Conservatism Today Has Become Javert

My wife recently took me to see the movie Les Misérables for my birthday. Afterwards, I was emotionally spent. The movie has lingered with me over the recent days, especially the powerful portrayals of the major characters. Yesterday, I saw this Huffington Post piece highlighting conservative Joe Scarborough's dark warning about the seeds of destruction being planted by the elected Republican majority in the House of Representatives. And that's when I had a revelation. That's when I knew. Conservatism today has become Javert.

Inspector Javert as portrayed by the Oscar-winning actor Russell Crowe is a man bound by the mathematics of his own stiff adherence to the law. Javert lived and died in accord with his legalism--he was right and the prisoner Jean Valjean was wrong and that was the way the world had to work. 1+1 had to equal 2. Javert's insistence that Jean ValJean was wrong was as inflexible as his singing voice and as stiff as his posture...until he finally shattered that stiffness along with his body on the harsh edges of a reservoir at the very end of the film. But by then it was too late. Javert's character was not evil...you saw what his character might have been when he pinned that medal on my hero, the little boy named Gavroche, who gladly laid down his life for his friends, the young revolutionaries.

And that brings me back to my revelation about conservatism today. When did conservatism become Javert? I remember a few years ago when I started to hear regularly from conservatives on talk radio and on Fox News that Democrats were either evil or stupid. Wait a minute! This is nothing I had ever grown up hearing from Republicans. This was new. My mother is a life-long Democrat. Ma is neither evil nor stupid...far from it. I can vouch for her. And yet in this new inflexible equation, my mother has to be Javert's mortal enemy. She could not be a fellow citizen. She could not be a pleasant neighbor. Ma, and anyone who does not see the world as Javert, has to be demonized as dangerous or stupid or dependent or as one of the 47% who supposedly "believe they are victims" and cannot possibly be convinced to "take personal responsibility and care for their lives." Even if this math was never ever true at all.

And that inability to see what stands right in front of one's face is the ultimate tragedy of both Javert and what has become conservatism today. Conservatives aren't any more evil than Javert was. But neither are Democrats, and the fact that Republicans can no longer see the good that stands before them in every encounter with Jean Valjean has become their fatal flaw. As pointed out by former Republican representative Joe Scarborough, this is a story that will not end well. And elected conservatives, now pacing the edge of a cliff of their own design, will not see the end coming until they have launched themselves over the edge of the precipice toward the hardest landing possible. Watch what happens during the midterm elections of 2014. Mark my words. Or as Javert might say, remember my face.