Betrayal of Conservatism

by Paul Schafer

At the same time as the attack on Pearl Harbor, the Japanese invaded the Philippines. In early 1942, when they overran Luzon Island, they placed my father, then 11, and his family into an internment camp, where they were held until MacArthur returned in 1945. When I was a child, my dad related to me his despair as he watched the American flag being lowered at the start of his internment. This event entered the folklore of my family, which later returned to America ready to begin a decades-long period of Republican conservatism and patriotic Americanism.

Eight years after World War II ended, he was back in East Asia, flying Air Force jets in Korea. His wartime experience at the hand of one totalitarian power was followed by a term of a voluntary wartime enlistment fighting another.

Just as the lowering of the American flag had brought him despair, my dad for much of his life found comfort in American power, both military and economic. During the escalation years of the Vietnam War, he supported the use of this power and I followed his lead. When my seventh-grade class wrote letters to soldiers in Vietnam in 1968, I said to a Private Cole that I would probably join him over there when I was old enough to enlist.

My Dad in the US Air Force: top row, fourth from left

Most of Dad's life was lived during the Cold War, which was ending at about the time he died, in 1990. In 2003, my stepmom asked whether I thought my dad would still be a Republican in today's USA. After carefully considering the question, I decided the answer was no. He would not be able to adhere to the current Republican line. In fact, I believe I faithfully represent his outlook when I say that he and his brand of genuine conservatism would feel betrayed by the leaders of today's Republican Party.

What is Conservatism?

Conservatism means "support for small government, balanced budgets, fiscal prudence, and great skepticism about overseas adventures." This concise summary comes from Clyde Prestowitz, who in the 1960s was a young supporter of Barry Goldwater. My father, who also was a Goldwater Republican (as opposed to being a moderate Republican), would have agreed. I recall Dad as ascribing these duties to government: act strongly but prudently overseas, balance your budgets, show loyalty to your country and its basic tenets, decentralize power, foster a climate in which businesses can thrive, and secure personal freedoms, including a right to bear arms.

In the following sections, I present evidence that today's Republicans (the ones in control, at least) have betrayed American conservatives on most issues, and moreover are best classified as radicals. I will consider this shift from the viewpoint of the American conservative I knew best, my father, David W. Schafer.

As I wrote this, I asked for help from my stepmother, Patty Freyermuth, and my uncle, Paul E. Schafer. They generously gave of their time and effort to verify my statements about my dad in light of the conservatism they shared with him.

Foreign Wars, Then and Now

Although my father initially supported the Vietnam War, he began to disagree with the Vietnam policy in the late 1960s. I heard him say, "Either win the damn thing or pull out. Stop frittering away our boys' lives." This shows him as a follower, decades early, of the Powell doctrine: If you must fight a war, do it quickly and win with overwhelming force, with minimum loss of American life. Having been intimately involved with two wars, Dad was familiar with war's desolation. He felt that wars should be fought when needed, not when wanted.

Like my father, Colin Powell gained his wartime perspective in East Asia. Tragically, Powell was overruled by Rumsfeld, Cheney, and Bush, with the result that many lives continue to be frittered away in Iraq. My dad, lifelong Republican, would have rejected the way the current war is being waged.

I never knew whether my father learned that Congress had voted on the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution after being given false information--"intelligence"--that described a naval attack that never took place. But I think he would have found it a horrific betrayal of US service people, 50,000 of whom went on to die needlessly in the resulting war.

That was Johnson, this is Bush: Presidents of either party can play that game. Bush's reasons for the Iraq war have been debunked; we know that the administration's token veteran, Colin Powell, clung to his reticence to support the war as long as possible, until ordered to make his presentation (now recognized as fallacious) at the United Nations. In June 2004, even William F. Buckley stated that--given what he knows now--it was a mistake to invade Iraq. Bill Buckley, has for years been a hero to the conservative side of my family, my dad included. He proves you can have impeccable conservative credentials and disagree with George W. Bush. More importantly, Buckley's statement shows that you can change your position when new facts emerge, something that the Bush administration refuses to do. It's OK, in other words, to adhere to realism, not mere ideology. My dad was able to change his mind to respond to changing circumstances.

Conduct of the War

Would my dad want us to leave Iraq now? Despite the false reasoning for going to war, wouldn't he say that we should stay there until we "win"? I don't believe so, and it's because he'd recognize this war as unwinnable. It's unwinnable because the US is using the wrong tools for the task at hand. That is, the Bush Administration seems to be trying to fight a conventional war against an opponent fighting a guerrilla war. This is why the US may actually be militarily forced out of Iraq in the near future. A similar American strategy lost in Vietnam.

Japanese troops lowering the American flag over Luzon.

