Insanity
Recycles dryer sheets
- Joined
- Mar 3, 2007
- Messages
- 128
I greatly dislike what the label "conservative" has become. William Buckley's definition -- a smaller, unobtrusive government, less spending, a balanced budget, lower taxes (after the budget is balanced), etc. -- have become unwanted guests on the Republican ticket.
What has moved in to replace William Buckley's conservatism is a new form of "conservatism" that's not conservative at all. It is, instead, an activist agenda dictated by a select group of Extreme Christian Conservatives wishing to establish a new standard of appropriate behavior inside the United States and beyond.
An ad by the Federal Health and Human Services department demonstrates my point. In that ad it told parents to talk with their kids about the importance of not having sex -- and I could be mostly OK with that message, except it went further -- and to talk with them about the importance of waiting until they're married to have sex!!!!
Mostly people get married well after they become adults. Since when is it our government should ever have a role in telling us about how to conduct ourselves in the bedroom once we become adults? This isn't smaller, more obtrusive government, it's Soviet-style social engineering, and I hate it.
As for the cornerstone of traditional conservatism, fiscal restraint, the current administration has totally ignored it, increasing our national debt faster than at any time in our history -- wartime or not. George W. didn't veto even one spending bill while the Republicans were in charge in Congress.
I'd be happy to vote for a Conservative as I grew up to know them. It's real pity there don't seem to be a whole lot of them left in the Republican Party, but John McCain has more than a passing resemblance to the old-style conservatives. And I trust him a whole lot more not to poke the Federal Government's long nose into my rights or private life than I do the current crop of "Conservatives."
I also like the idea of balancing a now primarily Democratic Congress with a Republican President (or vice-versa). I think it leads to better oversight of Presidential authority and better lawmaking. I think this balance of power for six of the eight years Bill Clinton was in office has a lot to do with how the budget was balanced and American progress late in the last century.
And I think you're right about a McCain/Huckabee ticket. Huckabee brings something to the Republican platform that McCain needs: a Christian Conservative bent and street 'cred in the Old South and Plains States. I'd be uneasy about Huckabee on the ticket; I don't think he's my first or even third choice as our leader, and given McCain's age I think it's quite possible that a McCain VP might ascend into the Oval Office, but I do think that having him on-board will draw votes McCain needs to win.
As for me, if I set the issue of balancing a Democratic Congress with a Republican President aside, I think Obama will better represents the people of this country than any of his opponents.
I also think that electing Obama, a Christian man who's name and father have Islamic roots, might be a good International Policy move, one that would give people of Muslim faith a reason to stop and re-think their fear that America is a country of Islamaphobes set on wiping them from the face of the earth.
It may sound like a small and simple thing, but there's great International interest in this American campaign abroad, and strong International support for Obama, including in the Muslim world. Placing a man who has an innate understanding of what it means to live in a Muslim country, what Muslim faith is all about, could go a very great distance against Al Quaida 's anti-USA propoganda.
