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thedrifter
02-23-07, 08:33 AM
What Did Conservatives Get Right?
By Tom Van Dyke
Published 2/23/2007 12:07:19 AM

A friend on the other side of the great ideological divide recently challenged me to come up with the high points of conservatism's record over the last 50 or so years.

My thoughtful answer was that there's a continuum, that both the New Deal and the undesirability of confiscatory levels of taxation have captured the center, that Nixon was a liberal and that Bill Clinton was not unconservative, but that was apparently unsatisfactory. (I thought it was we righties who are the simplistic Manichaeans, seeing everything in terms of black and white, but not so, not so.)

I despise laundry lists, especially since I refuse to separate the white wash from the colored on grounds [AD] of discrimination. Still, I do credit the ability of conservatives, when asked, to actually answer a direct question. And so:

---That the constantly rising tide of taxation needed to be reversed, as it stifles hard work, entrepreneurship, innovation, and ultimately, prosperity.

---That the constantly rising tide of regulation needed to be halted, as compliance begins to elbow out actual production. (Notice the Tide motif creeping into the laundry list.)

---That deregulation largely results in lower prices for consumers (energy, telephones, airlines, yachts... er, maybe let's lose that last one).

---That communism was an ideological tyranny, an enemy of freedom and of man's spirit, needing to be opposed and rolled back at every opportunity. (The Strategic Defense Initiative, "Star Wars," drove liberals nuts but drove the Soviet Union to suicide. Although we need not credit George Lucas with singlehandedly winning the Cold War.)

---That autocrats like the Shah are more able to reform than totalitarian ideologies like the one that now operates Iran. (We may thank the late Jeane Kirkpatrick for that one.)

---That, per Washington's Farewell Address, religion is not an enemy, but an indispensable ally for any republic based on individual self-governance.

---That the family is the core platoon of society (there is a provable higher incidence of almost every social pathology in its absence), and that the welfare system was crippling it while smothering individual initiative.

---That affirmative action is at best neutral in the short term, its greater access offset by lower graduation rates and suspicion of minorities' genuine achievement.

---That portraying the discrimination against groups as trumping individual effort results in endemic hopelessness and a destructive racial divide.

---That choice in schools (vouchers) is the only real solution to resegregation. (One can be sure that if conservatives had such a monopoly on the schools and the education establishment [without whose money and volunteers the Democratic Party would die], good liberals everywhere would be in favor of such freedom.)

---That locking up pathologically habitual offenders keeps them off the streets and it's a mathematical certainty, borne out by the stats, that crime rates decrease.

---That a person has a right to defend kith and kin, with a gun if necessary.

---That the 55 mile an hour speed limit totally, clearly, and unimpeachably sucked. (With apologies to Liddy Dole who zealously enforced that as Secretary of Transportation. She was clearly not up to speed on that one.)

If all conservatives ever accomplished was the lattermost, I'd say it was all worth it. Yes, there are so many things we take for granted after Reagan and Gingrich that people need to be reminded of just now.

On both sides of the great divide.

Ellie

yellowwing
02-23-07, 09:04 AM
Let's not forget the conservatives have wiped out the hunger problem in America!


Some Americans Lack Food, but USDA Won't Call Them Hungry

By Elizabeth Williamson
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, November 16, 2006; Page A01 (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/11/15/AR2006111501621.html)

The U.S. government has vowed that Americans will never be hungry again. But they may experience "very low food security."

Every year, the Agriculture Department issues a report that measures Americans' access to food, and it has consistently used the word "hunger" to describe those who can least afford to put food on the table. But not this year.

Mark Nord, the lead author of the report, said "hungry" is "not a scientifically accurate term for the specific phenomenon being measured in the food security survey." Nord, a USDA sociologist, said, "We don't have a measure of that condition."

The USDA said that 12 percent of Americans -- 35 million people -- could not put food on the table at least part of last year. Eleven million of them reported going hungry at times. Beginning this year, the USDA has determined "very low food security" to be a more scientifically palatable description for that group.
35 million Americans can relax now! :banana:

HOLM
02-23-07, 12:13 PM
If you can't make it in this country you have to be almost beyond help.


People always will divide up into those who want to be controled and those that don't...

If people are taught to fend for themsevles the nation will have very few problems.

If you can't help yourself... you can't help anyone else...

ridingcrops
02-27-07, 11:07 AM
How about the rise in oil prices even though there are plenty of reserves and the oil companies are showing the biggest profits in history? How about all the homeless mental patients who are on the streets and can't get medication for their condition because Reagan said we were violating their rights? Or the inner city children who go to bed hungry especially in the summer because their parents are on drugs and we don't run the lunch programs? Or the lack of benefits for veterans who Reagan shafted out of theri benefits in ten years instead of grandfathering the law? And school vouchers were the idea of repubs not the Dems? Or the great quote "Read my lips, no new taxes." and then went on to raise the taxes of the middle class while giving the ultra wealthy the biggest tax breaks in history until the deserting coward came along and made the tax breaks even bigger?
Yep you gotta love the conservatives. Wish I could afford to love them but I have to work on my tax return now and see how much I have to spend to let the billionairs live the good life.

HOLM
02-27-07, 11:17 AM
Yep you gotta love the conservatives. Wish I could afford to love them but I have to work on my tax return now and see how much I have to spend to let the billionairs live the good life.

YEAH some day if and when I ever make it big in this country I hope that there is a bunch of whinny sniffling libs sitting around *****ing cause I made the American dream

TAXES ALWAYS hurt the middle class. Cause they make enough money to tax... The rich always pay more than their fair shake cause the have so much. The top 1% percent of income earners pay over 70% of the federal taxes.... Yeah soo F_ING what they have a couple million left over after paying taxes... THAT IS THE AMERICAN DREAM RIGHT????

YEAH lets tax the sh!t out of the oil companies... That is just what we need another ford style big corporation losing money and laying people off....

I am not even close to being in the top income brackets in this country.. BUT MY publicly traded EXON stock is doing F_ing great... SO keep your damn liberal hands off my company.... and out of my F_ing pocket

Those poor starving kids in the hood don't need handouts.. they need to be taught to support themselves so they won't raise another generation dependent on someone else's HARD WORK....

GO AHEAD vote for Edwards HE already guaranteed a tax increase...

Sgt Leprechaun
02-28-07, 06:11 AM
See how much you have to SPEND because of conservatives???

Oh, please.

The wonderful left wing fruitbats are the one's that are going to tax us to death, and then tax us some more after we are dead, to pay for more useless social programs.

Esp. in the great socialist state of Maryland, which is now going to outlaw smoking in bars, following the idea of Bawlmore City.

Point of note, I don't go to bars and haven't smoked cig's in years, but it's yet another example of mindless nannystateism.

jinelson
02-28-07, 06:39 AM
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v660/jinelson/Dummies2.gif

Screw the secular progressive liberal commie socialist swine. Watch this little class on the heroes of the leftest secular progressive moonbats - KNOW YOUR ENEMY!

Jim!