This isn't a question of left or right, liberal or conservative or right-wing extremist; it's a matter of realism, and the lack of it. At the beginning of the war, Iraq's army melted away and we swiftly occupied Baghdad. But then our troops became sitting ducks amongst a populace who intimately know the climate, the terrain, and every back alley, and who outnumber the invaders almost 200 to 1, and--though they lack weapons of mass destruction to attack with--are nevertheless well-armed and ingenious in means of bringing death to young Americans. Sort of like Vietnam.

The lessons from Vietnam don't stop there. Civilians join insurgencies as occupations wear on and become more desperate and brutal. (If George W. Bush had served in Vietnam, he might have learned lessons such as this.) On the other hand, real conservatives, such as General Brent Scowcroft, do not let ideology trump the lessons of history. After serving as national security advisor under two Republican presidents, including George H.W. Bush during Operation Desert Storm, he rightfully predicted that George W's adventure in Iraq would create "an explosion of outrage against us."

But we did invade, even if it was a mistake. What now? I think Dad would say our mission is done (Saddam has been ousted and captured) and it's time to "declare victory" and bring the troops home to the parades they deserve. The longer we wait, the more ignominious will be our defeat, and the more damage will be done to our international standing.

Budgetary Madness

Our country's spiraling debt would have repulsed my father. As a real conservative, he played by the rules: What gets spent must also get collected. For this reason, I think my dad would have disagreed with the "starve the beast" strategy envisioned by tax-radical Grover Norquist and practiced by the current Republican leadership.

President Reagan started off his first term with large tax cuts. When he later saw evidence that these tax cuts were fiscally irresponsible, he, acting as a realist, changed course. George W. Bush, confronted with similar evidence on an even larger scale, has pushed for even more tax cuts.

Since Bush took power, although Congress has sent him its usual amount of pork to sign into law, he is the first president since Garfield to have not once used the power of the veto. Even the ultra-conservative Heritage Foundation recently stated, "Budget discipline clearly isn't a priority of this administration..."

The budget problem is causing traditional conservatives to leave the Bush camp. At the beginning of August, 2004, a group of 200 business executives announced that they would support John Kerry in the November election. Among the reasons why this group shifted their allegiance are rising health-care costs, record budget deficits, and "America's tarnished reputation in the world" under Bush.

Conservative commentator Kevin Phillips has written that, although the administration claims to adhere to the classic conservative stance against big government, "when it's big government that takes care of the oil industry or bails out financial institutions or pumps money into the Pentagon, then they tend to be in favor of that."

Even Bill Buckley has said that the growth of the federal government under the current President Bush "bothers me enormously."

Defending the Constitution

If there's one thing that conservatives have been known to staunchly defend, it's the US Constitution. And this may be where Bush's betrayal is the most egregious. One glaring example of unconstitutional behavior overseas is the decision to spend $700 million on a "massive, covert public works program" in Kuwait in 2002, although Congress (which alone has constitutional power to decide where money is spent) had allocated that money for the Afghan campaign. Not only that, the Bush people neglected to inform Congress that they had decided to divert the money. This violated Article 1, Section 9, Clause 7 of the US Constitution. Other examples are easy to find, varying from overt (illegal detentions) to more subtle but continual attempts to diminish the civil liberties that define our freedom.

The natural repercussion of this behavior is, of course, impeachment, but why has that not happened? Only because the House, for the moment, is in the hands of Republicans, not traditional moderate or conservative Republicans but radicals who apparently have no interest in conserving the validity, the honor, of the US Constitution.

Corporate Patriotism: Absent Without Leave

My dad was born during the presidency of Herbert Hoover. The Depression that began on Hoover's watch eventually caused my grandfather to move his family to a US territory overseas, the Philippines, to find work. Under George W. Bush, the United States has suffered job losses on a scale not seen since Hoover. But moving overseas isn't the option in 2004 that it was in the 1930s, at least not if you're a worker. Under Bush, though, it's a different matter for corporations.

If you're an American corporation, what advantages might you find overseas? Two: By employing workers in India or China, you pay less in labor costs than you would if you employed American workers. And with your corporate address in another country, say, Bermuda, you can avoid paying US taxes.

The results are obvious. Every job shipped overseas is an American job lost. Not only does this devastate the worker who lost the job (and the worker's family); it puts downward pressure on wages, which spreads the suffering to other Americans in the same industry and region.

When corporations avoid paying US taxes, this shifts the tax burden to the loyal companies and individuals who remain here. Is that fair? Of course not. Has Bush cracked down on companies that do this--for example, by refusing to grant the offending corporations major defense contracts? No, and that's the biggest outrage: Our tax dollars are rewarding corporations that are undermining the economic strength of our country. But Bush could at least use the bully pulpit, right? Has he once held a news conference or a major policy speech in which he's asked US citizens to "buy American"? No, and why is that? Some of his biggest campaign contributors are the same companies that are shipping US jobs overseas.

Immigration Reform

A recent Bush administration plan gives eight million illegal immigrants temporary visas for the duration of their jobs. This plan has drawn criticism from Latino leaders as being exploitative.

