Conservatives and cognitive dissonance

Long ago I came to the conclusion that by in large many conservatives have no problem with cognitive dissonance. It’s like hypocrisy is the new black.

Some examples?

Conservatives love to claim they’re all about personal liberty and defending the constitution. You would expect that following that they would be staunch opponents of anyone who sought to violate the constitution…right? That would make logical sense.

Well the other Saturday Ann Coulter, the darling of the right, spoke at CPAC, a huge right wing convention where she said “there should be more jailed journalists.” Now, one would expect a crowd of staunch personal liberty/constitution supporters to have shouted her off stage. Right? That would make sense. After all, jailing journalists is antithetical to the first amendment freedom of speech and just reeks of a totalitarian regime where personal liberty doesn’t exist. But you guessed it, and like you can see from the video, they gave her a roaring applause.

Or how about the conservative stance on personal liberty and how it relates to abortion, healthcare, and the death penalty? When liberals wanted a public option to create more competition in the market of healthcare (another thing conservatives claim to be all in favor of) the right went ballistic. They invented out of whole cloth the idea that the government would be making people’s health decisions for them, and boy how their blood did boil. They stood there with their stupid signs screaming about government intervention in their private health and then would turn around and tell you with s a straight face that they wanted big government to control women’s bodies and what a healthcare procedures a woman would have access to.

Abortion is one of their favorite topics. Ignoring the obvious hypocrisy of wanting big government to control women, they want to force the woman to have an unwanted child. They froth at the mouth about making the woman have the child, but they’re nowhere to be found when she finally does have the baby. They’re exactly like the dead beat boyfriends or rapists who got the women pregnant in the first place. When it comes time to be financially responsible for the upbringing of this child, they skip town.

Instead, the unwanted child grows up in a broken and unloving home where they inevitably turn to a life of crime. The conservatives then spend even more money on the prison system to jail the criminals they fought so hard to make sure were born. If they do anything really bad, the conservatives then want big government to step in and execute a private citizen. They’ve now gone full circle from wanting small government and life to wanting big government and death.  Just keep in mind, hypocrisy is the new black.

Glenn Beck promotes violence

Glenn Beck recently spoke at CPAC, the Conservative Political Action Conference where he claimed America’s ills were due to progressivism. Ok, that’s fine. I disagree with him greatly, but he’s a conservative. He then goes on to compare progressivism to cancer. (see the video of his talk here) Ok, so now we’re getting a little shaky. But then he dives off the deep end and says “it can’t co-exist. You must eradicate it! You must cut it out of the system!” Seriously? How are people supposed to interpret that? The way I interpret that, the way I believe most people would interpret that is an urge to use violence. “Eradicate! Cut-out! Can’t co-exist!” You may laugh, but Glenn Beck’s viewers are scared, stupid, and armed.

Take this for example. Canada is thinking about allowing people with terminal diseases to elect, of their own free will, to undergo doctor assisted suicide. Beck twists this into “euthanasia!!!!” and tells his viewers that Obama and the progressives are trying to bring this hear. “Just like the Nazi’s in the 1930’s!” “A great evil is coming! Like in the 1930’s! Are you going to stand up and do something?!?!?” A caller calls in, believing all this bullshit, scared to death that Obama is going to kill her, and Beck says HE WILL!!!

What do you expect is going to happen? Eventually some scared idiot is going to take Beck’s urge to action seriously and get their gun and do something horrible. They might shoot a government employee, be it a cop or a mailman, or they might blow up a federal building.  If an angry mob marches on Washington with guns, the situation could rapidly deteriorate. The last thing Obama should do is send in police or troops to break up the protesters. It would quickly turn to shooting, and regardless of who fired the first shoot, the Tea Party idiots would claim another Boston massacre and use it as a rallying cry for more violence. The best thing he could do would be to pull back all law enforcement officials and just let the mob go, destroying everything in their path. This way the world will see them for how crazy and violent they are. Don’t give them any martyrs.