ConservativeMyths.com is written by Rusticus, nom de plume of a true American (i.e. liberal) patriot.

Prior to the Revolutionary War there was an elusive and mysterious figure, whether male or female no one now knows, who published a series of pamphlets called The Alarm, which railed against the abuses increasingly being perpetrated upon the American colonists by King George of Britain and his sycophant coterie of conservatives and corporatists. The pamphlets, published in New York and distributed throughout the colonies, were signed by someone named "Rusticus."

Rusticus directed particular fire toward a corporation, of which King George (and the "father of modern conservatism" Edmund Burke) held shares: the East India Company. Awarded special privileges and powers, the British East India Company rampaged around the world, dominating commerce, and people, throughout the vast British Empire. In the American colonies, the East India Company planned to crush all competition, particularly in the tea trade. Rusticus was one of the early voices that called for resistance to this violation of what many liberal thinkers were already considering their "inalienable rights".

Remember that the definition of a conservative is to "conserve" traditional values, institutions and hierarchies. So conservatives of 1773 were aghast that anyone would dare even speak against much less openly oppose their beloved Britain and the divine right of kings, the most traditional, and sacred, value, institution and hierarchy of them all!

Yet brazenly, Rusticus accused King George, his ministers and the corporation of "enslaving America". Rusticus wrote, "How little they regard the Laws of Nature, the Rights, Liberties, or Lives of Men." Has a more accurate portrayal of despots and modern corporations ever been written?

Rusticus leveled a broadside against King George and the East India Company that reverberates even today amidst the absolute greed, cronyism and corruption we have seen from conservative politicians and corporate executives: "They have levied War, excited Rebellions, dethroned lawful Princes, and sacrificed Millions for the Sake of Gain. The Revenues of Mighty Kingdoms have centered in their Coffers. And these not being sufficient to glut their Avarice..."

Wow! Mind you, this was written in 1773... but the parallels to how conservative and corporatist policies have wrought damage and destruction here at home in America, and around the world, are simply stunning.

Conservatism - both the corporate and social version - is the antithesis of true American values. Conservatism is actually at odds with democracy. At its core conservatism is infused with selfishness, whereas American ideals are all about magnanimity. Conservatism esteems authoritarianism (from kings and dictators and mullahs to Trump), worships wealth, encourages clannishness, and actively seeks to oppress, subjugate and exploit "the other," whether that be people or planet. Social conservatism keeps cultures mired in mythology and superstition, in continual friction with science, and highly resistant to change for the betterment of the whole. Meanwhile, corporatism has inexorably accrued far more power and influence than it ever should have been allowed. If they were to come back to life today, those founding fathers of America would at once notice and be shocked and alarmed by the degree of control corporations have usurped within the American system. The concept that "Corporations are Persons" would incite a second revolt among those who knew personally some of the original Boston Tea Partiers.

Corporatism is by far the most dangerous form of conservatism for it provides a mechanism for wealth to run rampant across cultures and around the globe with virtual impunity. Yes many corporations (particularly smaller businesses) are benign, even helpful to their communities, but the larger entities are quite often vicious in their relentless quest to slake their unquenchable thirst for profit. Profit at all cost is their mantra; that "cost" often being borne by the public while the corporation (most particularly its top echelon) pockets all the gains. Corporations gobbling each other up, getting bigger and bigger and bigger, paying their top executives more and more and more (while paying their workers less and less and less), invasions of countries that posed no threat to us, "no-bid" contracts to corporations with ultra-close associations with the politicians who are awarding the contracts, privatization of "the commons", the greedy compulsion of conservatives to "deregulate" big business and unleash an even more voraciously predatory "free market", the resultant (and totally predictable) orgy of reckless speculation that has led to our current economic disaster (which, of course, closely parallels the economic disaster the same conservative policies led us into in the 1920s), the inculcation and perpetuation of a rampant consumerism that does, indeed, "enslave" us all to corporations... each of these afronts to our independence, welfare, sense of justice and basic goodness as Americans is eerily similar (though assuredly magnified in sheer scale) to the very issues that Rusticus warned about.

