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Randall50
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Posted - 10/31/2009 : 1:56:54 PM
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I am a registered Republican because I believe that's the best place for conservative ideas to live. Today, it's difficult for true conservatism to live anywhere, which makes me re-think my party affiliation. Liberalism, although attractive with its caring heart, is tearing away at individualism and personal freedom. Conservatives (some Republicans) are often portrayed as cold and indifferent. What's more loving than to offer someone personal freedom? Liberals (some Democrats) are portrayed as warm and tolerant. Yet they want to control just about every aspect of the human condition. Leave me to live in my own, naked skin!
To gain confidence I always heard: "Imagine the person sitting in his underwear." Funny, I had nothing on at all.
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Country: USA
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Moontan
Forum Member
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Posted - 10/31/2009 : 7:27:41 PM
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Warmskin, That would pretty much sum it up. I can go on and on about about how and why I think the way I do, but that's just me. I could be wrong. Nor am I trying shout from a soapbox.
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Country: USA
| Posts: 37 |
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balataf
Forum Member
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Posted - 10/31/2009 : 11:43:22 PM
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Naken, a full response to your post would take a book.
But I will address one particular point, and that is the ongoing drug wars within Colombia and Mexico. If you check you will find that both nations have suffered tremendous losses and casualties in their fights to avoid having the Narco-terrorists take over their societies. Not only have many of been killed, but in both, hundreds of elected officials have been asassinated. That makes it difficult, at best. At this point, both are open, functioning democracies that deserve our help.
In the Afghanistan-Pakistan area, there are just over 200 million people, This is not negligible, and if such should fall to the Taliban, we would have a great deal of trouble for decades. We can get off cheap if America doen't wimp out. I am quite familiar with the costs, but I will also consider the benefits.
By the way, the signature of the Taliban includes their policy, in both nations, of throwing battery acid into the faces and eyes of little girls who dare to go to school against their wishes. That alone should be worth fighting against, altho some seem not to care, and want to abandon them to the Talibn,
By the way, I spent a year with the 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment in Viet Nam.
You are right as to the consumer end of the drug equation, but that, of which alcoholism is one form, does not appear to be a problem that is solvable above the individual level. Even then, it is extremely hard work. (I hsave a personal theory that diabetes and alcoholism nd to be linked genetically, as they appear to run in the same families, including both problems within my Mother's close relatives.)
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Edited by - balataf on 10/31/2009 11:54:39 PM |
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Country: USA
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Beachluvr
New Member
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 Posted - 10/31/2009 : 11:48:39 PM
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Registered Democrat, social liberal, fiscal conservative. I'd probably register Republican if the party behaved itself. I want government out of my wallet, but don't understand why the "out of your wallet" party is also the "into your bedroom" party - all for financial freedom, but against personal choices? I'd rather deal with government regulating business and providing social safety nets, and staying out of my personal decisions. Is it really freedom if the government can regulate your private behaviors?
I'd think all naturists would vote for the party that advocated personal freedom, leaving us alone to pursue our practices when those practices do not harm the public. And when you figure out what the name of that party is, please let us know.
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Country: USA
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sailawaybob
Forum Member
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Posted - 11/05/2009 : 01:07:55 AM
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libertarian is certainly the party of less government i agree we certainly need to downscale our government by at least half no i'm dreaming heck i would consider a third of those idiots gone, but a third party candidate doesn't have a chance and thats sad because we really need help in this country as our government is way to left and busting at the seams. i really don't know if it can be saved before we become socialist.
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Country: USA
| Posts: 673 |
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Taxman
Forum Member
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Posted - 11/05/2009 : 2:42:10 PM
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My question would be that if we had the older version of the GOP and its thriftiness in government, -- how would we pay for the social programs if the government had only enough to barely take care of itself? I can't seem to come up with that answer, but maybe I'm missing something here. Give me a hand with this one; thanks!"
I believe providing all of our social programs is the problem.
I am tired of paying for these programs when those who benefit by them basically do nothing for it.
We need to make getting social benefits a lot harder and worth a lot less than working. We need to encourage everyone to find some kind of work.
Work is there. It may not be what one wants but it is there.
We could start with simple things like food stamps, well fair or Mediciad. To get them you have to agree to not purchase smokes or liquior with these funds or any other funds you may come into.
If you get some thing like well fair, our elected officials need to tell the unions to take a back seat and put these people to work for us.
After all, the government is there to provide a service not a job. If you get a job by providing government service consider yourself luckey just not employeed for life.
It's not that I back all of the social programs as much as I'm thinking in the context of if I want to see a certain movie or read a certain book I should be able to do so without government interference. (I.E book bans and censorship) Also in some areas of sexuality. Things along those lines.
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Country: USA
| Posts: 38 |
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balataf
Forum Member
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Posted - 11/06/2009 : 01:22:09 AM
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Taxman, ideally, I agree with you. The best, classic, example is that both Hong Kong and Calcutta were inundated with refugees in 1948-49. So were the Palestinian areas and other places at the same time. Hong Kong people received very little in welfare, and it became known for its wealth rising from extreme poverty. India hastily organized and maintained massive "relief" for the Calcutta refugees, who have remained the worst poverty hell-hole on the planet. Again, massive international welfare kept the Palestinians in poverty.
