The Sunshine Empire

The Sunshine Empire’s crack political team is always monitoring the pulse of the conservative movement and always try to make sense of the sometimes contradictory messages that come forth from Lord Limbaugh’s minions. Watching the Twitter and the interwebs I’m struck by one seeming contradiction. During the 2008 presidential election Republicans and McCain supporters often mocked now President Obama’s background as a community organizer. The effort was natural politically from a campaign wishing to contrast that against McCain’s narrative of resolute war hero. But it didn’t end there. After the election I began to and continue to read conservative twitter friends that are highly skeptical of “volunteerism.” The ideals behind community organization and volunteerism are that the communities themselves should help themselves. Yet conservatives have attempted to frame this movement as some way of gathering a liberal Obama army to infiltrate American communities.

Now a certain amount of Obama derangement syndrome of course is at fault, but the confusing thing for me is that the standard conservative political narrative is that “liberals” always look for the government to do it for them. They say government is not the answer. Yet when groups attempt to promote helping your community on your own, that is also cast as some kind of evil liberal conspiracy. It cannot be both for most rational people, but the cognitive dissonance of both government and ordinary people not being the answer seems to be one of the hallmarks of today’s conservative movement.

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