States was founded when as a colony it rebelled and had a revolution to break England’s rule of the colonies. That is why it is called the American Revolutionary War. Thus a revolution is usually called for when a genuine tyranny is in control, or when a colony has matured to the point where it seeks to break from the country in control. However, a revolutionary mindset is not called for when one seeks to extend rights within an otherwise just country. That is not only wrong but counterproductive.

Let me give the example of the American Civil War, known as the war against slavery. The southerners who believed in the continued ownership of slaves actually considered themselves justified revolutionaries. Why? They thought that the Federal government was taking away from them a “right,” which was the right to continue having slaves. So they thought they were noble, just as were the Revolutionary soldiers who created America by breaking from England, but in their case thinking that by breaking from the USA federation and forming their own states that they were retaining rights. This is why it is important to understand the difference between a revolutionary and a true liberal, and why I have to “back into” a definition of true liberalism by first showing what it is NOT. Liberals and conservatives, even though they did not call themselves that, were the ones to fight and defeat slavery in the United States. It was liberalism that identified and stimulated the intellectual and moral impulse to rid the country of slavery, and it was in alliance with conservatives that this was in fact accomplished. Somehow in the United States from the 1960’s onward the word “revolution” and the distortion of what is really means became a self destructive erroneous model of behavior that has become glorified, at the detriment of the very causes that people think they are espousing. Remember, in order to be intellectually honest you have to look at human historic record to identify revolutions, and assess whether they were beneficial or destructive. The American Revolution against the British was moral and constructive, giving birth to a great nation. However, who would argue that the South revolting against the North in order to protect slavery was a “good thing?” Do those of you who think social change only is achieved through “revolution” think that you would have cheered those revolutionaries, the slave owning Confederates? Likewise there were revolutions that resulted in Communist governments. Somehow modern “revolutionaries” are unable to see the terrible fallout of such unjust revolutions, regardless of the obvious and measurable outcomes (Stalin and his murder of millions in concentration camps, for example. Nothing the czars did was as bad as that, ultimately. Look also at Pol Pot in Cambodia and explain how that was a “good” revolution).

So the past two generations have been particularly brainwashed and “pumped up” by thinking that one must “fight for one’s rights” and “got to revolution.” They never see the difference between being a liberal advocate for rights and being a destructive and ultimately self destructive, “revolutionary.” Believe me, I saw them in my time, as they put on their berets and pose in front of the mirror thinking they look like “Che G,” yet have no idea about how to work “within the system” (a term they distained) in order to achieve what they wanted and even more.

Let’s use the analogy I presented in the Part 1 conservative blog post, where we had met our vegetarian conservative. Our vegetarian conservative valued the delicious and nutritious salad, and was cautious about the addition of new ingredients or the salad dressing, using discernment and good taste when he or she did make those decisions. What is our vegetarian liberal like? Now, here I am going to describe a genuine and true liberal, not a pseudo liberal, as most are today. A genuine liberal shares the same valuing of the salad as does the vegetarian conservative. In fact, the genuine liberal enjoys his or her salad so much that he or she wants to be sure that everyone else who wants or needs one can obtain one that is just as good. Thus, underlying all true liberalism is an active sense of “social justice.” This does not mean that the vegetarian conservative does not also want many people to also have salads. But the vegetarian conservative tends to focus on the kitchen where the salad is produced; making sure that there is enough for everyone who seeks it out. The vegetarian conservative does not tend to look around and identify who is in want or need of the salad. The vegetarian liberal is a restless soul who tends to look around to see who needs or wants the salad, but does not have it.

So how does the true vegetarian liberal feel? The vegetarian liberal loves his or her salad and thinks that it is so wonderful that all should have access to the same quality salad. The vegetarian true liberal does not turn against salad and hate it because it is not available to all. The vegetarian true liberal does not take salad away from someone else and put it in front of the one who lacked it, saying that is “fair.” And the vegetarian true liberal does not insult the producers of the salad, either those who went before us or the ones who are producing the salads now. The vegetarian true liberal is a “nudge,” to use a Yiddish term, where the liberal identifies a social justice need (such as the need for more people to receive their own equal qualities salad) and then nags the vegetarian conservative to find a way to make that done. Liberalism is frosting on the cake of conservatism; they are absolutely not in opposition.

