Posted on 02/23/2010 4:10:06 AM PST by look.a.liberal
I came here to understand the conservative point of view. I've lurked for a while now. I decided it'd be appropriate for me to say a few words.
I think that you are patriotic Americans. I am a patriotic American too. It is our right and duty as Americans to vehemently disagree with eachother about how this nation should be governed. It is also our right to call into question the patriotism of those with whom we disagree, but it is our duty not to. It was patriotic to protest the government four years ago, and it is patriotic now. I thank you for this patriotism.
Here are some of the things that I believe:
I support the constitution. I support second amendment rights as well as first amendment rights. I think that it is necessary and good that a court interpret these amendments, but I am as appalled by the notion of a free speech zone as I was by DC's handgun ban. I'm angry about the recent encroachment against the fourth amendment, and the steady erosion of the tenth. It affects blue states as much as red ones. I don't care for drugs, but you tell me how the interstate commerce clause empowers the federal government to keep my neighbor from growing and then smoking a plant without leaving his back yard.
There is little doubt that the federal government exercises more power than it is allowed by the constitution. On the other hand, I think that the infrastructure of a modern country demands more federal powers than are described in the constitution. Instead of amending the constitution, we allowed more and more powers to be read into it. Now it's a status quo that we can't easily abandon.
I support abortion rights, but I think that the opposite position is also very reasonable. If abortion is murder, then there is no question that it should be banned at the federal level. If abortion is simply a medical procedure, then it is tyranny for the government to forbid it. Either way, it would seem that the question should be decided on the federal level. Yet, if we can't reach a consensus about something as basic as whether abortion is murder or an operation, how can we choose to forbid or protect it? I think abortion is a federal-level question that for the moment must unfortunately be decided at the state level.
I am a liberal. I don't think Obama is more tyrannical or arrogant than past presidents. I think a government health-care option would be good for Americans. I don't care that Bush wasn't eloquent, and I also don't think that intellect in the narrow sense is the most important quality for a president. On the other hand I think that the Iraq war was a catastrophic mistake that America won't live down in my lifetime. It weakened America financially, diplomatically and militarily. So, I am very much a liberal. Still, I think we have some common ground.
I'd like to say something a bit more personal. I'm an academic. We spend a lot of our lives thinking about very abstract, technical things. This makes academics prone to elaboration and understatement in our area of expertise, and simultaneously to oversimplification and overconfidence outside of it. We can be short on common sense, but we can have counterinuitive insight in technical matters. It takes academics, entrepreneurs, and factory workers to make a plane fly, and it takes all of us to make the right decisions for America. I think that anti-intellectualism marginalizes an important part of American society, and I think it's destructive. To those who say that small businessmen have nothing of value to say about the US economy, I say you're wrong, and to those who say that academic economists have nothing to say about the US economy, I also say you're wrong.
Please leave comments if you'd like. I'll try to respond tomorrow.
We, Americans, conservative and liberal, need to figure out our own compromises, because our media and our politicians sure as taxes won't do it for us. Like it or not, we're in it together.
No kidding. I was just checking weather, email and the web on the iPhone. And I just woke up.
Need coffee.
I am an academic also. Specifically, I am an academic economist. And I am conservative. I believe in the free market and believe the role of the government should be limited. In particular, I believe that minimum wage laws cause unemployment (especially among the particular class of people the laws are intended to help). I believe that taxation hampers business, regulation and taxation leads to inefficiency and free trade is desirable.
The normative questions, specifically about equity issues, are often used to pit classes against each other, even though by definition there does not exist answers.
I am tired to hear people in academics talk about economic issues when they are trained in other areas. Specifically, professors in education, sociology, and many other areas believe that exposure to Marx is equivalent to sound economic theory. I believe the focus on diversity in the university ignores diversity of thought, with an unhealth (nearly unanimous) tilt towards liberalism.
I am tired with the academic class and the media portraying Palin as ignorant, the tea partiers as less intelligent, even though many top economists share their view. There is a reason that economics tends to have the highest percentage of conservatives in academics.
IBTZ
I read very carefully. You are not much of a liberal. As academics go, you are practically a right-wingnut. You agree with us far too much. When ObamaCare blows up in our faces, you’ll be right at home here.
Correct you on one thing:
“If abortion is murder, then there is no question that it should be banned at the federal level.”
That would only be true if they were performed at post offices, military installations, national parks and other federal properties. Otherwise, the crime of murder is a state issue.