Within a year and a half of Rusticus' Alarm, the patriots of Boston had had enough, and rose up in protest. You may have heard of the affair. Disguised as Indians, they boarded the East India Company ships in Boston Harbor and dumped the tea overboard. Yes, that's right... the Boston Tea Party was American patriots against a corporation! These patriots were LIBERALS (as all people who truly believe in American ideals are)... abusing the sacrosanct conservative principle of "private property," and thrusting the proverbial middle finger at "traditional values" and the divine right of kings. (So we can see how the modern "Tea Party," in its obedience and slavish devotion to corporate wealth and power, is precisely the opposite of the original revolutionary impulse.)

A British soldier writes back to England telling of discontent in the colonies, Rusticus' Alarm, and how colonists plan on not allowing any tea to land, even threatening to burn ships. Whoa! Not a very conservative bunch, those trouble-makers! Indeed, they were the opposite of conservatives... they were LIBERALS!

Now Rusticus is back, sounding the alarm again:

Wake up America! Arise! It is time to again organize our oroginal liberal virtues so to stringently counter social conservatives and their ignorant, selfish and backwards "traditions," and even more so to oppose corporate conservatives and their exploitative, oppressive, destructive and banal obsessions to accrue wealth and power for themselves by way of normalizing (even glorifying) over-the-top greed and infecting all the world with materialistic desire! Our country's ideals and destiny have been too long held hostage and retarded by social conservative and corporatist perversions.

Even as we offer our love, compassion and friendship to all people, and resolve to always use peaceful means except in the most dire of circumstances, we must staunchly oppose ideologies that seek to divide and conquer, as well as political or economic policies that serve up inequality, injustice, harm and unsustainability toward both human culture and the biosphere.

We must throw off the tyranny of oligarchy, predatory corporatism, corporate "personhood," as well as conservative "principles" and "traditions" and "values" that have proven, time and again, they are not really principles or values at all that benefit the common person or the social whole.

We must reclaim our independence, our unity, our sense of justice for all, and real compassion as Americans.

We must hold conservatives accountable for their litany of utter failure of judgment, failure of insight, failure of ideas, failure of conscience, and failure of morality throughout American history!

We must re-establish our determination to hold corporations and great individual wealth subservient to the nation, community, people, and biosphere, not vice-versa. We must insist that our system be Pro People, Pro Planet! Those who would place their own wealth, that of a corporation or even entire industry sector, or their own self-held traditions before the welfare of We the People or our precious, fragile Mother Earth are no friend of virtue, humankind or life itself. Such entities are not worthy of serving as leaders of a dog pack, much less a community or a nation.

We must reverse the conservative legal assumption that corporations are "persons" (a ploy they use to usurp vast powers unavailable to any actual living person). The presumption that corporations are persons is rationally bereft, entirely malicious, and but a clever construct of those who wish to monopolize, manipulate, control, dominate, exploit, abuse, addict or "enslave" consumers and citizens of the United States. Corporations are not "persons;" they are contructs of the imagination of persons, and therefore must never be accorded ANY political power, certainly not willfully bequeathed far greater power and privileges than the average citizen could ever hope to accrue. Such corporate political power is a clear and present danger to the Republic, far more dangerous than any military or "terrorist" force on earth today.

Mind you, we recognize that many corporations seek only a fair profit to provide for and sustain their owners, employees and shareholders, and are law-abiding and good citizens of their communities. Yet the largest, just like the East India Company of 1773, and the railroads, steel, oil, banking and other "trusts" of the late 1880s, are once again running amok. We have seen corporate malfeasance many times before in history, but today the threat is exponentially more serious than what was even imaginable in the 1770s, 1880s or even 1920s. The worldwide reach and potentially disastrous technologies readily available to these non-virtuous corporate actors are powerful enough not only to damage local human lives but could even poison the livability of the entire planet!

Corporatism - and the toadies who support this religion - is now threatening the very fabric of our nation, our society and our world. They control our daily lives, the food we eat, the water we drink, the air we breathe, the information we receive... and therefore the thoughts in our heads. They demand that we buy, buy, buy from them in a never-ending, negative feedback loop of subservient transfer of our capital, our time, our freedoms... indeed, our very lives... directly to their purpose. To them we are serfs, if not sheer slaves. Some of these corporations would destroy you for a dollar; they would certainly destroy the world for an extra billion! And, indeed, as you are reading this sentence they are doing just that.... aided and abetted by conservative politicians and power-mongers all along the way.