Modern liberalism has developed a very unhealthy and unproductive rage. For some reason in modern times liberalism has lost its modesty and became “revolutionary elitist. “ Liberals used to be very humble souls, grateful for the goodness of what they have, and gently seeking to make the same goodness available to others. It was not for nothing that Hubert Humphrey was called “The Happy Warrior.” True liberals value and love what they have and seek to identify what we used to call the “disenfranchised” in order to bring them into the franchise, because it is good in there. Rather than hating the country or system that produced so much goodness, true liberals seek to bring more into the fold of enjoying the goodness. It is the techniques where the disenfranchised are brought into the fold where true conservatives and true liberals may have their legitimate disagreement, and that is where I had expected this country to evolve to at this point, rather than devolving into total meanness and stupidity of discourse and deed as it has. For example, I’ve pointed out in previous posts that the founders and original beneficiaries of the Civil Rights movement wanted the same thing that everyone else did: freedom, equality, a good home, a good job and a happy family. The elders, the ancestors, of modern Afro Americans loved their country and wanted to be enfranchised. They didn’t hate. These remarkable people didn’t hate even when they had every reason to, when they were oppressed in actual slavery. You can read many stories about slaves who escaped, who then worked at jobs to earn money that they then used to buy the freedom of their families. They did not hate the country and they did not hate the system. They fought and bought their way into being enfranchised. They did not view their children as a “burden,” but a blessing, even in those worst of times. For example, they struggled to get into the armed services, even serving in segregated units, not to have a “job,” but because they believed in their country as flawed as it was in regard to their treatment, and sought enfranchisement, not “revolution.”

Now here is where maniac conservatives have both consciously and unconsciously honed the hatred of many modern “liberals.” I alluded to maniac liberals in my previous Part 1 posting, and now I will allude to maniac conservatives. Maniac conservatives have a smugness and hardness at heart that can be described as follows. A vegetarian maniac conservative would like to wave around in front of the disenfranchised a serving of salad, saying, “Mm, mm this sure is good! If you worked hard you could have one of these too!” And then they would turn their backs and call themselves wonderful defenders of conservatism and capitalism. Such behavior is always outrageous and I well understand liberals who feel incited. Maniac conservatives like to bait the “have nots.” Maniac liberals, then, in response, want to tear down all that is good, like cutting the baby in half, to be “fair” and in retaliation. Unfortunately, rather than having reached a time where true conservatives and true liberals work together, disagreeing only on their methods, the dialogue is based on the rage generated by the self destructive energies of the maniac conservatives and maniac liberals, who are the puppet string pullers behind the scenes.

Another definition of a true liberal is a person who has a firm faith and moral ethos foundation. Without that liberals tend to be rudderless and reactive. That is one of the downfalls of genuine liberalism, their abandonment of traditional faith and moral strictures. Genuine liberals are enfranchised in their faith and moral heritage; they do not “invent a faith” as they trundle through life. Thus “new age” and other occult beliefs have taken root like weeds in the ethos of many liberals, and thus have led them totally astray. This is why they tend to make up out of the air ideas of “new rights” and “new grievances” as they stumble through life, untrue to their own heritage and the wisdom of those who came before. Modern liberals “make it up as they go along.” How have equal rights and civil rights gone, therefore, from being free and being able to support a family to having under age sex, tearing and tossing the baby out of the womb like a used snot rag, and then watching booty shake in your music video? I’m being serious. True liberals do not take their vegetarian salads and show children how to rub the pieces up their orifices while filming themselves on the cell phone. But all modern liberals care about is thinking of a “new right” or a “new outrage” that always seem to share one thing in common, which is sullying and destroying the actual foundational “salad.”

A genuine vegetarian liberal wants to expand the kitchen and expand the factory and expand the access so all who need and want the good high quality salad can obtain it. A false vegetarian liberal thinks of ways to roll the pieces of the salad in the dirt, to “get back at” those who created it in the first place, and to teach those who did not have the salad that “mm, mm, this dirt covered salad that WE invented and provided to you sure is good.” A genuine vegetarian liberal expands access to the salad and promotes peace of mind. A false vegetarian liberal makes sure that the stomach remains churning in “indignation” and rage, even as the person who had been denied the salad finally receives it. When a false liberal hands out a “right” or a “gift” to the disenfranchised, they ought to to hand out the little purple pill at the same time, because rather than promoting peace of mind and prosperity, they promote angst and continuing mental discord.

