Polly Dogood

Upon the Eve, and What Is Conserved

Wherein the Author, on the Night before the Polls, asks what the Conservatives have conserved, reads the Ledger, and recalls that in her Grandpapa's Day the Men who conserved the King called themselves his Friends.

To the Readers of this Publick Blog,

On Tuesday you vote, and I am expected to say something fitting for the Eve of it. I shall instead ask a Question that has puzzled me all Autumn, as the Advertisements went by: what is it, precisely, that the Conservatives conserve?

I ask as a Friend of the Thing itself. I am of a conserving Disposition. I keep old Clothes until they are Rags, old Friends until they are Memories, and the Constitution until somebody better than Mr. Madison comes along, which I do not expect. To conserve is to keep what is worth keeping. So I took the Party at its Word, and opened the Ledger to see what it has kept.

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The Ledger

The Debt. On the Day the President took his Oath, the Nation owed $36.2 trillion. It now owes $40.6 trillion. The Party that holds the House, the Senate and the White House raised the Limit on its own Borrowing by $5 trillion in its one great Bill, which the Congressional Budget Office reckons will add $3.4 trillion to the Deficits over ten Years. Whatever was conserved here, it was not Money.

The Purse. The Constitution gives the Power to tax to Congress alone. This Congress let Tariffs be laid by Proclamation, voted that Days were not Days so that it need not vote upon them, and has watched the Executive withhold Money that Congress itself appropriated, a Practice the Comptroller General calls illegal. The Purse was not conserved. It was handed over.

The Rule of Law. A Law that binds only when the President pleases, I wrote in October, is not a Law. The Rule of Law means that the Crime is found first and the Man second. In September the President wrote publicly to his Attorney General that three of his Enemies were "guilty as hell" and that "JUSTICE MUST BE SERVED, NOW!!!" The Prosecutor who had declined to charge them was pushed out, the President's own former Lawyer was installed in his Place, and she indicted two of the three within Weeks. In November a Judge threw both Cases out, finding that she had been "unlawfully serving" all along. The Man was selected; the Crime was searched for afterward. Meanwhile some seventeen Inspectors General, whose whole Office is to find Crimes without Regard to the Man, were dismissed in a Night, which another Judge found unlawful; and when a Judge ruled against the President in March, he called for the Judge's Impeachment, and was corrected by the Chief Justice himself. The Rule of Law was not conserved. It was turned round.

Free Trade. For a Century the Party preached it. We now pay the highest Tariffs in about eighty Years, at the Counter, in a Travelling Coat.

The Peace. Two Americans were shot dead this Year on the Streets of Minneapolis by federal Officers. The State's Investigators were shut out of the Evidence, the Officers' own Masters declared it Self-Defence, and no one has been charged. Soldiers have been sent into our Cities over the Objection of their Governors, until the Supreme Court itself said No in Illinois. At Sea, at least 239 Persons have been killed without Trial or Charge, and the Senate twice declined, 48 to 51 and 49 to 51, so much as to be consulted. A War was begun upon Iran in our Name in February with no Vote of Congress; when the two Houses at last voted in June to bring the Forces home, they were told it had no Force of Law. And our oldest Neighbour, Canada, is taxed at 50% like an Enemy, while Enemies are received like Friends. The old Conservative was a Man who distrusted a War begun on a Whim, and a Soldier in a City Street. I should like to know where he is kept.

The House itself. They demolished the East Wing of the People's House for a Ballroom. I do not know what Conserving means, if it does not mean leaving the Walls where you found them.

The American Way of Life. This they say they conserve above all, and Grandpapa would have asked them which one. The Way of Life his Generation founded was a Way of Progress and of the Rights of Man. The Constitution itself charges Congress "to promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts"; the Rights of Man was Mr. Paine's Title and Mr. Jefferson's Theme. A Government that cuts the Laboratories and sends Men away without a Hearing conserves neither. It conserves the Way of Life of 1750, before Grandpapa got to work on it: a Governor who answers to one Man, Taxes laid without a Vote, Soldiers in the Towns, and Trials dispensed with. That is not conserving the Revolution. That is repealing it.

The Manners. The Rules, the Courtesies, the Decencies between the Branches, which Grandpapa's Generation called the Forms, and which cost nothing at all to keep. Gone, and cheerfully.

Not the Debt, then, nor the Purse, nor the Law, nor Trade, nor the Peace, nor the Walls, nor the Founders' Way of Life, nor the Manners. I have my Suspicions what older Things some Gentlemen would conserve, and so have you; but I would rather count what can be counted, and the Ledger is empty on every Line but one.

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Upon Theft and Treading

I hear it said, by Gentlemen in Hats, that Taxation is Theft, and that no Man shall tread on them. Grandpapa, who wrote that nothing in this World is certain but Death and Taxes, would have asked two Questions.

First: who steals more? The Government, which takes a Portion to keep the Roads mended, the Ships afloat and the Courts open; or the Billionaire who buys your Congressman outright, with a Fortune made upon those Roads, upon Discoveries your Taxes paid for, and in Courts that enforce his Contracts? Second: who does the treading? The Liberal with Love in his Heart, misguided perhaps, but wanting a better Life for his Neighbours and a better Republick, in the Spirit of our Founding; or the Politician owned by Corporations, with the Newspapers in his Pocket and a Power that answers to no one, who keeps you quarrelling with your Neighbour so that you will not notice his Boot?

And if it is a strong Military you would conserve, consider what has lately been asked of it: to march into American Cities over the Objection of their Governors; to sink Boats without a Trial; to be spent in the Middle East on a War that Congress never voted. The Rattlesnake on that yellow Flag was Grandpapa's Notion before it was anybody's Banner. He admired it, he wrote, because it never begins an Attack, and never surrenders. It was not meant to be carried by Men who do the one and demand the other.

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The King's Friends

In Grandpapa's Day there was a Party in London which conserved one Thing only, and that was the King. Mr. Burke called them the King's Friends. They had no Principle a Man could name; they had a Person, and they voted as his Pleasure went. Our own Loyalists, perhaps one Colonist in five, were much the same. Grandpapa's own Son, the Royal Governor of New Jersey, was one of them. He conserved the King, and lost his Father for it.

That is the one full Line in the Ledger. What this Party has conserved, faithfully and at any Cost, is its Loyalty to one Man. And a Party that conserves nothing but a Man is not a Party. It is a Court.

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For the Eve

So I say to my conservative Neighbour, whom I like, and whose Hedges are better kept than mine: if you wish to conserve something, Tuesday is the Day for it. Conserve the Constitution's Checks, which only a Congress of the other Party will presently apply. Conserve the Purse, by sending Men who will vote upon your Taxes with their Names on the Record. Conserve the Peace, your Wallet, and the Walls of the House. You need not love the Democrat to do it. You need only love the Republick more than the Court, hold your Nose, and vote for a Government divided enough to argue with itself again.

That is what Conservatives used to do. I should be glad to meet one.

P.S. The Governor of New Jersey conserved himself very well: he lived out his Days in London on £800 a Year from the Crown. It is the one Thing the King's Friends never fail to conserve.