What If the United States Really Was a Christian Nation?

Let's pretend the United States really was the Christian nation that the fundamentalist social conservatives and religious rightists claim it is for just a moment.

Seriously, let's just take them at their word and assume that they're right:  the United States actually is a Christian nation.

So, does America the Christian Nation live up to its lofty religious beliefs?

America, as a sovereign nation, has never once in its history actually acted according to the teachings of Jesus Christ, as depicted in the Bible.  Not once.  Oh, sure, America as a nation sends a miniscule percentage of its vast and awesome wealth in aid to assist this or that third world country currently suffering from poverty, rampant disease, and natural disasters, but the very same fundamentalist conservatives who insist that this is a Christian nation want to put an end to that practice, and want to end it yesterday!

The truth is that the primary impulse from most funamentalist Christians in this country has been explotative selfishness, and this has been true since before we actually existed as the United States.

The first colonists from England had barely just arrived to the shores of the New World when they started stealing and murdering the indigenous inhabitants.  You know, that's pretty much the way the Hebrews acted when they entered the land of Canaan now that I think about it.  So perhaps we can call this behavior "biblical", but not "Christian."  Anyway, these English so-called Christian pilgrims quickly expanded their program of exploiting and subjugating the natives, promoting superstition and fear, murdering "witches" (a fad that they shared with a lot of fundamentalist Christians of their day) and establishing, via the Dutch, a lively trade with certain African warlords for that all-important commodity for their burgeoning empire:  cheap labor in the form of slaves.

And when they weren't murdering the natives, hanging and stoning people for being witches, or whipping their slaves into obedience, these enterprising "followers of Christ" were busily chopping down every tree they could find and shooting every animal they came across; both trees and animals were aspects of "nature" they believed they were given dominion over.  Again, we can see Old Testament style ruthlessness, but not a hint of the love promoted by Jesus Christ.

Adding to the problem is the fact that the rise of the corporations as a power bloc in America began almost as soon as the country was founded.  The very same folks that Jesus tossed out of the temple in Jerusalem, the people he warned had as much chance of getting into heaven as a camel had to passing through the eye of a needle, had already taken control of the government and were steering the brand new nation toward their own personal destination:  the Land of Eternal Greed.

This version of America is the same one that is still present today, what with its celebration of filthy rich celebrities who are famous for being filthy rich celebrities, its millionaire athletes, and its lineup of corporate titans who, despite having more money than they could ever hope to spend, drive themselves to acquire more and more and more.  Because enough is never really enough.  This nation is quite apart from any sort of Christian ideal.

The successful conquest of the United States by the corporations ended any concept of the American public concentrating en masse on thoughts of philosophy, art, science, love, or religious devotion.  These things would still be pursued by a few, but the overwhelming majority were lured into another way of living:  that of "consume consume consume."

Jesus said, "The man who has two tunics is to share with him who has none; and he who has food is to do likewise." (That's Luke 3:10, just so you know.)  The corporations say, "If you've only got two tunics, you're worthless; what you need are a dozen of those things!  Get to a mall, now!"  Nothing is too childish, nothing is too silly, nothing is too meaningless to be obsessed over until you purchase it, at which point you'll be told that what you really need isn't what you just bought, but something you need to buy next.  And of course, while you're engaged in this endless cycle of purchase, purchase, purchase, your mind is far, far away from any sort of actual enlightening thought or activity.

Such is the real religion of the United States of America.

Currently, America is exporting some of the most dangerous products in the history of the world, including predatory business ideals, banking practices that highly resemble Mafia protection rackets, and industrial practices that are just short of criminal.  We send pesticides and herbicides oversees that are so toxic we've forbidden their use within the borders of the United States (apparently the rest of the world doesn't matter much).  This, too, is the product of the corporate domination of America.  And yet, we never hear a peep of protest from would-be Christians against this sort of "missionary work" as their so-called "Christian nation" deals evil to the rest of the world.

Meanwhile, the American military-industrial complex arose that has never seen a lethal weapon it didn't want to sell to the general public at wholesale prices.  This has had an interesting effect on how the timeline of history has been portrayed in American textbooks.  History actually comes across as a continual cycle of "prelude-to-war", "war,", and then "prelude to war" again.  In its entire 238 year history (as I write this), America the So-Called Christian Nation has only been "at peace" (by which I mean, not fighting anyone at all) for only about 10 years or so.

