Reactionaries Keep Up Masquerade as Conservatives in O.C. Elections

Journalist and philosopher Ambrose Bierce once defined an American election as “a strife of interests masquerading as a contest of principles.” We’ve got an election coming up in a few weeks that seems to fit this definition rather snugly, especially in the area of candidates who mislabel themselves or their opponents as “conservative” or “liberal.” No staples of American public life have been so drained of meaning and so misused as these two.

Ever since the assassination of John F. Kennedy (in Orange County, ever since the election of Millard Fillmore), “conservative” has been in and “liberal” has been out. So the route to public office has more often than not been for all sorts of reactionaries, Know Nothings and economic Brahmins to wrap themselves in the panoply of “conservatism” and win elections by attacking “liberals” who are defined as permissive airheads or card-carrying leftists who either want to spend the country into oblivion or sell it out to the communists.

That’s about the level at which George Bush won the presidency and also seems to be the level at which the governorship of California and a passel of other lesser state and local offices are being contested in 1990. And in the process, these two time-honored and once meaningful political terms, liberal and conservative , are once more being bludgeoned into insensibility.

Webster is instructive on this point. He defines conservative as “tending to preserve established traditions or institutions and to resist or oppose any changes in these; moderate, prudent, safe.”

If you weigh this definition against some of the people who pass for conservatives in Southern California, the scales are going to shout TILT. Was it, for example, either “moderate” or “prudent” of Rep. William E. Dannemeyer (R-Fullerton) to insert a graphic description of the sexual activity of gay men in the Congressional Record? Or to compare Nelson Mandela--when he was an invited guest in our country--to convicted atomic spies Ethel and Julius Rosenberg? Or of Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Long Beach) when he suggested that the Persian Gulf crisis might have been avoided if the CIA were allowed to assassinate whomever our government decides are the bad guys in the world?

What is Assemblyman Dennis Brown (R-Los Alamitos) conserving when he votes no almost automatically on every piece of environmental legislation that crosses his desk? And where is the moderation and prudence when Los Angeles Police Chief Daryl Gates tells a U.S. Senate committee that “casual drug users ought to be taken out and shot?” Or when Rep. Robert K. Dornan (R-Garden Grove) calls men who support the abortion rights movement “women trapped in men’s bodies . . . who are like camp followers looking for an easy lay?” Or when a field representative of Assemblyman Gil Ferguson (R-Newport Beach) says that “we want people to know that (homosexuality) is not just wearing a pink shirt and being an interior decorator?”

Can you imagine legitimate conservatives--like Barry Goldwater or Pete Wilson or William Buckley or--for that matter, Orange County’s current state senators, Marian Bergeson (R-Newport Beach) and John Seymour (R-Anaheim)--making such statements or performing in such a way?

Most of the people noted above are reactionaries masquerading as conservatives. (Webster defines a reactionary as one who favors “movement back to a former or less advanced condition or stage.”) Or, as former President Franklin D. Roosevelt put it: “A reactionary is a somnambulist walking into the future backwards.”

Our political system is built on the checks and balances of a plural society. Within that balance, there is an absolute need for both the conservative and liberal viewpoints to be expressed by people who understand the imperatives of this type of society. Just as the true conservative would work to conserve and preserve our freedoms and traditions, the true liberal (defined by Webster as “tolerant of views different from one’s own and favoring reform or progress tending toward democracy and personal freedom for the individual”) would look for ways to better adapt the system to always-changing times and conditions.

Challenging the patriotism or personal integrity of either group is not only nonsense but terribly counter-productive. And, let’s face it, most of this has been done by the so-called “conservatives.” Richard M. Nixon climbed the rope of communist-baiting to the highest office in the land. And George Bush got considerable political mileage out of hanging around Michael S. Dukakis’ neck the Democratic presidential candidate’s membership in the American Civil Liberties Union.

If Dukakis had had either the wit or the courage not just to acknowledge but to embrace his ACLU membership, he couldn’t possibly have hurt himself more than the reaction to the gelatinous position he did take. And if an ACLU membership is perceived as hurting a candidate nationally, it blows the mind to think what it might do in Orange County. Yet, this organization has probably supported as many conservative as liberal causes and has deep roots in preserving and protecting American values. But in spite of this, it is known to most Americans not for the positions it takes and believes in stead-fastly but rather for the “liberal” tar-and-feather job done on it for years by reactionaries calling themselves conservatives.

And this sort of thing is getting worse, not better. As we regress into the bumper sticker slogan and TV sound-bite political campaigns that take place today, politicians arm themselves with symbols (like the ACLU or “no new taxes” or George Bush’s favorite ex-con, Willie Horton) to beat voters around the ears instead of trying to engage their minds with issues and ideas. And the cynics rule the day.

If you want an awful example, hold your nose and take a quick look at the current campaign for the California Assembly between incumbent Curt Pringle (R-Garden Grove) who got to the Legislature in the first place when his party leaders intimidated Latino voters and Democratic candidate Tom Umberg. God knows, they differ enough on the issues without resorting to personal vilification. This could have been a legitimate contest between conservative and mildly liberal philosophies of government; instead, the candidates have demeaned both points of view with their tactics.

To go back to where we started, maybe the cynicism of Ambrose Bierce is the only honest place to come down these days. He might have been talking about 1990 instead of a hundred years earlier when he said, “A conservative is a statesman who is enamored of existing evils, as distinguished from the liberal who wishes to replace them with others.”