(ThyBlackMan.com) Happy New Year.
The advent of the new year brings about many things: vows to change your way of life, resolutions to lose weight, quit smoking, volunteer and read more. The New Year for some means new starts or achieving old goals. Around these blog parts a new year means election season. Every year seems like an election year because some candidates are in constant campaign mode; somebody somewhere is always up for election. But right here, right now in 2012 it’s the start of the 2012 Presidential election. Decision 2012. Vote 2012. Your Right, Your Vote. Your Life, Your Choice. Vote or Die. Whatever you want to call or brand this election, it’s here.
We are one day, count them folks, one day away from the Iowa caucuses. Six of the seven GOP candidates are criss-crossing the state today and part of tomorrow in an effort to drum up last minute support, win over conservatives, the undecided’s, and whomever else might find themselves inside a caucus center. Right now Mitt Romney, Ron Paul, and who’d thunk motherfreaking Rick Santorum are in a position to come in first, second and third in the caucuses.
But I don’t want to just talk about the Republican candidates today. Today I want to talk about the incumbent in this whole shindig; the Democrat holding it down in the White House. President Obama. We’ll talk about the GOP tomorrow. I promise.
Now, it has come to my attention 2012 is going to be like this uber important election. Like more important than the election of 1860; you know that election that put Abraham Lincoln into office and began the downward spiral into a Civil War — still re-enacted to this day — and subtle or not so subtle racism and discrimination no longer confined to the confines of the peculiar institution. I’m not saying 2012 is as important as this, I’m just telling you what I heard. (word to Yahzarah)
I also heard that this election is about restoring American values; the vision of America.
This vision, envisioned by our founders included life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness has apparently gone all the way awry in the nearly three years under Obama and thus needs to be restored. 
So how do we do that?
According to the GOP candidates we elect them to be our next President of the United States and watch them roll back all of the hope and change that has simply failed us as a country. Health care reform… who needs it? Regulation of Wall Street… who wants that? Fair pay between men and women…why bother? The list goes on and on. President Obama’s America has failed us.?
Or could it be that in a sea of Republican candidates who seek to return the United States to the wondrous vision of it’s former self, GOP candidates in actuality will return the country to an era whose policies no longer fit the framework of the current conditions. Where their “progressive conservative” policies will potentially fail the country over and over again, President Obama’s meticulous machinations of laws that progressives scream don’t go far enough and conservatives say are ruining the country hand over fist, are in fact just the right dose of lukewarm hope and moderate change to course correct nearly a decade of reckless spending, war mongering and an expansion of government greater than any other President we’d previously had in our past.
Conservatives charge President Obama with wanting government to be so big it becomes a socialist entity working for its people and the people enabled so much they no longer work for themselves. Conservatives charge President Obama with wanting so much regulation the free market is stifled and the economy so choked off it will never fully recover; only rebounding in short bursts as it gasps for breath to hang on to life. Conservatives charge President Obama with playing panderer to enemy nations instead of taking a forceful step in countries like Iran and Libya and Iraq now that we’ve left.
In a conservative America the free market would be free and robust, the American people responsible for their own fortune or poverty, their own great health or near death’s door medical condition. In a Conservative America we would continue to be the world’s cop provoking nations to attack us with our insensitive actions and waging wars with any who so dared to threaten us.
This conservative America is dangerous. This vision of a conservative America where faith based values intercede over personal choice and privacy is not a conservative America at all. It is an Orwellian America. 1984 twenty-first century style.
Furthermore, this conservative America where government plays no role in people’s lives because it is heavy-handed is an America that will certainly collapse. People right now in 2012 are surviving thanks to the government. 99 weeks of unemployment benefits; please and thank you to the chronically jobless who’ve been without work for years. Food assistance; please and thank you to the American people who work hard at their under-employed gigs, or their full-time credentialed jobs yet still can’t afford a gallon of milk or a carton of eggs let alone fresh organic kale, spinach and broccoli. Medicaid; please and thank you to the family where the parents work in jobs where health insurance is not offered and the co-ops of the Affordable Care Act have yet to take effect. Medicare and Social Security; please and thank you to our Nation’s seniors and aging Boomers who worked for year s to make this country the force that it is today and are now looking for that force to help them out when a new generation should be taking over the workforce.
A conservative America sees these programs as an opportunity for the bottom feeders of any society to get over quick, and leech resources from the government. That underhanded element to undermine will be present in any government; it is not a reason to get rid of all government that actually helps people. Reform of these gargantuan programs is great; eliminating them… not so much.
A conservative America sees tax cuts for the rich and the trickle down effect for the poor as the answer to a country where social programs are naught and personal responsibility and personal choice result in equality. The problem with this school of thought is that it is a fallacy through and through. The trickle down effect never leaves the one percent and personal responsibility and personal choice are sometimes eroded by circumstance such as being born into poverty or racism and discrimination that no matter how post-civil rights, post-slavery we get we still have yet to understand what it is to be post-black, post-white, post-social constructs made to separate; post-racial? What is that?
This is conservative America. The great vision that America once was that it must return to. The problem with 99 percent of this conservative America is that it was not great when it was and it will not be great if or when it is revisited. Every period, every decade, every era in this country has been marred by tension or strife when certain conservative values have been allowed to run unchecked. It does not matter which party is in office. The issues range from Civil Rights in the 1960s to the economy now. Social conservatism does not work, fiscal conservatism works in moderation, and faith based conservatism is blasphemous to the founder’s intent in creating this nation.
“…(O)ur rulers can have no authority over such natural rights, only as we have submitted to them. The rights of conscience we never submitted, we could not submit. We are answerable for them to our God. The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. But it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.”
~ Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the state of Virginia, 1785.
As we head into the 2012 election we will find the GOP brand of conservatism is in fact a brand of policy that has failed America over and over again from 1860 — thank you Newt — ’til now.
Yet the GOP embraces these policies of conservatism that by definition and in action preserve the status quo and or restore the status quo of yesteryear to limit any change.
These polices are nothing new, they are the same radically right positions the majority of our nation has rejected time and again. Only this time they’re being billed as brand new in the face of a moderate-Republican passing as a Democrat whose pragmatic policy decisions have left liberals itching to move past go and conservatives screaming go straight to jail.
The race for the White House in 2012 begins tomorrow. These are your choices. A conservative America we’ve seen fail, or a pragmatic approach to conservatism and liberalism that allows breath to be breathed into our country’s life blood and a way forward that will never be a way back.
What do you think is at stake in 2012 for President Obama and his opponents?
Staff Writer; Nikesha Leeper
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