Thanks for a good and comprehensive post. Here are some thoughts which you provoked:
Coincidentally, I just posted this reply which follows in quotation marks to another thread. The last paragraph has been added to address your concerns about Kerry's conservatism because he appears to be condoning teen sex with the issuance of his executive order. Thereafter, I consider your other points.
"If this were a vaccination of schoolchildren against a communicable disease such as smallpox, I would have no problem whatsoever with the state, as opposed to the federal government, mandating inoculation.
In a communicable disease the law can require the inoculation because the state has an interest in protecting innocents from contracting a disease from those who refuse to be inoculated.
However, this is not a communicable disease but a preventative for cancer. As such it should be wholly voluntary. The problem with this Executive Order is that it was not wholly voluntary but required action on the part of the parents to opt out. This is an encroachment on individual liberty but not one that sends me to the barricades. The parents did, after all, have the option to opt out. So the objection is more procedural than substantive. The law should leave the option for parents to opt in.
There is some argument to the effect that the procedure to opt out was onerous and the executive order did not properly provide for notifying the parents of their rights. Again, these objections, if real, are procedural rather than substantive. In my judgment they do not demonstrate a disqualifying tendency in the statist to dominate the individual."
But all of this seems to me to miss the main point.
But does it? Is the issue one of mandating an intrusion into the body or somehow condoning teen sex? If it is an issue of intruding into the body, the degree to which it is mandatory and the degree to which parents can opt out become very relevant and the quality of the procedure provided becomes relevant. I conclude that the Executive Order was misguided and the procedure was probably not as forthright and transparent as possible. But these are venal procedural miscalculations not mortal sins.
With all of the furor over Obamacare and mandatory payments, why is it a good thing to order mandatory vaccines for something which is picked up through *voluntary* behaviour?
Because the "voluntary" behavior might well have been done by a minor and the law has a long tradition of presuming that minors are not capable, or at least not as capable as an adult, of the mens rea required either to commit a crime, to vote, or to drive a vehicle. The law presumes the children are not adults and with good reason.
There is a substantial difference between such an inoculation and providing children condoms. The one is far removed from the other in the sense that inoculation does not facilitate sex and is not immediate to the act. It does not prevent the contraction of STDs, as I understand it, merely the ensuing consequences, namely, cancer. There is a huge difference in perception.
Doesn’t this undermine the moral authority of the parents?
No, because the parents have the option to opt out. We may cavil about the regularity or quality of the procedure but the ultimate power of the parents to have their way was preserved. They remain sovereign they remain the ultimate authority.
This sounds more like a Romney-type stunt than the behaviour of a true conservative!
If there were no opt out provisions then the requirements would in fact be mandatory and it would be similar not just to Romney but to Obama in requiring the individual to buy health insurance with no opt out provision.
Trans-Texas Corridor
Clearly, the power of the state and not just a state but of the federal government as well to build roads is unquestioned. Since colonial times both kinds of governments have done so. And since colonial times private entities have built toll roads. Citizens ride on one every day to Dulles Airport. Unlike Obama Care, there is no obligation to drive on the road and pay the toll.
Eminent domain for a public purpose is entirely constitutional and entirely within our culture and part of the capitalist structure providing the property owner is fairly compensated and the use is for a public purpose. A public road clearly is a public purpose even though built by a private concern which charges tolls to pay the bonds which were created to fund construction.
I have no knowledge of whether this was touted as a green project and cannot comment. As to rail transportation, we have a history of the United States of government corporation with and authorization of private companies to be granted right of ways to build rail lines. In the 19th century our rail lines were financed to a great degree by foreign, British, investors. Whole sections of America were populated with grants of land given to private companies who build railroads and sent the profits (or losses) to British investors.
Highway and rail communications are absolutely fundamental to a growing economy and Texas is growing economically and in population at an explosive rate. I do not see anything inherently anti-conservative in building roads and railroads.
Perhaps my American prejudice against railroads as been diminished by my experience here in Europe where traveling by rail is a positive experience and one I prefer whenever distances permit over air travel.
As for the "double taxation" argument, it seems to me that is a matter for a budget calculation. If state gasoline taxes were insufficient to build such a highway, there was no double taxation.
Support of Al Gore; Dream Act and Immigration
Perry's got a lot 'splainin' to do to satisfy me on these issues.
Soft on Islam
I have posted long and hard on these threads that war against the terrorism conducted by militant Islam can only be won by Muslims. We simply do not have the resources to dominate more than 1 billion Muslims from the Atlantic to the Hindu Kush.
Therefore, we have to be very careful, as George Bush was, in how we handle our relations with "moderate" (if there be such an animal-but we have to assume there is.) Islam.
That said, we must be vigilant against the imposition of sharia at home, we must fight PC acceptance of Islam tooth and nail, we must not permit Islam to be morally equated with Christianity.
Polling Data
So far, Perry's surge is undeniable. He is consuming all the oxygen. I very much regret the selfish and ultimately self-defeating attitude of the Perry/Palin camps in waging internecine guerrilla war. I suspect most of it is unauthorized. It is certainly unproductive.
I think Perry is setting the proper example which I have commented on these threads which is to leave his Republican rivals behind as he goes after Obama and bitch slaps him black and blue.
