How I Became A Conservative by Al Garner - HTML preview

Chapter   IV    The light goes on

Through renting rooms, investments, frugality, and being single with no kids, I gained some degree of financial independence in the late 70s.  I had gone from often out of work, frustrated, social worker, poor man to retired (busy body).  What luck.  Paradise.  I was free to spend my time writing (as a hobby).

I started with a typewriter, which spent most of its time in a repair shop, and later switched to a computer.  I was happy to be reading and writing about everything I’d been in and thought about.  My Christmas newsletter to friends describes this:

Having been in several fields, I wanted to put my pen to paper.  I went to writing clubs and learned writers are bright and different - some write standing, some in restaurants; some share everything, others nothing.  Some say there are no rules; just write.

I learned you can say a lot in a few words, you write the way you talk, you write 10% of what you know (like other fields), and you reveal yourself.  If you don’t make money nor get much recognition, you’re writing for yourself.  Friends and family don’t understand, but get used to it.

Such a life offers: no commute, no 9 to 5, no interruptions, meetings, dead- lines, explaining, compromising, office politics, or big wardrobe.

Ideas come out of the blue, so I keep one recorder on the night table and one in the glove compartment.  I listen to cab drivers, check-out clerks, gas station attendants for the wisdom of the common people.  I clip things from papers and watch documentaries.

Once a subject takes form, the ideas percolate.  I take notes, organize them, and write the piece.  Then comes revising.  It never stops, which makes a computer indispensable.  After I got one, my writing exploded.

Each article is its own reward; and if it gets published, that’s extra.  If I know a particular field and criticize it, I don’t send it to a publication in that field; they often don’t want to hear it.  I send it to a paper or magazine.  The public can see what I’m saying; the field sees what it wants to see.

I send copies to people who feel the way I do and they love it!  I’ve gotten notes from Milton Friedman, the president of Boston U., the principal in the movie LEAN ON ME, people running half-way houses on TV, and others.

You learn to tell good writing and TV programs from bad, and the importance of objectivity, firsthand experience, and age.

Creative work is self-absorbing, impractical, difficult, solitary, intuitive, vindicating, engrossing, compelling, and a privilege.  Harkin to the voice within.

In the past I’d taken the NEW YORK TIMES and the WASHINGTON POST when living in those cities, and by now I had been taking the LOS ANGELES TIMES for years.  (These and the WALL STREET JOURNAL were considered the top four papers at the time.)  I watched most of the documentaries and programs like 60 MINUTES, and clipped a zillion articles.  I could more clearly understand many errors by liberals and some by conservatives.

A     Liberal pitfalls

Having received a liberal education (in conservative Orange County, Calif.) and spent years in liberal social work in liberal New York City, where I daily read the liberal N.Y. Times, I found ‘liberal’ is used as the good housekeeping seal of intellectual thought.  One might think conservatives would have good ideas, but not so.  ‘Liberal’ is seen as ‘progressive, educated, compassionate, and generous.’

But many liberal programs have been disasters.  How could that be if based on such good intentions?  It’s because they were based on the false assumptions of:

Ideal

The liberal believes a better world is just out ahead.  We need only to be ‘freed’ from the ‘repressive’ past to ‘express’ ourselves, our good intentions and new ideas, and we’ll create a society of equality, peace, and security.  This sounds good in school but isn’t real.

Guilt

As the world isn’t ideal, the liberal is quick to point the finger.  He blames the older generation, the establishment, the upper classes.  They have more because of greed or capitalism and become mean conservatives to preserve it.  Those with less are victims.  This is why the (mostly liberal) media, are so negative.

Old is bad

The liberal thinks that our problems came from the past.  An example is the 19th   century.  He consistently runs it down as one of exploitation of the masses by the robber barons of Wall St. who conned Main St., bled Mid-western farmers, and fleeced immigrants.  He’s mistaken; the standard of life for the common man rose dramatically.

In disparaging the past he doesn’t learn from it - a fatal mistake.  The past contains the wisdom of traditional values gained at great cost, but he believes old is bad and

New is good

New ideas from new fields are something he can sink his teeth into; psychology, socialism, ‘modern’ economics, and other social ‘sciences’ are ‘technologies’ which can ‘engineer’ a ‘new man,’ New Deal, New Frontier, Great Society, etc.  While he might claim to believe in traditional values, he postpones them indefinitely.

Equal

As Robin Hood he wants redistribute the wealth.  He wants to push working class people through college, when many are not interested.

He is sure our poor are trapped, when immigrant poor, with limited English, pass them every day.

