Conserving what?

I have to thank a My Free Country fan for making me the subject of his April 10th blog at http://www.astoria-rust.blogspot.com/. Interestingly, his previous day's posting took conservatives to task for, well, not being very conservative. The reckless deficit spending of the Republican leadership has many rank and file conservatives upset as well.

Let me be clear, the liberal and conservative terms are more trouble than they are worth. Instead of trying to get your head around these slippery terms that divide us unnecessarily, we should categorize political ideologies in a way that has concrete and logical meaning: are you authoritarian or anti-authoritarian? Both camps include both types, which is why Americans are screwed no matter who's in charge.

I get more fan mail from self-described conservatives, and that's probably because they've always been the primary audience for my writing. But I get equally laudatory emails from self-described liberals. I speak to the anti-authoritarians in both camps.

Since the party of fiscal conservativism started spending money like there's no tomorrow, many self-described liberals and conservatives are confused. The relevant question to ask is: What are conservatives trying to conserve?

My conservative fans are trying to conserve resources, values and traditions, including the traditional American right to be left alone. The problem is that the people who control the conservative camp are trying to conserve only one thing: power. That's why conservatives are right wing, which describes the side of the aristocracy and monarchy in parliamentary proceedings leading up to the French Revolution.

The other problem is that the conservative leadership has misrepresented liberals when they tell their rank and file that liberals are liberal with government spending and power. In fact, liberals desire to be liberal with freedom - that's where the term comes from - liberty. Real liberals want to see people left alone to live their own lives just as much as the rank and file conservatives.

But the liberal camp suffers from the same disease that's crippled the conservatives. The liberal camp is controlled by people who want to be liberal with just one thing: the use of power. You can understand why many liberals fall for this because the supposed "free market" has generated such problems that those who love freedom often think some exercise of government power is needed for the basic defense of rights.

Of course, as my writing frequently illustrates, we have no free market in America or globally, and the conservative leadership doesn't actually want one either. Otherwise they'd be hacking away at the unfree market foundational controls of our economy: our central bank monopoly, the corporate personhood doctrine that shields corporations from accountability, and drug prohibitions, especially the prohibition on hemp, which keeps farmers from competing in untold numbers of industries.

With only two choices before them (liberal or conservative), most Americans pick a team based on stylistic preferences. Are you a freak or a square? Do arguments for social freedom resonate more with you, or arguments for economic freedom? Anyway, it's a moot question because the leadership of both camps have no intention of delivering real freedom of any kind.

There you have it folks. The left-right, liberal-conservative divide is a trap. It's the oldest trick in the book (Machiavelli's book, in fact - remember divide and conquer?)

So stop trying to rationalize your membership in one camp and stop trying to blame those in the other camp for all the problems in our country. The authoritarians in both camps are the problem. Freedom is the solution.