Responsibility
One of the foundation principles of the conservatives, when they still had principles, was personal responsibility. Dunno if George Washington was a conservative, but he might have been a symbol for them. When asked by his father if he had chopped down the cherry tree with his new hatchet, he told him he could not tell a lie. What a concept.
Frank Rich had a blistering OpEd in the Times about how the people responsible for the disastrous invasion of Iraq and those who charted our way into the Second Great Depression – it ain’t nearly over yet, folks – played a far different tune from that of our first president.
Bush-Cheney and their scurrilous ilk insisted that they based their attack on Iraq on "intelligence" about WMD that they and everyone else thought that was right. Horse-hockey. Greenspan, Rubin, Geithner and the rest of those Wall Street whores also claimed surprise that bubbles burst. Pshaw, putrescent paper created the fetid gas that caused the bubbles.
It’s amazing how so many of the top decision-makers made so few mistakes, by their own admission, since they were in charge, and either screwed up or were in charge of those who did. Either way, they were the ones who made the wrong decisions, though of course they don’t speak to that point. Nor are they pressed by their abettors in the media and on Capitol Hill.
Politicians may be the worst. They outright prevaricate and other stretch the facts so often they wouldn’t recognize the truth if it bit ‘em in the behind. Unfortunately, they get away with it. Meg Whitman played such dirty games at Goldman Sachs that the rules had to be changed.
Or consider Michael Steele who now claims that the reviews of his disastrous leadership of the Republican National Committee have been because he’s black and held to a higher standard.
George Washington may not have been a conservative, but he certainly wasn’t a politician, not by today’s standards.
©2010 SetonnoteS
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