If conservatives want to become relevant to the present
Kraichgauer
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It used to be that the Republicans would primarily champion the middle class and the Democrats would primarily champion the poor. It had its flaws, but that system seemed to work a lot better than the way the Republicans now call anything that could harm the wealthiest in this country "class warfare."
I think that is a pretty simplified way of looking at politics in America, I think it has always been playing the competing interests of one particular group against the others be it the poor versus the middle class, minorities versus whites, Catholics versus Protestants, social conservatives versus social liberals, north versus south, etc., etc. All it is just trying to get 50% +1 of the people engaged enough to vote to be on your side. It's hard not to be totally cynical about the whole process at this point, it's all done thru fear or promising things they cannot deliver. The American people don't actually control their government, there is a ruling class that just herds them into one camp to another to maintain their power.
It is an oversimplification. But it used to be that more often than not, the secondary beneficiaries (the wealthy being #1 for both parties) of their policies were in those two categories. The Republican party no longer endorses the middle class, and instead only focuses on class warfare and how taxing the wealthiest any more would destroy the country. And guns and God.
The Republicans use the the three G's - guns, God, and gays - as a bogeyman to get poor and middle class people to vote against their own economic and social interests.
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-Bill, otherwise known as Kraichgauer
No, I believe it's God, Guns, & Guts. Conservatism is generally not very supportive of gays.
As in to be on the dole even though there are fewer people employed to pay for it.
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Kraichgauer
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Joined: 12 Apr 2010
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Posts: 49,245
Location: Spokane area, Washington state.
No, I believe it's God, Guns, & Guts. Conservatism is generally not very supportive of gays.
As in to be on the dole even though there are fewer people employed to pay for it.
No, I didn't say Republicans support gays, but rather they use the specter of gay rights and marriage to scare people into voting Republican. In the same way that they play up on fears of gun control in face of paranoid fears of government take over once guns are gone, or how the government is allegedly persecuting Christians.
As for your second point - what does any of that have to do with the price of tea in China?

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-Bill, otherwise known as Kraichgauer
Maybe not what you meant but thats' what you wrote. And the gay rights thing is becoming less and less of an issue for mainstream conservatives. I've addressed that here before.

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"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants."
- Thomas Jefferson
re: Republican bogeymen
In the past few years there was a scientific study comparing the brain structures of people who label themselves conservative to those who label themselves liberal. Apparently the "fear center" is larger in the brains of conservatives. That makes a lot of sense to me, because Republicans use FEAR more than liberals do in trying to manipulate people.
Diversity in a gene pool is a strength, not a weakness. There may be situations where the conservative mindset is more advantageous to survival than a liberal mindset. In general though it does seem very much to me that liberals are motivated more by compassion and education while conservatives are motivated more by greed and fear.
As others have pointed out, the situation is a lot more complicated than the way some present it. I agree with some of the principles of conservatism: holding fast to the Constitution, limiting the size and power of government, and protecting the rights of the individual. However, many of them mix financial conservatism with social conservatism. I would have more sympathy for conservatives if so many of them were not trying so much to legislate reality to fit their interpretation of a Bronze age mythology, and if they were not trying so much to legislate what people can or cannot do in their private lives.
oh yeah, and giving grossly unfair advantages to the richest people and the biggest corporations so they can exploit the poor and rape and poison the planet to make a quick buck regardless of the costs to present and future generations. The gap between the richest 1% and the rest of humanity is several orders of magnitude bigger than ever before in human history, and getting wider. Such a situation is of course UNSTABLE and not at all healthy for any society.
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sonofghandi
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I will agree with this. The massive gun and ammunition sales spike was driven almost entirely by unfounded paranoid fear. The actual number of gun owners has gone down, but the number of guns owned has sky-rocketed. I think that trend is winding down, though, as most companies have been revising their forecasts downwards. Smith & Wesson is the latest (and one of the more severe):
http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2014/06/24/is-smith-wesson-firing-blanks.aspx
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"The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently" -Nietzsche
Kraichgauer
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Joined: 12 Apr 2010
Gender: Male
Posts: 49,245
Location: Spokane area, Washington state.
I will agree with this. The massive gun and ammunition sales spike was driven almost entirely by unfounded paranoid fear. The actual number of gun owners has gone down, but the number of guns owned has sky-rocketed. I think that trend is winding down, though, as most companies have been revising their forecasts downwards. Smith & Wesson is the latest (and one of the more severe):
http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2014/06/24/is-smith-wesson-firing-blanks.aspx
Yeah sure, whatever.....

_________________
"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants."
- Thomas Jefferson
Kraichgauer
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Joined: 12 Apr 2010
Gender: Male
Posts: 49,245
Location: Spokane area, Washington state.
Maybe not what you meant but thats' what you wrote. And the gay rights thing is becoming less and less of an issue for mainstream conservatives. I've addressed that here before.

But how long has it been since mainstream conservatives have had any influence in the Republican party? The people who the RNC lives in fear and does the bidding of the homophobic pray-the-gay-away types, and paranoid gun nuts who have highjacked the NRA. Just because the tea baggers aren't holding their own in local elections hardly means they still don't have the ear of the conservative leadership.
And yes, people vote for the candidates who aren't going to let them starve. I seriously can't see how that could be counted against them.
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-Bill, otherwise known as Kraichgauer
sonofghandi
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Joined: 17 Apr 2007
Age: 46
Gender: Male
Posts: 3,540
Location: Cleveland, OH (and not the nice part)
I will agree with this. The massive gun and ammunition sales spike was driven almost entirely by unfounded paranoid fear. The actual number of gun owners has gone down, but the number of guns owned has sky-rocketed. I think that trend is winding down, though, as most companies have been revising their forecasts downwards. Smith & Wesson is the latest (and one of the more severe):
http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2014/06/24/is-smith-wesson-firing-blanks.aspx
Yeah sure, whatever.....

