JR'S Free Thought Pages
No Gods ~ No Masters
~ No Bullshit
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JR'S Free Thought Pages |
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Foreword By JR. Sept 2025 The strong do as they wish and the weak suffer as they must – Thucydides Leave politics aside for a moment, if you can. What does the word conservative means to people outside the abominable political environment that entails the emergence of fascism and other forms of authoritarianism? For me personally while disregarding the dysfunctional political connotations, it implies respecting long standing traditions of civility, decency, the golden rule and fairness in addition to caution when it comes to dramatic change and most importantly valuing truth, honesty, generosity and maintaining caution, skepticism and proper ethical behavior. The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines conservatism as “tending or disposed to maintain existing views, conditions, or institutions; marked by moderation or caution; and marked by or relating to traditional norms of taste, elegance, style or manners.” Within the political realm, does any of that apply to so-called conservatives today? Has it been true throughout history? On both counts with rare exception I say no. Change is of course inevitable and without it we would not even have some of the minor progressive advancements in science and what we now falsely call “democracy”. Certainly our anything goes for profit globalized fascistic kamikaze capitalism is not synonymous with prudence, fairness, freedom, justice, egalitarianism and any semblance of democratic process in our farcical money driven elections.
Crypto-fascist Conservatives Goldwater, Ray Gun, Buchanan, George W Bush and Herr Trump (but where are Lyin’ Brian (On the take) Mulroney, Tricky Dick Nixon, Stephen (Praise Jesus) Harper, Hitler and Mussolini?) Sadly in the real world, conservatism is not about holding to ethical principles whether construed politically or within one’s personal life. Throughout history generally it’s been about preserving cruelty, greed, acquisitiveness, aristocracy, elitism [1], entitlement, hierarchy, authoritarianism, selfishness and raw power maintained by a blood-soaked violent militaristic police and prison state. Conservatism is everything that an anarchist is not. Conservatism is incompatible with real freedom, compassion, community, sharing, empathy, universal prosperity, civil society and caring for our worst off. It is a destructive medieval draconian system of economic disparity and prejudice that is founded on deceit, having no place in a genuine bottom up democracy. From the pharaohs of ancient Egypt to the self-regarding brutal thugs of ancient Rome to the glorified religious tyrants, popes, warlords of medieval and absolutist Europe, racist police state fascists of Germany and Italy to the contemporary modern 20th and 21st century vulture capitalist classes and banking mafia who invariably blame the victim (it’s your fault your parents are paupers) there have been self-appointed tyrants who have tried to set themselves up as an aristocracy. This is the undemocratic model that exists and has existed throughout human history; the unvarnished truth is real democracy is a sham. Waste of money police, prisons and the military if needed for the crime of poverty and homelessness are set up by these conservative bastards. Homelessness, for example, can be solved easily: provide these destitute people with the help they need and put a roof over their heads (Double DUH)! George Carlin suggested turning the decadent golf courses into homes for the homeless and killing all assholes. A just egalitarian society has no need for cops, cages and hired killers for the state called “soldiers”. Conservatives and now faux liberals (classical or traditional liberalism has been dead in the water for decades) are the self-appointed hyper-capitalists and corrupt corporate oligarchs who write all the rules and laws to serve their interests who for the past four centuries have been rabid Godzilla capitalists who call themselves entrepreneurial wealth creators (aka con men, swindlers and hucksters) obsessed with money – all for themselves. We’re informed by these conservative criminal cretins that “there is no alternative” to parasitic capitalism (the infamous TINA principle – the quintessence of dogmatism) who are bailed out every few years with trillions of dollars of government corporate welfare money to save their sorry asses. Their sense of entitlement, often pious Christians and other capitalist assholes without ethics and moral principle; these are the losers we call conservatives, most of whom are born into wealth and privilege - the proverbial silver spoon. The real existing “golden rule” is NOT “do not do to others that you do not want done to yourself” but rather is this: “those who have the gold make the rules.” That is obvious to anyone with a spinal cord. Contra the psychopath hyper capitalist slimy character Gordon Gekko in Oliver Stone’s movie Wall Street, greed is NOT good, in fact profoundly immoral and private property* (was private property axiomatic before greedy bastards called humans arrived on this contaminated planet?) is not a scientific truism of physics or biology respectively such as universal gravitation or evolutionary theory for which the latter are modern theoretical necessities. Conservatives only endorse change if it serves their interests and hereditary entitlements, especially those they may have lost to the enlightenment ideals and reforms of traditional John Rawls’ liberalism and social democracy. They have invariably endorsed authoritarian, reactionary and regressive political agendas for quite understandable reasons and have been counter-revolutionaries when their historical entitlements are imperiled. That's because conservatives are people who have throughout history been perched atop the hierarchy of the economic pyramid, controlling the political process, the vast majority of the wealth and the subordination of those beneath their class. One of the most predictable aspects of anyone born into wealth, and many who have become wealthy