If Conservative Republicans Want to Survive, They Better Start Conserving Something

There isn’t much of thst going around today in American politics. To conserve means to protect something, especially the environment or resources, from harm or depletion in order to maintain it for future use.

So, let’s see how that’s worked out since Ronnie Reagan, who is said to be not only the ‘great communicator,’ but the bedrock of modern conservative politics.

In August 1981, over 13,000 federal air traffic controllers—organized under the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization (PATCO)—walked off the job, seeking fair wages, humane hours, and safer working conditions. Rather than negotiate, President Ronald Reagan responded with brute force: he fired more than 11,000 workers and imposed a lifetime ban from federal service.

This sent a chilling message across the entire workforce in American unions: strike and you’ll be crushed, marking the beginning of a coordinated, decades-long assault on unions, accelerating wage stagnation, corporate power, and the erosion of collective bargaining rights in America.

Not much ‘conserving’ going on there of a growing union movement that built America’s middle class.

So far as direct acts of conservative destruction of American values are concerned, I would have to list the following:

· Reagan’s Trickle-Down Tax Cuts for the wealthy and corporations promised benefits to all. Instead, inequality exploded, deficits ballooned, and the middle class bore the burden of underfunded public services.

· The North Atlantic Free Trade Agreement hollowed out U.S. manufacturing, devastated union jobs, and gutted working-class communities—while corporations thrived off cheap labor and weak regulation abroad.

· Conservatives love to cut taxes, as long as they benefit their base, and Bush’s 2001 and 2003 Tax Cuts accelerated the growth of wealth concentration at the top.

· Bush’s proposal to partially privatize Social Security (an ongoing conservative goal) would have exposed retirement security to stock market risk, undermining a bedrock of middle-class stability. It failed after public backlash but revealed the conservative agenda to dismantle public safety nets.

· From Reagan to Trump, conservative leadership has consistently opposed universal healthcare. The GOP fought Clinton’s 1993 health plan, tried dozens of times to repeal the Affordable Care Act (ACA), and expanded junk insurance plans that left families unprotected.

· Conservatives pushed for school privatization, charter expansion, and voucher programs, often at the expense of funding public schools. Simultaneously, they demonized teacher unions, undermining educators’ rights and eroding education quality for middle and working-class families.

· Trump’s 1^st term tax cuts, billed as a middle-class boost, delivered 83% of its benefits to the top 1%, and raised deficits by $1.9 trillion, leading to conservative calls for cuts to Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security, each with a direct attack on middle-class lifelines. It remains a part of Trump’s “Big, Beautiful Spending Bill,'“ currently under assessmment and passage in the Senate.

· Conservative-led states passed “right-to-work” laws, weakening union power and bargaining ability. This led to lower wages, fewer benefits, and worse job security for millions of middle-class workers, particularly in the Midwest and South.

Lower wages, fewer benefits, and worse job security is only ‘conservative,’ if you’re not losing them.

Internationally, America’s onetime reputation as the nation in which most people hoped to live, has been shattered by a half-centure of conservative actions.

· Reagan’s secret sale of arms to Iran, a designated enemy, and funneling the money to right-wing Contra rebels in Nicaragua—in violation of U.S. law and Congressional bans—severely tarnished America’s image as a law-abiding democratic power, both at home and abroad, particularly in Central and South America.

· President Bush pulled the U.S. out of the Kyoto Global Climate Agreement, angering allies and making the U.S. a pariah on climate action. It signaled that America would continue to prioritize corporate polluters over global environmental responsibility. Following the script, TRump pulled us out of the Paris agreements.

· George Bush’s Iraq War and “Weapons of Mass Destruction” invasion of Iraq, claiming under false pretenses that Saddam Hussein had WMDs. None were found. The war killed hundreds of thousands, destabilized the Middle East, and severely damaged U.S. credibility, even among allies, particularly Great Britain. Bush followed up with the longest war America has ever fought, five times the length of WWII, a twenty year disaster in Afghanistan, from which we only recently slunk home.

· During the conservative Bush-Cheney administration, its leadership authorized CIA torture programs, secret prisons, and extraordinary rendition—all in violation of international law. The images from Abu Ghraib prison became a global symbol of U.S. hypocrisy and abuse.

· Rejecting the International Criminal Court, the Bush administration “unsigned” the Rome Statute and passed the American Service-Members’ Protection Act, nicknamed the “Hague Invasion Act”, authorizing force to free Americans tried for war crimes—an unprecedented rejection of global justice norms.

· Donald Trump withdrew the U.S. from the Paris Climate Accord, the world’s most important climate agreement. The move alienated nearly every global ally and made the U.S. a lone outlier in the fight against climate change.

· The acts of his 2^nd administration are almost too numerous to list and continue on a daily basis. He publicly praised authoritarian leaders like Putin, Kim Jong-un, Turkey’s Erdoğan, Hungary’s Orban, and Duterte of the Philippines. His fawning, photo-op diplomacy—especially in North Korea—undermined U.S. values of democracy and human rights, as well as making a mockery of free leadership.

· Trump mocked and threatened NATO, calling it “obsolete,” and questioned America’s commitment to defending allies. He also withdrew U.S. troops from Germany without warning, deeply eroding trust among European democracies.

· He banned citizens from several Muslim-majority countries—with no evidence-based security justification, seen globally as both xenophobic and Islamophobic. It damaged relations with allies and inflamed anti-American sentiment in Muslim-majority nations.

· Trump’s refusal to accept the 2020 election results, incitement of the January 6th insurrection, and ongoing conservative efforts to undermine democracy deeply shook U.S. allies. For the first time, America is seen as politically unstable and a cautionary tale rather than a democratic model.

· And then there are the tariff wars, destabilizing world financial markets, and Elon Musk’s illegal slash and burn destruction of American bureaucracy.

· Lately, this icon of conservative government has avowed ending the Iran-Israeli mini-war, having already failed to immediately end Gaza (supporting Netanyahu) and Ukraine (supporting Putin).

· Conservatives gush at taking Greenland by military force and coercing Canada into statehood, further trashing what’s left of our international reputation.

And so, I call out conservatism for what it has become in a single lifetime; the destroyer of most things sacred in the America I once knew.

It must end, while something of American

values remain.