Confused Liberal (Part 2)

I’m a little (okay, a lot) obsessive. It is just how my mind works. Once I start down a path I cannot leave it until every twist, turn, and rabbit hole has been completely explored. All inconsistencies must be flushed out to the best of my ability. All issues must be reconciled and wrapped in pretty paper complete with a fancy bow. This is not to say that I do not have any inconsistencies in my life. I do. Many. This is why I continue to be obsessive and why politics, while I love them, drive me mad. Forty-eight hours ago I wrote an article entitled, Confused Liberal. Ever since, my mind has been obsessed with many other questions that I did not include in my original article. So that I may achieve some amount of peace in the next few days, here is where my mind has been over the weekend.

Why are conservatives suddenly freaking the hell out about perceived restrictions of their civil liberties?
Honest to God, I didn’t hear a peep out of the conservatives while Bush was warrantlessly wire-tapping our phones. Not one conservative, that I am aware of, spoke up to even say “Boo” when the Bush doctrine was being put into to place. (Sarah, if you’ve expanded your reading list since the Couric interview, the Bush doctrine is that of preemptive war. You can Google it to find Wikipedia’s basic description for beginners.) I’ve not heard one bit of concern from the right about an American citizen that has been indefinitely detained on U.S. soil and not yet brought to trial. And how about torture? Any conservatives out there worried about our country’s violation of the Geneva Convention? Are you conservatives really worried about the mythical resurrection of the Fairness Doctrine after all that? Really, no really? Please.

How can it possibly be that after eight years of “You’re either with us or against us,” conservatives are trying to say “I don’t want the President to fail. Just his policies”?
What? I’m going to need a twenty-part dissertation on this. Let’s just go ahead and set aside that Rush Limbaugh seems to be the conservatives’ new Buddha so I don’t get distracted. Someone, anyone, please help me find a thread of logic here. Something, anything that I can hold on to. How ‘bout some bread crumbs? I just cannot wrap my mind around the fact that it was not okay to even raise an objection when we were rushing into an unjustified war without being called “Unamerican”; but when we’re faced with the largest economic crisis in eighty years conservatives won’t even set a foot in the ballpark, much less get into the game. What the hell, Dudes? Surely you understand that this time it is not just the middle class who is losing the shirts off their backs? Wealth is disappearing, that’s YOU? Hello? Anyone home in the glass house?

And what is up with this opposition to gay marriage?
“Protection of the sanctity of the institution of marriage” my fat liberal ass. If conservatives want to “protect” marriage, perhaps they should focus on the real enemies of marriage—financial hardship, adultery, and divorce. No? Not interested in that? Okay, that’s fair. Let’s focus on what this is really about—religion. So tell me, if marriage is solely a religious institution, why should we let nonreligious people marry? Hmmm. That’s a hard one. Why not get rid of judges marrying people in civil ceremonies? Why not restrict the legal privileges of marriage to only those that are married in the church. Why don’t we go ahead and make that church a Christian one while we’re at it? No? Okay. Then how about this? Why don’t conservatives continue to get married in their own churches to whomever they want and let’s allow the gay community to do the same? How ‘bout that?

Where were the conservative voices on fiscal responsibility while Bush drained the Clinton surplus and ran up a half trillion dollar deficit?
Please, someone, put me out of my misery. Where were you? For all the conservative screaming about earmarks, entitlements, and deficits that I have heard since the Inauguration, one would think I could remember hearing you scream at some point in the past eight years. No? Why? Is it because you think it’s okay to run up a deficit and an economy into the ground for the higher moral purpose that is war? Is it because you were in favor of tax cuts for the wealthy? I mean, after all, the wealthy do the “real” work of investing and creating jobs so that the rest of us can then bail you out because the companies you created are too big to fail.

I know, right?