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When a Democrat, without capable Republican refutation, puts the choice to people that they can either start to live like the working class in Shanghai or Bangalore, or just decide to live and let live regarding gay marriage, but not both, don't have any doubt which may most people will go.
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This scenario is only possible if you take as a given that the government in question has the ability to provide it's citizens with these choices. It will always be the conservative position that the people are the only agent that can provide these services to themselves. Government has a very limited role in peoples lives if it is to be successful.

America is now a debtor nation. We are paying bills on credit. We have mortgaged the equity on our homes and real property with the assumption that prosperity will always bless America. We have deluded ourselves into thinking that America controls its own destiny and the destiny of the entire world. We are now a service orientated economy that imports what it needs from nations that produce. Consequently our government can no longer guarantee that it will be able to provide for our well being into the future. Entitlements will come due and government won't be able to pay. Oil is no longer in our control. Basic goods are imported and depend on exporting countries being willing to take our notes as payment for their goods.

America is like the drug addict who, when first using the drug, finds a euphoria and excitement never experienced before. As he continues to seek that euphoria he demands increasing amounts of the drug until finally he is past his ability to pay, and experiences the inevitable breakdown in which his euphoria is turned into a nightmare of constant craving of that which he can never have.

We are heading for that breakdown, after years of euphoria. The Iranian-muslim threat will be the catalyst. Oil will be the weapon, and depression and possible chaos will be the result.

The things that the government should be doing, defeating our enemy, defending our borders. It is failing to do. The things that it has no business doing, public education, health care, social security, welfare, food stamps, environmental protection, affirmative action, and on and on, it is doing to excess. This is the formula for disaster. There can be no compromise on our basic founding principles. We will suffer the consequences of the road we are going down, and soon. The difference between republicans and conservatives is that republicans must get elected. It is the duty of the people, conservatives included, to demand that elected officials act in our best interests. In the end we will get for better or worse, the government we deserve.

It has always been the position of American voters that government can solve their problems. The only politically-viable debate is "how." Conservatives have done moderately well by saying "government will, in the main, facilitate the market, and encourage traditional family structure." When problems change, the answers that liberals AND conservatives will change. Our challenge is to anticipate those problems, and think through what the right (politically viable) answers to this are. I agree that in a certain sense we're headed for a breakdown, but you don't seem to want to address the consequences: what are the solutions that we will have to offer? In the last serious delocation (the Great Depression) conservatives had no palatable solutions to offer, and this led to a 50-year abeyyance of conservative thought in political influence.