A New Definition of “Social Conservative”

And you thought this was an easy one. You thought being a “social conservative” meant some sort of combination of pro-life, pro-family, pro-fiscal responsibility, pro-original intent, and so forth. You thought that your faith was on the leading edge of this ethic. Well, do I have news for you. But it will have to wait just a few minutes. You see, there is some correction of history that we need to do.

History, it seems, has been playing a dirty little trick on us. No longer are the socialism (national and international) of Hitler and Stalin the products of the Marxist-Progressive movement. Castro was not a “progressive” and Mao did not represent the Leftist turn of the modern liberal movement. History is a real trickster. Just like the human-caused global warming “scientists” who have written away the Little Ice Age, a new breed of Leftist “historians” have written away the bloody heritage of the Left and assigned it to — you guessed it — the social conservative.

James Veverka, whoever he is, has, according to “ed” @ Talk2Action, written an analysis that

roundly rebuts Glenn Beck’s new documentary “The Revolutionary Holocaust” which paints Nazism as a left-wing phenomenon and claims societal groups Hitler and the Nazis actually targeted were perpetrators of the Holocaust - ignoring the fact that along with Jews, according to the US Holocaust Museum, the Nazi regime threw many communists into concentration camps too.

So the plan is set. The goal is, as it has been many times in the past, to paint all social conservatives as Nazis, tools of Nazis, or at best, tools of some totalitarian who plans on killing Jews, homosexuals, and even communists. It’s no wonder they seem worried. (Want paranoia? These Leftists think they might be targets, and for multiple reasons. They worry about us, but fail to look at their own movment.)

Veverka’s error is not in particular details. That’s now how propaganda is done. His details seem precise. What is in error is his framing. For instance, he just loves sweeping generalizations. He cannot separate the run-of-the-mill fundamentalist Christian from the radical and violent Islamist.

It is for the same reasons, and rather ironically, that many conservatives have coined the word “Islamafascists” to describe religious fundamentalists of Islam. But both religions have a fundamentalist wing that continually attacks modernity and secularism. Radical Islamists want to fight off the same forces of western modernity that Christian extremists do. At the UN, we see Islamic nations, the Catholic Church and Protestant fundamentalists on the same side in the matters of science and society, modernity and secularism.

The association is clear — we are airline bombers and extremists. We are not concerned about the betterment of society and the protection of life from the violence of those who practice infanticide. (After all, eugenics is the Left’s sanctioned violence.) Nope. We have no genuine concern.

Notice, also, that Veverka protects and characterizes “modernity and secularism” as though it is the innocent party, the peaceful movement that is under attack. It is almost a “noble savage” ideal.

He is correct that radical social policy is readily employed by totalitarians. Religion coupled with the state can be dangerous. Even so, his argument is not about the social conservatism of the Left, or rather the social orthodoxy of the Left, but only about the conservative movement.

It may surprise many that hardline communists were also hardline social conservatives on the matters of family and sexuality. It is the nature of extremism to incorporate far out views on these matters into state policy. The answers to this perverse mix of despotism and family values lies in the natures of religion and nationalism. It is not about left versus right because social conservatism can be found in both as tools of the state. Social conservatism, both religious and secular, when wed to nationalism and embraced as state policy, has almost always turned into an enemy of tolerance and liberty. In fact, social conservatives in the USA, led by Christian conservatives, have fought or disagreed with religious diversity, religious equality, abolition of slavery, Suffrage, desegregation, integrating the armed forces, Brown v Board of Education, mixed race marriages, respect and equality for Jews (not in MY country club!), the Civil Rights Act of 1965, gender equality laws, women in authority, working women, reproductive education, family planning, contraception, condoms, gay rights and a host of others. It was humanists, both religious and secular that banded together to win the rights movements of the past. Such is the case presently with regards to gay, lesbian and family planning rights.

I wonder if he has paid any attention to the hatred of Jews by today’s mainstream Left?

As you read the article, you may notice that his use of conservative varies from traditional roles and definitions to something akin to today’s non-Leftist. He does not deal with the social orthdoxy of today’s U.S. leftist. The closest he comes is to dealing with totalitarian Leftists like Castro. Nothing about abortion (as though it is a real right) as mandatory in PROC. It is a convenient bit of bait-and-switch that accomplishes the propaganda character of this work This became evident here, as he attempts to couple the past with only one part of the present.

Because of popular cultural myths and the religious right’s propaganda, both misinformed and dishonest, most people don’t realize that Nazi Germany and Stalin were on the same page as religious conservatives regarding homosexuals. The anti-gay propaganda of both the religious conservatives and the Nazis is nearly identical. One is religious, the other secular, but the message is the same. The views are the same. The doctrines are the same. The blind hatred is the same. Both embrace rigid patriarchal family views that see women as men-helpers and baby-makers. Both consider their views “virtues”. Both are the moral crusaders to save the family in a nation that is supposedly threatened by decadence (Weimar Germany then and counterculture now). (emphasis mine)

The post is, of course, replete with Nazi graphics, accompanied by a few Leftist totalitarians. Interestingly a number of them were inappropriate enough that Photobucket censored them, according to their policy, a policy of which Talk2Action should have been aware.

To help summarize the attitude brought to the article, some notable quotes are provided as a resolution to your last, pleasant meal:

Like religious fundamentalists, Nazis were intensely patriarchal and pronatalist.

Chrysostom, like many Christian fundamentalists, takes the same view as many Nazis. Chrysostom and Augustine were wrong, of course. It was a time of great ignorance in matters of natural science. Homosexual bonding, bisexuality and same sex parenting are very common and natural in animal societies They are part of the social glue in these animal’s social structures. It is a mistake to think that the only social units in a society are reproductive ones or imitate them. Nature is far more diverse in it’s social units than the rigid views of patriarchal totalism.

Due to Christian traditions, laws against mixed race marriages existed at one time or another in most of the US until the Supreme Court put a stop to them in 1967. In this regard, the USA was lawfully a racist nation for almost 200 years. It is a good thing the 1960s came along with all of it’s activism and challenges to traditional dogma. The good old days of American tradition were racist, sexist, anti-Semitic and homophobic.

This exclusivist concept of masculinity, like that of the conservative Christian and Muslim place of men in their ideal society, denigrates gay men as less than human and seeks to silence and persecute them out of existence. Or to repair and re-educate them in order to destroy their identity. The outcome is the same. Foremost in the mind of the religious fundamentalist, like the fascists and the Stalinists, for whatever reason, is their radical authoritarian agenda to deny the GLBT community of equal rights under the law.

Ok, I’ve had my cookies for the evening and have been able to keep them down. Fortunately.  Enjoy your own heavy helping of historical revisionism.