When it comes to bums and criminals, he has a thousand excuses.

Secure

He wants a world free of risk and want.  The earlier days of heroism, tragedy, and the free market are to be leveled for predictability and safety.  This can only be done through programs that promote:

Socialism

Where socialism (heavy government involvement) has been tried (India and East Germany in the 50s & 60s), development has been hindered.  Where it has been held back, development has flourished (Korea, Taiwan, Japan, and West Germany).   Thus he tends to be:

Anti-private

He’s not interested in understanding private schools, charity, prisons, nursing homes, fire depts., mail, transportation, utilities ...

Anti-business

He sees the high salaries of top executives as great inequities.  Henry Ford the 1st  put the country on wheels, but the liberal sees that Ford was rich while others were poor, and goes on to support the graduated income tax, capital gains taxes and other measures which penalize the Ford types.

He sees profit as mean.  If nursing home A makes a profit and clearly does a better job than non-profit nursing home B, A is bad and B is good.  Nursing home A can be ten times better than B, but liberals are reluctant to give it credit because it makes a profit.

Caring

The liberal claims to have a corner on caring and ‘love.’ His is the soapy, coddling kind.  It spoils those he’s trying to help.  He can’t imagine anything hardnosed or authoritarian as ‘caring.’  He needs to know that coach Vince Lombardi and General Patton were hard on their men because they cared about them.

Permissive

Seeing the past as repressive, believing in psychology, and seeing himself as a ‘caring’ person, he is tolerant of vice and seeks to ‘understand’ crime.  He doesn’t believe strongly in authority or discipline, and considers punishment ‘medieval.’  If ‘boot camp’ programs help delinquent youth, you won’t hear much - it’s outside his frame of reference.

Overly-generous

He spoils children; spoils the poor by paying them not to work; and spoils 3rd poor countries with foreign aid.  His programs pay farmers not to grow and the American Indian to be dependent.

The conservative disagrees.  He is often older and more experienced and realistic.  He venerates the establishment, capitalism, and traditional values; he sees social classes as  overlapping, natural, and healthy; his ‘caring’ meets a person only half way; he holds bums and criminals responsible for their behavior; he shows how the private sector has taken over many government functions and done a better job.

Let’s hear more from the conservative side.  Let’s promote it in academia and the media.  Let’s remind our youth, as people get older, they get more conser- vative because a lot of liberal ideas are idealistic and flawed.

As much damage as liberals have done, they deserve credit for:

• More rights for minorities, women, gays, the handicapped.
• More openness about battered spouses, addiction, child abuse, incest, abortion, impotence, etc.
• More acceptances of ethnic diversity and intermarriage.
• More acceptances of separation & divorce.
• More use of psychology to get to the roots of one’s problems instead of ‘keeping it all in’ and enduring ‘long suffering.’
• More openness about public figures instead of putting them on a pedestal.
• More open-minded about premarital relations in long-term, responsible relationships.
• More questioning of religion. Integrating newsrooms.

Liberals led the way with these because of their challenging old ideas, being open to new ones, and because of their interest in those who have less.  A look at history shows they led the way in abolishing slavery, getting women the vote, civil rights …

The liberal media

The importance of the news media cannot be underestimated as most issues are decided by public opinion.  But are the media fair?  We get an idea from a widely quoted survey taken in ‘82 of ‘the prestige media’  (NY Times, Wash. Post, Wall St. Journal, Time, Newsweek, the 3 major networks and PBS).  It said the media have a liberal bias as:

• Three times as many of their newsmen considered themselves liberal as conservative.
• 80% favored affirmative action.
• 79% believed in the welfare state.
• 80% voted democratic from ‘64 to ‘76.

Why are the news media liberal despite the fact most Americans are conservative?  One reason is liberals tend to go into the media, and conservatives tend to go into business according to David Brinkley.

What is the liberal bias?   In my opinion it is: an ideal world is possible, old is bad - new is good, anti-establishment, anti-business, pro-union, less defense, more social programs, and level the classes for ‘equality.’  (Conservatives take the opposite positions.)

The following show the liberal tilt of the news media.

History

• Many in the media snicker at ‘status quo’ presidents like Harding, Coolidge, Hoover, and Eisenhower.  They prefer men of ‘action’ like Teddy Roosevelt, FDR, and JFK.
• Many find the 50s sterile and glory in the protests of the late 60s.
• Many didn’t like Reagan.  John Chancellor called him and arch- conservative; Walter Cronkite gave him a low rating; Harry Reasoner implied he was a cowboy; and Gloria Steinem said he was just lucky.
• When George H. Bush promised a ‘kinder, gentler’ day, the media jumped on this and milked it.  Brokaw said Bush had started ‘the process of healing.’ Leslie Stall said Bush was a rejection of the Reagan values.
• John Chancellor said, ‘The 80s are over and Carter is more popular than Reagan.’  March ‘90.