How about a consevrative source then?
http://www.foxbusiness.com/industries/2014/06/20/smith-wesson-ignites-selloff-with-tepid-outlook/
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"The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently" -Nietzsche

The tea party isn't what it started out to be. Of course, you'd be against anything that's against big government.
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"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants."
- Thomas Jefferson
Kraichgauer
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Joined: 12 Apr 2010
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Location: Spokane area, Washington state.

The tea party isn't what it started out to be. Of course, you'd be against anything that's against big government.
What does the Democratic party have that's remotely similar to the tea baggers? The DNC is more likely enthralled by big money that has unfortunately compromised their values, rather than ideological lunatics.
And party line or not, the fact remains the lunatic fringe who believe that gun rights are absolute, and that mass shootings have been staged by the government complete with actors, are the activists who control the gun movement these days.
As for role of government according to liberals and conservatives - you seem to have forgotten that Republicans figure the state has no business keeping us safe from a hostile majority if part of a minority, or keeping us safe from shoddy products and pollution by industry, but has every right to stick it's nose in our bedrooms.
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-Bill, otherwise known as Kraichgauer
sonofghandi
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Joined: 17 Apr 2007
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Location: Cleveland, OH (and not the nice part)

When I say "F*ck the NRA," as I do quite often lately, it's for a host of reasons both personal and political, but has nothing to do with my feelings for guns or the 2nd amendment.
http://alibi.com/food/43794/Pro-Gun-Anti-NRA.html
Some hunters fear the NRA?s hard-line stance is starting to give their sport a bad name.
"We have to deal with this black cloud, because people who don't like these black rifles are starting to equate, 'those are all hunters, people who are banging around with 30-round magazines,'" says John Cooper, a former secretary of the South Dakota Department of Fish, Game, and Parks. "And that couldn't be further from the truth."
http://www.newrepublic.com/article/112326/nra-and-hunters-interests-are-not-always-aligned
There are plenty of organizations that advocate for and support outdoor sportsmanship. If the NRA doesn?t take a sensible stand on Friday, I ask that you reconsider your support of the NRA.
http://muscatinejournal.com/news/opinion/editorial/columns/jameson/hoping-for-a-change-of-heart-in-the-nra/article_1ed74f08-4a11-11e2-b473-001a4bcf887a.html
In 2007, Zumbo, a respected hunting journalist, suggested in a column that semiautomatic weapons were not appropriate for hunting and that game departments should ban them. "Excuse me, maybe I'm a traditionalist, but I see no place for these weapons among our hunting fraternity," he wrote in his column for Outdoor Life magazine. "I'll go so far as to call them 'terrorist' rifles ... We don't need to be lumped into the group of people who terrorize the world with them."
The response was swift.
He left the magazine, which apologized for his comments and took the post down. The NRA ?pointed to the collapse of Zumbo?s career as an example of what can happen to anyone, including a ?fellow gun owner,? who challenges the right of Americans to own or hunt with assault-style firearms.?
http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2014/6/18/hunters-gun-rightshavenothingtodowithhunting.html
conference, which skews heavily toward the hook-and-bullet crowd. The 79-year-old Korean war vet and lifelong Republican still drives his pickup to New Hampshire every year on the first day of deer-hunting season. "Nobody will ever take my gun," he says. "If they do, I'll be stretched out, and they can grab it." Despite the tough talk, however, Dorr is no friend to the National Rifle Association (NRA), which has asked him to join many times. Get him going, and he'll tell you that the gun-lobbying group has lost its way with too extreme a focus on protecting the Second Amendment. "It's not concentrating enough on things that matter to me," he says, "like conservation."
In fact, Dorr is here at the conference as chair of a new organization called the American Hunters and Shooters Association (ahsa), which bills itself as a more "moderate alternative to the NRA." The group has tapped into a small but growing minority of hunters and sportsmen who feel disgruntled with the NRA's support of conservative lawmakers who, they say, vote against their best interests. Judging from the reception at the conference, there are more Dorrs out there than one might expect.
http://www.newrepublic.com/article/the-revolt-against-the-nra
The NRA?s lobbying on these bills appears to contradict the express commitment of its lobbying arm to ?be involved in any issue that directly or indirectly affects firearms ownership and use. These involve such topics as hunting and access to hunting lands [and] wilderness and wildlife conservation.? CAP?s report also cites several polls showing that preservation of wildlife is important to most sportsmen: A 2012 poll found that two-thirds of sportsmen want to maintain current conservation levels and oppose ?allowing private companies to develop public lands when it would limit the public?s enjoyment of?or access to?these lands.? In a 2013 survey of hunters and anglers, nearly 75 percent of respondents opposed selling public lands to help reduce the deficit.
http://grist.org/climate-energy/is-oil-money-turning-the-nra-against-hunters/
http://newwest.net/main/article/saving_hunters_from_the_nra/
The NRA isn?t for hunters any more than AAA is for bicyclists. