Letters by a modern St. Ferdinand III about cults

Beyond the media and pop culture nonsense about 'left vs right', the reality is that the 'left' is just as 'bad' as the right, demagoguery notwithstanding. The veracity of this is clear in every election. But little of it makes sense. There is no 'left' and 'right'. The terms are meaningless. There are only various strains of 'state socialism' and some groups still devoted to the 19^th century ideals of freedom and responsibility. That is it.

In North America and Europe during the election silly season full of promises and posturing, we see the that 'right' – whatever that might mean to people -- is associated with Christianity, racism, Nazism, and an unbounded lust to let the poor, the old, the disadvantaged and the clueless die naked, illiterate, diseased and starving on some black riverbank next to stinking water full of dead plant and fauna. The 'right' is always depicted as 'rich', privileged, part of the elite and obscene deniers of Mother Earth's pain, inured to social 'justice' and suffering from various strains of Islamophobic Homophobia.

None of the attributes of the 'right' make any sense. In every Western democracy in the past 30 years the 'right of center' governments – whatever that means – have outspent or come pretty close to out-debting their 'leftist' opponents. G.W. Bush, or Bushitler to many, was the godfather of spending. He doubled the US national debt in 8 years; ushered in trade restrictions on steel, lumber and agricultural products; initiated the Un-Constitutional and quite illegal 'TARP' bailout of Wall Street; did nothing to halt illegal immigration except building a few miles of fence; spent $70 billion on drug price caps for old people to help out his brother governor in Florida; ran off to the nearest mosques as often as possible to show that he loved Islam; increased spending on GlobaloneyWarming projects and ethanol moonshine production for cars; and expanded by over 40 % the budgets of education and health care. I would think that the Obama-worshippers would love Bush. The two had exactly the same policies. Obama is still in Iraq and Afghanistan and led a military coup in Libya.

But Bush's record is hardly unique. The same has or was replicated in Canada [Mulroney and now Harper the big spender]; Little Britain [Thatcher was a great spender contrary to myth, and so is Cameron]; France [Sarkozy]; Germany [right of center Merkel, a country in which real conservatism is long dead]; and Spain [Aznar]. Israel centered out for abuse and labeling as a 'fascist' state, is in reality run by coalitions which can only be called Statist. There is little which is 'conservative' about Israeli social policy. [Arabs much prefer to live there, than in Greater Arabia in part due to lavish welfare, free education and health care].

Every modern 'Conservative' or 'right wing' [aka vicious fascist] government in the West has pursued inter-alia; higher taxes, more regulations, more socialist programs and the creation of hysteria to impose more government controls on life and liberty. In America and now in Canada the 0.02% of crimes called 'sex offenses' which is a broad category indeed; have been used to whip up fear and loathing in a witch hunt. It is bizarre and stupid. The purpose is more budgets, more built prisons, more police control, registries of information made public which generate the consequences of vigilantism, reduced property values, more crime, and reduced safety [all studies confirm this]. Witch hunts are only used to buy votes, and they are just as likely to arise from 'right wing' parties as from the left. They are not conservative.

In the real world 'right wing' means nothing. Conservative ideals are neither right nor left. They are conservative ideals and they can cover a broad range. The basic fundaments are supply side economics, reasonable tax rates, private property, the right to free speech and privacy, common sensical and equally applied laws, some form of welfare in a limited government setting, contracts, enforceable regulations and contracts, and an ethos of Judeo-Christian ideals including free-will, responsibility, charity, a certain limited tolerance, and hard work. That program is neither left nor right, but simply an expression of what works best. It is hardly dogmatic with variations to be found in each category. Conservatism is at its core, pragmatism but pragmatism based on what works.

Statism is very different. It is an ideology of fantasy, emotion, rhetoric, hysteria, and assuming that people are dumb and useless. Statist ideals emanate from two origins; 1. Oriental despotism and 2. Communal theology including socialism, communism and variants of both such as fascism, and militarism. These concepts are the opposite of conservative theology. Statism is the replacement of conservative ideals around individuality, responsibility, free-will, freedom and market forces, with state power. The state becomes the most important actor. The cult of the state rules. It owns everything including your income. The individual, the family, the business, the guild, the association all become dependent upon the state. Statism replaces all other theologies and becomes not only the organizing principle of society, but a religion. If you object to Statism you will be branded, hunted, abused and discarded.

'Conservatives' are in most cases simply less petulant and dogmatic statists. This is the reality of our Western political-economy. In this sense there is no real difference between political parties. You can have Mickey Mouse leading the winning party and the inexorable statist expansion will still occur. Republicrats or the merger of 'Democrat's [the most undemocratic of Western parties] and Republicans [Res publica or the public rule meaning the Constitution was long lost on most in this party]. Obama is proof of the Mickey Mouse theory, portrayed not only as God, but even at times as centrist, mildly to the right of 'centre' and 'pragmatic'. Such appellations defy reality. But we should not be surprised. Anyone who is not a slobering Leninist can be portrayed as a 'conservative right wing evangelical racist phobic suffering red neck'. Seen in this light Conservatism has mutated into a slower Statism, a theology of state-love which differs only from the 'left wing' version in the amount of time it will take to reach bankruptcy. That is about the only difference between the 'left' and the 'right'. That is why most elections don't matter. BushBama ?