Anti-business

The media and business have been hostile for years.  Each sees the other as dominant, and each would like to dominate.

• The media say capitalism caused the Depression and government got us out of it.  But conservatives say the government caused it and made it worse.
• When the price of gas goes up, the media raise a fuss; when down, silence. When profits in business are big, the media complains; when losses are big, silence.
• If G.M. makes big profits and closes a plant, it’s a conspiracy.
• When Polish citizens drove long distances to sell goods in West Berlin in ‘89, a reporter said they were ‘greedy.’
• When more college freshmen than usual signed up for business, it was a rise in the ‘greed index’ (John Chancellor).
• When David Stockman left the Reagan government in the 80s to make more money, it was our ‘greedy’ system (said Chancellor, whose high salary comes from the ‘system’).
• When AT&T was broken up and banks deregulated, these ‘helped the rich and hurt the poor’ Ray Brady, CBS.
• When capitalism brought great progress to parts of China, our media stress the problems.  They said the economy there was ‘overheating’ and the government should restrain it.  A reporter interviewing a new millionaire there, asked him if his success hadn’t created ‘inequality.’
• When the free trade pact with Canada brought benefits, the media stressed the problems.  The same in ‘91 when talking about free trade with Mexico. The media continually suggest the business community fill in for schools, family, and government with education, health care, child care, etc.
• Once there was a report on 20/20 about how much better various businesses did when government got out of regulating them.  Reporters Hugh Downs and Tom Jerrel were surprised.
• Reagan and Thatcher were never understood by the media, nor fully credited.  Those two understood the free market; the media don’t and don’t want to.

‘Equality’

• An article in TIME said Avril Harriman was ‘born almost embarrassingly rich ....’
• Mike Wallace asked Brook Aster if she felt guilty about being rich.  Donald Trump said he did.
• The media blame the haves, and fawn over the have-nots:
• Labor is right; management is wrong.  Tenants are right; landlords wrong. The poor are right; the rich are wrong.  Minorities are right; whites are wrong.  Consumers are right; big business is wrong.  Those over 30 are wrong; those under 30 are right.  Detention for illegal aliens is ‘dehumanizing.’  Confronting a delinquent about his crime is ‘brutal.’  Getting up at 6:00 am for recovering alcoholics is ‘tough.’  Spanking is ‘beating.’  Rules are ‘regimentation.’  Innocent teasing is ‘humiliation.’
• The media pity the poor without talking to those they hurt: merchants, insurance companies, employers, credit bureaus, teachers, police, public utilities ….  They feature the poor who do not work, not the poor who do.
• The media endlessly indulge criminals who excuse their crimes with asinine logic.
• The media support admitting under-qualified blacks and Hispanics to college, at the expense of better qualified whites and Asians.
• The media blame drug addiction on poverty and discrimination, and ignore the poor and minority people who do not take drugs.  When treatment programs (only 25% successful) are not immediately available, it’s society’s fault that addicts continue to take drugs.
• During and after a riot, they feature mostly the rioters, not the locals who hate riots and have to live next to burned-out buildings.  Years later the media warn society of the chance of riots over growing tensions.  They don’t warn the poor not to riot by pointing out the damage that will never be repaired, the flight of business, and the rise of insurance rates.
• The media think equal opportunity should bring equal results.

Poverty

• A noted author wrote of the 60s and 70s, ‘White liberals saw the ... ghetto through a romantic haze and extolled its music, warmth, aliveness - missing the child abuse, brutality, abandonment, drunkenness, addiction, disease.’ When the gays, the rich, or immigrants improve a neighborhood, the media say the poor were ‘pushed out.’
• When the poor ‘push’ the middle class out, we don’t hear much.
• They assure us being black is hopeless, not mentioning that poor blacks from the Caribbean come here and our blacks.  Same with other poor immigrants passing our poor.
• The media run down menial work - the traditional route out of poverty.
• They talk of heat subsidies when the low at night is only 52.
• The media were indignant about Reagan’s cutting back social programs. They don’t ask if the programs worked or if they did more harm than good.

