Conservative Punk is Just Plain Stupid

Since I am unable to quell my growing disdain for all things right wing, I have decided to unload today's frustration on the ridiculously senseless organization-Conservative Punk.

First of all, can there be a greater contradiction of terms? Nonetheless, Conservative Punk was apparently conceived as a response to Fat Mike from Nofx's Punk Voter organization, and to counteract what they call the "oversimplification" of complex topics by "heavy handed" political punk rock. I can't help but wonder who they are referring to? Could they be talking about the anything but simplistic social commentary and impact of The Clash, Sex Pistols,Fifteen, Billy Bragg, Dead Kennedy's, Anti-Flag and even Green Day, who despite their pop credentials and somewhat unserious history, have become a very serious, dare I say Clash-like band; conversely, I'd like to know what contribution to the political dialogue that the so-called "conservative punk" bands have made?

But I digress-During my visits to the Conservative Punk website since its inception, I have always gotten a good laugh. One of the goals listed in their mission statement reads; "To encourage the young voters to draw their own conclusions rather than indoctrinate them to a certain way of thinking." Sounds like a noble cause right? You might be thinking - How does Conservative Punk accomplish encouraging "young voters" to be independent thinkers? How else-by filling their website with establishment, Republican talking points and ideas that would make punk rock icon Sean Hannity proud, such as French bashing, gay bashing, liberal bashing, Kerry bashing, Reagan loving, UN bashing, fear-mongering about Iranian nukes, insistence that there are WMD in Iraq, corporate pandering, insistence that Iraq is going well and general defense of silver spoon, country club, private school bred chicken-hawk, draft dodger George Dubya Bush-how punk rock is that!!

Pathetically, the most well known figures associated with the group are little known right-wing radio host Andrew Wilkow, and Michael Graves, former Marine and singer for the reincarnated Misfits, and more recently a band called Gotham Road. Some may remember the Daily Show's satirical feature of Graves a couple of years ago. Interestingly, according to Graves' Wikipedia profile, he had not even heard a Misfits song before buying the Collection I album in order to prepare for his audition to be the bands singer. He had never heard a Misfits song? That is enough to end this article right now having proven the very un-punk credentials of this organization. But, I think I'll continue on.

During my most recent perusal through the Conservative Punk site, one banner in particular caught my eye reading "Boycott Chinese Goods". I really wasn't sure what to expect when I clicked on it, but when I did I was greeted with some of the most backward advice I may have ever encountered.

According to the website, the reasons for boycotting "Chinese goods" given by Conservative Punk are:

- China's labor practices encourage outsourcing and drive down American wages. Aren't you tired of manufacturing jobs leaving the US?

- China has an atrocious human rights track record, including its illegal occupation of Tibet. This occupation has been marked by religious oppression of Tibet's proud Buddhist population, political imprisonment, torture and murder.

- China is a threat to regional stability, and threatens to crush peaceful Taiwan, if Taiwan ever sought independence.

- Why contribute to the rapid military buildup of a violent and abusive Communist regime?

These are all ostensibly true and good reasons to advocate not buying products produced in China. However, the porblem is that before listing the above reasons not to buy Chinese goods, Conservative Punk states; "some websites will encourage you to boycott companies based on the perceived political bend of their CEO (IE Buyblue.org), we at Conservativepunk feel that punishing workers because the suits might have made donations to political causes we might not like is not an intelligent use of the power of our dollar. Instead, we believe that our consumer power can be put to the best use through the boycott of Chinese goods."

So, according the Conservative Punk, we are not supposed to hold US corporations responsible for the outsourcing to China because we shouldn't "punish workers" due to the political bend of the CEO's? I'd like to know just who the hell Conservative Punk thinks is responsible for products being produced in China, if not the American corporations and their conservative political enablers?

Manufacturing jobs of all sorts are sent to China by the very CEO's Conservative Punk believes we should let off the hook. American companies set up shop in China and elsewhere in order to take advantage of the lack of labor and humanitarian law. These American companies are then able to ship these goods back, paying very little, or nothing, in the way of tariffs because of "free trade" deals championed by conservatives(some of which claim to be Democrats); then they sell these goods at retail shops all over the US at cheap prices, in turn generating enormous profits. Besides eliminating jobs American's could be doing to produce these goods, these American Companies then fight hard to beat down the few workers left in America who wish to organize their labor force, again with the aid of conservative politicians.

In other words, the American companies, and the conservative politicians in government are the ones responsible for Chinese goods that destroy the American work force and the American middle-class, and their political affiliations are completly relevant. Is Conservative Punk simply too stupid to realize that the American corporations and CEO's they oppose holding to account, are the very people most responsible for hurting the workers they claim to care so much about?

Conservative Punk telling people to boycott Chinese goods, while at the same time trying to excuse American corporations is almost as contradictory as the organizations name.