JEB BUSH AND COMPASSIONATE CONSERVATISM

As the presidential candidate hopefuls line up and give speeches, we hear more and more oxymorons. So far, the master of that game is Jeb Bush. His announcement speech was one contradiction after another. He took a page out of his brother’s playbook when he declared himself a compassionate conservative. Every thinking person knows there is no such thing. I often reference the ultimate conservative, Ayn Rand, in articles I write. She has become an icon of conservative ideology flattered by imitation. When Jeb Bush labels himself as a compassionate conservative, he labels himself as a follower of Ayn Rand, an imitator. Although we can easily identify the promoters of her political philosopher, there is reluctance on their part to admit an association. Congressional representatives Paul Ryan and Ron Johnson from Wisconsin, the now deposed Eric Cantor, the financiers of political campaigns, the Koch brothers are prime examples. She bases her entire philosophy on one idea, which is individualized greed; if I have mine, to hell with you. You cannot a compassionate conservative because there is no such thing. If you are not a productive member of society, you should not benefit in any way from society, which is Darwinian! As Herbert Spencer, a Darwin contemporary philosopher, summed up his ideas, “it is survival of the fittest”. Greed is core to conservative political philosophy. A majority of people knows and hates greed. Even conservatives do not want to identify themselves as being greedy, so they lie by calling themselves compassionate conservatives. Don’t they know it is a contradictory expression? They are admitting their shame. Using an oxymoron in not the only way they cover their shame. Conservatives completely avoid the subject of welfare in their rhetoric, or it comes up in a stilted way. Conservatives, those who can afford to pay for their health care, call for Congress to repeal and replaced universal health care or Obamacare, which by definition requires government intervention to pay the cost for those who cannot afford it. I defy anyone to tell me what would replace it. Their answer to that question is so obvious; they would replace it with free enterprise medicine. As Ayn Rand says, it is simple, if you cannot afford the medical care you need you should not have that medical care; you die; so what—you don’t count. As a society, conservatives and liberals alike know this; however, conservatives don’t care. In contrast, liberals saw this, which is why we have Obamacare. Nothing in biology makes sense without understanding evolution and Darwin’s contribution to the subject. Also, that understanding has to include how in many ways out humanization is causing us to turn our backs on the survival of the fittest. As parents, we feed and care for our children but also we feel an obligation to feed and care for those adults who are not capable of doing so, the injured, the mentally retarded, and old, etc. Humans know what leads to suffering and know the consequences of suffering, and act to prevent it. Conservatives, in a universal voice call to destroy social security when they know that program ended old age poverty; so why do they want to destroy it. There is only one answer; if you are too old to work, you no longer count. Of course, emotions are a guide to survival; however, conservatives, like “survival of the fittest”, know no misery or cruelty. If a person for any reason, including old age, cannot feed him or herself, they starve to death—que sera, sera. URL: firetreepub.blogspot.com Comments Invited and not moderated