The Philosophy of a True Conservative, Today

[Adak]

Originally Posted by BigV

Adak.

I have listened to a great deal of what your ideas about the labels "conservative" and "liberal". I have not heard anything that can not be distilled down to "conservative is good and liberal is bad". You've turned them into synonyms. Ha ha! that was a conservative joke! Oh, no, don't eat that, it tastes liberal. Yes Santa, I have been a conservative boy this year. Liberal dog, LIBERAL DOG!

I'm liberal if by "liberal" you infer "wants liberty". I'm in favor of a National Health Service, just not the POS we have now. I'm in favor of gay rights - because whose sons and daughters ARE those gays and lesbians, if not ours? Same with racial/ethnic/religious freedoms and equal opportunity.

Frankly, although I know where racism stems from, but if you take a wider view, isn't it just an artificial construct based on *nothing*?
That's the way I see it. It's rational, and especially here, aren't we based on the precept of inalienable rights - including life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness"?

You can't reconcile that with slavery or racism of any kind.

I'm pro abortion IF the woman was raped, her life is endangered, or the woman wants an early term abortion. It's late term abortions that I can't tolerate.

So, it isn't "Liberal" that is bad at all. That's just the term everyone knows. The real bad guy is "statists"! That's where the state has you totally dependent on it, and controls every aspect of your life, right down to your wallet - which it regularly empties, to pay for itself.

Imagine how it is in a stateist country:

*You work half or more of your life - just to pay your taxes
*The state tells you how many children you can have
*and what kind of job you can work at
*and what kind of car you can drive
*and what your wages will be
*and everything you do you need a license, certificate, bureaucratic approval of some sort or other - and each little approval you need, requires another payment.

Which is pretty close to what we have today, imo. Imagine - we pay for the streets to be built, and resurfaced and cleaned. But now, that's not enough - we need to pay AGAIN, so we can PARK on the street, we already paid for!

Unions are another roadblock to liberty:

*what jobs you can take
*what states you can work in
*what work you can specifically do, and what work you must not do
*of course, they want their dues
*and will tell you when to go on strike - you have a vote, but the union leaders make the decisions, not you.

All of these restrictions on your liberty can only be enforced or supported by the state, and that requires a very large system of gov't, which is VERY expensive to maintain. You pay dearly for a very intrusive gov't, that destroys your liberties, and makes us more and more dependent on that gov't. The more dependent you become, the less freedom you shall have.

I totally get your point, how you use these terms. You occasionally have given some examples of an action, and when you like it, you call it conservative. When you don't, you call it liberal. Insofar as I, and everyone, really, wants good and not bad, what's the difference? None. You extend these examples sometimes to government policies, and once again, the ones you like are labeled conservative and the ones you oppose you label liberal. Never mind the contradictions. You're less concerned about actual policies than you are with making sure that the ones that you deem good get the coveted "conservative" label. That's peachy, you go right on with your bad self.

I plead somewhat guilty to this, but there isn't a better term for it. The liberals in this country have planted their actions so firmly into this kind of straight jacket political philosophy and laws.

However, I have no desire for my government to display the kinds of policies you support. I am especially irked by the inconsistencies. I like government. I realize that our government is made up of people, not just faceless despicable bureaucrats. I realize that our government does good. I also realize that being people, that there are things that could be improved, and that some people do bad. That's not a conservative or liberal thing, though.

I don't think you're final authority on what "conservative" means, I think you're just one guy, hung up on a couple terms, who uses them as shortcuts to conclusions to help you make sense of the world. I'm heartened by this for two reasons. One, your one vote is only as strong as my one vote. Two, while there are conservative ideals that are worth supporting, as well as liberal ones, you are not the decider in chief. I'll continue to evaluate the ideas on their merits and not on whether or not they appeal to you. I wish you well, but I'm not optimistic about your prospects for success in a complex, nuanced world with such a simplistic set of tools.[/quote]

I never claimed to be either a final word, or an authority, on the subject.

There is however, a real beauty to a pragmatic conservative (should I call it independent libertarian?) philosophy. One where YOU take more control of your life, instead of the gov't, and you also take more responsibility for it.

We need to seriously stay away from the Japanese fish market syndrome. You want to buy a fish, but you can't buy it from the fisherman, oh no! You can't get it second hand from the wholesaler, or third hand from the retail fish market, either.

Because the fish is sold maybe 10 to 20 times at the wholesale level, before it ever leaves the wholesale fish market. By the time you get a chance to buy the fish, it will cost 20x -100x what it would cost, if it was sold just once or twice.

Conservatism, is efficient, and pragmatic. Gov't is the back up player, not the starting quarterback on the team. You are the quarterback of your life. You are free to choose.

I'll post up links to the excellent videos that Milton Freeman made on the subject. He does call himself a liberal, because in his day, liberals were more for liberty, and less for big gov't stateism.

Freeman is a Nobel prize winning economist, but he's able to communicate the ideas of using our freedom, in a very down to earth way - never over your head.