George W. Bush is not a Conservative

It is a very simple fact, but nobody seems to have noticed it. George W. Bush is not a conservative.

When you ignore his talk, and looking at what he has actually done, you see that over and over again, George W. Bush has betrayed every ideal that the conservative movement has.

The heart and soul of the conservative thinking is fiscal conservatism: the government should be responsible for how it spends money. The conservative economic view has always been very simple: balance the budget, and quit deficit spending. That idea somehow went out the window when George W. Bush was elected (in fact, suddenly we are even hearing how deficit spending is somehow good for the nation.) What happened to the "lock box," where George Bush said he would put the budget surplus to save it for social security? The instant he got elected, he seems to have forgotten his promise.

The fact is, George W. Bush has run up a record budget deficit-- the largest deficit in history. And, before you say that terrorism and the response to the 9/11 atrocity is the source of the unexpected budget deficit-- look at the data. Only a small portion of the Bush deficit can be tagged to the 9/11 terrorists. Bragging about "cutting" taxes while actually increasing government spending at the same time isn't really a tax cut; it's just increasing the tax next year. America is about our children, and leaving our children and grandchildren in debt is not what we mean by "family values."

The heart of America is our business. Americans aren't afraid to work... but where are the jobs? A conservative president should be a pro-business president, but in fact rather than helping business, American businesses are going out of business; and the ones that are staying in business are shipping jobs oversees. No matter what Mr. Bush's advisors may think, ramping up the deficit is not helping the economy.

Mr. Bush says that education is his priority. This is excellent, but is the federal government really the right place to reform our schools? Education needs to be done at the local level-- right at the level of homes and families-- and not by big-government mandate. The "no child left behind" laws, stripped of rhetoric, consist of nothing except new government-mandated standardized tests-- another unfunded mandate from Washington that our states and cities have to pay for. Teaching children how to do well on standardized tests-- is what we want to teach our children? When did conservatism start believing that the government in Washington is the right place to run our schools?

The conservative world view is that the era of Big Government is over. Ronald Reagan knew that, and for that matter, so did President George H. W. Bush. But the younger Bush just hasn't gotten the message.

Iraq. It goes without saying that America needs to be strong, and that we should use every means of defending ourselves against those who detest our freedom and despise our way of life. Destroying the Taliban, the stronghold of the Al Qaida terrorists, was necessary and unavoidable; it was required for the defense of America. But invading Iraq? Long ago, John Quincy Adams wrote, "Wherever the standard of freedom shall be unfurled, there will [America's] heart, her benedictions, and her prayers be. But she goes not abroad in search of monsters to destroy." It doesn't matter how loathsome a dictator Saddam Hussein was; America should go to war only with great reluctance, and as a matter of last resort. America isn't in the business of nation building.

Once, even George W. Bush understood that. During a debate with then-Vice-President Al Gore in 2000, Mr. Bush said: "I don't think our troops ought to be used for what's called nation-building . . .. Maybe I'm missing something here. I mean, we're going to have a kind of nation-building corps from America? Absolutely not." Apparently to Mr. Bush, it depends on what the meaning of "absolutely not" is.

And fear of terrorism is no reason to erode our liberty.

Conservative leader Pat Buchanan said, "It is remarkable how complacent Americans seem to be, as our freedoms are gradually restricted, and more and more power and wealth flow to Big Government to protect us from terrorists." Do we really need the 342-page Patriot Act, to protect us from terrorism by giving the government more rights? Has we finally become a place where American citizens can be picked up and held without lawyer and without charges, indefinitely? It is worth quoting Benjamin Franklin: "They who would give up an essential liberty for temporary security, deserve neither liberty or security. " When did we decide that we prefer our security to our liberty?

Mr. Bush is that, quite frankly, he is not merely destroying the credibility of the Republican party, he is damaging the credibility of conservativm, period. Is Bush really the person who we want the world to view as the public image of conservatism? For the last twenty years, Ronald Reagan has been the image of conservatism in American. Do we want George W. Bush to be the intellect who will shape conservatism for the next twenty years? Conservatism could have survived a term of Mr. Kerry as president-- it may even have made us stronger and more focussed. But will conservatism survive another term of Mr. Bush?

Bush, a wolf in sheep's clothing, is eroding our economy, our liberty, and the very standing of our nation in the world. His words say that he is a conservative. His actions, on the other hand, say exactly the opposite.

Recommended reading:
Where the Right Went Wrong: How Neoconservatives Subverted the Reagan Revolution and Hijacked the Bush Presidency, by Pat Buchanan
War without end: www.theamericancause.org/patthecheney.htm
The Case against Empire: www.theamericancause.org/caseagainst.htm
The war party www.theamericancause.org/patthewarpartys.htm