As the battle for America’s political soul rages on, I’ve noticed one thing about the conservative movement (at least among those conservatives in the media) that really didn’t hit me until recently, with the election of Barack Obama as President of the United States. From Rush Limbaugh’s declaration that he wants the President to fail, because of his fear of what Obama’s policies will do to the country; to their opposition of gay marriage, out of fear for the “sanctity of marriage”; to their fierce opposition to the closing of the detention center at Guantanamo Bay, out of fear that terror suspects will be released into the general population; to their fear of calling waterboarding what it is (torture), to their opposition to an assault weapons ban, out of fear that the government will take away our right to bear arms. The recurring theme to all of their opposing positions is fear; I’ve just realized that conservatives are a bunch of sissies.

There’s no mistake that the Republican Party in America had been able to hold onto power in Washington for so many years by feeding the American people a steady diet of fear and paranoia. The mantra of “we are the only ones who can protect you from those who want to hurt you” has been a powerful weapon for the right wing in America, especially since 9/11; the Republican talking point that they “kept us safe” in the seven plus years since the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon has been a persuasive argument for the right, until of course you consider that 9/11 could have been prevented if anyone in the Bush White House had been paying attention, and that more Americans died under Bush / Cheney at the hands of terrorists than in any other time in American history. What I find interesting – and shocking – is that in their quest to hold onto their influence in the American political debate, they are revealing a remarkable amount of cowardice. Simply put: the majority of conservatives are chicken-shit.

Especially on the issues of national security – long seen to be an area dominated by Republicans – once rational arguments have given way to sheer paranoia, denial and outright fear. Take the conservative talking point that if Gitmo is closed and terror suspects are brought to the US, the american people will somehow be in grave danger. Forget the fact that the US houses some of the worlds most dangerous criminals like Charles Manson, the Unabomber and domestic terrorists Eric Rudolph and Timothy McVeigh and numerous foreign terrorists; America has some of the worlds most well fortified maximum security prisons, facilities that no one to date has escaped from. The notion that these places cannot hold suspected terrorists is not only ridiculous, it’s an insult to the thousands of men and women who work for the US prison system, as it says they’re not capable of doing their jobs. Even more than that, such sentiment reeks of cowardice.

You cannot, in my opinion, boast about how pro-America, “we kick ass”, shoot-first-ask-questions-later you are, but at the same time be afraid of the gay or lesbian couple who wants to marry, the person who hasn’t even been convicted of a crime going to a Supermax prison, or the state legislature who wants to ban the sale of weapons that were solely designed to kill people. You cannot be pro military, but at the same time support a war that was unnecessary and morally wrong, thus putting the lives and livelihoods of our military and their families at constant risk.

Granted, not all conservatives are cowards; recently, a conservative radio personality named Erich “Mancow” Muller subjected himself to waterboarding in order to “prove” that is wasn’t torture. Not only did he change his stance on the issue after going through it himself, saying that it was “absolutely torture”, he said that if he were waterboarded under interrogation he would have said anything to make the torture stop. The courage he showed by being waterboarded in order to back up his claim and his ability to admit he was wrong are traits that, sadly, the average American conservative are sorely lacking these days.

I guess having a spine doesn’t generally belong to conservative ideology.

For years I’ve considered myself politically “left of center”; a progressive / liberal on social issues, pretty much a moderate on fiscal issues. I tend to support politicians who have reasonable positions on issues, regardless if they’re Democrats, Republicans or Independents. The current debate about whether or not the US committed acts of torture in the name of national security, however, has really made me rethink my political leanings.

As I’ve stated in the description of my website, I’m a political junkie. I watch the news every day on TV and online; When I read the newspaper, I always start with political stories; I listen to the news updates every hour on the radio; I talk to anyone and everyone who is willing to hear me out regarding politics. Lately, I’ve been shocked at the number of conservative commentators and pundits in the media who defend the United States’ use of torture, specifically waterboarding, on terror suspects beginning in 2002, and their support of those who conjured up our so-called “enhanced interrogation” program. The shock comes not only from the fact that it’s been proven time and time again throughout history that torture doesn’t really work, but from the apparently deeply held belief that the end justified the means in cases of waterboarding; the notion that torture was right as long as it worked and “kept us safe”.

What bothers me the most that these people are totally willing to deny facts and the historical record regarding torture in order to push their belief that torture is OK if the US does it. The facts are clear; we prosecuted Japanese soldiers after World War II for waterboarding US war prisoners. We prosecuted and convicted our own soldiers during the Vietnam War for waterboarding captive enemy soldiers. As recently as the 1980s we prosecuted and convicted a US sheriff in Texas for waterboarding prisoners. Waterboarding is categorized as torture since the 1890s and is considered a war crime by the Geneva Conventions, a document the US not only signed, but helped to draft. And yet, so many on the political right believe that because of what happened to the United States on 9 / 11, we are totally justified using torture techniques to extract information from our enemies, in the name of “protecting America”, an argument that totally contradicts what should define American society: the rule of law. According to the law, waterboarding and other forms of torture is a crime, and should not be done under any circumstances.

Regarding this issue, it has been those on the left who are so far on the correct side of the debate. Even those like Senator John McCain, who himself was subjected to waterboarding and other forms of torture during his captivity in Vietnam, has come out with the position that the US government should just sweep the issue under the rug, let bygones be bygones, and move forward, without at least an investigation of those who committed war crimes in the name of the United States. Based not only on this example of how conservatives in the US embrace this belief, and how progressives / liberals for the most part are for upholding the rule of law (there are certainly those who want prosecutions as some sort of political payback, but that’s a subject for another article), but on a host of other issues where conservatives are in my opinion on the wrong side of history, that I find my own political beliefs shifting even more to the left. Their current stance on torture makes them no different than those whom they claim we should be defending America against.

It could also be that I’ve been a straight-up liberal all along, but just didn’t want to admit it. However, when I think back on my time here in Europe and my political thinking in regard to German, British, Spanish and French politics, it’s been clear that I more often than not have supported left-leaning politicians and policies. It has to do with the fact that many aspects of liberal political philosophy just makes more sense to me. In America, for example, it’s common conservative wisdom nowadays that government cannot ever be that answer to society’s problems, because government is the problem. Given that a democratically elected government is chosen by the people and that we have the power to correct the so-called problem through the election process (which is, ironically, exactly what happened with the election of Barack Obama), this notion is fundamentally flawed. One could argue that, at least in the US, the government is now trying to clean up the problems we as citizens created, but that’s also the topic of another article.

At the end of the day, people should be interested in what’s true, right, and fair. The conservative movement in America represent neither of these values right now. The question is; when will the conservatives come back around to those principles that are supposed to define what their movement, let alone America, should be all about?