This is where my political beliefs and principles come from:



What did this man do wrong? In what way did he fail, that he would deserve such a thing? Show me this man's immorality, his sin, that justifies what has happened to him and his family.

I'm beginning to think that the root problem with the conservative movement is that, despite the rhetoric, it never has been about "small government" or even about "personal responsibility." Individuals can and surely do believe that. But the movement in aggregate certainly does not.

The movement fights every pay increase. It passes bankruptcy legislation which simultaneously makes it harder for individuals to declare bankruptcy and easier for corporations and protects corporations from lawsuits by individuals seeking to recover some of their losses. The conservative movement touts "free trade" as some great way to not only make everyone richer but also to expand democracy when it does neither. "Free trade," in the real world, simply means making it easier to move jobs from the USA to countries that don't have the same protections for their workers or the same standards for products.

And the conservative movement paints those who are poor as lazy, immoral, lacking in character. Even when you work for a company for 34 years, retire because of a disability and then lose your pension and health insurance through no fault of your own.

And when Democrats say that perhaps it's time for American citizens to band together so these things don't happen, the conservative movement shrieks "socialism" or some such nonsense. When people stop fearing one thing long enough to start calling for change, then it's time to trot out homosexuals, or immigrants, or to come up with another unfounded terrorism "alert," or to pretend that they care about abortion.

All of that in order to protect the wealth and privileges of an extremely small minority.

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