Crime

• Connie Chung did a program on a teenager whose crimes were so bad, he was labeled a ‘poster child for capital punishment.’  (Why ‘child’?)  It was about how the system had ‘failed’ him, not how he failed the system.
• The FBI asked newspapers to publish posters of fugitives, but some papers said it would violate fugitives’ rights.
• When an incorrigible in prison was put in a diaper and shackles, a reporter called it ‘draconian.’  When another was put in shackles by a guard, a reporter (Tom Jerrel of 20/20) asked if the guard was ‘paranoid.’
• Mr. Jerrel also did a one-sided report on a home for delinquents, portraying them as victims of a heartless staff.

Socialistic

• Bill Moyers called himself a son of the New Deal.
• Tom Brokaw said congress has to ‘face up’ to providing child care. Another time his program criticized our health system for several nights, then praised Canada’s socialized medicine.
• Former Speaker of the House, Tip O’Neill said on TV all he and his col- leagues ‘ever wanted was to provide a chance for the average guy to make a decent living for his family ....’  Sounded good, but what did it mean - Medicaid, unemployment insurance, job training, affordable housing, rent subsidies, heat subsidies, food stamps, counseling for substance abuse, gambling, mental illness - on and on.
• In 1990 with the deficit looming ever larger, the media often quoted polls showing the public would pay higher taxes for more programs.  The media didn’t go into cutting spending.
• They favored Castro, when he first took over Cuba.
• They reported the breakup of communism in eastern Europe without explaining the reason - central planning (which liberals like).  They say those countries are not ‘ready’ for capitalism; they should try socialism. (J.K. Galbraith).

Education

• The media have put more responsibility on schools, while taking away the tools (authority, accountability, values, and standards).  They helped bring open classroom, new math, no grading, pass/fail, dual admissions… . Classes were supposed to be so interesting, discipline wouldn’t be neces- sary.  These caused many to graduate functionally illiterate.
• The media anguish over the failure of public schools, ignoring the success of private schools - because they think in terms of the public sector, not the private sector.
• They say some colleges (Columbia, Yale, Univ. of So. Calif.) are centers of privilege and inequality which ignore the ghettos around them.  Let’s see: The ghettos are not the responsibility of the colleges.  The colleges provide work for many in the ghetto; and colleges have to spend a lot for security because they are surrounded by ghettos.  This, yet the colleges are somehow guilty.  The examples go on in housing, health, legal aid, etc.  It’s time we become more aware of this bias and counter it with facts.

Now the forbidden subject of

Social classes

American liberals resist the idea of ‘social classes,’ assuming:

• Classes mean ‘inequality,’ ‘stratification,’ and conflict.
• If the gap between rich and poor grows, something is wrong.
• Those with more exploit those with less.
• The working class is oppressed, and the ‘underclass’ is ‘trapped.’
• If capitalism isn’t the cause, it must be close.
• Government should redistribute the wealth and power to level the classes.

To get a picture of classes, let’s consider what noted conservative E. Banfield describes as the four classes: upper, middle, working, and lower, and how liberals view them.

Housing

The lower class of bums, common criminals and the improvident can afford only the worst housing (and let it run down, as we’ll see).  The other classes can afford better, but they maintain it.  They fight to keep the lower class out.  (When this is middle class blacks keeping out lower class blacks, liberals are baffled as they assume all blacks stick together.)

When the middle class ‘push’ the lower class out of a neighborhood, liberals complain; when the lower class ‘push’ the middle class out, liberals are quiet.

Education

Liberals consider private schools ‘elitist.’  They ignore them and anguish over public schools.  The latter are supposed to be the great equalizer, but, in fact they help the upper class; and, after the 9th  grade, hurt the lower class.

The lower class doesn’t value education.  The working class Archie Bunkers value it somewhat, but not as much as liberals think.  Many are ready to leave school after 14, get a job, and start a family before too long.

The middle and upper classes want to stay in school longer.  The liberals, most of whom come from these classes, assume this is better and that others have or should have the same interests.  Not so.

Liberals have wanted so badly to help the working and lower classes, they have dropped educational standards since the mid-60s.  They wanted to include everyone and not have anyone feel bad about getting low marks.  They have also taken responsibilities from the family and put them on the schools, but have taken away  - authority, discipline, punishment, and standards.  The disastrous results are well-documented.

At the college level liberals support taxing all the classes to pay for public colleges.  This is one of the great injustices in our system as those who benefit are primarily middle and upper class students, says Nobel winner Milton Friedman.

Work

Liberals have appointed themselves champions of the ‘working man.’  They are sure he is being exploited by management, so they support unions whose policies: cost the country thousands of jobs, raise prices, monopolize, discriminate, and support raising the minimum wage.

