Brown Sludge

Confessions Of a Right Winger

November 7th, 2005

In politics, many people tend to view the idea of political conservatism or liberalism as a fence of sorts. You are either leftwing, or rightwing. Liberal. Conservative. Your yard. My yard. Anyone sitting on that fence is usually reviled by both sides. Not surprising.

But the truth of the matter is that there are issues that can’t be contained by these frail and inadequate fences. Corporate greed, corporatism, “Brown Sludge” - is absolutely one of these issues.

The farther to the left you lean, the more controls and the less freedom you tend to wish upon corporations and the market place in general – until you arrive at the logical endpoint of this train of thought – which is of course socialism. A market controlled and ran by the state itself.

The farther to the right you lean, the less controls and the more freedom you tend to wish upon corporations and the market place in general – until you arrive at the logical endpoint of this train of thought – which is of course – unbridled corporate avarice. Corporatism. A market so unrestrained and pitilessly devoid of conscience that it’s entitled to sell anything to anyone at any price. Even human life.

Historically, corporatism is an issue that the left feels is its own. Liberals use horrifying corporate behavior as the wooden shoe that they hope to throw into the machinery of what they see as soulless capitalism and the free market in general.

Because there is no shortage of this horrifying behavior, the left has an endless supply of ammunition. And we’re not talking about pea-shooter ammunition here, we’re talking big honking mother mortar rounds that have the power to lay waist to whole communities, rob people of their pensions and their retirement funds, leave them without adequate health care coverage and deregulate them into abject poverty.

The right always responds to these things with the same knee-jerk reaction. They view these accusations as attacks on the “free market” and “capitalism”, and immediately throw their bodies in front of the greedy and ill behaved corporations, putting themselves in the ridiculous position of defending those corporations – and – whether they like it or not – defending those horrifying behaviors.

Now… the truth is that most of the time the left is attacking the free market and capitalism in general.

It’s a sucker’s game that conservatives cannot win. The liberal puts up the straw-man that all corporations are greedy and evil, the conservative rises to the bait, and then… WHAM… right between the eyes with the big aluminum baseball bat of the bad corporate behavior du jour.

It’s like bowling. Set ‘em up. Knock ‘em down.

As someone who considers themselves a “conservative” – I’d like to say this loud and clear:

It’s time that we on the Right stopped getting it wrong on corporatism.

There are brash bomb-throwing pundits on both sides of the ideological fence, and from these people you don’t look for wisdom. You look for “malatov entertainment”. You look for incendiaries. You look for talk radio sound-bites.

Then there are commentators and journalists and politicians on both sides that you look to for a more even-tempered outlook. Those you hope to learn something from. Those who you trust enough to use their intellectual weight as a balance on the scales of your opinion.

Nothing breaks my heart more that to see a conservative commentator or politician I respect and trust standing there trying to defend one of these soulless corporate Brown Sludge monsters that are doing so much to harm to our communities and the American way of life.

I’d like to challenge every conservative politician and Right thinking journalist or commentator to examine the following the facts:

The Fathers who founded this nation were men who understood the term “Free Market” to mean independent men, prospering from enterprise that wasn’t controlled by the government or monopolies. They were devout and religious men, to whom the ideas of greed, envy, exploitation, and parasitism were too heavy a burden for a mortal soul to bear. They believed that these sins carried with them their own punishments, and that the Free Market would put paid to this behavior by turning away from such stark iniquity without hesitation. They called this “enlightened self interest” and knew that being a savvy businessperson required one to be a charitable and decent citizen.

Thomas Jefferson held the ideal of monopolistic corporations in such contempt that he strove to include in the Bill of Rights an amendment that outlawed them (and their influence on politicians) entirely.

There is some historical data to support the idea that The Boston Tea Party itself happened because of the predatory practices of one of the original corporate monopolies controlling the tea trade. Apparently so many members of English aristocracy were shareholders in – or otherwise financially beholden to – that gigantic multinational corporate monopoly that it had no problem at all getting legislation passed that made it easy for it to destroy legitimate competition control the tea trade almost exclusively. Thus setting the stage for the showdown that would spark The American Revolution itself. (Sound eerily familiar?)

Corporations, especially gigantic multinational monopolies were never envisioned as part of the American way of life, and were, in fact, an idea absolutely reviled by many of the Founding Fathers.

So, when you rush to the defense of these predators, or aid them by passing legislation favorable to them because you’ve taken campaign contributions from them, you are absolutely working against true American ideals, and the American People as a whole.

And as the American People wake up to the cancer that is the corporate take over of their communities and neighborhoods, and the systematic assassination of the small, independently owned, and locally operated business people that are so vital to those communities and the real American way of life – they are increasingly asking themselves:

“How did this happen?”

It horrifies me to think that those of us who are labeled “conservatives” will be standing there with the blood of these ideals on our hands.

Entry Filed under: The Right Has It Wrong