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Readers' forum: We need a real conservative
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Americans need to be free again.
And it is already happening.
Thank God!
Could you really call George H. W. Bush a conserviative. Like most of them he spoke out of both sides of his mouth (No new taxes!). And then, of course, there was the compassionate conservative George W. Bush. Never have we (the American taxpayers) spent so wrecklessly or surrendered so many of our civil rights as we have under the current adminstration. I say, "Thank goodness!" there are no "conservatives" running for office.
You libs totally distrust people and want to control every thing they do, for the common good.
You are just a bunch of bullies and scared children.
It sure would be horrible if everyone helped one another out, wouldn't it?
Personally, I don't want lots of "liberal legislation", guaranteeing "everything for everyone". But I would like to see basic benefits for every American. As long as there is any way in the world we can afford it, that just seems like the "right" thing to do.
Things like police/fire protection, education, emergency health care, food if you're starving, and shelter from harsh weather, all of these seem like items an advanced and civilized society should be able to offer and provide.
I really don't think we should be giving HUGE tax breaks and subsidies to insurance companies, drug companies, and hospital CEO's as long as the basic needs of average Americans are being ignored.
Government seems to have it backwards on who needs help first.
The first is that most of us are not conversant with what the U.S. Constitution actually says. A study I ran across a few years ago found that only 2% of the population could state the rights in the Bill of Rights.
The second is that most of us are not aware of what is meant by conservative or liberal. Since these terms are now associated as right wing conservative and left wing liberal perhaps we ought to define what the political left and right are as understood by the founding fathers.
Political left and right refer the the spectrum of government with anarchy on the extreme right and totalitarianism on the extreme left. The founders strove to strike a balance between the two and did a pretty good job, but over the years collectively we have decided government should be what we want it to be and the constitution is just given lip service.
We're beginning to feel the real weight of past liberal policies and our solution seems to be wanting more liberal policies. Just doesn't make sense to me.
Roll over and play dead
Go progressively nuts
Throw it right back at the nasty NeoCons with an equal and opposite force.
Granted, our government is known for bungling a LOT of things, but there are some basic areas that simply seem to cry out for government intervention.
When the free enterprise system utterly fails to meet the needs of society, it's time for the government of "we the people" to take charge.
My nearest neighbors have a small business. They contribute to society. They don't want a handout. But their health insurance is over $13,000 a year. That's the best rate that would cover their family of four.
THE SYSTEM IS BROKEN!!!
And if no one else seems able to fix it, perhaps it's time for the government to step up to the plate. What other option do we have?
I like Revolution. >:-)
Otherwise, there are candidates running for president outside the two incumbent parties. Do your homework and see if they would put the federal government back into its constitutional box.
George Phillies, Wayne Allyn Root, and Steve Kubby are presidential candidates advocating a federal government much smaller and less taxing on the American people than it is now.
What we can do with the flag
What we can do with our reproductive rights
Insist on praying in our schools
Who we can sleep with
What we should smoke or drink
How we should view stem-cell research
And the list goes on and on.
Then these same people whine and scream that this same government should be smaller and less intrusive.
These are some seriously disturbed individuals.
I'm happy to host a fund-raiser to pay for my kidney transplant, just let someone sew on a severed finger for less than $10,000.
Can't we help each other out?
Marriage: Conservatives want government imposed regulation to limit marriage to one man one woman. Liberals want loosen the defination of the term to allow same sex marriage.
Patriotism: Conservatives want forced patriotism for the flag and Military. Liberals want to allow a person to use his own mind.
Religion: Conservatives want to put religion and religious symbols into every part of our lives. Liberal would allow each person to define their own beliefs.
Who is for freedom and who is for government force?
Oh yeah. Its those Republican congresses that think we can create wealth through massive debt.
Poverty levels have increase every year under Bush. Giving huge tax breaks to the super wealthy with the hopes that the wealthy will then spend their plunder and in turn helping the working class clearly does not work.
I'm one former conservative who hopes we never have to deal with another conservative president.
20 of the past 28 years have been run by a repug, they've created the vast majority of the problems in the U.S.
I wouldn't say that it's "conservatives" so much as a certain type of conservative - neconservatives and Wall Street Journal conservatives (not sure there's a difference) doing all the damage.
Main Street conservatism can work and has worked - Eisenhower, and Reagan to some extent. But there aren't too many people running as one of those anymore.
As a conservative I, for one, won't be too disappointed if Obama or Clinton wins this fall. They'll raise taxes on the rich and then the folks at the Wall Street Journal can decide if that's better than controlling the borders.
I can't remember when the Rush O'Hannitys of these blogs were so quiet.
Way to go my fellow REAL Americans!
Keep up the good work!
Everytime the far-right shoots its mouth off judging, moralizing, and trying to demean other points of view - THROW IT RIGHT BACK AT THEM!
Again, and again, and again.
We SHALL overcome!
All of this garbage of moving the country towards "socialism" is nothing other than fear propaganda. Obama and Clinton (though I don NOT want her elected) have said nothing to make me believe that they will do away with our Republic. We're still going to have the Constitution, due process, and elections. We just might have easier access to health care, as well.
John Birch Society Conservatives
Reagan Conservatives
And now we have Rush O'Hannity Conservatives.
Each group in their own way, moralizing, judging, and dictating what we should do with our bodies, relationships, prayer, science, flags, stem-cells, mode of entertainment, immigrants, ... the list goes on and on.
And when confronted, they maintain they want smaller government and have yet clearly defined what it is they are trying to conserve.
"Things like police/fire protection, education, emergency health care, food if you're starving, and shelter from harsh weather, all of these seem like items an advanced and civilized society should be able to offer and provide."