In only the last 75 years, the United States has carpet bombed Europe, dropped two nuclear weapons on inhabited cities, rained bombs and napalm and agent orange all over Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia, invaded tiny nations like Grenada and Panama that had no hope of standing up to us, and then proceeded to dump "shock and awe" all over Iraq and Afghanistan.  The level of justification used for these actions varied from definitely necessary to not necessary whatsoever, but regardless of justification, "peace through warmongering" is the precise opposite of what Jesus taught.

It is clear, based on America's culture of consumption and endless military adventurism that America is about as far from being a Christian nation as it can be.  The only time that America ever strayed into the actual ideological territory championed by Jesus in the Bible was when it tries to take care of, and expand the rights and dignity of the disenfranchised and abused:  the poor, women, children, people of color, Native Americans, immigrants, gay, lesbian, and transgender people, the sick, the elderly, the disabled, the oppressed, and the hungry.  In other words, those outsiders that Jesus Christ said would eventually "inherit the earth."

America has a special term for such people.  We call them We the People...

You're Just a Misogynist

For those of you who haven't ever heard the phrase "shaming tactics" before, let me introduce you to one of the worst and most insidious "weapons" in the debate over men's issues.

In the context of the men's rights debate, a shaming tactic is an emotional device used by people (both men and women) who refuse to argue their points with logic, but rather try to force a debate to shut down.  They are meant to elicit sympathy for those who use them, and paint the target of the shaming tactic as unacceptable, outcast, and anathema.  They are cheap tricks used not to comment on the point that someone is making, but rather on the person making the point and how they are making it.

Basically, its just another form of Ad hominem attack.  The people who use shaming tactics cannot respond intelligently to the points of an argument, so they're going to convince everyone the person they are arguing against is a bad person so no one will listen to them.

Its cheap, to be honest.

Take this shaming tactic, for instance:  "You're just a misogynist!"

Yep.  You got me.

I'm not trying to raise awareness of men's issues because I want to try and help men who have been victimized.  I don't really want to stop discrimination against men.  I don't really want to stop unfair practices that put men at a disadvantage merely because they possess a Y chromosome.

What, are you kidding?  Why would I do that?

Nope.  It has to be that I hate women.

There's no other reason for it at all.

All that stuff I've written about how male rape victims are ignored, or how male domestic violence victims are treated as jokes was just written just because I'm blind to the rampant misogyny that makes up the very fabric of everything to do with modern society, because I'm a man, and therefore am a beneficiary and promoter of that misogyny.

Oh, and all those female friends I have who happen to agree with me about the problems involved in modern gender issues?

Yeah, they've internalized the misogyny so badly that they've been brainwashed into thinking that its okay to hate women.

Since the 1980s, and perhaps longer, the accusation of misogyny has been the most reliable shaming tactic available to those people who want to make sure that absolutely no attention at all is paid to men's issues.  It's the most common way to bully both male and female activists who support men's issues into silence.

Say something a they doesn't like, get called a misogynist.

Criticize one of their theories or actions?  Misogynist.

Disagree with their analysis of a problem, or object to their proposed solution?  You're a filthy rape-promoting misogynist.  You're only saying that because you hate women.  You're only being critical because you hate women.  You're only pointing out the holes in the their argument because you hate women.

It has nothing to do with you're having a better argument, or being more logical, or being more rational.  Its all about the hating women.  And this applies even if you are a woman.  Being female doesn't get you off the hook, because you obviously suffer from internalized misogyny!  You're so oppressed by misogyny that you've been brainwashed into thinking like a misogynist!

Believe it or not, up until really recently, this worked every time it was used.  This is changing, mostly because accusations of misogyny are being made for the most petty, ridiculous reasons.

To give you an example, the other day (I write this on December 27, 2014), I saw a man being accused of misogyny for the "crime" of saying that he thinks Miley Cyrus is a "bad influence" on young girls, and thus has forbidden his nine-year-old daughter from watching Cyrus's videos.  That's apparently what floats as misogyny to modern feminism.

And its happening so often, and in response to such silly nonsense, that regular folk not engaged in the gender-issue debate are developing a resistance to it.  And of course, there are more and more of us who, when someone tries to shame us into silence by accusing of of misogyny, are refusing to shut up.