Bush's position is explainable in terms of his allegiance with the major agribusiness concerns that would benefit from using large numbers of low-wage laborers that not only are guaranteed to be temporary but are legal, and thus more convenient.

But Bush's plan has also drawn fire from conservative groups who feel that illegal immigrants should be deported. In fact, Bush's plan has ignited support for immigration-reform champion Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-CO), and much is being made of the movement to persuade conservatives to cast write-in votes for Rep. Tancredo for President in 2004.

I recall my dad as opposing mass immigration. But would he have given his vote to a one-issue candidate like Tancredo? Probably not, but Dad had an unconventional side that would have caused him to at least flirt with the idea of a Tancredo vote.

Conservatism and Conservation

Estimates vary, but only about 40 years remain of petroleum consumption. This number is probably high, considering that major oil suppliers have lowered their estimates of petroleum reserves. In addition, rapid industrialization and rising standard of living in China and other areas of the developing world are causing large increases in oil consumption. Knowing that at most two generations remain of gasoline-consumption levels, what should we do? How do we make sure our standard of living continues? Continue down our current path? You might choose that if your only goal is oil-company profits, but you'd probably find it foolish if your goal is a soft landing--a stable and smooth transition to the next energy sources.

So, where would Dad have stood? In college, my father was taught "economic geology," in which ore is extracted in such a way that none is wasted; that is, no "high-grading." This is the principle of conservation as practiced in the mining industry. Later in life, he installed "passive solar" heating on his house, to conserve energy. In both examples, conservation--not waste or short-term profits--made sense to him without conflicting with his conservatism. (And how does the current Republican Administration promote conservation? A federal tax break for Hummers and other large SUVs.)

Radicalism, this Time on the Right

This year's election reminds me of 1972. Many who look back on that year feel that the party led by George McGovern had been taken over by radicals, and blame them for the landslide loss the Democrats suffered. I think many non-radical Republicans are beginning to view 2004 as a possible repeat, with the Republican radicals coming out on the losing end this time.

A number of high-profile conservatives have already defected from the Bush camp and have called for his defeat. They recognize the radical direction he is leading the country in and see the dangers. They have a wide variety of reasons.

• In June 2004, for example, a group calling itself Diplomats and Military Commanders for Change issued a statement that calls for Bush's defeat, based on the damage George W. Bush has done to our national security. This group is composed of retired military commanders and former senior diplomatic officials. ( www. diplomatsforchange.com/project/statement.shtml)
• Ed Stringer, a longtime moderate Republican and former Minnesota Supreme Court justice, has stated that he will back John Kerry in this year's presidential election, and has contributed to the Kerry campaign. (Stringer voted for Bush in 2000.)
• A Nixon/Ford appointee to the EPA (and lifelong Republican) has declared that he'll vote for Kerry, saying: "It's almost as if the motto of the administration in power today in Washington is not environmental protection, but polluter protection." (www.alternet.org/election04/log/)
• In an interview with the British newspaper the Guardian, Michael Scheuer, a 22-year veteran of the CIA, said that al Qaeda, aware that they "can't have a better administration for them than the one they have now," could well be planning to strike within the US this fall in order to help the re-election chances of George W. Bush, banking on the theory that Americans will again rally around Bush the way they did in September 2001. The reason for this is that Bush is "taking the US in exactly the direction Bin Laden wants, towards all-out confrontation with Islam under the banner of spreading democracy."

Dad Believed in a Bright Future

Dad loved our country and was optimistic about it. He lived in many states, and he visited all fifty. He had faith in the ability of capitalism to bring opportunity--he himself had been an entrepreneur--and he would have been thrilled to see a free-market Russia replace the Soviet Union. But just as post-Soviet Russia eventually descended into mob rule, America's capitalism has become a haven for elite, well-connected corporations, some with no qualms about moving their "headquarters" overseas. (Today's radical conservatives seem to demand high moral standards only from the poor, but rarely from the wealthy and powerful. How long did it take to indict Ken Lay?) By courting cronyism, today's Republican Party is hobbling capitalism and accelerating the ruin of the system. Are Adam Smith's free market forces really at work when the largest and best-connected corporations--sometimes directly connected to the Vice President or to the President's family--receive welfare (often under the guise of military spending) that is financed by shifting the tax burden downward?

Dad also loved his freedom. He would have been appalled that a politician might consider proposing the intrusive and restrictive measures that the Patriot Act and related legislation have granted to the central government. Further, he would have been aghast that such laws would actually pass. (When legislators make such a conscious effort to restrict freedoms, they neither honor our founding principles nor serve the people.) Dad would have been optimistic that our freedoms would expand, not diminish, and he would have been mad as hell that our own government--a big, fat, Republican government at that--is restricting rights! And no, he wouldn't have accepted a terrorist attack as an excuse.

How would my father vote in 2004? I cannot answer, but I believe he would have felt that traditional American principles, what he saw as his own conservative principles, have been abandoned--betrayed, even--by his old party, the GOP.