Here is my monthly column for the Albuquerque Tribune. It ran yesterday, April 28, 2005.
Twisting Meanings
former Gov. Cargo wouldn't call Bush White House conservative, maybe neo-conservative
By Arthur Alpert
"Unique" was an excellent word - one of a kind - conjured up for me by a white unicorn on a French tapestry I saw at the Cloisters, Manhattan’s medieval monastery. After years of misuse, though, it’s come to mean "unusual."
Oh well, as Sinatra sang, that’s life. Language evolves. No more mourning "unique."
I will stand and fight, though, for "conservative," a word politicians twist to corrupt our civic dialogue.
Conservative means favoring what is, distrusting change. Politicos translate that into policy, but when they call black "white," it’s time to blow the whistle.
Today’s radicals lie when they call their policies conservative. And many reporters and commentators aid and abet, as if conservative is content-less, just a point on a horizontal line. Following this logic, Genghis Khan was conservative. Also, the BushWhite House.
I think not. For reassurance, though, I consulted with former New Mexico Governor David Cargo, a self-described progressive Republican and formidable historian.
AA: Would Bob Taft, Mr. Conservative, fit today’s GOP?
Cargo: Oh, they’d read him out of the party. He was a fairly moderate guy by present standards.
AA: He favored balanced budgets.
Gov. Cargo: At dinner once when I was a college young Republican, Taft said, "You know all the mentally unbalanced people believe in unbalanced budgets."
AA: I’m so old I remember when Pete Domenici thought unbalanced budget work of the Devil
Cargo: He’s now a born-again deficit spender. I get after him all the time. When the heck are you going to balance the budget? And he says it’s not as important an issue as it was. It was Reagan who turned it around on this deficit business. The theory is that if you starve the budget enough by giving tax breaks to the wealthy, then the way to balance the budget is to shrink every single domestic program and spend more on the armed forces and away you go.
AA: Today’s GOP also hates progressive taxation.
Cargo: The progressive income tax was a Republican idea. William Howard Taft was a big supporter.
AA: Michigan Sen. Arthur Vandenberg made the GOP internationalist.
Cargo: Vandenberg would have had a fit on a go-it-alone policy. His view was that international cooperation is the keystone .
AA: This White House is Wilsonian.
Cargo: And that’s why we’re in trouble. When Wilson went along with the Versailles Treaty he laid the groundwork for WWII.
And I don’t understand (President Bush) bragging about adopting the Wilsonian approach. Wilson’s foreign policy was really a disaster
AA: Conservatives favor small government.
Cargo: They’ve become big government conservatives. Instead of taking off hands off people’s private lives, they’re interfering with them. That’s not conservative. I think they’re small government people when it’s convenient.
AA: Bob Taft backed states’ rights.
Cargo: The only one concerned about the states and their boundaries today is Rand-McNally.
AA: Did Republicans invent environmentalism?
Cargo: Environmentalism was started by General Ulysses S Grant, who set up Yellowstone Park. Conservation is a conservative proposition.
AA: So this Administration isn’t conservative?
Cargo: A lot of people call them neo-conservative. And probably the neo-cons have had an undue influence. I’m not a doctrinaire conservative, but there are virtues to thoughtful conservatism.
Governor Cargo added, unsolicited, "Beware of people who never read newspapers or books."
Agreed, but I figure we who do read ought to be wary, too, of nefarious politicians twisting words and thoughtless journalists echoing them.
Alpert is a semi-retired newsman in Albuquerque. Email him at ArthurAlpert@swcp.com. His column appears in Insight and Opinion the fourth Thursday of the month.