Here's something to think about:  if, as we hear every day, we are living in a culture in which misogyny is so pervasive as to be normalized, why the hell would an accusation of misogyny hold any power?  Remember, our society hates women.  Right down to the very bones, our society is set up to oppress women, and the men in our society are raised from birth to hate women.  But if so, why would it ever be considered a threat to label someone a misogynist?

If misogyny really was that ever-present in our society as, say, brown-eyed people, then why would the accusation of misogyny be any more effective than being called brown-eyed?

And no, before you start, I am not saying that there are no misogynists out there.  I'm not saying that there really aren't people out there who despise and hate women just for being women.  No one with a working brain would ever say that.

However, the problem is a relatively small handful of complete and total assholes who, for reasons that I cannot and doubt I ever will be able to comprehend, despise and denigrate women, not the entire gender, no matter what these people say.

An accusation of misogyny could only have the power to shame someone into silence in a society that is not inherently misogynystic.  As Albert Camus said, "The power of an insult is the power to bring the weight of society's disapproval upon an individual."  In order for such an accusation to have any effect, it requires the culture in general to disapprove of the behavior, attitude, or attribute in question.  The fact that an accusation of misogyny works as a shaming tactic to silence and bully people, or to damage their lives and social status, reflects a society that is not actually misogynystic.  The fact that this shaming tactic is inordinately effective when used against men also demonstrates that people who say that our society is misogynystic are, to put it bluntly, full of shit.

To put it bluntly, if hating women were normal for our culture, if all men really are raised from birth to hate women, then calling a man a misogynist would be as useless as calling a person brown-eyed. 

Let's look at the reverse for a moment:  "You're just a misandrist!"

Call someone in today's society a misandrist, and the most common reaction you're going to receive back is a puzzled look because the person will likely not have the first damned clue as to what that word means.  And the most common reaction from the small handful of people who do know what it means will be a shrug and a dismissive "whatever."  Others will be puzzled because they can't figure out how their sexist, anti-male opinions and attitudes, supported as they are by "common wisdom" and popular culture, could be considered anti-male sexism.

And then you get my favorite reaction:  those people who laugh and then make jokes about men being butthurt and "manfeelz" and "drinking male tears."

You know, the shitheads who will blithely explain that misandry just don't exist, and that the only people who bring up misandry are the misogynistic asshole rape-promoters, so shut the fuck up already you fucking woman-hater!

Some of the more polite misandry-deniers will tell you, with a straight face, that "misandry" is nothing more than secondary misogyny.

No, really.  "Misandry", the hatred of men, is just a different type of misogyny.

These people will point out that its a proven fact that misogyny is the root cause of ALL sexism, regardless of the target, and because of this fact, misandry is just an unfortunate side effect that would not exist without misogyny.  The only reason, these idiots argue, that women denigrate men is because of a long history of suffering under the bootheels of those same men.

This implies that misandry will, as if by magic, disappear once we’ve exposed and rooted out all the misogyny in society and properly cleansed our filthy sexist souls of it.

And yet, you see hashtags and memes and entire facebook groups proudly proclaiming things like Men Are Pigs (the name of a real facebook group) and #killallmen.  There's a forum website out there called ihatemen.org that has a quarter million subscribed users, some of whom are national-level politicians, scientists, and teachers at major universities.  There is a series of children's books out there, along with associated merchandise, called "Boys Are Stupid, Throw Rocks At Them".

It's no wonder people aren't shamed into silence or into altering their behavior by an accusation of misandry.  Accusing someone of hating men doesn't have the power to shame them or make them stop what they are doing.  This is because society’s values are such that even if hating men is not exactly considered a good thing, its not considered a bad thing either, especially if the person who is doing the hating is a woman.

Here's another question I want you to think about:  if misogyny is supposed to be the ultimate cause of all sexism, and if misandry is just an unfortunate side effect of it, then why is misandry so much more socially acceptable than misogyny?

Just think about it for a second.

More Fan Mail

Well, this didn't take long.

In response to my "Answering Fan Mail" blog, I got the following private message from an entirely different person, in reaction to it.

Here is the content of the second private message, in its entirety:

I read your answer to your so-called "fan mail."  Men don't have answers, fuckwad!!!!  Their is no fucking need for a mens movment your so-called fucking issues are just the result of patriarchy!!!!  Look up patriarchy, fuckwad!!!!  Educate yourself!!!!  All men need is feminsm, you fucking turd!!!  All anyone needs if feminism!!!!

