Dr. John Young                                                                                                                      9/2/07

UUCJ

Reminder: Sermons are a verbal form of expression. These printed reflections do not usually contain the stories, reference and spontaneous connections that John makes when he does his sermons. The way to experience them is to attend the Sunday service.

Neo-Con’s Impoverishment of USA’s Majority

            America’s political landscape has been dominated by neo-conservatives for most of the last generation. A potent alliance of religious and ideological fundamentalists, Christian evangelicals, people with inherited wealth, business executives, militarists, and bigots have been determined to create and to maintain permanent neo-conservative control of America’s political institutions. These forces represent less than one third of the American people. Their slogans and policies enrich and empower a yet smaller proportion of Americans.

A few thousands neo-conservative ideologues wrested control of the Republican Party, but more potently, they have addicted America to a group of false ideological slogans and failed public policy panaceas. The neo-conservatives will not let go of what they have accomplished without equally determined and patient efforts by progressive Americans. Progressives will not make much headway with the majority of Americans until they move beyond reacting to these false slogans and failed policies.

Within this and every Unitarian Universalist congregation, there are a full range of political partisans and those who support no party. We all support civic activism based on justice and equity. We all intend to stand up for what we believe and to make a difference in the world in which we live. In doing so, we will support a variety of policies, parties, and candidates. My ideas today, as with any other week, may neither represent your opinions nor your ultimate choices. However, if my words provoke you to think and to weigh your choices more carefully, if my ideas get some of you to speak up, to challenge others, and to inspire a few, then I will have done what I believe you ask your ministers to do.

            The biggest neo-conservative lie is that government is the problem, and that the way to make government succeed is to put people in charge of government who don’t believe in government. Ronald Reagan was the godfather of the neo-conservatives. George W. Bush, like Ronald Reagan, is another figure-head ideologue that the neo-conservative puppet-masters placed out in front. These figure-heads are nice men, who remind you of a neighbor or buddy with a few big ideas that they just keep saying over and over and over.

            No new taxes, and new tax cuts each election cycle has filled Republican election coffers and become an American addiction. The only problem is that people want and need their governments to accomplish things, and in order to so, they need money, and in order for governments to get money, they need taxes. The neo-conservatives quickly discovered that in fact they needed taxes and fees and surcharges, etc., because they had to actually try to do something, and so they figured out ways to cut taxes that have disproportionately helped the very richest Americans, who were filling their campaign coffers, and providing their post-government jobs, while taking away services and support from the majority of the American people, and lessening most of our tax bills only symbolically. Look at the new Republican Governor Crist of Florida, he’s done some good things, but also he had to fulfill his pledge to cut property taxes and so now all the branches of Florida’s government are trying to figure out which needed programs they are going to eliminate, and how they are going to keep some semblance of actually governing or serving their constituencies.

            The next neo-conservative shibboleth is that unrestrained and unregulated free enterprise is the best economic system for America and the world. Since they don’t believe in government, and they have cut taxes so much they cannot meet the actual public needs what they do is to replace these unmet needs by de-regulating private enterprises so that they do not have watch over them because businesses and investment houses will police themselves. Privatize all those public needs where capitalists can turn a profit: prisons, vocational education, private security and no-bid contracts in Iraq. Then, turn those public problems which are unlikely to turn a financial profit over to faith-based operations whose pay-off is that while they are teaching children, nursing the sick or feeding the homeless they can also market their particular ways of saving souls

The problem is that this does not work. When you don’t regulate private enterprises, they, in fact, don’t behave. You get CEOS that lie and siphon off millions. You get misleading loans and faulty investments. And, you don’t actually mean that you are not going to give those private enterprises all sorts of government services, corporate welfare, and tax advantages. What you mean is that public benefits should go to the rich and powerful and not to the poor, the needy, or the hard-working and completely stretched middle class. Faith-based enterprises cannot solve the public’s problems.

People are most easily manipulated when they are afraid. The unimpeded free market with the minimum of public services will mean that people are constantly afraid for their economic and social futures. Get them to concentrate on working and consuming so they pay as little attention as possible to who is primarily benefiting from both private enterprise and public policy. In the last 30 years in the USA, the average earnings of Americans has grown by just 1% when adjusted for inflation while the cost of all the essentials have gone up. The all-adults working family is not an extravagance, it has become a necessity. Americans today have 22 few hours a week to spend with their kids than they did in 1969. This systematic destruction of family values is the heart of the neo-conservative impoverishment of America’s majority.

