Conservatism doesn’t work

Dear Chase Cooper, \nPerhaps you have been so busy over the last seven years that you haven’t had time to read, watch or hear the news lately, but your brand of conservatism has been all but given free reign under your President George W. Bush, despite your weak attempt to label him a liberal a couple of weeks ago – a mostly compliant Congress and an increasingly conservative judiciary. It seems you would rather wax poetic about what conservatism should be in theory than look at what your form of government has actually brought upon this country.\nPerhaps deep down you do realize that American conservatism, based on the premise that “government doesn’t work,” has become a self-fulfilling prophecy when said government at all levels is stacked with cronies and people who don’t want their government to work. In just one example, lead-painted toys have been slipping under the radar of a product safety commission being run by a conservative crony who actually argued to Congress that the agency she runs doesn’t need more funding to protect our children from lead poisoning in toys, even after Congress offered to supply the extra funding and manpower.\nIronically, there are conservatives in Congress who argue that government shouldn’t be giving health care to sick children who can’t afford health insurance, or raise the minimum wage which would help more people participate in that wonderful “free market” when they have more buying power. Yet, with a straight face, they also argue that government should be devoting resources to spying on our private phone conversations and torturing random people because of the ambiguous threat of “terrorism.”\nActually, it seems that your holy vision of American conservatism and that evil scourge of Communism share something in common: Both are great in theory, but when the human factor is introduced, both of them eventually drive their countries into ruin. No amount of wishful thinking is going to change that.