primarily via inheritance, is that they will endorse conservatism as a political ideology. Then there is the stifling propaganda system: schools, churches and the mass media controlled by corporations. Conservative critic Corey Robin tells us in his The Reactionary Mind (2011) that the conservative is challenged by the Enlightenment and Scientific Revolution realities and the concomitant problem of the loss of absolutist verities and moral certainties in addition of how to: “...defend a principle of rule in a world where nothing is solid, all is in flux? From the moment conservatism came onto the scene, it has had to contend with the decline of ancient and medieval ideas of an orderly universe, in which permanent hierarchies of power reflected the eternal structure of the cosmos. The overthrow of the old regime reveals not only the weakness and incompetence of its leaders but also a larger truth about the lack of design in the world... The conservative defends particular orders—hierarchical, often private regimes of rule—on the assumption, in part, that hierarchy is order. "Order cannot be had," declared Johnson, "but by subordination." For Burke, it was axiomatic that "when the multitude are not under this discipline" of "the wiser, the more expert, and the more opulent," "they can scarcely be said to be in civil society" In defending such orders, moreover, the conservative invariably launches himself on a program of reaction and counterrevolution, often requiring an overhaul of the very regime he is defending.” (pp 18, 24)** Conservatism, I hesitate to say, is a political tradition that really has no underlying secular moral principle because self-interest is antithetical to behaving morally in any meaningful way. Adam Smith promoted the dubious idea of "enlightened" self-interest*. I'm sorry to say, there's nothing enlightening about self-interest (aka greed and selfishness). Adam Smith, a highly intelligent moral Scottish philosopher ought to have known better than to introduce such a self-contradictory notion into his “ethical” world view. It’s not unlike Ayn Rand’s oxymoronic book “The Virtue of Selfishness”. Conservatism sucks and freedom without responsibility and moral oversight is vacuous. Conservatives incessantly claim to defend tradition. The truth is, most traditions such as slavery and racism need to be abolished and over time in civil societies they have been, but what conservatives really defend is avarice, contra their hero Jesus - love of money, oligarchy, selfishness and illegitimate power over all others who were fortunate to have been born into wealth and/ or aristocracy . *There is a newer edition of Corey Robin’s book that has been released ** But even more pointedly, in its defense of property, for conservatives and the modern “liberals” most committed proponent of individualism that the world has ever seen. For what is private property but the ultimate assertion of the individual over the community? Property rights endow the capitalist with a tremendous power over the rest of the population and it’s not just land rights but what the egregious fraud called “intellectual property rights “, the right to knowledge and technology which is dubious at best. No one comes up with an idea out of a vacuum. There are multiple precursors that were required for any discovery. Bill Gates – a mediocre intellect who never invented anything -and others have become billionaires (a global disgrace) from this capitalist swindle and fraud – not unlike declaring that an abstraction such as a corporation is a “person” (in the US it’s Citizen’s United) with the same rights., capitalism will adapt to anything to maintain its survival and steady stream of profit at the expense of all else. This of course is denied real humans but for banks and mega-corporations it involves massive bailouts by the state for their ongoing criminal activities. What a fucking farce – thievery, bailouts and massive swindles. Free markets however defined may be a good idea but capitalism is not about either political freedom or what most people regard as “free” markets. Notes: [1] With perhaps the exception of hunter gatherer societies, the diversity of primarily capitalist governments and social structures, every country today faces social and political tensions tied to concentrated and unaccountable power in the hands of wealthy elites. The modern sociological concept of “elite” arose in the early 20th century when Vilfredo Pareto argued that every society eventually produces a tiny minority of primarily wealthy elites who manage decision-making. Other sociologists further refined the idea of elitism, noting its ugly regularity within capitalist organizations such as corporations, banks and other financial behemoths. Extreme wealth disparity cannot co-exist with democracy that implies economic and other forms of equality, ostensibly implying rule by the majority. Over a century ago Robert Michaels introduced the concept of the Iron Law of Oligarchy whereby not just the hierarchies of capitalism but even mass socialist, communist or other collective organizations may became elitist as power invariably corrupts and metastasizes. This can also be seen in generally in any organization, political or otherwise but both left and right wing oriented political movements are prone to this disease of power whereby leaders confront established elites while consolidating and masking their own aspirations for elitist status. Any anarchist knows this well – after all its axiomatic that power (within capitalism its money) corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. JR The Right Side of History Has Never Been on the Political Right Conservatism is Self-Inflicted Stupidity and Elitist Assholery By Troy Nahumko, September 19, 2025 The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness – John Kenneth Galbraith (1908-2006) Canadian Economist and advisor to several US Presidents What’s it like to always be wrong? You have to wonder, really, what it’s like to always be on the wrong side of history. We all know that acquaintance - the one who, when given two options, will always, without fail, pick the wrong goddamn one. The poor bastard who