A Brief History of Conservatism

1095-1291: The Crusades.

1633: Galileo arrested by conservatives for sharing his scientific observations.

1692: Women tried and executed by religious conservatives in Salem as witches.

1861: Conservatives fight Civil War war to continue slavery.

1865: A conservative assassinates Abraham Lincoln.

1914: The conservative Harrison Act criminalizes recreational drugs, defying "Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" promised by the Declaration of Independence.

1918: Conservatives finally lose the battle to keep women from voting.

1919: Conservatives convince Congress to pass prohibition of alcohol.

1920-present: Conservatives fight to prevent sex education in schools.

1934: The conservative Hays Code enforces censoring sex in movies.

1938: Conservatives lost the fight to keep children working, even in coal mines, when liberals passed The Fair Labor Standards Act.

1939-1942: Conservative Nazis gas millions of Jews and homosexuals.

1947: Scores of film writers and actors blacklisted by conservatives and even jailed as communists.

1949: President Truman nearly doubled the minimum wage from 40 cents per hour to 75 cents. The conservative business lobby screamed it would kill jobs and cause inflation. Instead, unemployment was cut in half to 2.6 percent, inflation didn't rise, and we enjoyed two decades of unprecedented economic prosperity.

1950: Conservative Republican senator Joseph McCarthy urges government investigations into US citizens accused of being communists and homosexuals, which led to the blacklisting of hundreds of Hollywood actors, writers, and directors.

1965: Conservatives finally lose their battle to keep birth control illegal. (THIS fact-based article proves conservatives wrong.)

1967: Conservative laws barring interracial marriage in the US overthrown by the Supreme Court.

Only a conservative could believe that the solution to the gun problem is yet more guns.

1967-present: Conservatives try to ban teaching evolution in schools.

1968: A conservative murders Martin Luther King, Jr.

1970s: Conservative thinking forced math students to use slide rules, even though affordable scientific calculators were much better.

1983: Conservative Republicans tried but failed to prevent making Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday a national holiday.

1980s-2000s: Conservatives succeed in passing tort reform limiting a citizen's ability to sue for rightful damages.

1996: After lobbying by the National Rifle Association (NRA), Conservative US Representative Jay Dickey (R-AR) authored a bill forbidding the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) from even researching the causes of gun violence.

1998: Matthew Shepard murdered by redneck conservatives for being homosexual.

2003: Congress approved a landmark program to help seniors buy prescription drugs, but conservative Republicans added a provision barring the federal government from negotiating cheaper prices for those drugs. When Democrats tried to change that in 2007, Republicans again blocked the proposal keeping the cost to taxpayers high in order to give their drug company donors a gift.

2003 President George W. Bush starts a bullshit war based knowingly on false pretenses that has so far drained the US economy of at least $1 Trillion dollars that could have gone to infrastructure, jobs, veteran affairs, helping the homeless, healthcare for seniors and others with limited income, and so much more.

2004: Larry Hooper murdered by a conservative for being an atheist.

2016: Conservative lawmakers vote to overturn a Labor Department rule that requires financial advisers to act in the best interests of clients when advising them about retirement accounts. Thankfully, President Barack Obama had the sense to veto this bill, yet conservatives are now passing it again under Trump.

2016: Conservative lawmakers vote to remove the restrictions that prevented mentally ill people from buying guns.

And these are the same people who claim to champion personal freedom and liberty, and argue for less government intervention in our personal lives. Did you ever read about liberals banning books or burning Beatles records? What I find most infuriating about modern conservatives is their hypocrisy. Listen to Sean Hannity and those like him. Every day he thumps his chest, and proclaims America is great for its freedom. Yet his kind of thinking puts harmless drug users and prostitutes in jail. If we are not free to take drugs in the privacy of our own homes, or pay a willing partner for sex, then we are not free at all.

Does anyone believe these protesters are liberals?

Not all conservatives today are racists or homophobes, but many are. Even if you're not a racist, your predecessors probably were. And their predecessors either owned slaves or were not opposed to slavery. Does anyone believe that Stalin was a liberal? Bin Laden? Hitler? Do you think the American Nazis protesting in Charlottesville were Hillary supporters? You may find misguided hippies checking their daily horoscope, or arguing that cell phone towers cause cancer, but pure evil is a conservative practice. And nobody ignores facts like conservatives. Lyndon Johnson's Presidential Commission on Pornography was soundly rejected by conservatives in Congress because it found no evidence of harm. The Shafer Commission Report on Marijuana and Drugs was also rejected by conservatives because it found no justification for imprisoning offenders. [Additional link] And now (in 2015) they're still at it:

Most of the points above address social issues such as interracial marriage and sex education, but conservatives have also been consistently wrong on economics and foreign policy as explained and proven with facts in this detailed expose:

http://jeff61b.hubpages.com/hub/21-TruthsThat-Prove-Republicans-Have-Been-Wrong-About-Everything

Perhaps the single worst things conservative politicians do is voter suppression, which is incredibly un-American. Same for Gerrymandering. In their minds, if you can't win fairly then it's okay to cheat.

