Posted on 11/03/2008 10:50:05 AM PST by WilliamReading
“Those who depend on books already written are totally unaware of potential consequences, because they’re not written down on paper yet!”
I thoroughly disagree. No one has perfect foresight. Anyway, you know what Hamlet said: conscience does make coward of us all. Prejudice is a sturdy guide to action, and if you don’t think so, you’re not a conservative.
yes he is -- if you compare him to kim jung Il, Fidel Castro, Hugo Chavez and Robert Mugabe.
We won’t be able to do any rebuilding if Stalin wins, he will see to that with his thugocracy. With mac, yes we can still rebuild.
The choice is clear in this election, Liberty or Stalinism. Take your pick, I choose liberty.
(1) Bush is demonstrably not a Wilsonian. The purpose of the President's intervention was related to US strategic interests, not Wilson's utopianism.
(2) Barack Obama categorically and radically rejects the two basic cornerstones of conservatism: moral rectitude and economic freedom. He is an open advocate of abortion and redistribution.
Professor Jeffrey Hart
“the current pestiferous bible-banging evangelicals, whom I regard as organized ignorance, a menace to public health, to science, to medicine, to serious Western religion, to intellect and indeed to sanity”
He (Hart) knocked the Republican record on the environment, suggested that a ban on abortion would never succeed, and lamented Bush’s neoconservative approach to Iraq. “Conservatives assume that the Republican Party is by and large conservative,” he concluded. “But the party has stood for many and various things in its history. The most recent change occurred in 1964, when its center of gravity shifted to the South and the Sunbelt….The consequences of that profound shift are evident.”
Hart relishes the sport of his latest engagement, as expressed in a more recent series of editorials, including one for the left-wing Washington Monthly that ran in October. He also appeared on National Public Radio denouncing Bush on stem-cell research, and he used a book-signing at the Dartmouth Bookstore, which aired on C-SPAN, to attack Bush on national TV.
“Like the Whig gentry who were the Founders, I loathe populism,” Hart explains. “Most especially in the form of populist religion, i.e., the current pestiferous bible-banging evangelicals, whom I regard as organized ignorance, a menace to public health, to science, to medicine, to serious Western religion, to intellect and indeed to sanity. Evangelicalism, driven by emotion, and not creedal, is thoroughly erratic and by its nature cannot be conservative. My conservatism is aristocratic in spirit, anti-populist and rooted in the Northeast. It is Burke brought up to date. A ‘social conservative’ in my view is not a moral authoritarian Evangelical who wants to push people around, but an American gentleman, conservative in a social sense. He has gone to a good school, maybe shops at J. Press, maybe plays tennis or golf, and drinks either Bombay or Beefeater martinis, or maybe Dewar’s on the rocks, or both.”
No kidding. Someone should ask this “Professor” to name one accomplishment of Obama’s... voting present doesn’t a conservative make, saying you will bankrupt the coal industry, does not a conservative make.... hanging with the weather underground does not a conservative make...
I have changed my mind on letting people use their social security accounts to play the stock market, as opposed to leaving it invested in government bonds.
The stock market is too easily manipulated and corporations to easily plundered by the Board of Directors to allow that to happen.
I see, the government knows best huh? The government is free of 'plundering' and 'manipulation'? If you are scared of the big, bad market, put your own money in treasuries, but don't take everyone else's freedom to choose how we invest our money.
My guess is that you as a conservative would like to get rid of Social Security and Medicare altogether?
Medicare is socialized medicine if there ever was any.
Absolutely. The government should keep its contractual obligation for those near retirement regarding Social Security, but the rest of us should be given a choice if we want to keep it or cash out (the option allows for a clean transition process). As for Medicare- ditto, a contract can be sold to private companies to oversee low cost insurance programs through the reduction in regulations and the prevention of buying medical care across State lines. This could be done in a nice, staged transition process so it doesn't shock the system- but yes, it should be eliminated.
I will be voting for McCain, which is certainly not a vote for liberty but is a vote against Obama, who must be stopped. If you think your vote is a vote for liberty you have not been paying attention to McCain's sponsored bills or his Senate votes for the last several years.
