As the right wing, self-styled conservatives try to roll back the clock on almost every issue facing us: voting rights, civil rights, labor rights, health care and health insurance, environmental quality, women's rights, Social Security and Medicare, abortion and even contraception, I've come to the conclusion that they are not conservatives. Conservatives want to maintain the status quo. These right-wingers want to go back to a time when they imagined everything was perfect, like a Father Knows Best or Donna Reed episode of the 1950s, or even the 1920s: before FDR was elected, before he introduced Social Security, "Relief" [Public Assistance] and public work projects. They idolize Reagan, who was elected 35 years ago. Home computers were only introduced three years before that, and most homes still had rotary dial telephones; many still had black and white TVs. I could go on.
My conclusion: they are not conservatives, seeking to preserve what prevails now. Rather, they are reactionaries, wanting to return to an era 40 to 80 years in the past.
We should stop buying into their use of the term "conservative", with which they identify and pat themselves on their collective shoulders. Instead, we should start using the correct word, the one that more precisely defines them -- reactionaries.
I'm old enough to remember how that term was used against Barry Goldwater, and the negative effect it had. For many years, they tried to make the word "liberal" pejorative; let's use the English word that perfectly and negatively defines them, i.e.
R E A C T I O N A R I E S!