From a vantage point 240-something years advanced from the original Rusticus, we can fully corroborate his or her perceptions. Aside from its single core theorem: that some things should be conserved, conservatism in practice has never had a good idea in the history of the world. It is so bad at serving that core theorem that the lable "conservative" should be stripped from them, and a far better descriptive term applied to them: "dominators."

History proves that it is liberals who have been both the liberating heroes of history, as well as the more proper conservors of that which deserves to be conserved, the virtues. Rather than virtue, the focus of conservative conservation through the ages has been the "Dominator Hierarchy," systems which divide, separate, exploit, subjugate, oppress and enslave. Nothing has changed, not since Rusticus the First, and not since time immemorial.

So we must ask, can it ever be changed? YES! Of course, it can. We have seen the ebb and flow through history. When liberality prevails, liberation follows, cooperation commences, progress flows, science and the arts flourish, innovation is stimulated, economies prosper, the Middle and Lower classes are lifted, the Upper Class still profits but to a lesser degree. Where conservatism prevails, selfishness, separation, authoritarianism, oppression, disparity, exploitation swell.

How long will we tolerate this back-and-forth, this two steps forward, one step backward, danse macabre? When will we step into a fully rational, fully scientific, fully empathetic, fully compassionate, fully virtuous system of human society? And leave the bad thinking, bad acting and myths behind?

. Why not NOW? Before conservatism poisons our culture and wrecks our planet entirely?

On Guard America! Wake up, all nations, and all people everywhere! SOUND THE ALARM!!!!

Shake off the chains of selfishness, ignorance, fear, greed, prejudice... and RAMPANT, IGNORANT CONSUMERISM!

Reject conservatism!

Oppose corporatism!

Stop being the dupes of people who want to divert you, distract you, inebriate you, bully you, rob you blind, and keep you in bondage!

Conservatism wants to take over the world.

We are The People! Let's send that ideology back to the hell that it came from!

Meanwhile, keep the faith. Victory is assured!

IMPORTANT NOTE: Dateline: America, March, 2015 We have learned there is a copy-cat "Rusticus" out there on the web who has stolen verbatim some of our original text on this page. That is plagiarism. That is theft. That is stealing. That is a sin. That is evil.

We now suspect that this other Rusticus stole not only our words but also the very idea of Rusticus Returns! Considering that the original Rusticus was just that, very original, this other Rusticus is actually quite the opposite in essential character.

But it gets worse: this other Rusticus' "Alarm" is a call to real arms. He/she is advocating violence against the government! NOW!

And so we seem to have a Battle of Rusticuses! One, us, we deem Rusticus (the Good)! We counsel no violence, we want to bring America and the World together in peace, love, harmony, sustainable prosperity and happiness, and the Universal Virtues. Our "Alarm" is that we see the Prime Problem in America as the takeover of government by wealth and power: the corporatization of America, and the attendant weakening of all those who lack such wealth and power, which includes almost everyone else (i.e. We the People). We see the rich and corporations perpetrating and accelerating a system that is both destroying the environment and enslaving us with mindless, endless materialistic desire. We see the government as the only real counterweight to the combined might of corporateers and other individuals who would seek to exploit, oppress and corrupt the "General Welfare" of the nation in favor of their own self-aggrandizement. And so our mission is not to attack or destroy or diminish the government, but to take this great and powerful instrument from the corporate pirates and bend it to our wills, our benefit, our values, not theirs!

The other Rusticus, the thief, Rusticus (the Evil), sees the government itself as the problem, a "nanny state" run amok, trampling the rights of patriots nationwide. This fake patriot would serve the pirates (which isn't surprising given his/her own criminality) by eviscerating the federal government, the one and only power capable of defending Universal Virtue (when it does) against rapacious non-virtue from every quarter. He/she is blind to the corrupting role of over-the-top materialism, rapacious consumption and insatiable desire that is inculcated by corporatism. Indeed, this Rusticus sees unfettered desire as part and parcel of individualistic "liberty," and any governmental attempt to control that potentially disastrous impulse is to be violently resisted! The solution according to the Evil Rusticus is to overthrow democracy NOW, and go straight to armed resistance. He/she is calling all "patriots" to load their guns!

