In their contribution to the 2008 anti-Obama campaign, conservative non-profit Focus on the Family published their unforgettable “Letter from 2012 in Obama’s America”, making 34 very specific predictions for the next 4 years which spectacularly failed to occur on every count. The closest they came to a successful prophecy was the likely guess that DADT would be repealed, but they utterly failed in its ramifications. Which was kind of the primary reason conservatives opposed its repeal.
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The Religious Right has a long history of this fear-mongering, manipulating people with (literally) apocalyptic doom if they don’t get their way. So far, they have yet to be right, obviously. Things that today’s generation takes for granted, like women voters, integrated schools or interracial marriage, were once heated culture wars that could mean the end of the world if any changes to the status quo were implemented. To these conservatives, every election cycle isn’t just another opportunity to participate in democracy, it’s also another shot to postpone the always impending apocalypse. Currently, the Rightwing is promoting an irrational fear of divine judgment if the Supreme Court rules against them on the constitutionality of same-sex marriage. The dilemma here is that if the Rightwing somehow succeeds in blocking nationwide marriage equality, then they also absolve themselves of the burden of proof. Perhaps this is why the Rightwing is so determined not to lose, even suggesting their followers start another Civil War in case they do. They might be doubling down more out of fear of the embarrassment of being proven wrong than the genuine conviction of being right.
Conservatism lends itself to this fallacy by definition. There really is no position that is inherently conservative other than the status quo. Contrary to their conservative forbears, today’s conservatives have adapted to the status quo of abolition, women’s suffrage, and integration even though these positions today were at one time the liberal ones. Today’s liberals are tomorrow’s conservatives, the only real distinctions are the arbitrary lines conservatives draw in the present. Thus conservatism is a constant struggle to impede progress, for progress is an existential threat to conservatism. Conservatism has the natural advantage that it can always argue change is bad whether it has valid reasons to do so or not. And conservatives can make any ridiculous claims as long as they win elections or court cases in the end, because then the actual consequences of that change will then never be realized.
Unfortunately for conservatives, they can’t win every election or lawsuit. Obama won. Twice. The Affordable Care Act has not been “the end of the U.S. economy.” The odds seem to be that whenever conservatives foretell the future, the exact opposite will happen if allowed to occur without obstruction. I would argue that conservatism is naturally handicapped at prognostication, because one has to be forward-thinking to accurately predict the future. One would think consistently being wrong about everything would drive more people out of the conservative fold; yet like a doomsday cult, cognitive dissonance kicks in to overlook these losses, even if that means starting battle of Armageddon themselves. Their wins, however, are still more of a threat to progress, not just because victory enables conservatives to implement reactionary policies without a basis in reality, but also because it reinforces their delusion. The momentum of the conservative agenda is fueled by political victories that affirm their worldview without ever having to prove it true. Therefore, not raising the minimum wage vindicates their position more than any actual arguments against raising it. The irony is that if liberal policies were in fact wrong, they would fail if given the chance; whereas the strength of conservative policies rests in not allowing them to be tested.
It’s not enough to call conservatives out as the boy who cried wolf, because as long as conservatives get their way then they get to act as if the wolf is real. This is damaging because the “wolf” is very often a slanderous stereotype of the opposition. Southern hostility to integration was rooted in a racist fear of black men as predators of white women, assuming that lynching was usually a justified response to rape. As President Eisenhower was quoted as saying, “[Southerners] are not bad people. All they are concerned about is to see that their sweet little girls are not required to sit in school alongside some big overgrown Negroes.” Similarly, the opposition to same-sex adoption and marriage has been perpetuated by unfounded allegations such as equating homosexuality with pedophilia. If conservatives stay in power, they will just go on believing that the working poor are lazy, that women who use birth control are sluts, or that DREAMers brought into this country as minors are criminals. Conservatives need to lose for their own sakes, not just so to confirm once and for all that their predictions are false, but also to correct their erroneous opinions of their fellow Americans. Liberals cannot just be on the right side of the issues, we have to be on the winning side.
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Matthew Jensen
Matthew Jensen is a freelance writer and activist who lives in Los Angeles, California. Growing up in conservative Christian fundamentalism, he became a student of world religions and eventually broadened his views. He is a fan of silent movies and any books that have been written or copied by hand, from ancient texts to modern comic books.
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