Keep thinking. I’d say that you’re ‘getting there.’
After years of seeing only the liberal side of arguements I was electrified when I first heard William F Buckley and recognized my political center of gravity. But those shows were close to actual debates with a lot of give and take and some points of mutual agreement. But ever since 'Crossfire', political debate as resembled WWI trench warfare where trying to cross 'no-mans-land' will get you shot.
Political debate has become too defensive where even friends and family find it hard to agree to disagree.
Sorry, I will never be able to support 0bama and the vast majority of liberals because they are mentally ill and unstable. Every liberal I know is on some type of doctor prescribed medication just so their brains can function semi-normally each day.
If only that were entirely true :-(
One more thing, the modern liberal tries to drive wedges between differences, in religion, sex, race, and whatever else they can find because this is how they destroy this great country from within. Perhaps you need to find a new word to define yourself rather than liberal. Like gay liberal has taken on a new conontation than its original meaning. So unless you want to be thrown in with all of those who really do wish to destroy this country use your acedamia to invent that new word that better defines you.
I don't think you know what you believe.
If abortion is just an "operation", it's the only operation in which success is defined by the death of a human being.
And you call that "choice"? The right to choose to kill another person on the basis of personal convenience? If it is murder to kill a child 5 minutes after birth, why isn't it murder to kill that same child 5 minutes before birth?
You liberals are hypocrites, first and foremost.
You do have a right to believe this. You also have a right to be an idiot; but just having a right is different from making it right. You are wrong.
Actually, you lost me at "I am a Liberal." Liberal is a mental disorder. You are sick, but admitting your illness is a step in the right direction. I don't care to hear your liberal bullsh*t. We get enough of that from your kommie "Dear Reader," the ass-clown stinking up our White House, and our TV sets every narcissistically manic damn day.
We come here to get away from your ignorant puke. Please go to Hell, and leave America where you found her. You are no more an American patriot than was Stalin. You want socialism and daily gummint ass-reamings, move to France or Haiti. I hear it's real nice this time of year.
;-/
I am a conservative:
1) Pro-life, (at conception)
2) Pro-second amendment, (I carry a Ruger .357)
3) Pro-traditional family, (one man, one woman).
4) Pro-choice in schooling (we home-school our daughter, but I volunteer in Public Schools to help kids stuck in failing schools by a currupt Teachers Union)
5) Support hunting (but rescue abandoned animals)
6) Bible-carrying, Born-again Christian (but still love to listen to Hendrix)
I'm a typical conservative, but I'm not a typical conservative - don't really think any of us can be put "in a box".
I think you'll find the exchanges here interesting (and infuriating, and humorous, and curious, and....)
Academia is a major problem in America... and one day we will purge the communists and islamist loving anarchists from our education system.
You are a libertarian... that is one notch up from a drooler like schmucky schumer or henry waxman... try to seek help and it would not hurt to allow GOD into your life... your ideologies are not the center of the Universe... and neither are you.
You guys certainly ascribe deity like powers to you bullsh!t profession. Personally... I'd like to put you all against the wall... but then I believe in the Constitution... and I actually understand the men that wrote it. They would have found your kind a little to "red" for their liking. Have any synapses fired in that septic pool of a brain of yours yet?
LLS
As an academic you must also be aware that presentation and gloss is very often not indicative of substance. I have taken great issue with the characterization of Bush as an ‘anti-intellectual idiot’, and have never bought into the characterization of Obama as ‘brilliant’ and intellectual. The liberal establishment (e.g. certain media outlets, academia, etc.) have, however, perpetuated this false dichotomy. That, to me, is very offensive, and actually outright anti-intellectual. It is very difficult to have a meaningful dialogue when one side has already decided it is intellectually superior.
For the record, IMHO the act of characterizing oneself as ‘intellectual’ is generally a marker of not being so in reality. That was a general comment not directed at you in any way.
Again, thanks for starting this dialogue.
An academic what?
What a curious way to describe one's self.
Danged straight! I’m with you FRiend!
LLS
You are not a liberal!
Very good read. I am a firm believer in a strong 2 party political system; however, we have a very long way yo go in this country. Hopefully the Tea Party and the American people at the ‘grass root’ level will bring about the change we need
He might be an OPEN BORDERS SYMPATHIZER!
ALL ILLEGALS ALL THE TIME!
Welcome to FR. I do hope you keep lurking even if your account gets banned. Reagan was a democrat. So were my parents. Education is key. :)
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