The Real Conservative Leaders Are Women

     The teapot tempest about Rush's leadership of Republicans blipped by my radar screen the other day, but no one seemed to be talking about what exactly the sacred conservative principles actually are. That's probably because the standard Republican version is about as self-contradictory as the Bible, an inconvenient fact which many religious conservatives are similarly in total denial about.

     For example, how can people whose Bible says "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you" be comfortable in the same party as corporations who say 'Do unto others before they do unto you?'

     My Bible says "For where your treasure is, there will you heart be also. Behold the fowls of the air; for they sow not neither do they reap, nor gather into barns, yet your heavenly Father feedeth them. Are ye not much better than they?" Where are the hearts of the Republican party's elected leaders who look at Mother Earth and think only of money and profit and never of loving stewardship?

     My Bible says "For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it; but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it." How can anyone who understands that a shallow materialistic life is spiritually unsatisfying accept, let alone embrace, the cut-throat concept of homo economicus, an isolated individual in the lonely crowd? This inhumane view of humans is the uneasy foundation for most of the allegedly scientific mathematics on which modern economic analysis rests. But corporations believe that they will only make money if they never lose.

     My Bible says "The love of money is the root of all evil." Only people who don't believe this can support corporations whose god is profit or vote for politicians who gain office through multi-million dollar campaigns.

     But the reason that women are the real conservatives has little to do with the Bible. It is really about sex, and about children. You may have noticed that women can bear and care for just a few children, compared to the large number men can sow. Thus, women are constrained to be more risk-averse about their children's care, all other things being equal (as they say in economics).

     So if conservatism means being economical in using one's resources, if it means traditions of caution in adopting new habits, if it means using what you have rather than trashing your stuff and buying more because corporations are advertising you to death - then women are by definition the true conservatives.

     Not Rush. Anyone who disses women can't really be conservative.