For that reason I stopped thinking of myself, personally, as a liberal many years ago.

Liberals have forgotten that they are supposed to expand the base that conservatism built, not warp or destroy it so that everyone has less of worth and worthiness in the end.

I hope that you find this helpful.

Pop culture supplemental material to Part I politics

Here is some “modern culture” supplemental information to what I wrote about in Tutorial 1 about conservatism. I mentioned that a great social upheaval that is, at the heart of it, an error is the demonizing of the concept that good people are “protective” and have “something to protect.” While protective parents, community leaders, bosses and governments were once viewed as ideals, in the grasping of a hedonistic “anything goes” “ideal” during the sexual and drug revolution of the 1960’s, someone who was protective became demonized into being “oppressors.” I have excerpted from a Bob Dylan song from the time where you can see what I am saying was actually codified in the so called “voice of the generation.”

http://www.sing365.com/music/lyric.nsf/My-Back-Pages-lyrics-Bob-Dylan/7ECC3BFD1A56ED8D4825696900282D21

Yes, my guard stood hard when abstract threats
Too noble to neglect
Deceived me into thinking
I had something to protect
Good and bad, I define these terms
Quite clear, no doubt, somehow.
Ah, but I was so much older then,
I'm younger than that now.

Great… not only did that fresh and “enlightened” generation demonize being protective as being the result of “deception,” but they also first declared “Good and bad, I define these terms.” Really? Really? I was there and trust me; no one was defining “good and bad” in the 1960’-70’s in any wise or responsible way.

Now, I was a freshman in college in 1971 and one of my dorm roommates, an Italian Catholic girl, just loved Bob Dylan. I can still imagine her clutching to her chest his “complete book of lyrics” (I seem to remember it as bright pink) much more fondly than the Bible. I, frankly, loathed Bob Dylan, except for one or two songs, including the one I quote from here. Yes, I really like the song “My Back Pages” even though I totally disagree with its premise. Mature people are able to do that. They can like one or two songs without giving the conceptual basis of the lyrics or the writer or singer a “Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval.” But she just loved, loved, loved him, and also clutched her book by Malcolm X “Soul on Ice” just to prove that she was “with it” and “hip” and “not just some white girl” and “down for the struggle.” She had no clue what she was actually reading or listening to, but that was the way it was. And in fact, as I’ve written about her before, she had a secret abortion that freshman year, and I stood by her, as friends do, even though I know she was doing a wrong thing. Everyone was doing a wrong thing in those times, and it only got worse now. Why? Because people think “having something to protect” is bad and deceptive, and they think that God is all “relative” and “Good and bad, I define these terms.” When it comes to having an ethos and a genuine humanitarian conscience, our country had a miscarriage in the 1960’s-1970’s, and its not because of the “oppressors.”

Anyway, I thought you’d enjoy seeing a pop culture reference to the very phenomenon that I described in my tutorial. By the way, yes, I did recently review Bob Dylan’s album. He of course went through his Christian born again conversion many years ago, and I think that has served him well. I’ve also read one of his recent autobiographical books. I remain troubled, however, by Christian evangelical and “born again” experiences because they emphasize individual salvation and de-emphasize the body of Christ of the union of faithful which, troubled as it is, the Catholic Church maintains. Thus there is not a continuum of a sense of collective responsibility among evangelicals and “born agains,” because all they emphasize is emulating, according to their individual perception, Christ, and they tend to view salvation as kind of a conga line that goes under the limbo pole, and each person “makes it” and is “saved,” or not. That is not a socially responsible or ultimately salvatory mindset, as reading the ENTIRE works of Jesus and the Apostles reveals. So when he was “born again,” half of me was of course glad, while the other half rolled my eyes. Being “born again” is a handy way to focus on one’s self, figuring that now “I’m good with God,” while letting one’s self off the hook for having been a communal bad example, and working against the true body of the Church who attempts to conserve the greater good.