Okay then, let's talk about patriarchy for a minute.

In my opinion, the so-called "Patriarchal Theory" is inherently flawed because it only looks at sexism from the point of view of women and the history of sexism against women.  I've discovered, since I started talking and writing about sexism and men's issues and gender equality, that most women who identify themselves as feminist often seem unaware that sexism against men exists at all, much less that it is just as harmful as sexism against women and they are absolutely not aware at all how often sexism against men takes very different forms as sexism against women.

Some feminists even go so far as to claim that there is no such thing as anti-male sexism because men are privileged.  This, by the way, is an example of the logical fallacy known as "Circular Reasoning."  It goes like this:

Question:  How do you know men are privileged?

Answer:  Because they aren't subject to sexism.

Question:  How do you know men aren't subject to sexism?

Answer:  Because they are privileged. 

A large number of feminists have told me in discussion that anti-male sexism, when they acknowledge that such a thing exists at all, is actually just a side-effect of anti-female sexism.  That is, the oppression of men is enabled by men against themselves as a part of the institutionalized oppression of women.

As I said, this is just another example of sexism only being viewed through the female perspective, because you could just as easily say that sexism against women is a product of sexism against men, which would be just as valid a statement.

The problem with Patriarchal Theory (not to mention some of the more repugnantly misogynistic pro-male, anti-female reactions to it) is the assumption that one gender and only one gender is solely and wholly responsible for sexism with little to no input from the other gender.  This is complete and utter nonsense.  Sexist actions and sexist attitudes are held, maintained, "justified" (yes, I know, just go with it), and promoted by members of both gender, and whether male or female, the promoters of these sexist attitudes are simply shitty human beings.

The truth is, most of what is labelled "sexism" in today's society affects both men and women, but in completely and totally different ways.  And because the effects that the two genders are subjected to are different, men and women both tend to look at the other gender, see that they are not being affected in the same exact way they are being affected, and thus say, "This affects men/women and only men/women, thus women/men are privileged", when the truth is, both genders are being oppressed, and both genders are enjoying privilege, but the oppression and privilege bear no resemblance to each other.

So if both sides are affected equally (if differently) by sexism, why in the world would be ever call such a situation "Patriarchy?"

Well, let's look at it a little more closely.

The most common and pervasive form of sexism in American society is the idea that women are precious, but incompetent and men are competent, but utterly disposable.

• This idea conveys many privileges to women.  For example, when women as a whole are suffering some form of crisis (such as domestic violence against women or the breast cancer epidemic) the society as a whole mobilizes to do something about it.
• This idea conveys many privileges to men.  For example, men are automatically taken more seriously in business environments, and are seen as more credible when consulted as experts in their field.  Men are seen as strong, dependable, and stable, and are always turned to when it comes time to get things done.
• This idea hurts women in many ways.  For example, women are often not taken as seriously as men in business environments, a fact that can hurt their professional careers.  Their credibility as experts in their field is seen as lesser than that of men.  Women are often made to feel as if they are being infantilized or emotionally unstable.
• This idea hurts men in many ways.  For example, a man's life is seen as less valuable than a woman's life (sing along with me now, "women and children first", or the fact that thousands of news stories have been published with the headline "X number of women killed in this horrific event" when the fact is the number of people killed was X women and 2X men).

So you can see how both men and women benefit from this basic form of sexism and both sides are harmed by it, but in completely different fashions.  This does not mean the idea is any less sexist, it just means that the sexism is not unidirectional.

Now, I can hear you out there saying, "But men hold all the power, and because men hold all the power, its a patriarchy!"

Well... I might be willing to concede that if it was true that the ultimate source of sexism was social power, as if sexist ideals were created and imposed on all of us proles by the Great Gray Monolithic Overlords who rule our society, rather than bubbling up from below.  You see, to me, its quite obvious that the sexist attitudes that still flourish in our society come from the past.  Basic biological differences forced on us by our species evolutionary history, have led to vastly different gender expectations for both men and women.

I've spoken about this before.

Back when leaving the home meant the possibility of being eaten by a leopard, the reason men went out to hunt and gather firewood and women stayed home and cared for the kids was simple mathematics.  The tribe could survive losing men, but losing women could lead to the extinction of the entire human species.  Because of this, over the last hundred thousand years, these expectations have become cemented into place and become what we call "enforced gender roles."  Not only that, these enforced gender roles have been expanded more and more until, thousands of years later, they have become monsters with lives of their own that dictate what is expected from men and women, even today in our supposedly "enlightened" society.

