The American Conservative Movement: Paranoid, Ignorant, and Wrong

It seems that some of our fellow Americans are succumbing more and more to paranoia and hate. Nothing shows this better than the annual conference of the Conservative Political Action Committee, sponsored by the American Conservative Union and more than 100 other conservative groups. The conference ended on February 12, and is bursting at the seams with evidence of the growing extremism and increasingly bizarre assertions of the conservative movement.

Let’s first take a look at the issue of Islam in America. The conference had an entire formal panel dedicated to Sharia, or Islamic law, as well as several informal discussions and events. The right has long blathered about the danger Sharia poses to the American legal system. These panels did not take a measured look at whether or not that was the case; the panelists took the evils of Islam as a given and took it from there. And boy, are we in for a roller coaster ride of vitriol. One of the members of the panel, a controversial conservative blogger named Pamela Geller, made some incredibly incendiary quotes. Take this one, where she attacks the entire CPAC, saying “This is the problem with CPAC. It’s corrupted and compromised by the Muslim Brotherhood.” An audience member said “Moderate Muslims don’t exist.” After seeing a documentary about the 9/11 attacks, another commented that “it’s too soon to build mosques in general.”

I guess I shouldn’t be surprised, but I still am. The far right has continually taken shot after shot at law abiding Americans. Of course, they want you to think of these as Americans not as fellow citizens or as human beings, but as extreme and violent Islamic terrorists. These vicious jihadists are not to be trusted, the right says. Besides the blatant racism and bigotry, their “facts” are not actually true, in any way at all. I may not agree with CPAC on most things, but I certainly don’t think they’re infiltrated by an Egyptian political movement. In past years, these sorts of conspiracy theories were the ones that came from the left. Now, the right is its own worst enemy. It’s cannibalizing itself, and no one has been able to make it stop. The blanket statements against all Muslims are equally false and disconcerting. It’s so blatantly obvious that moderate Muslims abound in our country and across the world that to say differently is an affront to all human logic and observation. It’s strange to see a political movement that wants to run the government alienate entire portions of the electorate over and over again, but that is exactly what the right is doing. First they started against Hispanics, who often are more like Republicans than Democrats in social issues. Instead of capitalizing on common ground, the right chose to eschew common decency and good politics and cater to the xenophobic right with its anti-immigration policies. Now, it’s against the Muslims, another potential bloc of supporters on social issues. It’s not often when doing the right thing morally and doing the right thing politically are the same, and it’s even stranger when a party made up of educated Americans does the exact opposite of both.

It doesn’t stop at abusing law abiding citizens. For the second year in a row, avowed birther and conservative personality Laurie Roth addressed the conference. In her remarks, she called President Obama the “President of Islam.” This is not just some grandstanding by a little-known member of the movement hungry for some press. She actually believes this stuff. She accuses the media of not investigating whether or not Obama is actually American. For her website, she wrote an article just a few weeks ago about how “It is time get (sic) to the bottom of the line” about Obama’s birthplace. It still amazes me how many people still believe this drivel. There is overwhelming evidence that Obama is an American citizen. Check out FactCheck.org for a good synopsis of the information if you don’t believe me. The fact that the ACU allows people like this at their conference is sickening. It is a blatant political play by people who should know better. When the ACU allows people to use its most prominent event of the year to parade debunked conspiracy theories, it loses any credibility that it might have once had. It simply can’t be seen as an honest broker in politics. The ACU, and other similar organizations, are really only interested in winning elections and keeping America frozen in time. The modern conservative movement, with few exceptions, cares little about actual people. They put their faith in rigid ideologies, and anyone who goes against them is not only wrong but also a traitor, an infidel, and a terrorist sympathizer. We’re witnessing the death of civility and honesty, and unless people wake up and take a stand for integrity and tolerance, the decline of our country will continue unabated.