- What?
- One of my best friends has become a conservative.
- Conservative morally or politically?
- Politically. It’s so stupid.
- By conservative you mean resistant to change?
- No. I mean wanting to keep the present kind of government but reduce it to a minimum, conserving the idea of government and little else.
- That is stupid because an idea of government doesn’t govern, people do, the kind of people who have that idea of government. And what kind of people are they?
- Selfish and greedy.
- And the reason you say conservatives are stupid is that the government in idea alone they ask for ends up being against them?
- Yes. Against all of them but those who are of the same social class and wealth as their leaders.
- Conservatives want to exclude aliens, end aid to the poor, forbid subsidies to business: they don’t want the government to help strangers. Yet they elect to represent them and implement this idea strangers who convince them that they hate strangers more than all the others running for office. They don’t seem to have any doubt these strangers who hate strangers will not hate them as strangers.
- They think these politicians are their friends.
- Where do they get that idea?
- They share with them a fear and hatred of strangers. Living alike in fear they think they all are in this together.
- A kind of family. While in a family people help each other instead of treating each other as enemies, as the politicians say they want to do and the people say they want the politicians to do.
- And somehow not hate them too!
- Some things government must do if the state is to remain in existence. Government must defend against attack, protect against other countries' subsidized products coming in to ruin local trade, protect against crime. These government jobs are to be given into the hands of people who hate strangers, when the people who gave them the jobs are also strangers to them and in the normal course of things will be hated?
- They aren’t expected to act against us because, just like us, they don’t like strangers. We are alike in not liking strangers (yet alike in nothing else).
- Political representatives have authority over people who elect them, like the government has authority over the poor and weak. Representatives who are elected to minimize concern for the poor and weak will also minimize their relation to those who elect them who are likewise poor and weak in relation to themselves who have the power of the government behind them. Have you tried explaining this to your friend?
- You know how it is. No one listens.
- We’re strangers.
Further Reading:
Against Leaders