Over the last five decades, I’ve closely studied the promises and outcomes of politically conservative economic policy. This graphic breaks it down to a “meme” level, but there’s more to these issues than a few facts and figures. Let’s look at the factors involved in how conservatism fails America.

1. The lie of pure capitalism. While many conservatives are fond of quoting the likes of Milton Friedman, the University of Chicago “economist” who strongly believed in unfettered free market capitalism, the consistent outcome of unregulated markets is industries monopolized by players gobbling up smaller companies to grab market share and eliminate competition. Way back in Teddy Roosevelt’s days in battling Robber Barons, America learned that allowing aggressive players free reign results in economic imbalance as shared in a Los Angeles Times story: “When Theodore Roosevelt became president in 1901, tycoons had grown fabulously wealthy through monopolistic manipulations of industry, and the economic deck was stacked against the common man and woman. T.R., the scion of a prominent New York family, was no stranger to wealth, but he was also raised with the conviction that those who came into life with great advantages had a moral responsibility to improve the condition of the disadvantaged. Believing that America could not thrive unless all Americans had a chance to thrive, Roosevelt used his epic energy, intellect and reformist zeal to confront the rapacious robber barons and offer the rest of the citizenry a “Square Deal” that promised the federal government would be a fair arbiter that would not favor the rich over everyone else.” So yes, whether it involves a Square Deal or a New Deal or a Green New Deal, the United States of America needs government to defend the interests of the middle class and poor. Some call these actions “socialism,” but in fact it’s quite the opposite.
2. Conservatives love the idea of “privatize the profits, socialize the losses.” We often hear conservatives complain about “social welfare” and “social programs” as being unsustainable expenditures. Yet corporate welfare handouts are just as common from government to small businesses all the way up to massive entities the size of Elon Musk’s organization. Yet in turn, many of these same companies, having absorbed taxpayer dollars to guarantee productivity and then profits, love to avoid paying taxes because the “corporations are people too” mindset of the Mitt Romney’s of the world maintain it is fair and just for companies to avoid paying taxes at all costs. These “free speech rights” include the ability to pay lobbyists who sell their interests to government officials in exchange for campaign funding toward re-election. The entire system is rigged toward corporate largesse. Yet when companies become “too big to fail” (such as the auto or banking industries), Americans are forced to pay for the losses of speculative management, outright corruption, or predatory corporate behavior. These losses form the other bookend of corporate socialism. Yet conservatives love to gaslight about labor or social programs being “socialism” while supporting the elitist function of corporatism as a patriotic ideal. It is no such thing.
3. Conservatives regard labor as a “necessary evil.” From the labor-busting policies of Ronald Reagan to the corporate “downsizing” trend popular among hardline managers during the 80s and 90s, it is labor and the middle class that have borne the pain of economic loss in the form of flat wages, job insecurity, and reduced economic mobility. Combined with the offshoring of American jobs and manufacturing to capitalize on cheaper foreign labor, which often involved harsh conditions nearing slave labor, the American Heartland was gutted to deliver profits to shareholders of companies without seeming to care about the fate of the nation or its citizens. The conservative despise of labor also swings the opposite direction, maligning immigrant populations brought in to farm the fields, work in meat-packing plants, or do millions of jobs that Americans need to get done but feel the work is beneath their cultural status or pay-grade. That populist hatred for immigrants is now a political mainstay among political conservatives leveraging fear for votes. This is an immoral reality, and we’ll address that in section #5.
4. Conservatives consistently refuse to accept responsibility for the costs of pollution or climate change. During the Nixon administration, several laws were passed to clean up American air, water, and the environment. These bipartisan initiatives improved conditions across the nation, reducing acidification of lakes and streams, cutting smog in urban areas, cleaning up rivers used as dumping grounds by manufacturing and industry, and protecting critical habitat for wildlife. In addition, Superfund money went to work cleaning up dangerous pollution zones, and lawsuits brought against big polluters put money to use in massize accidents like the Exxon Valdez and other environmental calamaties. If not for these initiatives supported by our government, the costs of pollution in health and safety terms would have sunk into the lives of millions more people. And yet today, conservatives say the costs of fighting anthropogenic climate change are “too high” or claim that there isn’t a problem at all. Some of that denial comes from a different sort of conservative belief system. People possessed of a fundamentalist religious worldview deny that humanity can affect such change, believing that only God can affect things on a global scale. Yet that pursuantly denies the religious tradition that it was humanity that brought about the “fall of the world.” Such “logic” is thus fallacious and hypocritical. But whoever said Christianity contradicts itself? Well, let’s take yet another look at one of the most egregious examples of that.
5. The “money is not the root of all evil” conservative mindset. Despite the many admonitions of Jesus against the love of money found in the Bible, today’s ‘fiscally conservative’ Christians love to find ways to deny that aspect of the Lord’s ministry. There is nothing in the life and ministry of Jesus that suggests a broad tolerance for the pursuit of earthly wealth. A simple AI summary says it best: “Jesus taught that people should not store up riches on earth, where they can be destroyed by moths, rust, and thieves. Instead, he encouraged people to store up riches in heaven, where they would be safe from destruction.” Yet from the Reagan era through both Bushes and into the Trump Era, an accelerated fascination with avarice consumes conservative Christianity. The so-called Prosperity Gospel of televangelists is the ultimate ironic expression of this bad theology. Uber-wealthy TV preachers fly around in private jets while dunning their parishioners for their last dimes on the promise that such wealth will return to them tenfold, or whatever. It’s all lies about money packaged in legalistic religion from which people are afraid to break fear due to the fire and brimstone warning that they won’t get into heaven if they don’t “pay up.” The Catholic Church worked this scam a few thousand years ago with indulgences and purgatory, but religious suckers and fearfully conservative populists love the idea of monetary returns and heavenly rewards. Christian conservatives often deeply desire to have their cake and eat it too. If the two are combined in one package, all the better. And, if someone appears to stand in the way of these aims, the conservative instinct is to leapfrog the earthly obligation of Christ to serve others and claim salvation well in advance of Judgement Day. There is even a massive faction hoping for judgment day to arrive sooner than later, and an entire industry of Christian apologetics is devoted to predicting when the End Times will come, and how those who don’t play along with the rules of Christian legalism will pay with suffering in this life and beyond. It’s all a transactional game, this conservative religious instinct. Religious legalists have long understood how to extract wealth from those fearful of the Great Beyond and eager for vindication against their perception of evil in this life. The Internet is flush with dichotomous so-called Christians claiming that the upcoming election between Trump and Harris is the epitome of “good versus evil.” Wouldn’t Jesus be surprised to come back and study those claims?