Having said that, part of the problem is that manufacturing has become less labor intensive. While American manufacturing grew 270 percent from 1980 to 2007, it gave the ILLUSION OF DECLINE by shedding two thirds of the jobs, putting in computers, robots and sophisticated machinery. (This is the same procesws by which farming went from 90% of all labor, down to 1 percent, while increasing production many times over.
The jobs that are growing mostly require higher education, and another decade or two. But the outlook is excellent, altho rather rocky in getting there.
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Edited by - balataf on 11/06/2009 01:26:05 AM |
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Country: USA
| Posts: 482 |
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Warmskin
Forum Member
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Posted - 11/06/2009 : 7:37:40 PM
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One thing that fascinates me is that the Pilgrims had no government programs, and yet there was no shortage of work needed to be done. To me, that is quite natural. Now suppose there was a government already there with handouts for everyone. That would decrease the work that the Pilgrims had to do. Why work if there are free good and services? However, that was not the case. All the Pilgrims had work to do.
Oddly enough, William Bradford, the Pilgrim leader, tried socialism at Plymouth Rock. There was a common storage place for food and other goods. The "government" Bradford had formed required all grown food to be placed in this central storage.
No one was individually responsible for the total sum of all available food. There was, though, plenty of demand for the stored food. As a result, each individual was, generally speaking, taking more food out of storage than was putting in the storage house. The supply of food dwindled as time went on.
Then, Bradford had a brilliant idea. Each family was to store their own food in their own way. The common storage came to an end. Result -- the sum of all the individual efforts to grow food went up dramatically. People were forced back to reality and they worked much harder to keep up their own supply of necessities.
This makes a great laboratory of politics. Which is more productive, socialism or free enterprise? The Pilgrim experience showed that free enterprise beats socialism every time.
Now apply this principle to health care. Common health care, versus individuals and their private doctors.
Why is it that the American people cannot learn from past experiments that yield classical results? Perhaps it is because they are seduced into taking government handouts, and not sticking to individual accomplishments. They have engaged in taking the most they can from government, and then want to pay the least they can get away with in paying for the government goodies. This takes us right back to the inescapable lessons the Pilgrims learned, writ small.
From all this and more, I have learned to lean Libertarian, and for practical reasons have come to believe that the less the government the better. I cannot believe that all the government employees know better about my life, than do I. It's absurd to think they do, yet enough Americans believe this foolishness. It is costing us dearly, and few people have the courage to bring us back to true American principles.
The Pilgrims already taught us how to be productive and better off. We need to learn the same thing all over again.
"All men having power ought to be distrusted to a certain degree."
James Madison
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Country: USA
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balataf
Forum Member
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Posted - 11/06/2009 : 9:21:30 PM
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Wow! I had not known this about the Pilgrims.
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Country: USA
| Posts: 482 |
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Warmskin
Forum Member
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Posted - 11/07/2009 : 01:15:12 AM
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quote:
Originally posted by balataf
Wow! I had not known this about the Pilgrims.
Hi Balataf,
I had not known that for a long time, too. It was quite instructive to learn about this. It seems to make sense, in that if you are responsible for yourself, you will accomplish more. I forgot where I learned this account.
"All men having power ought to be distrusted to a certain degree."
James Madison
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Country: USA
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sailawaybob
Forum Member
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Posted - 12/19/2009 : 12:03:07 AM
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so warmskin what you are saying is that we had socialist even back then, maybe if the pilgrims had put bradford back on the boat we wouldn't have this problem today. i agree with the libertarian idea to bad americans won't wake up to the party of less government or do most american want more government ?
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Country: USA
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GaNewnude
Forum Member
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Posted - 12/19/2009 : 2:11:09 PM
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As for me, I'm a conservative and mostly Republican
What I have noticed in our society today is that we have replaced truth with agenda. It's not important anymore to believe in truth but It seems to be more important to make truth match our agenda. We start with our agenda and then manipulate the truth to fit. (like global warming??) I think that we have to be willing to seek the truth first and start with ourselves. Our society can not survive unless we are willing to govern ourselves first by doing the "Right Thing" by truth
What we believe does not matter, what matters is what's true so seek the truth.
That's my contribution to the large scale discussion about political affiliations
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Moontan
Forum Member
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Posted - 12/20/2009 : 1:24:09 PM
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But everyone has a different slant on what the truth is or even what is right for that matter.
It's a conundrum for sure.
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Country: USA
| Posts: 37 |
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Warmskin
Forum Member
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Posted - 12/20/2009 : 5:28:11 PM
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If I could be a dictator (and that would be supremely beneficial to the nation   ), I would re-arrange the two major parties into the following:
The Democrats, with big spending, programs for everything, constant overseas wars (as in World War I and II, Korea, and Vietnam), funding of any country that wants our tax dollars, determined to be rid of the US Constitution. Democrat heroes would be FDR, LBJ, and Leon Trotsky.
The Republicans, who would want no income tax, no programs at the federal level, no wars except to fend off current invaders (the Iraq and Afghan wars are not conservative in nature, but are neo-conservative instead), no foreign aid except for voluntary individual action, strict adherence to the US Constitution. Republican heroes would be Reagan, Goldwater, and Adam Smith (Scottish economist of the 18th century).
Now that we have all that straightened out, I'll go duck for cover!! 
"The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground."
Thomas Jefferson
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Country: USA
| Posts: 939 |
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Moontan
Forum Member
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Posted - 12/20/2009 : 6:32:16 PM
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Ok DUCK!!!!!!
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Country: USA
| Posts: 37 |
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