Some questions have to be asked again and again, because being unable to get a straight answer reminds us what’s really going on:
What do “conservatives” plan to conserve?
For most of the last 20 years, one thing above all gave the lie to the idea that modern “conservatism” has any remaining link to the moral traditions from which it derives – many (not all) conservatives’ reflexive contempt for environmental conservation. (“Tree huggers”!) Since the discovery that torture is a convenient tool of state terror, under Bush II, we have had a mounting dung-pile of other evidence. But now there’s something new – something that, as Nicholas Kristof has said, crosses a line from nasty and brutish into evil.
Follow the link below for Andrew Sullivan’s take on the “conservative” Jeff Sessions defending (or rather: refusing even to bother to defend) a policy that violates the most basic norms of civilization and decency – children being separated from their parents, and not because this profound cruelty is even alleged to be in any way necessary or appropriate to the case at hand, but because it will send a message:
An important thing to bear in mind: disgusting, corrupted, unforgivable people like Sessions (and his handler, President Donnorhea) may find that the label “conservative” plays well to the sufficiently-frightened masses. But there is nothing, nothing, that could be less conservative than tearing up our most fundamental moral norms.
What these people are doing in our name should never be forgotten, should never be forgiven, and should be rejected unconditionally by everyone – especially any actual conservatives out there. The foundations of the building are burning.