Failed Conservative Values: All about Greed

Written by: Edwin Rutsch on May 31, 2008 9:06 PM EDT

There is sufficiency in the world for man's need but not for man's greed. 
Mahatma Gandhi

I interviewed people around the Democracy for America booth at the California Democratic Party Convention in San Jose.  I asked people how have conservative values failed?  It surprised me how many responded that the conservative value of greed was the biggest failure.   Here are some of the comments.

Failed Conservative Values: Dan Healy on Greed & Force

The word conservative is even more abused than the word progressive, I think.  But I guess in its current incarnation of those phrases, I think the word conservative literally means “I’m out for me”, and the word progressive means “We are out for we” at his most basic analysis.  That’s how things seem to look right now.

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Greed is a value.  And again, if you think of the word conservative -- and I think even what a lot of conservatives think they are – they would reject that label.  But I think greed obviously as a conservative value is “I’m going to look out for me, and who cares about you”.  That is in a lot of ways a core conservative value, and it’s clearly not working, and has never worked, and it never will work.  And that’s kind of the bedrock one.

In terms of the context of due process, the idea kind of broader in the sense of war, the idea that force is a value that works.  Folks that consider themselves conservative -- which one would think is restrictive – are actually the most aggressive in terms of the use of force. 

The use of force in context of how we police ourselves, the use of force in terms of how we execute our foreign policy.  That’s clearly a failure, and it’s one that people are hopefully coming to realize. 

 Failed Conservative Values: Don on Greed is Good

This is Don at the Democratic Convention in San Jose.  I’m being asked by the cameraman here what was the failed conservative value.  As far as I can see, the key conservative value – I don’t know if it’s failed. 

The underlying fundamental conservative value is greed is good.  If everyone acts entirely in their own self interest, it will make the best of all possible worlds.  I’m not sure that that’s failed.  But that is the operating value.

And other things flow from that.  What about people who fall by the wayside?  Perhaps because they’re not big enough or that they didn’t act fully in their self interest, that they fell by the wayside.

That’s another conservative value that follows from the first one – that people who do not act in their own self interest do not deserve anything and should fall by the wayside.

Another conservative value is that if people band together in their own self interest and oppose the very greedy, that’s wrong, because they are overcoming the will of the strong. 

At a certain point you reach a contradiction in the conservative values, because conservatives are going to say “We mustn’t let people band together for their own self interests, because they’ll be against the will of the strong. 

If you go back to Plato, I think he points out an inconsistency there.  If they’re really weak and banding together, then they’re not so weak.  So that’s a flaw, and that’s really a dynamic of what’s happening in history. 

I see a different point of view as a progressive, and I don’t think that greed is a good value.  I think it’s been disproved over the centuries that every man with his own rifle – emphasis on the word “man” – takes care of himself and those he chooses to take care of.  We’ve seen that fail throughout world history.  So perhaps that’s the failure in the conservative value. 

I suppose the bull elephant seal, or the solitary lion might be your metaphor for the greatest good.  And social animals that band together for their own welfare, whether they are honeybees, or attack dogs, or whatever, a contrasting example.  We built civilization on socialization.  Not on individual greed.

Failed Conservative Values: Norma on Greed

My name is Norma, and how conservative values have failed – they’ve failed, because they have forgotten the little man.   They’ve forgotten that they don’t earn their money.  We’re the ones that earns it for them.  We’re the low-paying workers.  We’re the ones that are out there on a daily basis.  They get the fruit of our labor.

I think their value is greed.  They have forgotten that they can’t do it without us.  They need to start remembering that.  I would guess that they were like an anaconda, in that they sit there and try to choke their prey.  They’re trying to choke every dollar out of us for their benefit, so that they will get bigger as we get smaller.

I think their value is greed.  They have forgotten that they can’t do it without us.  They need to start remembering that.  I would guess that they were like an anaconda, in that they sit there and try to choke their prey.  They’re trying to choke every dollar out of us for their benefit, so that they will get bigger as we get smaller.

Failed Conservative Values: Karen Suarez on Greed

That’s what I don’t get.  I would think that the title conservative would mean to conserve, and it even says – I’m not a religious person – but it says in the Bible somewhere, somebody told me once, that I will destroy those who destroy the earth.

And I can understand using resources – you need to live.  We take the energy from the sun in different forms around us.  We need to survive.  It’s the sun, and energy is the circle of life.  But to overuse and be greedy – I don’t understand it.

EDWIN:  Have conservative values failed?

ANSWER:  I don’t even think they realize – in this Administration right now, I don’t think people understand what they were trying to do.  I think they opened up Pandora’s box, and they’re not happy with what they wished for. 

And I can understand using resources – you need to live.  We take the energy from the sun in different forms around us.  We need to survive.  It’s the sun, and energy is the circle of life.  But to overuse and be greedy – I don’t understand it.

EDWIN:  Have conservative values failed?

ANSWER:  I don’t even think they realize – in this Administration right now, I don’t think people understand what they were trying to do.  I think they opened up Pandora’s box, and they’re not happy with what they wished for. 

Failed Conservative Values: David Lutness on Me Firstism

The conservative, just like the progressive, is not monolithic.  There are many conservatives who think that they should be allowed to proceed without the interference of government.  There is also a large segment of people who call themselves conservative who believe they should be allowed to proceed with the benefit of government.  So they pay lots of men money and they get things like new big contracts to provide over in Iraq – like Halliburton.

EDWIN:  What is the value in one word?

ANSWER:  Me first.  Very often conservative values work for the people who have them.  They have failed society.  If you say that the conservative values are the people who argue that you need to burn coal without stripping the stacks so that we can have cheap electricity without having to worry about or pay for the fact that burning coal is polluting the ocean,

Now they are telling us to only turn it on once a week or maybe once a month, or once a year.  Or don’t feed tuna to anybody under the age of six.  A direct consequence of burning coal, by the way.

Question

What do you think is the Progressive counter value to Greed? 

 
Failed Conservative Values
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