Modern American Conservatism died last night at 7 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time. It was 35 years old.
Born with the 1980 presidential election of Ronald Reagan, conservatism had an impressive childhood. After cutting taxes for the wealthy, deregulating the economy, sparking a decline in union membership and squelching a nascent push for renewable energy, conservatism appeared poised to live a long and healthy life.
But its health began to wane in its adolescence. A stiff dose of fiscal conservatism administered by President George H.W. Bush caused a troubling side effect which impaired the part of the brain that handles mathematics.
In the 1990s, a time when conservatism was led by a group of adulterers and pedophiles, an attempt to define conservatism as the arbiter of social morality backfired. Yet psychiatric counseling was not sought.
A myriad of diseases in conservatism's early adulthood were devastating and eventually proved to be irrevocable. The math-damaged brain ravaged the budget. Excessive deregulation destroyed its financial circulatory system. A body drunk with power became unable to execute foreign policy with lucidity.
In 2008, doctors checked conservatism into a treatment facility, hoping that extended rest and a battery of tests would pinpoint the causes of its ailments and nurture a recovery. But once the necessary regimen of medications was established, conservatism was a difficult patient, often obstructing the ability of doctors to perform their care.
Its immunity to demagoguery severely weakened, the conservative host was eventually overtaken by the viruses of bigotry and authoritarianism. The lifeless body was discovered Tuesday May 3 in Huntington, Indiana, outside of the Dan Quayle Center & Vice-Presidential Museum, which will be accepting donations in lieu of flowers.
