Opinion—Stop calling them Conservatives. They are Regressives.

I was a late adopter of Facebook. I didn’t see it as being useful to me making money, and I am all about making money while I’m physically and mentally capable of making money. If I get to the point where I’m a burden on society, I’m not going to want to be a part of society….

I finally joined Facebook in 2011. Here I am. When I started getting most of my news from Facebook links and Google News, I decided to stop paying $100 a month for cable service. That was September 2013.

What is most important to me is that I can connect with like-minded people who hold similar political views to my own. I was a Republican from my first vote in 1976 to 2013, which meant that I was a gay Republican, and an openly gay Republican from 1993 to 2013. I know. Oxymoron.

Finally, after the 2012 presidential election, I gave up on the Republican party. Sure glad I did. They are not conservatives. They are simply mean, hateful people. A Facebook friend, Charles Fernandez, calls them Regressives. I think he’s spot on. Here’s Charles in his own words:

They are not conservatives but are Regressives and many Regressives are also White Nationals.

Stop calling them Conservatives!
What do they want to conserve?

Our language and political identity has been usurped and demeaned by Radical Right Wing Reactionary Regressives. The real dichotomy is between Progressives and Regressives; NOT Liberal and Conservative. We must make a winning effort to take control of the language of debate.

What are so called conservatives trying to conserve? Certainly not the 10,000 year habitable “Goldilocks’” environment for humans, nor the 224-year-old separation of church and state, nor the 49 year old voting rights act, nor the 102-year-old progressive income tax, nor the 81-year-old social security safety net, nor the 41-year-old right to privacy. These are all things under attack by ironically named “conservatives. ”Republicans are not Conservatives but Regressives; radical reactionaries seeking to return to the days of untrammeled white male heterosexual privilege, Jim Crow, non unionized – substandard living wages, gilded age extravagance, bloated military industrial cold war excesses, and a Norman Rockwell vision of America and the world rooted in fantasy.

They claim to be Economic Conservatives. But what Conservative in their right mind would budget money for buying private airplanes and yachts, hundred million dollar mansions, and 181 million dollar paintings when the roof was leaking, the car needs tires, the electricity is intermittent, and the kids can’t read. Our infrastructure, roads, bridges, rail, power production and transmission, and our schools are in dire need of repair. Interest rates are at an all time low. Is it not the essence of conservatism and good business to conserve and protect what you have and not go on a profligate spending spree with money you don’t have. And every good business knows that when interest rates are at an all time low it is time to invest and grow. Since when is living beyond your means conservative? It is the very definition of a profligate regressive.

Progressive are true Conservatives seeking to preserve the core American values:
Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.

Life: More than 45,000 Americans die from a lack of health care. Health care is no longer a doctor with a little black bag making house calls for $5 or a chicken. In order to provide the miracles that modern medical science has conceived we need a health care system that makes it possible to provide those services to all. Conservatives demand personal responsibility. But NOT having insurance or the means to cover bills and relying on government to pay the emergency room bills is the opposite of conservative dogma. Yet they prevent a responsible system where all pay a bit more progressive tax to fund a single payer system. And such a system is economically conservative, as it would save billions over insurance costs while providing a better chance of life to the 45,000 Americans who have died each year from a lack of health care.

It is the Regressives who are cutting the social security net especially the reactionary push to drastically cut food stamps that overwhelmingly feed hungry children, the sick and the old, with very little fraud. In an attempt to undo Medicaid they cut the funding for fraud enforcement that led to a drastic increase in fraud, thereby fueling the anger at Medicaid thieves and the program as a whole. Progressives, where elected, have increased funding and drastically cut the fraud.

Since when is it NOT Conservative to CONSERVE the Environment by opposing fracking, dirty tar sands, soft terrorist targets like pipelines and unsustainable nuclear energy, resisting renewable energy etc. Of course it is the fossil fuel fueled Regressives. Clean air and water are essential to LIFE!

It is the Regressive NeoCons who campaigned for foreign wars costing thousands of American lives and in the process exploding the deficit by not putting the cost into the budget and providing for it with progressive taxation.

Liberty: Taxation without representation caused by Regressive gerrymandering congressional districts that enabled them in 2012 to win 33 more House of Representative races while losing the popular vote by 1.2 million votes. Regressives are trying their best to suppress the vote with multiple obstructionist measure’s that make it difficult or impossible to vote, in in effect denying voting rights to many poor people, minorities, women, old and young people? Denying voting rights to millions who have paid their debt to society is to exclude them from civil society. Their rational of voter fraud to deny voting rights is THE fraud, as it does not exist in any other meaningful way.

Is it not a basic right, a fundamental liberty to have dominion over ones own body? Has it not been long established that we have the right to congregate include forming unions. Regressives are attacking Unions. Regressives are suppressing free enterprise by establishing rules that empower and enable monopoly crony capitalism at the cost of millions of small family and individual entrepreneurs who both hire and buy locally, while oligarchs off-shore of jobs to low wage countries and stash the profits in tax havens to avoid taxes. Working full time and just covering the minimum costs of sustenance; a roof over your head, food on the table, and a shirt on your back, is that not the definition of slave? What kind of Liberty can one have with Regressive backed Slave wages?

The Pursuit of Happiness: Regressives are cutting funding for education and the long established right to a free public first class education that is the key to success in the modern world? Is it not a conservative right to believe in GOD in your own way, or not? Is this belief Not fundamental to personal happiness? Regressives are trying to establish a Christian America in an a-historical, anti-American “crusade.” Freedom to believe and practice a religion of your choice or no religion, unencumbered by the dictates of Government was a major reason the new world was populated by Europeans fleeing from religious oppression. It is enshrined in our Constitution. Jefferson, Adams, Madison, all wrote and supported a strict separation of Church and State. Washington religiously practiced that separation by never joining a specific church while attending many. This is a conservative tradition 400 years old and fundamental to happiness. It is Progressive’s who support this right and traditions, and religious fundamentalists supported by Regressives who are threatening it. Regressives oppose the right to marry whom you choose? What pray tell is more important to happiness than the right to love whom you choose.

This list could go on for pages but one thing is certain, it is emphatically not Progressives standing in the way of the Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness. I suggest that we start using this terminology,

Stop calling them Conservatives. They are Regressives.

Thank you, Charles.