By Bill Mefford
Of course the Republican National Convention this week is going to be filled with lies – it’s the trump show. donald trump plans on speaking all four nights of the Republican National Convention because, naturally, as a narcissist he cannot stand for others to steal the limelight even when they are speaking about him! But even when others are given the mic for very short periods of time they will try and convince the United States that conservatism is the only force that can save us; that conservatism best sums up the values and principles of our faith (and by that they mean only Christianity) and the collective belief in freedom and equality in this country. They are wrong.
In fact, they have always been wrong. Just look at the 20 years of this century. This century has been largely controlled by conservatives: 12 years in the Executive, all but two years in control of one or both chambers in Congress, and clear control of the Judiciary (which directly comes from control of the Executive). And what has this gotten us? Let’s list:
The biggest terrorist attack on the US in history and which could have been prevented had Bush read his daily briefing (something he shares with the current Idiot-in-Chief)
Two complete financial meltdowns
Record deficits joined with tax cuts for the wealthy joined with increased funding for military contractors
Privatization of government services like education, prisons, costs associated with the courts, social services, etc. which have all resulted in lessened quality of the services rendered and massive corruption
Torture
State-sponsored terror against immigrants
Increased legitimacy of hate groups and homegrown terror groups
Lessening of the stature and leadership of the United States in the world
Rise of nationalism
Climate change on the brink of passing the line of no return
This is just SOME of what has resulted from conservative control. And now they want four more years. Even if the current occupant of the White House was not a monstrous, narcissistic, racist, misogynistic, incompetent buffoon, we would be absolutely be beyond stupid to give conservativism four more minutes, much less four more years.
However, they will be begging for four more years. And the sad thing is that there is a significant number of voters who look at the list above and think, “hell yeah! Gimme four more!” Stupid is as stupid does.
But some so-called conservatives and independents base their votes on lies; lies that the Republican Party has convinced them they need to feel safe and moral and protected. I am here to tell them, to tell us all, that those are lies. In this post, I will focus on lie number one.
LIE #1: Conservative Republicans are pro-life
No, you are not. You might be against granting a woman the right to choose whether she wants or needs to end her pregnancy, but you are most definitely NOT pro-life. Far from it. If you cared about life you would want to address some of the factors that impact a woman’s decision to end or sustain her pregnancy, especially economic factors. But pro-lifers are typically against raising the minimum wage, they are against universal health care, they are against granting workers collective bargaining and safe working conditions, they are against social services like WIC and food stamps; they are against everything that would ensure a child experience fullness and safety and opportunity in life. This is not pro-life. This is pro-death.
Further, pro-lifers typically support torture, the death penalty, and unlimited access to guns. The president who touted a “culture of life” (George W. Bush) is responsible for the longest war in American history and the most illegal. Hundreds of thousands of people died because of his stupidity and lack of concern for life, while he easily carried the pro-life banner. Being pro-life is a joke.
But the Republicans created the pro-life position as a cultural construct in order to revive the party. Institutionally, evangelicals could not have cared less about abortion when it was made legal in 1972. The Southern Baptist Convention supported it at the time and only the Catholics made any real effort to stop it. In the mid to late 70s right wing activist Paul Weyrich convinced a bunch of right-wing pastors to break with Jimmy Carter – who was and is an evangelical – but they did so because their private schools, which had been started as a way to avoid integration (conservatives are racist too), were rightly in danger of being taxed. These pastors organized not to stop abortion; they organized to protect their racist private schools. They later used the issue of abortion to shame people away from the Democratic Party so that they could ultimately get tax cuts for themselves and sustain for themselves access to power. It worked.
If you are sincerely devoted to stopping abortion then the Republican Party has used you and you have let them. If you are sincerely devoted to stopping abortion then know that that stance has little to do with being authentically pro-life. If you want to be authentically pro-life then you have no choice but to vote Republicans out of power because they have become the party of stupidity and death. It is far more congruent to be pro-choice and pro-life because by creating more opportunities for poor people, by honoring the wisdom and decision-making power of doctors and women, by implementing personal choices to become more collective in the way we raise up new generations of children through love and safety; these are the ways we reduce the number of unwanted pregnancies and truly honor and protect the lives of children and women. Stopping abortion has little if anything to do with protecting life and it never has.
Republican conservatives are as far away from being pro-life as the east is from the west. Being pro-life is entirely a social, political, and cultural construct created and sustained to maintain power for conservative elites like Jerry Falwell Jr. and Franklin Graham. If you want to be pro-life then be pro-life: adopt children, be for government-sponsored social services and against further inflating the military budget which primarily goes into the already-stuffed pockets of military contractors, be against the death penalty, be against war and torture, be for sex education in schools, be against mass incarceration, be for public education, and be against unlimited access to guns. There is so much to do to create a genuine culture of life and absolutely none of it is supported by Republican conservatives. Don’t be duped. They are hoping you will believe their lies.