Well, I give you credit for consistency. But I have never heard Rush Limbaugh or Sean Hannity call for getting rid of MediCare.
I know Ronald Reagan was against it in the 1960s, but he never mentioned abolishing it during his Presidency.
A radio personality not mentioning something doesn’t mean it is not part of our overall value system (although I have heard Rush bash it quite often). Medicare is one of the tougher items to attack because of the level of dependence on it and the fact there really isn’t a private market alternative set up. When you have something like medicare so ingrained in our system, there are a lot of other items that must be fixed before it is dismantled completely- such as the tax system, insurance regulations, etc. The difference with Social Security is that there are many private market options available that would make a transition easy.
The closest metaphor I can find to dismantling medicare would be scientists looking for ways to prolong life. That may be the big picture of what they want to do, but in order to prolong life, they really have to focus on small pieces that build to that, such as cancer research or preventing heart disease- you conquer those, and you are a step closer to life prolonging..
I am aware of McCain’s bills and his politics and oppose much of what he does. Still, he doesn’t try to intimidate his opposition and silence them, nor does he support voter fraud, or the creation of a new Gestapo. Our enemies fear him and do NOT want him to be prez. Mac is a continuation of America, the good, the bad, and the ugly. Stalin means total destruction of America, its that simple.
I think one of the weaknesses of the McCain Campaign was that he always railed against socialized medicine, but never talked about abolishing Medicare, except to root out “waste and fraud”. Also, if socialized medicine is so bad, why don’t the Canadians, French, English, Germans, etc., vote it out? They do have democracies in those countries, of course.
If only men were voting tomorrow, McCain would win the election handily. Alas, women are voting in droves tomorrow and they do indeed like the idea of Medicare being spread to all Americans.
But Hannity and Limbaugh will not call for the abolition of Medicare . . it is just way too popular to oppose.
Let's go back to Reagan- he knew that some things like this would be too big for the average person to chew on, so he started with just indoctrinating the Conservative philosophy- if one has a philosophy of not being dependent, then that is one step towards the big picture of ending Medicare and all other Socialized programs...
Just saying ‘end Medicare’ only preaches to the choir, for the average person, you have to start with why they don't want to be dependent and slowly remove barriers to being independent.
From a pure, campaign marketing perspective, sometimes one has to face the reality that making big proclamations when 75%+ of populace doesn't understand the fundamental “why” behind it is a campaign killer- it means you don't get elected and never have a chance to enact even the starting point toward your big goal.
This is why Reagan was a success- he started with changing minds and hearts.
This is why other politicians (no names here as I'm just dealing with philosophy) who claim to be ‘pure Conservatives’ have been abject failures at actually making change. They preach the big picture, but don't understand a roadmap of changes that must happen to reach that big picture. They want to jump from A to Z and skip everything in between. It is philosophical suicide.
Our public school system, DMV, housing projects, food stamp programs, etc, all suck, yet people don't vote those things out- it is because it is part of the indoctrinated reality they live. For many, these things are just as normal as breathing. Imagine a person who eats out fast food every day and is morbidly obese and always ill. I'm sure you know people like this, I do. They don't think that eating McDonald's is bad and hurting their health, they just do it. Even if they, at some level, know they shouldn't, it has become a behavior pattern. For said person, it often takes a jolt to their behavior patter, such as a heart attack, getting diabetes, or a friend passing to make them step out of their own world view and look externally.
People in the UK for example, all have probably heard stories about people dying waiting for medical help, but until it happens to someone close, it is not part of their little world, thus, they keep with the status quo.
Basically what the author, like all the other Pubbie defectors, is saying is that since the Republican candidates are not conservative enough for him, he’s going to vote for a socialist. Now that’s great logic. (smirk)
..almost as dumb as the folks writing in Chuck Baldwin or someone else.. I saw one at lunch, hippie looking guy with Baldwin stickers all over his van and painted on it, McCain hates America, Stop the NWO, and some other things I couldn’t make out. I wish I had snapped a picture.
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