The ultimate proof that some conservatives are intellectually challenged derives from recent research at Brock University, as explained in this summary. However, research has shown that while most people with limited intelligence are conservative, that doesn't mean that most conservatives have low IQs. I believe the main issue is misinformation, though new research shows a possible genetic contribution.

Many conservatives watch Fox News, which has been shown to lie and distort facts intentionally. So if you believe Ronald Reagan was the greatest US president ever, and Barack Obama was the worst, it's not that you're stupid but simply misinformed:

This smug jackass intentionally lied us into a war that killed more Americans than did the 9/11 hijackers, and cost US taxpayers more than $1 Trillion dollars. He should be tarred and feathered, then whipped in public, then left to die at the bottom of a deep dry well. I am serious. Why haven't George W. Bush and his vice president Dick Cheney been executed for treason? Why isn't everyone in his administration who was involved in that lie in jail right now? If you don't understand how the Bush administration intentionally and knowingly lied to start a war between the US and Iraq, this documentary explains it in great detail: Just imagine what the United States could do with all that money G.W. Bush flushed down the toilet: We could have provided free housing for every single homeless veteran, and given them a $1 Million investment to live off for the rest of their lives. We could have also provided billions of dollars to researchers working on cures for cancer, diabetes, and childhood leukemia.We could have also rebuilt every single failing bridge and highway in the entire country. The list of what we could have done with all that money goes on and on.

I don't know who wrote this short essay, but it sums up the stupidity of conservatism perfectly:

A day in the life of Sue Republican.

Sue gets up at 6:00 am and fills her coffee pot with water to prepare her morning coffee. The water is clean and good because some tree-hugging liberal fought for minimum water-quality standards.

With her first swallow of coffee, she takes her daily medication. Her medications are safe to take because some stupid commie liberal fought to insure their safety and that they work as advertised.

All but $10 of her medications are paid for by her employer's medical plan because some liberal union workers fought their employers for paid medical insurance. Now Sue gets insurance too.

She prepares her morning breakfast, bacon and eggs. Sue's bacon is safe to eat because some girly-man liberal fought for laws to regulate the meat packing industry.

In the shower, Sue reaches for her shampoo. Her bottle is properly labeled with each ingredient and its amount in the total contents because some crybaby liberal fought for her right to know what she was putting on her body and how much it contained.

Sue dresses, walks outside and takes a deep breath. The air she breathes is clean because some environmentalist wacko liberal fought for laws to stop industries from polluting our air.

She walks to the subway station for her government-subsidized ride to work. It saves her considerable money in parking and transportation fees because some fancy-pants liberal fought for affordable public transportation, which gives everyone the opportunity to be a contributor.

Sue begins her work day. She has a good job with excellent pay, medical benefits, retirement, paid holidays and vacation because some lazy liberal union members fought and died for these working standards. Sue's employer pays these standards because Sue's employer doesn't want his employees to call the union.

If Sue is hurt on the job or becomes unemployed, she'll get a worker compensation or unemployment check because some stupid liberal didn't think she should lose her home because of her temporary misfortune.

It's noon and Sue needs to make a bank deposit so she can pay some bills. Sue's deposit is federally insured by the FDIC because some godless liberal wanted to protect Sue's money from unscrupulous bankers who ruined the banking system before the Great Depression.

Sue has to pay her Fannie Mae-underwritten mortgage and her below-market federal student loan because some elitist liberal decided that Sue and the government would be better off if she was educated and earned more money over her lifetime.

Sue is home from work. She plans to visit her father this evening at his farm home in the country. She gets in her car for the drive. Her car is among the safest in the world because some America-hating liberal fought for car safety standards.

She arrives at her childhood home. Her generation was the third to live in the house financed by Farmers' Home Administration because bankers didn't want to make rural loans. The house didn't have electricity until some big-government liberal stuck his nose where it didn't belong and demanded rural electrification.

She is happy to see her father, who is now retired. Her father lives on Social Security and a union pension because some wine-drinking, cheese-eating liberal made sure he could take care of himself so Sue wouldn't have to.

Sue gets back in her car for the ride home, and turns on a radio talk show. The radio host keeps saying that liberals are bad and conservatives are good. He doesn't mention that Republicans have fought against every protection and benefit Sue enjoys throughout her day. Sue agrees: "We don't need those big-government liberals ruining our lives! After all, I'm self-made and believe everyone should take care of themselves, just like I have."

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