stands in the supermarket, eyes darting like a junkie rabbit, and still ends up in the line that moves slower than a Soviet bread line. The same schmuck who dissects a menu like it’s the Dead Sea Scrolls, only to order the dish that tastes like an ashtray soaked in cough syrup. Put a seemingly clear-cut choice in front of them and you know which way the house is betting with absolute certainty: whatever they pick, the opposite is salvation. And that, in essence, is the conservative condition, a mutant gift for error masquerading as “principle.” Strip away empathy and compassion, and what’s left is this infallible divining rod for disaster. It’s one of the foolproof traits that has always kept me from even considering the Tucker Carlson-flavored red pill and falling into the sociopathic trench of conservatism: the sheer horror of being wrong every single time. I suppose I can see the fentanyl appeal of clinging to the status quo. It’s safe, it’s warm, it’s the rancid blanket you’ve been dragging around since childhood, soaked in norovirus stains and nostalgia. Some hunter-gatherer must have looked sideways at the maverick who sprinkled rock salt on her mastodon steak and muttered, “We’ve always eaten it raw, why change now?” But there’s a substantial line between skepticism and suicide. When it’s so bleeding obvious the status quo is a flaming garbage barge sinking into a tar pit, insisting on “tradition” isn’t noble — it’s grotesque. It’s suicidal, or worse, ecocide. It’s strapping your body to the Titanic’s smokestack, singing Dixie to statues of traitors and calling it heritage. Conservatives, Yahweh help them, would rather drown clutching the captain’s log than use those new-fangled lifejackets and swim to shore. And that’s why, from slavery to segregation, from witch trials to climate denial, from Jim Crow to Gaza, they are always there — standing squarely on the wrong side of the burning stage, waving the flag of tradition while the whole tent collapses on the crowd. Conservatives don’t just pick the wrong line at the checkout counter — they pick the wrong war, the wrong massacre, the wrong blood-soaked “moral stand” every goddamn time. Slavery? They fought for it. Segregation? They bled cops and dogs into the streets to keep it alive. Women’s suffrage? They swore civilization would collapse if women so much as touched a ballot. Civil rights? They howled like rabid hyenas about “tradition” and “order” while black kids had to be escorted into schools under armed guard. And now it’s Gaza. Jesus Christ, Gaza - a 21st-century concentration camp where the children die first, crushed in rubble, starved in hospitals, bombed in breadlines. And still conservatives line up like obedient meat puppets, chanting about “self-defense” as though history hasn’t already marked them for what they are: collaborators in carnage, cheerleaders of genocide. You can practically hear the bones of Pontius Pilate, J. Edgar Hoover, Killer Kissinger and the Gomer Gipper rattling in their graves, nodding along in approval. They are wrong about restaurant menus, and they are wrong about genocide. They were wrong about apartheid, wrong about gay marriage, wrong about climate change, wrong about smoking, wrong about Galileo’s goddamn heliocentric solar system for Odin’s sake. And now, faced with the deliberate obliteration of an entire people, they remain predictably, fatally, obscenely wrong. And what’s even more frightening is that they no longer even recognize they are wrong. There’s no more shame. It’s no longer a social scarlet letter to be an out-and-out racist, not if it’s wrapped in irony, a flag pin, and a pressed Brooks Brothers shirt. You can say that prominent black women do not have the brain processing power to otherwise be taken really seriously, that Martin Luther King Jr. was ‘awful’ and that America made a huge mistake when it passed the Civil Rights Act in the 1960s, and be praised by the Vice President as he thumbs his dog-eared copy of inhumanity. You have to be a special kind of stupid not to grasp the benefit vaccines have given humanity, yet in today’s America, you can reject a century of science and still get booked for primetime on Fox or even land yourself a Cabinet job and be promoted to be United States Secretary of Health and Human Services. The Foxes are guarding the chicken coop, and the coop is already on fire. To be one of these conservatives is to be embalmed while still breathing, wrapped in the bandages of tradition, scripture and hierarchy, pumped full of the formaldehyde of fear. It’s not politics; it’s necrophilia with history itself. The record is there, inked in blood and ash, page after grotesque page: always late, always loud and always dead wrong. The ongoing genocide in Gaza will be no different. Fifty years from now, schoolchildren will look back and spit on the names of the politicians, preachers, and pundits who not only allowed but justified this slaughter. And conservatives will shrug, as they always do, muttering about hindsight while fumbling for the next catastrophe to endorse. Because that’s the conservative birthright: to pick the wrong side of the fire, to go down in flames clutching the lies, to mistake barbarism for order. Always wrong. Forever wrong. A movement built on the sacred art of being history’s punch line. And let’s be clear in the madness of it all: this isn’t about supporting Hamas - a pack of fundamentalist zealots with duct-taped Kalashnikovs and martyrdom hangovers - nor is it about the vile immorality of Capitalism that bloated reptile conservatives bow to like altar boys at a golden calf, no matter its vices and injustices. No; this is about human rights, the most basic law of the jungle; don’t murder children and call it justice, don’t turn hospitals and other designated safe places into tombs and call it security. History will carve it in neon fire across the sky: conservatives, once again, gnawing on the wrong side of the bone, smearing the Constitution in innocents’ blood like it was a disposable napkin and babbling about ‘order’ while the ghosts of the blameless circle overhead like vultures with flaming wings.
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