Bernie Sanders has ignited a populist movement. Despite his early campaign being ignored by corporate media, his rallies outperformed all the Super-PAC funded candidates. Conservatives are aghast: how could so many Americans rally around a self-avowed socialist? Libertarians can't believe how many former Ron Paul supporters are showing up in Bernie's camp. Have those people no convictions? What they don't realize, and no one is saying, is this: on the issues that define the Sanders platform, he is more conservative than the Republicans.
For-profit prisons
On Thursday Bernie proposed legislation to end for-profit prisons. Upon reading the news I asked myself one question (which prompted this post): why should this be the stance of the most liberal candidate in decades? Or more so, why isn't this the stance of almost everyone? Privatized prisons encourage longer prison sentences and allow corporate profiteering off what is essentially slave labor. And who pays for this? Taxpayers, of course, and the families of the incarcerated men. The goal of incarceration should be to discourage crime, and to rehabilitate criminals and return then to society. Privatizing prisons encourages the prisons to keep as many prisoners as possible for as long as possible. Everyday a man is in prison needlessly, his family lacks a husband and father. For-profit prisons are yet another attack on the core American institution: the family.
Marxists, who conservatives claim to stand against, have a singular goal: to destroy all traditional institutions and power structures to make room for their idealized society. Family, religion, local community; all should be replaced by a single institution: the global socialist government. Any attack on the nuclear family is a leftist victory. No group in American has seen a stronger degradation of the family than blacks. 67 percent of black children are raised by single parents (source), as opposed to 25 percent for whites. The Nation Review recently put out an article highlighting the detriments of so many single-parent households. I highly recommend a read through. The takeaway is that single-parent children have significantly reduced social mobility and economic outcomes. So it shouldn't be a surprise that blacks see they are doing, on average, worse than their white counterparts. They assume institutionalized racism and they attack society's institutions and power structures, like we're seeing now across America's college campuses. Do you see the chain of Marxism in action? The attack on American families is contributing to the attack on American educational institutions.
So where is the Christian right on the issue of privatized prisons? It is certainly no where in the Christian ethos to profit off human suffering. But even more, it is not conservative. It is one more tool of cultural marxism to destroy the American family. But our cultural defenders in the Republican party, those self-proclaimed saviors of family values, are doing nothing.
Corporate power
If any issue defines the Sanders campaign, it is his defense of the middle class, and assault on the corporatocracy. The corporate behemoth is without a doubt the greatest threat to American traditional values. They own the media, control the cultural narrative, buy off the government representatives, and don't blink at destroying the middle-class whenever it is profitable. Why Republicans bend over backwards for corporations is beyond me. They have to be bought out. Sanders is defending traditional America values against creeping corporate culture and power. This is definitive conservatism.
Citizens United
Citizen's United effectively legalizes the open bribery of politicians. This Supreme Court ruling is thoroughly disastrous. Anyone interested in traditional American values like honest government and democratic rule should be horrified. Where is the conservative backlash? Why is Sanders the only candidate making a fuss about this? Even Clinton now stands against it. Why? If you read the political commentary, she was outflanked on the left by Sanders, and changed her stance to neutralize his advantage with leftists. I say baloney. What is leftist about defending American democracy? His stance is the true conservative stance. It has been very popular with voters (besides zombie Republicans) and that's why she had to change her posture. She will pretend to be against it as long as she has to, but she is making bank off of it.
Trans-Pacific Partnership
Obama's second most significant legislation (after Obamacare), TPP is a blatant attack on the cornerstone of American values, the US Constitution. A veritable give-away to corporate interests, the TPP would seriously limit the ability of the American government to regulate and control corporate activities. It's Marxist as hell; it deliberately erodes American institutions in favor of multinational entities. It should say something that it was debated in secret in the US Congress. Is anything less American than that? It should say something that Obama could not get support from it from his own party. Republicans, who foam at the mouth at the mere name Obama, enabled his 2nd most important piece of legislation. Why is this okay with Republicans? I feel like I'm taking crazy pills.
Sanders is against it. Clinton is against it (again she changed her position to resemble his) and Rand Paul is against it. Every other Republican who doesn't stand resolutely against this, just isn't a conservative, no matter what letter is by his name.
The liberal side
Now, my point hasn't been to convince you that Bernie Sanders is a conservative. On most issues he is liberal. He was supporting gay rights well before that was trendy. He doesn't hesitate to promulgate leftists myths such as they gender pay gap or massive institutionalized racism. He is a democratic socialist, which means he does foster a stronger dependence on the state. He recently came out in support of mass Syrian immigration. This is not an inherently bad position, as long as there is some rationale behind it. But his assertion, in bold letters, is that if you don't support it you're a racist and a bigot. Basically he does pander to liberal electorates, and he does allow himself to take sides in the cacophonous left vs. right war of emotions.
However, in the matters that are most important, in the matters that have defined his candidacy, he is more conservative than his Republican counterparts. In fact the Republican often don't seem conservative at all. We need to dispel the commonly held belief that Republicans are conservative and Democrats are liberal. It really depends on how you slice the issues.
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