I don't say that in a thoughtless or sarcastic sort of way. They genuinely confuse me sometimes. I hear plenty of talk coming from the conservative radio/blogosphere side of the political argument about Obama, how horrible he is, how bad the economy is, how it's all his fault, how government is over-regulating business, and how we are losing our freedoms one by one.
And they always end with the same argument: that liberals are keeping the country from “moving forward.” In fact, one of the slogans of the Fox Business Network is, you guessed it, “Moving Forward.” The president and his administration need to get out of the way of the American people, in order to allow them to “move forward.”
I have one question: what IS forward? Which way is forward, and where will it take us to? I would assume that when one moves forward, one is moving towards something, a goal of some sort. In the end, in my opinion, “moving forward” may sound nice, but it barely means anything at all on closer inspection. And it seems no prominent conservative cares to explain what it means.
Let us take business in America for starters. Moving forward could mean moving towards a more prosperous future and a more business-friendly political climate. Conservative talk show host Neal Boortz flails his arms on this head almost every single day. President Obama has certainly shown his disdain not only for laws concerning businesses and wealthy people in his country, but also his contempt for a buyer- and seller-dictated market. And the world is still stuck in an economic pothole that seems to be getting deeper each passing day.
The only problem with the “moving forward” argument concerning business is that, as every conservative out there should know, the business world and the economy go through cycles. There are booms and busts. Apparently that is just how things work. During every boom they could proclaim that we are moving forward and getting something done, and during every bust just the opposite, even when these things occur naturally. But even if there were no busts in the marketplace, the argument still falls apart on another level: what is the eventual goal of business? Where is it ultimately going to? Is moving forward just rolling the corporate snowball farther and further, watching it grow and expand and gather goodies for everyone? The stock market crash of 1929 is a demonstrable warning against that sort of thinking: that the good times will always roll and the goal of life is to get rich, quickly or otherwise.
So unless you are a rampant materialist, the business argument could not be the definition of “moving forward.” What else could it be, then?
It could mean the reduction of government spending, waste, and abuse, returning it to a manageable level where it stays out of the private affairs of private citizens. Government certainly is intrusive, damaging in many ways, slow moving and bureaucratic, and too often not locally present and highly impersonal. It has taken on far more than it can ever handle in terms of responsibilities and debt with no end in sight. Our military is involved in questionable conflicts overseas with the permission of our politicians, and we are busily involved in social matters of other countries that were never our business in the first place.
Again, this “moving forward” argument has its holes. Take for example the hallmark of conservative thought, namely, that we are individuals with individual responsibility and that it is our job to take care of ourselves, not to let the government do it. If that was truly 100% the case, we would not need government in the first place because we could all manage ourselves just fine. The problem is that we are not only individuals, but almost more importantly, we are social beings. Our human nature demands contact with and exchange with other individuals. Thus the need for government and political power as a player in human interaction. But as any politician knows, political power tends to grow by its nature, and is always trying to expand its reach into matters outside of its realm. So “moving forward” could be the perpetual attempt to keep this growth of political power at bay.
It rings hollow for one simple reason: the struggle between political power and personal freedom is an ongoing thing, not a final goal to move towards. The struggle is a fundamentally human struggle and will only end when we humans end, either when the world meets its eventual fate or our species dies out. The same with business cycles: they are fundamentally human in nature, and will only end when we end. Thus both are only means to some eventual final goal, and not goals in themselves.
Conservatives despise communism, and with good reason: communism seeks to end personal freedom in an attempt to unnaturally homogenize wealth and power amongst the ordinary working people. Communism in the end fails all the time, but one fact about it remains: it clearly states that the end goal of its view of society is the “worker's paradise,” a utopia of equal work and equal wealth shared in common abundance. That is what communism “moves forward” towards. It is a pipe dream, but at least it is a concrete and openly stated end.
Now if only conservatives would be so clear about what they are moving forward towards as well.
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