That is one reason we have the abortion debacle that we have today. I have written about this before, and will do so again when I write the tutorial about liberals. Liberals have an excellent nose for hypocrisy. I was furious throughout the 1970’s and 1980’s (and remain so today, though obviously the damage is done) that evangelicals, “born agains” and “fundamentalists” break their own arms trying to pat themselves on the back as being the defender of the unborn babies, of being anti-abortion, while at the same time not doing one damn thing about putting their money where their mouth is and sponsoring children to be born or at least adopted using their own alms. For twenty years and more they attacked not only those who have abortions but also the Catholic Church, who is the place where adoption agencies and orphanages used to thrive. Never once did I see an evangelical step forward and stop an abortion by paying to bring the pregnant woman into their fold, to have the child, and to either raise the child or surrender it for adoption. So, as I have written before on this blog, that is why I am not too very impressed with “conversion” experiences, because I know, and I can tell you for a fact, that humans need to focus on a continual relationship with God and walking a just path within God’s entire community, and not glad happy slapping one’s back at having “made it” under the “limbo pole” of salvation. It is not too difficult for me to envision that procurers of abortions are side by side in hell with those who claimed such moral greatness in opposing abortion, but who never donated a dollar toward actually raising a child who would otherwise have been aborted. Trust me, that’s a very hard lesson many will learn when it is too late. They’ll pour money into political campaigns (and thus enrich lawyers and the media), but not actually bring the pregnant stranger into their home. This was particularly true in the terrible 1970’s and 1980’s, when even the quaint places for “wayward girls” fell away from support, so there was not an iota of encouragement from either side to have and financially support a live and living baby.

*Fuming* as I always do when recalling those times and looking at how its only gotten worse and not better.

Politics Tutorial: Part I, the Conservative

Politics Tutorial Part I: Conservative

I am going to explain here what true conservatism means. So this will be a tutorial to provide an accurate definition of a “conservative.” I will turn my attention to liberalism and being a “liberal” in part two. I always have young people on my mind, hoping this will be of benefit to them in particular, as they have been raised and educated in very ambiguous and erroneous times, thus they have been taught simply wrong definitions and historical perspectives of both concepts, of both conservatism and liberalism. But I also have to address the very followers and “believers” of each “side” too, because I have observed that you don’t even know what it actually means to claim to be a conservative, or to claim to be a liberal. Both sides have totally lost their integrity of cause as a result, since you claim to be what you no longer remember it is in truth. A kind analogy is like this. Everyone has probably seen a little boy, let’s say a three or four year old, who one day, in imitation of his father, tells someone “I’m a man too!” We all smile, and even maybe call him “Little Man” as a nickname, but while he is a male, and he is a little boy, he is not yet a man, nor does he even know all the fullness of definition of what it is to be a “man.” Likewise I see even the party leaders calling themselves “liberal” or “conservative,” and they don’t have a clue as to what that designation and position really means, no matter how much they think they are emulating their historical predecessors. So I hope to bring a strong light of clarity to this problem. Let’s start with conservatives.


The word “conservative” comes from the verb “to conserve.” For example, the early environmentalist aka “green” movement was called “conservation.” By the way, the “politically correct” movement in speech from using the term “conservationist” to “environmentalist” was an early sign of losing comprehension of one’s own terminology and implied actions, and has been at the root of much of the problems of radicalizing the “environmentalist” movement. Ironically by changing from “conservationists” to “environmentalists,” the result boomeranged to the opposite of what they wanted. But that is a subject for another tutorial. Back in the early days of the “conservationist” movement (of which I was a part and an observer), the philosophical “sorting out” that we did was to decide whether we were “conservationists” or “preservationists.” Everyone agreed that the difference is that conservationists do “conserve,” as in “protect” or “accumulate” or “judiciously utilize” while preservationists “preserve” in the sense that they will not use what they have, but maintain it in its “original state.” Thus those who decided to work in the new area of designating historic buildings and areas and restoring them chose, correctly, the term “historic preservationists.” Historic preservationists identify and restore buildings or even neighborhoods to how they appeared at a particular meaningful time, and then they defend that restoration against change or degradation. Conservationists correctly realized that they could only rarely be “preservationists,” since the earth is, by definition, the place where humans and animals live, where progress takes place, and change happens, including the hopefully judicious and prudent use of natural resources. So here is the important point. Many people think that to be a “conservative” means to be “frozen in time.” That is not true. A conservative is a realistic who embraces change, but only while “conserving” the base on which the change would be implemented. In politics this means that a conservative is a person who protects the basis of the, in our case, American way of life and the American nation and mandate as a whole. In lifestyle a conservative is a person who protects his family and livelihood. He does not do this by sealing the family up in a bomb shelter; that would be a preservationist LOL. A conservative man or woman has as their primary purpose the protection and thriving growth of their core family, their core beliefs and their core method of making a living.