So here we are today, dealing with the five main lies of fiscal conservatives gutting the American economy while claiming to love God and Country. Some go so far as to claim that one cannot be an American and be a Liberal. Or to be a Democrat and be a Christian.

Yet, when you look at the ministry of Jesus, who fought the moneyed religious conservatives of his day because they sought control of the economy and ruled the lives of the masses through laws and traditions only they could implement, we realize that conservatives are not only on the wrong side of economic truth, they are on the wrong side of God too. Plus, the truth of the matter is that the economy almost always does better under Democrats. Sometimes that’s because fiscal conservatives actually play ball with Democratic leadership to cut costs, and I’m all in favor of that. Hell, elite accounting firms were brought in to examine our nation’s military budgets and could not determine a first step at economic accountability. Yet conservatives love military spending and protect it at all costs. That goes for blowing millions on Israel because the Zionist wishes of Christian Conservatives want that nation to serve as the foundation for Armageddon and the Return of Christ. Too bad if you’re Jewish, it seems. You get left out on that deal. These are just a few of the ways conservatives have perverted the tenets of Christianity to work against the teachings of Christ on every front.

That even holds true on the abortion issue, where the economics of child-bearing and child-rearing are ignored in favor of blaming women for getting pregnant in the first place. Ex-President Donald Trump insists he “did the thing” in getting abortion rights tossed down to the states where inconsistency is the norm, and women are the people who suffer.

Why is it that conservatives never speak about the role men play in causing those pregnancies? And why do conservatives avoid the logical tactics of birth control, especially male birth control, in pregnancy prevention? That is the sure cure for abortions nationwide.

It is clear that conservatives don’t genuinely own the authority on abortion. Their sole goal seems to be proclaiming self-righteous grievance against women and claiming the right to assert that they’re “saving babies.” In fact, they’re only saving themselves the problem of having to care enough and get involved in the lives of women just as Jesus would tell them to do. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. When it comes to abortion, “If you must depend on the law to bring about the will of God, you have already failed.”

When it comes to economics, it is classic liberalism that owns all the “good things” done to bring about the promises of the Bill of Rights and the Constitution. Liberals, including Christians devoted to the teachings of Christ about equality in humanity, emancipated people from slavery and bondage. Liberals also worked to grant women the full rights of citizenship and voting, and to advocate for the well-being and normalcy of gay love and marriage in society. Liberals (including Christian liberals) work to protect the Earth from the chronically sinful ways of humankind. That’s all in keeping with the best aspects of the Bible while dispensing with anachronistic laws of patriarchal origin and the crueler facest of “kingship,” which is just another word for plutocracy and unrepentant capitalism.

We should never forget that the “kings of industry” are just as susceptible to character flaws as the biblical King David, upon whose life God cast a shadow by telling him at the end of life, “You cannot build a temple in my honor. You have too much blood on your hands.” That is not an excuse to claim, as too many evangelical Christians do, that “God works with flawed people to accomplish his aims.” To that I say, “Well, you don’t have to actively seek flawed people and support them no matter how many ways they sin, and refuse to be repentant.” That’s Donald Trump. He’s many sins packed into one Big Sin, that of unrepentant pride and hubris. God doesn’t like those kinds of people. The Bible shows many of them getting their just desserts, although Trump always seems to want a second helping.

Let that be a lesson to all who allow greed, violence, and adultery to rule their hearts. And I’m talking about you, Donald Trump, and everyone who supports you. God does not favor the unrepentant.