Again, why would you call a society produced by such history "Patriarchy?"  Or even "Matriarchy" for that matter?  Why not just call it what it is:  a sexist remnant of our primitive origins?

If you can concede the truth (that while men being in positions of power might be a symptom of sexism, it is not inherently the cause of sexism), then why are you naming your sexism-related worldview "Patriarchy" because of it?  Doing so is just another aspect of general sexism.  For example, compare the so-called "glass ceiling" with the so-called "glass floor."  Yes, it is true that 75% of all billionaires, corporate CEOs, and generally rich and powerful people in the world are male, but it is also true that almost 80% of all homeless people are male.  Why is feminism only concerned with one half of this equation and conveniently forgetting hte other half of it?  Men exist in abundance at both the top and bottom of society, but apparently the top and only the top is a problem.

Why?

Well, I've had an idea about that, actually.  The way I see it, there are two characteristics that are generally inherent in most men (not all, but most, I think) that would explain what we are seeing when we look at both the glass ceiling and the glass floor.  The first factor is the fact that men tend to be greater risk-takers.  Its in our hormonal makeup.  Men are biologically programmed to take more and bigger risks than women.  When one gender is driven to take risks while the other isn't, naturally the gender who receives the biggest rewards for doing so (not to mention suffers the harshest punishments) would be the gender who takes the most risks.

The second characteristic is that men are more genetically variable than women are (its because we have differential chromosomes -- we're XY, rather than XX -- and is not necessarily a good thing).  This results in there being more outliers on the human average who are male than female outliers.  This would, theoretically at least mean that more men would show up at both the top and bottom of the scale than would women.

Lo and behold, this is precisely what we see when we take a look at the average performances of men and women in general.  Now, I'm sure that enforced gender roles play a part in it all too, but just saying "enforced gender roles" leaves out a whole lot of other factors.

So, to sum it all up, since sexism affects both genders equally, but differently, calling it "Patriarchy" is nothing but a continuation of the sexism.  Male power might be a part of it, but its hardly the majority part, and thus naming it after male power is just stupid.

So, there you have it.  "Patriarchy" is a stupid concept that has no relationship with reality.

To be honest, I'm also sort of mystified why you would suggest that the solution to all the problems faced by men in our society can be solved by feminism, because feminism has such a glowing track record when it comes to dealing with men's issues.

(That was sarcasm, in case you missed it.)

The truth, as I have already shown, is that feminism is actually fighting against men being able to do anything about the problems they face as men, both politically (in terms of counter-activism and legislation) and socially (in terms of the outright vitriol spewed on anyone who even raises the idea that men have issues in the first place) and who take any chance they can get to disrupt anything being done (such as the when the Toronto Conference on Men's Health, a discussion on how to deal with the problem of the skyrocketing suicide rate among men and boys, was disrupted by an angry mob of female students when one of them yanked the fire-alarm).

Let's not even go into the fact that a lot of the feminists I've talked to (and I've talked to many of them) have, at least at first, refused to even accept that such a thing as sexism against men even exists.

You seriously want us to go to these people for help with our issues?

No thank you.  I think we'd prefer to handle things on our own.

Conservatives Hate America

Let's make one thing tragically clear right now.  Conservatives in general are not patriots, and the more hardcore conservative they are, the less patriotic they are.  The very idea of a "conservative patriot" right now would be a complete joke if it weren't so fucking tragic.  They are far from being patriots.  No, conservatives are too reckless and dangerous to be patriots.  They consistently veer closer and closer to being traitors to this country, and in the last twenty or thirty years they've enthusiastically crossed that line several times.

During the American Revolution, the Conservatives were actually against fighting alongside Britain.  They sided with the British against their own colonies.  They were the "Party of No" way back then, too.  Keep in mind that a conservative is someone who wishes to "promote, preserve and or restore traditional values, hierarchies, and institutions."  Well, in 1776, that meant they wanted absolutely no part in separating from England and the monarchy.  They liked being subjects of King George III.  They were called "Tories" then, and that name is still used in England by the Conservative Party.

Conservatives in this country started on the wrong side of history, and that's where they've been ever since.


