Who is the Conservative??
Who is the Conservative: Bush or Kerry?
By Daniel G. Jennings
There is one interesting question we must ask about this year's presidential election: who is the conservative and who is the liberal?
A quick analysis of the candidates' behavior shows us that this is not a silly question because Republican George W. Bush is behaving like a liberal and Democrat John Kerry is acting like a conservative. That is if we consider a liberal someone who takes bold and radical steps for change and a conservative somebody who defends and upholds the status quo at all costs.
Since his election Bush has taken one radical step after another: he proposed giving government funds to religious charities (faith based initiative), greatly increased federal aid to education, put the federal government in the business of evaluating and regulating public schools (No Child Left Behind), invaded Afghanistan after Sept. 11, adopted a new policy of seizing foreign terror suspects and imprisoning them in US military facilities, greatly expanded the federal government's police powers, launched a preemptive war in Iraq, adopted a new policy of nation rebuilding, ran up a vast deficit, proposed the construction of a moon base and a manned mission to Mars, and announced his support for the most radical constitutional amendment since Prohibition. Even Bush's seemingly conservative actions are radical in nature the faith based initiative would be a complete break with American traditions while the 28th Amendment which would ban gay marriage would take the unprecedented step of using constitutional law to set social policy (something nor president has done since prohibition in the 1920s).
Kerry at the same time has acted like a conservative defending the status quo of affirmative action and public education, demanding a return to traditional foreign trade practices, demanding a return to traditional democracy, attacked Bush's expansion of federal police powers, attacking Bush's policy in Iraq but demanding the use of American troops to shore up an existing foreign government in Haiti, he's even attacked Bush's out of control spending. In terms of social policy Kerry has opposed both the radical step of gay marriage and the radical policy of using the constitution to ban gay marriage. Kerry hasn't proposed an expansion of environmental law and protection simply a continuation of existing policies. The only radical measure Kerry has backed has been national healthcare, something that has been Democratic policy since Harry Truman's day fifty-five years ago.
The old rules and definitions no longer seem to apply to American politics. The world is turned upside down, the Left-wing Democrat John Kerry is mindlessly defending the status quo, while the Right-wing Republican George W. Bush is trying his best to tear it down.
What sort of nation will these new politics create? I don't know but it'll be a very different nation from the one we're living in today.