Not that government doesn't need serious reform. Many problems are embedded into the system as it exists today. Why wouldn't they be, given that Congress and the White House and the Supreme Court are essentially owned by Wealth and Power?

But the solution is not to destroy but to create, not to succumb to ignorance and fear and prejudice but to nurture our higher intelligence and spiritual intution, not to give the virtue of freedom to desire but to desire virtue, not to resort to violence but to bend toward the "general welfare," not to start another civil war, but to spark civil concordance.

Rusticus the Evil believes that the time for division and destruction is now. Rusticus (the Good) believes that now is the time for a coming together of We the People, in opposition to our democracy being hijacked and our very souls being corrupted for the benefit of a tiny minority of Americans.

Which Rusticus is right? Whose side are you on?

Here's our communication to Rusticus (the Evil) when we discovered the theft of our creative works:

Dear Rusticus (the Evil), we see that you have stolen verbatim our original prose about the original Rusticus. Now we are certain that the original Rusticus was no plagiarizing thief, nor are we. But your Rusticus reveals himself/herself a miserable cur, bereft of even the most basic virtue. THOU SHALT NOT STEAL!

Thus our suspicions are confirmed: Your Rusticus is, indeed, evil.

Please compare the text on your page: (URL not to be promoted) to the text on our page: http://conservativemyths.com/rusticus.html

Your creative genius has not deigned to change hardly a word of the paragraphs nicked. More blatant creative theft would be difficult to find.

Our page clearly has a copyright statement attached. Your Rusticus has seen fit to ignore this sacrosanct compact of civil law and ethical behavior.

And since Rusticus (the Evil) has stolen our words, we must presume that he/she likely stole the very idea of Rusticus Returns from our pages. How very, very low, indeed. You must be very, very proud of yourself.

In the days of the original Rusticus, your punkass prophet of pilfering would be run out of town on a rail, probably with a coat of tar and feathers. Or, of course, if this criminal activity had been perped by a black guy, back in the day when all was well in America, he would simply have been summarily lynched.

So this is the great messenger who claims to arise from the Cradle of the Constitution to rally all good patriots to war with their own nation! As like attracts like, you might be able to enjoin other ignorant and ignoble faux patriots unstable enough to have their toxic emotions and oversized egos stirred. Who knows what damage you and your zombie army might wreak upon some unsuspecting and innocent parties. But no one of higher character would want to be associated with such low personage or priorities.

It is revealing that the stolen verbiage hardly resembles in theme or tone most of the rest of the sludge presented by Rusticus (the Evil) in his/her efforts at rabble-rousing. Our "Alarm" is all about the very Conservative Myths you are spewing, and the Corporate and Wealth power takeover of America NOT about the size of government or its (admittedly somtimes clumsy) attempts to regulate a free-for-all chaos of millions of ignorant, prejudiced, fearful, greedy and otherwise non-virtuous people demanding their "liberties" with little or no regard to those other virtues enshrined in both the Declaration and Constitution: Equality, Justice for All, Pursuit of Happiness, and the General Welfare of the people and the commons! Not to mention the greatest of all virtues: Love for One Another, and the Mother Earth.

So we advise the pillaging pilgrim of maliciousness that we expect to see our content removed forthwith from his/her website and any other venues where he/she may also be harboring the stolen content of someone much less lazy and uncreative.

And I'll bet Rusticus (the Evil) is all on about "Property Rights," too! As you cavalierly steal someone else's intellectual property!

Thankfully, there is a BIG government that does not look favorably upon people like you taking "liberties" with the rightful possessions of others. And to this power we may resort to ensure that your ilk is properly rebuked for your transgressions against civilization.

Heaven help anyone who would follow or even listen to such a dysfunctional prophet. Rusticus (the Evil), the world needs you not!

Sincerely and Emphatically,
Rusticus (the Good)