            Another neo-conservative shibboleth is that if you keep pouring money into the pockets of the richest 1% it will trickle down and benefit the rest of us. However, that has not worked out well except for the wealthiest Americans. The rest of America is working harder, has less of a safety net, and is more stressed economically and socially than their parents or grandparents. As that enthusiastically cheerleader for capitalism, The Economist magazine said in its July 17, 2006 issue: “The gap between the rich and poor in the US today is bigger than in any other advanced country, and greater now in the US than any time since the Gilded Age a century ago. The wages of more than 50% of American workers have risen less than 1% since 2000. Most have almost no savings, and greatly increased personal debts. The typical American CEO now earns 400 times more than the average wage earner, a tenfold proportional increase since the 1970s. Outsourcing is threatening many in the middle class and decimating industrial workers, and in-sourcing of illegal immigrants is threatening much of the working class of poorly paid service workers, day and agricultural workers. Pensions are disappearing before our eyes, and one sixth of Americans are without health insurance. The safety net is full of holes. Most Americans are facing great economic vulnerability. Many American families are one serious illness, family job loss or a few paychecks away from a personal confrontation with poverty.”

This is what I specifically meant by my title for this sermon. Neo-conservatives policies have and are impoverishing America’s majority. However, I am as concerned about the spiritual and intellectual impoverishment produced by neo-conservatives’ addictive slogans.  

The neo-conservatives’ foreign policy is also based on fear. As our cold war enemies crumbled before our eyes, it looked as though we would have to face up to the fact that we do not need a military budget and a military-industrial establishment greater than all of the other advanced nations combined. Since most Americans don’t know much about the rest of the world, or even about the other regions and sub-cultures in their own nation, feed the fear of international cooperation except through free markets. The idea is to love Chinese products but simultaneously to fear the Chinese. Accept outsourcing to India and support the import of foreign professionals since it costs too much in public expenses to support the education and research systems needed in the 21^st century. Export jobs to Mexico and import cheap illegal workers.

Americans hate to lose so feed that old conservative despair over losing the war in Vietnam by finding some new wars that we can win through shock and awe. Imbed the news media with the soldiers so that they become propaganda pawns of our military plans. A war on terrorism provided an ideal replacement, but if the few thousand actual terrorists were destroyed or marginalized and the relatively few actual sources of advanced military terror dismantled or controlled, there would be little need for a continued foreign policy based on fear and on the idolatry of outworn military-industrial establishments. Neo-conservatives seem to scorn international cooperation in favor of unilateral ultimatums; to often dismiss negotiation and diplomacy in favor of pre-emptive strikes and unilateral aggression; to turn their backs on international law and treaties in preference for the support of regressive regimes and right-wing militaries, perhaps even the use of an occasional torture chamber.

Neo-conservative inaction and reaction has been in charge during the worst terrorist attack, the most dismal governmental response to a natural disaster, and the greatest death toll in war since Viet-Nam. We are less secure abroad and at home than at any time since the end of WWII. Family values conservatives are being exposed as hypocrites and even criminals. Law and order conservatives are being arrested and dismissed for massive corruption and the systematic abuse of public office for short-term political advantage. The neo-conservative politics of fear, wedge issues to divide and conquer, and self-righteous stubbornness in facing the facts has undermined not only our standing in the world but even our research and development efforts and our ethical foundations as a people. The neo-conservatives have had a generation to prove themselves and their policies, and both the people and the policies are demonstrable failures. It is time to vote them out of office and to move beyond their failed ideas.

I have no doubt that the Republican Party will re-gain its integrity, but I suspect that it will take a generation. For now, their hopefuls all still seem to be trying to be the better Reagan clone. I hope that progressive Americans will not get seduced again by the ideological virginity of the neo-conservatives and destroy their own prospects for electoral success by demanding ideological purity or a perfect, but un-elect-able candidate. The neo-conservatives have been using that trick for a generation. They think progressives don’t get it, and will be tricked once again. The neo-conservative functionaries think that 51% of the minority that vote will once again choose fear, division, and the failed and false shibboleths of their neo-conservative faith. Let’s prove them wrong through our determined and patient efforts to support an America based on justice rather than greed and upon equity rather than trickle down.