Liberals have gotten many people to frown on menial work.  They’ve decided it’s boring and numbing, because that’s what it is for them.  But many working class people are content with it.  They raise families on it and their kids often do the same (and  don’t need their jobs put down).

Liberals have made welfare so generous, people are paid not to take menial work.  (But such work and working harder than the class above have been the traditional route out of poverty.)

Liberals keep raising the minimum wage which costs thousands of entry- level jobs, depriving many teenagers of a chance to develop work habits.  Some feel life owes them something, and with no job, have a greater inclination toward crime.

Business

Various businesses use demographic studies to determine what social classes exist in which neighborhoods and target their products accordingly.  The military uses them when recruiting.  Insurance companies use them to ‘redline.’ Liberals would like to interpret this as class or racial prejudice, but it’s economics.

When businesses operate in a ghetto, they have to raise their prices as it costs more to operate (security, theft, vandalism, staff turnover).  Liberals call higher prices ‘exploitation.’

They say businesses in ghettos are ‘taking money out of the neighborhood and giving nothing back.’  Nothing back?   They are providing services no one else will!

Liberals continually want business to take on more social responsibility: child care, health insurance, comparable worth, family leave, 60 day plant closing notice, helping local schools etc.

Taxes

Liberals don’t mind ‘soaking the rich’ through the graduated income tax, inheritance tax, and capital gains tax (highest in the modern world).

Social programs

According to noted conservative E. G. Banfield the lower class is made up of people who choose not to become self-sufficient, self-respecting, and mature. Education can’t prepare them for work and adulthood. There is no chronic poverty outside this class.

You don’t hear this from liberals.  In ‘64 they created a ‘poverty line,’ which allows this class and other poor - food stamps, Medicare, legal aid, school lunch, rent & heat subsidies, job training and fewer taxes.  They are paid not to work. This has caused polarization and resentment - especially from the working poor.

Liberal programs have caused more harm than good with some of their programs:  rent control has created inequities and a housing shortage, and welfare has broken up families and created dependence.

Refugees

When early waves of refugees from communist Cuban and Vietnam come to the U.S. and become rich and later waves don’t, liberals blame our system, missing the matter of class.  First came the upper class, then the middle class, then the working class.  The upper class does better because they arrive with more skills.

Conclusion

We all believe in equal opportunity, but starting in the 60s, liberals began to think this should produce equal outcome.  It didn’t:  many education programs failed, many public housing projects became notorious, and welfare caused depen- dency, resentment, and polarization.  Liberal permissiveness increased crime, and affirmative action was often reverse discrimination.

It’s time for realism.  Broad overlapping social classes are a fact of life. They don’t conflict; they complement each other.  They are natural and healthy in an open society.  People gravitate to their own level.  They should be left alone to do so and not be manipulated by liberals, whose programs have often left everyone worse off.

Liberal spin on riots

Reporters did a good job covering the riots in Los Angeles of Spring, 92, but afterwards most fell into their tendency to favor those with less.  They featured the rioter’s side and didn’t challenge it with facts:

We heard a lot about the rage of the rioters, and a little about the rage of those who were beaten by rioters or who lost their homes, jobs, and stores.  We were told the riot was a matter of class, not race, implying the poor supported the riot.  Fraid not.  The majority of the poor are self-respecting.  They hate riots as they suffer the most from them.

Another item was rebuilding.  Many people felt the government didn’t owe the riot areas a dime to rebuild.  (Why should government money go where private money won’t.)  But the media did.  Garrick Utley of NBC spoke as if rebuilding should have started the day after the riot.  Being an election year, the politicians, who had been proving how broke government was, tripped over themselves with promises to rebuild.  If anyone believes this will restore the communities, they should look at Newark, Detroit, and Watts which rioted in the 60s.

Most of the media are doing what they did after the riots in the 60s - leading us down the liberal path of guilt, promises, idealism, some rebuilding, and ‘new’ social programs, which will fail, and increase dependency, self-pity, and a victim’s mentality.  This will increase the chance of future riots.

We need more attention to moderate journalists and leaders.  They channel unrest into legitimate forms of protest:  marches, lawsuits, picketing, boycotts, initiatives, referendums, and recalls.  They seek progress through:

- Avoiding job quotas, charity, subsidies, and preferential treatment.

- Supporting work skills, education, business experience, workfare, right to work, work at home, a sub-minimum wage, and traditional values.

B    Economics

When in college I’d majored in Political Science and minored in History. Neither gave enough attention to the economic factors that shaped them, nor did they mention Milton Friedman, Henry Hazlitt, and a host of others.  Luckily I now ran across the