Failed Conservatives Values: Gavin Newsom on Division and Tasmanian Devils

Written by: Edwin Rutsch on Aug 8, 2008 11:48 AM EDT

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A house divided against itself cannot stand.  Abraham Lincoln

San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom

The likes of Bill O'Reilly and Newt Gingrich have long railed against 'San Francisco Values' as a cause of America's ills.   I sat down with San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom at the Netroots Nation Conference in Austin, Texas to talk about conservative values.  Gavin articulated the case for how the conservative value of division has failed. He listed case after case of failed results and finally likened conservative values to schizophrenic and bipolar Tasmanian Devils. 

Failed Conservatives Values: Gavin Newsom on Division and Tasmanian Devils

Edwin:  I’ve been asking people how conservative values have failed.  I’m wondering what your thoughts are.

Gavin:  I guess I’m all about evidence and results.  Let’s take a look at the evidence of the last eight years, where you had a Republican Congress and a Republican President, and a conservative agenda, that was being carried on every talk show and almost every single cable news network that reconciled the fact that they needed to be more conservative in order to justify a market share in terms of an audience.

What you have are the largest deficits in the history of mankind, a debt that has grown exponentially.  You have income disparity, the likes of which we have never seen, and never could have imagined coming out of World War II, where we had a vibrant middle class.

You’ve got jobs that are being outsourced overseas, and you’ve got all sorts of issues of insecurity at home which relates to energy costs and the challenges associated with people trying to live the American Dream by keeping their home, let alone affording to purchase a home.

You’ve got stagnant wages.  You’ve got health care crisis, the likes of which none of us could have imagined ten or fifteen years ago – 46.6 million Americans without health insurance, and tens of millions more who can barely make ends meet keeping their existing insurance, and then those who have insurance, questions about the efficacy and the value of that insurance. 

We’ve got an environmental policy that is an embarrassment to this country and its values.  We’ve always been on the leading and cutting edge of environmental stewardship.  We’re no longer the pacesetter in the nation and the world.  And so in the world we are looked down upon, not looked up to, as we have historically been looked up to.

So I don’t know.  That’s a pretty damning record.  And we’re fighting two, arguably three wars with no ends in sight.  We’re spending at a degree that our great-grandkids are going to only be asked to reconcile this.

And there’s less confidence and less security in people’s minds.  And that’s the record, it seems to me, of this conservative movement and conservative agenda that has been forced on us and advanced in the last decade.  It’s pretty dismal, from my humble perspective.

Edwin:  What is their underlying values that is causing that?

Gavin:   Well, I come from the City of San Francisco, where people are pretty focused on the things that unite us, not on our differences.  And it seems to me that one of the precepts of the conservative movement as it relates to the political manifestation of that movement is to divide, to focus on the things that divide us, not the things that unit us.  To pit one group against another group.  That we’re in this, because one group has forced us into it – there’s a notion that we’re not all in this together.  That our strength is not our composite.

So I see the manifestation of the conservative movement as a very divisive manifestation, and I think it has done a tremendous amount of harm.  I also find it wonderfully ironic that you have a conservative movement that has morphed into being involved into making personal decisions, from being involved in the Terry Schiavo case to decisions about who you can marry, to decisions about whether you are given the freedom to choose. 

These don’t seem very consistent with the words – the actions of the conservative movement seems to be inconsistent with the words of the conservative movement.  And certainly, you’ve seen government used as a blunt instrument, in some cases, and then completely abandoning in other cases. 

I mean, where you need government is in catastrophe and emergency.  I mean you don’t need the free markets to respond to a crisis.  But you saw Katrina as a sort of extrapolation of this conservative value that “well, you’re on your own.  Use your credit card, get in your Winnebago, and be on your way”. 

Of course, that notion obviously needs to be abandoned and discounted.  So, it’s been immeasurably frustrating, and I'm one that's very  well-loved and embraced by the conservative movement by, you know, Michael Savage in the Savage Nation that takes some shots almost without exception almost every week, and Lou Dobbs, the new version of conservative values, sort of using the independent moniker to advance some of his perspectives and his values and beliefs. 

And of course, the work that Fox News has done so mightily.  I’ve seen their standard-bearer in Bill O’Reilly pontificate every single day.  It’s kind of now becoming almost a caricature of these guys, and there’s a weakness, because people are not immune to demanding results.  People are smart enough to say “where’s the evidence of success?”, and that’s really an extraordinary thing, because this was the dominant movement in our country for a number of years. 

But they just didn’t produce results.  And now people are turning the page to Barack Obama, or turning the core and reflecting that.  And arguably, now, deciding that they’ve had enough and are going in a different direction. 

At the end of the day, we must go forward with hope and not backward by fear and division. Jesse Jackson
 

Failed Conservative Values Metaphor: Gavin Newsom - Schizophrenic Tasmanian Devil

Edwin:  What would be a metaphor for failed conservative values?

Gavin:  Well, you know, for me, more of a Tasmanian Devil.  There’s no rhyme or reason.  It’s quixotic.  One day it’s small government, and no government intervention.  The next day it’s big government.  Absolute government intervention

It’s almost a bipolar movement.  Or schizophrenic movement perhaps best describes it.  I don’t know that the conservative movement knows what it is.  Is it about values?  Or is it about government, or is it about governing?  What is the core construct?  What are the core values?  I don’t know that the movement even knows.  I don’t know that Rush Limbaugh knows, and he, of course, parrots it more than anyone else.  And I think that people are just fed up with the blowviation, and they are actually interested in results.

Tasmanian Devil

I find myself. . . hoping a total end of all the unhappy divisions of mankind by party-spirit, which at best is but the madness of many for the gain of a few.  Alexander Pope

Divide and Rule at Wikipedia
In politics and sociology, divide and rule (also known as divide and conquer) is a combination of political, military and economic strategy of gaining and maintaining power by breaking up larger concentrations of power into chunks that individually have less power than the one implementing the strategy. In reality, it often refers to a strategy where small power groups are prevented from linking up and becoming more powerful, since it is difficult to break up existing power structures.......

Some Questions for Discussion:
    - How have conservatives used division to gain power?
    - What are the harmful effects of the value of division?
    - Is 'We're all in it together' the opposite value to division?
 

Failed Conservative Values Project
Assist us  in systematically building the arguments and telling the stories that reveal how Conservative Values have Failed. Join in our effort to create a documentary and book on the subject by contributing  articles, posts, chapters for the book and video clips. Check our website for more information and a growing outline of tasks that need to be done on this project. 
 

See more Progressive Values Stories:

Edwin Rutsch
What Are Progressive Values? Documentary Project
http://ProgressiveSpirit.com 
and Study Group
 

Poll: What's the worst conservative movement trait?

     (    )  blowviation
     (    )  being quixotic

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