I agree that civilized society should be able to offer and provide these things, but I think it is wrong to think that the GOVERNMENT needs to provide all of them.
It seems to me that those who benefit the most from so-called "socialist" programs, regulations, etc complain the most about them even though they keep capitalism from self-destructing. But he believes our best hope is to have conservatives lead us back to the glory days of families working 16 hour days, being paid quarter-time where you are forced to work 59 minutes and don't get paid for an hour. The glory days where children worked in factories to provide for their families and were seriously maimed or died. I'm so looking forward to a return to the glory days of conservatism and my family is so excited. We are waiting for a conservative like Bender to bring back tyranny.
A man who uses our roads to go to work every day shouldn't pay the same as a man who benefits from our highways and roads which allow his trucks carrying goods worth $35,000 profit to get from point A to point B. Who should pay more to maintain our roads? Should the man who benefits the least pay the same as the man who benefits the most? The same for police service. Who benefits the most? The man who has something to protect or the man who has only himself and his family to protect?
We often fail to understand this so we see taxing the wealthy at a greater rate as unfair even though its fair to do so and unfair to tax someone the same who doesn't benefit from the same services. The same is true of the military. This may sound unpatriotic but the poor man doesn't care who rules America and being able to vote means little to them.
Do we need to depend on Churches to recruit doctors to fix our child's broken leg? Or do we need to rely on the community to sponsor a fund raiser whenever someone needs a kidney transplant?
Who else besides the government has the incentive to correct a broken system? At least with the government running things, we can "vote the bums out" when they screw things up. With the current system we have no recourse.
Don't you think that "We the people" should be able to get essential services in an American democracy!
The argument is that the wealthy need government to keep angry mobs from looting their mansions. However, the wealthy have never depended much on police protection (regular police forces didn't even exist before the 19th century). The rich have always been able to pay for private security. It is, in fact, the poor who benefit disproportionately from (free) police coverage -- largely because they are unfortunate enough to live around other poor people, many of which have a nasty habit of victimizing their neighbors.
Example: The Newport Beach, California police department has pretty much nothing to do except pull over drunk drivers (and take apprehended shoplifters off the hands of the private mall security at Fashion Island). The Santa Ana police department a few miles away has its hands considerably more full.
That said, I have no problem with the rich being asked to pay more -- within reason. It's when it's proposed to place virtually the *entire* burden on those defined (broadly) as "wealthy" that questions of fairness can fairly be asked.
Yet, if you want an example of how the government benefits the wealthy more than the poor (nothing to do with mobs or mansions) I will give it to you. It was in Philadephia in 1789 that an armed mob marched on the Constitutional Convention where the wealthy were meeting to draft a new Constitution. Of if you wish I will quote Madison, one of the founding fathers, who said that the "role of government is to protect the opulent from the majority." Maybe the word opulent is too big for you?
In fact, a majority of historians accept that the constitutional convention was a reaction to Shays' Rebellion (the debtors). So I call bullweather to your argument.
Maybe your lack of knowledge of history doesn't allow you to know about how the National Guard were used to kill strikers or how they were used by the wealthy to control unrest by the poor.
Bush and Reagan introduced the religious rightwingers into government and we've gone downhill since.
Fortunately, the religous wackos are fighting to see which part of the party will control the GOP. Dissention in the ranks will split the PUBLICANS and we will then have realism instead of religion in our country again.
Please demonstrate where anyone has proposed that we place the "entire burden" on "those defined" as wealthy. I know I haven't proposed this and I have yet to see anyone who suggests that the wealthy or those who are able to pay their fair share should be forced to pay more than their fair share. This argument is used frequently in response to the idea that the wealthy who benefit more than those who benefit less.
It's called a "progressive tax" instead of many of the regressive taxes supported by conservatives. Right now our state property and sales tax are regressive taxes and the income tax has taken on a flat tax nature which means that those Utahns who benefit the least are paying more than their fair share while those who benefit the most are paying less than their fair share.
Please tell me why Warren Buffett should pay less of his income than his secretary?
AMERICA'S GREATEST WAR HERO, G.W. BUSH, fits 13 of the 14 characteristics of the definition of the word; "FASCISM"
I do not think rich people are always or mostly leeches, but I do think it should be based on how much is extracted from.
After all, if you really want to get technical, one role of government is to revoke the most basic free market principle of all - anyhing you can get your hands on you can steal is yours. If not so, how would billionaire Ted Turner be able to hold on to a million or so acres of ranchland without his own private army?
A true, natural free market does not exist, nor has it existed for a long time, nor would we want it to exist.
Conservative economic policy is a failure. The Laffer Curve is false. Cut taxes on the wealthy and it does not trickle down, the rich just keep it and ask for more. It has been tried twice (Reagan and Bush II) and it did not produce an increase in taxes that balanced the budget.
On the contrary, the tax cuts only worked to increase the deficits, both under Reagan and Bush.
Conservative's, you know the ones who like smaller government have presided over increases in the number of government employees while Clinton cut the size.
Conservatives also have increasingly argued for and stepped up government control of private life (saying the Supreme Court should not have struck down sodomy laws).
They argue for State's rights, but recently Conservative Judges Roberts, Alito, Thomas, Scalia all voted to strip states of the ability to keep citizens safe against product defects.
Conservative Policies are a failure, not the people, but the policies.
Thomas, your statement seems to be the most rational, and having lived in Newport Beach, Ca. I can attest that it's pretty quiet, and mainly because all those Santa Ana people can't afford to live there and stick out like a sore thumb if they come into Newport and start looking around for trouble.
The opinion piece stated that there is not a conservative choice in this election and I concur. No matter, regardless of the election of liberals or any other political movement or governments, I and other conservatives will position ourselves to make it through and I expect will still be conservatives and quite happily so.
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