Yesterday, I watched the senatorial debate in South Carolina on CSPAN. It would have made a good cure for insomnia. They fawned over each other trying to prove who was the most conservative person in the room.

Senator Lindsey Graham is the incumbent and each challenger took aim at him, blaming him for the ills of Congress. Each took turns explaining how they would get rid of the Department of Education, the EPA, the Department of Labor and Commerce. They droned on and on about the evils of government until, and I stress the word until a question came up about the need to expand the harbor in Charleston, South Carolina. All of a sudden government was their friend. They all expressed the fact that the economy of South Carolina would be harmed if the harbor did not get federal funds to enlarge the capacity of that beautiful antebellum city’s harbor.
Their answers to that question, in essence, are you willing to bring home the bacon, signaled for me the sheer lunacy of today’s conservatism. They speak the mantra of less government but when it comes to helping their own constituents they are willing to spend money just like the dreaded liberals. What a joke!
Let us not kid ourselves government is a necessity. It would help if people were consistent and honest with a sense of integrity. At least admit that in order for one to conserve you need to change. Charleston has a marvelous harbor and in order for it remain competitive it needs to be improved. It provides jobs and keeps things running in South Carolina. If you don’t conserve what is needed and good it will decay and wither and you will be worse off by not conserving the excellence of the harbor. Please, if only we could have a starting point and argue about spending money wisely with someone making sure there are not cost overruns and wasteful spending. Instead we have such hypocrisy arguing against spending money somewhere else but wanting it for your home folks.
Give me a government that is more efficient, and give me a government that is for the best interest of the people.
The 1930’s are a good example of government at it’s best. For years and years, farmers fed a nation but lost money and their land each and every year. Franklin Delano Roosevelt helped solve that historic problem with the idea of paying farmers to take land out of production. Utilities made the basic necessity of electricity only affordable to the few. Roosevelt ended the holding company’s monopolies. A depositor no longer had to worry about whether their money would be safer under their bed than in a bank. If you bought stock on the stock exchange was it safe, as far as whether or not the company was real? Buying stock on margin was ended as it was known in those days. So don’t tell me that government is not necessary to regulate greed. We built dams and through the TVA provided energy to many who had none before.
The Gilded age, had tainted food for sale.
The 60’s had air and water that was unfit to breathe and drink, so are you all really serious about returning to the day when your food that you ate could kill you or your air would make you choke or your water could give you cancer? No, let’s have more West Virginia’s, where the water will make you sick.
Or how about returning to the days of child labor, unsafe work places, and a 60-to 80 hour work week? Do you really want to go back to the days when 75% of those at the age of 65 or older had no health insurance, and retirees had no pensions?
We need to have two political parties that are interested in conserving by changing and keeping up to date, those programs worth saving. If you want to close down government you shouldn’t be in government because you are betraying your oath of office and you are not doing what government does best and that is to do what the private sector can not do. Inquiring minds want to know what are today’s conservatives for. Do they want to bring home the bacon or just complain and do nothing?