So a conservative is constantly concerned with and is constantly checking all proposed “changes” against a mental evaluation of whether that change is consistent and protective of the good foundation upon which the change is proposed. A vegetarian conservative, for example, would think carefully about what salad dressing he or she is adding to their carefully constructed salad. A vegetarian conservative understands that the nutrition and the goodness of their meal is the salad, constructed to their taste using wholesome ingredients. The “change” is the salad dressing, and a vegetarian conservative considers carefully what dressing they add to their salad, seeking only to improve upon the salad and not to harm or ruin it. So a really conservative vegetarian might cautiously add oil and vinegar, enough for flavor and moisture, but not to add calories, fat, artificial ingredients, or worst of all, a repellent taste. A kind of borderline conservative vegetarian might dump huge globs of high fat ranch dressing, making it delicious if he or she only wants to taste the dressing and not the salad ingredients LOL. They are still a conservative, even then, because they still eat the nutritious salad, valuing it, even though they just taste and calorie bombed it LOL.

This is why a political conservative is constantly checking any proposed political change, no matter how worthy that change is, against the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and also ways of handling unintentional consequences and fallout of even good changes. Suppose that the vegetarian conservative decides to add beets to the salad. Would he or she just drop the glass jar of beets into the middle of the salad? Would he or she buy a whole fresh beet, and then throw it unwashed and unpeeled right into the middle of the salad? Um, no, unless the conservative is engaging in some sort of performance art (and conservatives tend not to make statements using absurdist style performance art). No, the vegetarian conservative washes, peels and slices the right amount of beets to enhance the salad, not to “make a point” of “change for change’s sake.” Further, the vegetarian conservative makes sure that he or she has prepared sufficient beets for their whole family or all their friends and more so, has provided alternatives for those who just cannot abide the taste of beets. This is why TRUE political conservatives constantly, consistently and carefully assess any proposed change, no matter how judicious and beneficial, against the backdrop of what they are conserving, which is the United States, its freedom, its protections, its stability and its impact on families and culture, including genuine freedom of worship.

Thus a real vegetarian conservative might drive moderate conservatives or liberals crazy while they do this assessment. A real vegetarian conservative, when presented with a newly discovered “vegetable” to “try out” is likely to do a lot of thinking and research before serving it up to his or her family. A vegetarian conservative, if given a newly found vegetable, the “zork” let’s say, by a world traveling neighbor, and being told that it cures cancer, prevents pimples and removes that excess belly fat would be very, very, VERY cautious. A vegetarian conservative would carefully consider the implications of BOTH scenarios, if the zork was indeed a new miracle food, what would be the impact of that success (might kids get addicted? would it destroy the corn industry?) or the alternative that it is not true and possibly even dangerous (thus the vegetarian conservative is glad they took the time to research and think about it before biting into it and serving it to their family or friends). Meanwhile the less understanding moderate conservative or liberal might be yelling insults at the vegetarian conservative while the vegetarian conservative is pondering, since they do not understand the sober responsibility of the vegetarian conservative. They just view it as “resistance to change” and the vegetarian conservative being “frozen in the past.” While the vegetarian conservative is evaluating the zork, the moderate conservative or liberal runs out and buys ads on the TV and Internet accusing the vegetarian conservative as being “against change” and having “issues” because they won’t immediately embrace the zork.