After the American Revolution, many conservatives fled back to England, or ended up moving to Canada or one of the Caribbean islands.  Good riddance.  Unfortunately, many conservatives fled to Florida, which at the time of the Revolution was the one British colony (the British having acquired it from the Spanish) that sided with England during that time.  When Florida was acquired by the United States, the US got all those traitors back.

After the Revolution was over, the conservatives in the new United States began predicting the country's demise.  Almost universally, they believed that the "common rabble" could not govern themselves without the entire thing falling to chaos and anarchy.  To a man they refused to call themselves "American", and many vocally expressed anticipation on the British returning to America and "liberating" the colonies from the "barbaric commoners" who had taken it over.  As such, when the War of 1812 broke out, they once again returned to form and supported the British against the nation of which they were supposedly citizens.

That same war was the one that finally dashed the hopes of American conservatives that Britain would come and "liberate" the American colonies.  The conservatives, as I noted, might have welcomed the British with open arms, but their love of the British died when the British began looting, burning, and pillaging everywhere they went.  The British also incited the various Indian tribes to attack frontier settlements, once again stopped trade, and so on. 

This didn't sit well with the American conservatives.  Their supposed saviors turned out to be just another pack of rampaging barbarians, and for the first time the conservatives began identifying themselves as "American."

Better late than never, I suppose.

Make no mistake, though.  The nascent loyalty of the American conservatives to their own country was weak, tenuous, and easily broken.  This was readily apparent in 1861, when conservatives decided that they'd rather betray their country than put up with Abraham Lincoln as president.  They stomped off in a huff so they could form a nation where "states rights" triumphed Federal law, and where all right-thinking, decent Americans were free to own as many other human beings as they could afford.  This act of arrogant conservative ideology run amok killed over seven hundred thousand Americans, and brought about the first assassination of a political leader on American soil.

You'd think that such a shameful chapter in their history would have at least shamed conservatives into thinking before they started talking, but no.  One hundred and fifty years later, the descendants of these traitors are proud of their ancestor's treason.  Conservatives proudly fly the Confederate flag.  Sometimes they actually place that treasonous banner in a place of honor over the national flag of the United States.

Not only that, but many of them seem to be planning another try at secession.  Several Texas conservatives (including Rick Perry, the current governor of that state as I write this) have remarked openly about seceding.  Up in Alaska, former governor-turned-vice-presidential-candidate Sarah Palin belongs to a group called the Alaskan Independence Party, which advocates secession.  Local and state-level conservative politicians from Wyoming, including former Vice-President Dick Cheney, have remarked that the people of Wyoming are actively considering secession.

Ironically, all this fuss and feathers involving secession is once again been caused because these people would rather betray their country than put up with Barack Obama in the White House.  Its the same childish posturing, the same macho angst.  The same bluster.  And it just goes to show how shallow any real patriotic feeling flows among these so-called "conservative patriots."

Conservatives have always wanted to thwart the democratic process, since the beginning.  When the Constitution was being written, it was the conservatives who wanted to restrict citizenship to white men who owned property above a certain number of acres.  They also wanted Senators hand-picked by state office-holders.  The reason for these two measures was simple:  they were "conserving" the aristocracy.

By the way, these same measures are precisely how the old aristocracy has the British House of Lords rigged up.


It is a statement of historical fact that the conservatives in this country have stood in opposition to every effort to expand the vote away from white male property owners.  They have also stood opposed to all efforts to have most government positions, including senators, congressmen, and even the presidency itself open to popular vote. 

They have stopped at nothing, and will continue to stop at nothing, in order to interfere with the popular vote. 

Over the years they have thrown up poll taxes, literacy testing, blatant intimidation, inconvenient and unnecessarily strict ID requirements, setting up onerous and punitive restrictions on voter registration, outlawing voter registration programs, providing insufficient numbers of voting machines, blatantly rigging elections, tampering with vote counting, and even getting the United States Supreme Court to violate a sovereign state's Constitution in order to hand-pick a President, just to name a few of the malodorous and unethical tactics that have been used by conservatives to lower voter turnout among the "common folk".

And do not think that these tactics are things of the past.  Many of them are being put in place as I write this. 

Quite recently as I write this, conservatives such as Justice Antonin Scalia, Governor Rick Perry of Texas, former congressman and presidential candidate Ron Paul, Senator Zell Miller of Georgia, and many others have actively pursued the repeal of the 17th Amendment to the US Constitution, which grants the right to vote for their senators to the people of the United States.  Instead, they want Senators to be hand-picked by the state legislatures.  In other words, they want to take power away from the common folk and hand it back to the aristocracy.

