Letter to a Conservative Young Man

You might like to read the entire post from Mike Finley, a St. Paul writer.

I strongly wish we could trash the two labels because they constitute a political lie and they destroy any possibility of empathic discourse. I'm a traditional conservative in many ways. I'm an English major, for pete's sake — Old White Dudes Unlimited. I voted for Dole, gave money to McCain. In 1860 I would have been a Republican — anti-slavery, liberal on women's suffrage. In 1900 I would have been a Democrat — anti-child labor, pro-Immigrant. In 1940 I would have been at war, like the beautiful Hubert Humphrey, with the Dixiecrats — Jim Crow Demos who split to join Nixon's "Southern Strategy" — including Trent Lott. Today I am a Democrat — circumstances keep changing!

But my enemy is not conservatism (which is rooted in wariness of human nature) but corporate radicalism (rooted in laissez-faire, let-it-rip economics) — what was called fascism just before Hitler confused the term — government that works hand in glove with select large corporations, with amassed wealth. Our current government is "fascist" in the 1920s Italian sense of the word. It is a radical form of assisting the wealthy to increase and maintain economic power. This is not a good thing. It seeks to undermine democracy and turn the nation into a "market" and nothing more.