No matter what their party or political designation, I argue that every United States President before the last century was a conservative. Even if they had kooky ideas and took risks, each President since George Washington, up until the most recent of times, had first and foremost the “conservation” of the Republic of the United States of America as the cradle of goodness and freedom. In fact, I would argue that until recently, every American was a conservative, whether they realized it or not, especially once they reached a mature age. In fact, that was a common pithy saying when I was growing up. People always joked, and also explained, that liberalism is a youthful experiment and point of view, until they grow up and have “something to protect.” A wise middle aged conservative woman once explained that to my extremely liberal ex-husband, saying “If you had something to protect, you’d be a conservative.” Somewhere along the line, I’d say in the 1960’s, having something to protect became a dirty word. The pop psychology and depressive sex and drug culture argued that protecting is “bad” and having nothing to protect is “good.” Conservatives were demonized as being “against change.” Does that sound familiar? Conservatives are not against change. Conservatives tend to be the drivers of prudent GENUINE change that also preserves all that is good and free about the base.

You need look no further than the great President Abraham Lincoln. As every student knows Abraham Lincoln fought the Civil War on the side of “preserving the Union.” Lincoln did not invade the South in order to overthrow slavery. Lincoln opposed slavery using sound conservative principles. Lincoln refused to allow the Southern states to claim “States’ rights” in order to maintain their slavery and further Lincoln refused to allow the states to secede from the Union (in other words, break away from the United States and form a separate country) in order to maintain their slavery. See, if maniac liberals went back in time and tried to advise Lincoln in the beginning of the crisis, they would leap onto the Constitution and insult it, saying that it “should never have had slavery in the first place,” and that “the United States is a bad country” and would have agitated for actions that weaken or even destroy the base of the country, rather than using the conservative solution, which IS forceful and it IS change, but it seeks to protect the Union, not destroy it, while doing a great good. Maniac liberals would have attacked the fact that the USA was formed when slavery was a dreadful but prevalent practice, they would have attacked “states rights” as a whole, just because the seceding states sought to misuse that right, rather than use sober and deep understanding of the accurate and good basis for the country, its foundation, and reinforce the return to the Union without losing rights in the course of gaining rights. Thus Lincoln succeeded in one of the greatest changes in the history of the country, the abolition of slavery, exactly by being a conservative, who said, basically “Yes, states rights, but not those rights, and yes states rights, but not at the cost of the Union, not by fracturing our country.” Maniac liberals would have wanted the entire Constitution and States rights thrown out, and thus would neither have defeated slavery nor preserved the goodness of the nature of the United States. By the way, don’t worry, when I write about liberals I will criticize maniac conservatives too!

A genuine conservative does not need to be “schooled at Yale” or attend the correct mind expanding socials to be “smart enough.” For example, our vegetarian conservative did not have to learn how to make a healthy salad by watching a cable network, or going to a Culinary Institute. Genuine conservatives are informed by both their natural intelligence and their instincts, founded on love. Liberals love too, but I will explain the difference in the second tutorial. Genuine conservatives have an ardent love of their country and the traditional family as its basis, even if neither has been particularly kind to them in their personal life. Plenty of conservatives grew up in the school of hard knocks. The difference is that they do not feel that entitles them to be victims with a chip on their shoulder. This is because they recognize that stuff happens in life, but it is not an indictment of life, or their great country, or the importance of the family. For example, our vegetarian conservative might have a bad salad at a restaurant one day, but he or she does not now condemn all salads, or all restaurants. A genuine conservative recognizes that if he or she had freedom curtailed unfairly, or they grew up in a sad family situation, that is all the more reason to “protect” and “conserve” the right of everyone else to have a different experience, a positive and fruitful experience. Now, the “how” this is accomplished is where authentic conservatism has come unraveled and warped in modern times, resulting in jingoistic knee jerk reactions by many modern so called conservatives toward genuine suffering. I deplore modern conservatives who do not seem to understand compassion. That is not how it used to be, even in times when social services were absent. True conservatives had genuine social compassion, and they used to be wise and prudent about how to achieve it. I cannot say that they have that knowledge now. This does not make liberals “correct.” It means that there is a huge gaping hole in America that both sides are worsening, not bettering. Not too long ago even self proclaimed liberals were conservatives. I sometimes think that Hubert Humphrey was the last true liberal, who was a conservative who promoted change and social justice. Ah, yes, that is my hint about the definition of a true liberal.

I hope that you find this useful.