Conservatives are dead, aren’t they?

October 15, 5:28 PMIndependent ExaminerBrian Trent

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The time for gentle talk is over.

Neoconservatives are NOT conservatives. There, I said it.

This has been obvious for some time, and had a big spotlight thrown onto it during the Republican primary when Cato Institute's President Ed Crane asked Mitt Romney if he believed the president should have the authority to arrest U.S. citizens with no review. Romney’s astonishingly ignorant answer was that he would have to hear the pros and cons from lawyers.

If anyone wants to tape the numerous “due process” clauses from the Constitution onto Mr. Romney, I’ll buy you a steak dinner.

Now, as a lifelong nonpartisan and independent, I’ve seen foolishness on all sides of the political spectrum. What’s more, I’m outright opposed to the two-party system of this country anyway. As a journalist, I've attended rallies of both liberals and conservatives, and in my own cross-section of friends there exist a startling variety... which is as it should be. But over these past eight years especially, something hideous has happened.

Debate has been traded in for soundbytes and brainless, baseless barking. And alas, the greatest spouters are from the people who fancy themselves politically Right.

Today’s Republican Party is an abomination of classic conservatism. Indeed, classic conservatives have either gone into hiding or are wearing Halloween masks… because the only “right-wing” voices we hear are those from neoconservatives.

And neoconservatives are NOT conservatives. Maybe the inexplicable rise in zombie films is an unwitting metaphor for what’s happened here. And the last few days of neoconservative political rallies could easily be a stand-in for any film dealing with either zombies or the Salem witch trials.

In short, neoconservatives have become nothing more than dogs. The American ship has been run by their partisan priests for a decade, and look at the condition it’s in. A military perilously stretched to the breaking point, a dangerously unrealized plummet in the science and technology race, criminal rollbacks of Constitutional protections, rabid politicizing of the media and public arenas, and economic collapse.

Even as this ship sinks, there are others on board who are proposing new ways of fixing things, patching the leaks, and getting us on the correct course again. Yet the neoconservatives have been trained to bark. It IS just barking, because like a dog’s bark there is nor rationality to it, just ceaseless repetition that amounts to a lot of noise. The dogs are barking even as their masters continue ramming this ship into ever more icebergs. The mob mentality is alive and as unwell as ever.

The neoconservatives rail against entitlements yet demand that only they have an "entitlement" to run (ruin) the country, regardless of their abysmal track record and public sentiment that is NOT on their side. They act like a class of aristocrats about to be deprived of their backstage passes. Actually, that’s not fair; they act like dogs deprived of their Scooby Snacks.

While neoconservatives scream in blind hatred and fear about “socialists taking over” (despite the fact that the bailout touted by Bush is a running leap into socialism) they blissfully ignore what has happened to the US. Look around you! As a culture, all we have been building these past few years is a deficit, fueled largely by neoconservative policies. A failure to see reality is a clear definition of psychosis.

And yet they keep barking! Across the blogosphere is a rising tide of howling that could twist metal with its pitch. A rough translation goes soemthing like this: “Bark bark liberals bark bark socialists bark bark terrorists bark bark gays bark bark founding fathers bark bark bark bark.”

Challenge the barkers on specific points, and your reward is a dog-pound full of barks that is without subtsance, despite the noticeable increase in volume over the last few days from a doomed philosophy built of hate, ignorance, and fear. Indeed, though I will have much to say about Democrats should they retake government in the coming years, I can say that the biggest cowards I have ever personally encountered are the neoconservative cult.

Where are the true Republicans? Where are the true classic conservatives who stood on platforms of fiscal responsibility and smaller government... even while dismissing religious crusaders as “agents of intolerance?”

I refuse to believe you’re dead. But if you want to come back into the political spotlight, you’ve got to get rid of a large, pulsing mass of zombies first.