Even worse, since the last time conservatives were allowed to nearly bring this country to its knees back in the 1920s, conservatives have deliberately been disseminating propaganda which paints any government that isn't run by themselves as evil, corrupt, and bad for the nation.  When they aren't in control, conservatives do everything they can to disrupt and delegitimize the political authorities of the duly elected liberals who are in charge.  This is a hair's breadth away from High Treason.  K'ung Fu-tzu, the Chinese philosopher and politician known better today in the United States as "Confucius", once said that it would be better for nation to lose its security and all of its food than for the nation's government to lose the trust of the people.  Many otherwise powerful nations over history have fallen apart because such trust was lost.  Once the people lose their trust in their government, civil strife and anarchy are sure to follow.

And do not for one moment think that the conservatives don't know this.  They can read history just as well as I can, and they know what it means.  Why do you think they're trying to undermine trust in the government?  It's a power play.  They believe that once the common people mistrust their government, they'll be able to sweep in, making promises left right and center, and the people will love them so much that they (the common folk) will never know that the conservatives want to bring us back to the days of feudalism.

This nefarious scheme has won conservatives elections, but it has been one of the most disastrous strategies for the country itself of any political tactic in the history of the United States.  This scheme intentionally fosters deep and passionate division among the people, and a divided people are much easier to rule.  Conservatives are gleefully fanning the flames of not just disagreement but outright hatred for all things that aren't conservative, no matter how moderate these non-conservative things might be.  Over the past fifty years, conservatives have spit venomous bile at the likes of John F. Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, Jimmy Carter, Bill and Hillary Clinton, Al Gore, and most particularly Barack Obama, along with any ideas and proposals they make.

And they do this even when the ideas and proposals were originally put forth by conservatives, like "ObamaCare", which began life as "RomneyCare," a creation of former Governor Mitt Romney of Massachusetts.

This is the point at which some of my Libertarian friends will say, "There is no difference between parties.  They both do these things."  No.  This is a blatant lie.  The vitriol spewed by conservatives for their liberal counterparts are entire orders of magnitude more venomous and hate-filled, and more damaging to national unity and stability than anything coming from the liberal side.

Conservatives value party ideology and dogma over American ideals and values, including the all-important idea that we are one nation, united.  Guided by their disloyalty, conservatives seek to divide and separate themselves, whom they consider "superior", from all others, whom they regard as "inferior."  This naturally pits them in direct opposition to most Americans.  but then, they do not like most Americans.  They demonize and blame the country's problems on the blacks, on the Hispanics, on the poor, on the homosexuals, on the immigrants, on unions, on teachers, on firefighters, on government workers, on lawyers, and naturally, on liberals.  They blame anyone and everyone who is not one of them.  Not a fact in the world can possibly justify this arrogant assumption of superiority, nor support the blatantly prejudicial thinking that supports it, but conservatives truly believe that if you spread a lie wide enough and often enough times, if they spew their prejudicial hate-mongering message loudly enough, just enough gullible voters will believe it, and once enough people believe it, no one will ever remember that it all started out as a big fat lie.

The sad thing is, they're right about this.

So, as they are by nature in opposition to the interests of the American people, a Conservative's only real means of controlling the people is by way of dividing and conquering.  Conservatives know they cannot win by standing on their positions and their true agenda.  Rather, they must lie, deceive, frighten, divide, and subjugate.  The whole idea of a United States of America is contrary to conservative objectives.  What they want is an America divided into a caste system; a distinctive separation into a hierarchy between the politically and economically powerful haves and the utterly disenfranchised and subjugated have-nots.  They want a system of oppressors (themselves) and oppressed (everyone else).  And boy howdy, do they have a real problem with the idea of "We the People..."

To quote William F. Buckley, conservatives stand athwart democracy, yelling, "Stop!"

Conservative politicians wrap themselves in the flag and wallow in false patriotism.  What they are actually doing is everything they can to stop the democratic process while denigrating and foment distrust for the American government.  From Warren G. Harding's corrupt cronyism to McCarthy's witch hunts to Nixon's paranoia to Reagan's blatant disregard for the law to Bush's willful incompetence to the unprecedented obstructionism of today's Republican party, conservatives in America are actively working to murder their own nation.

Because they hate their own nation.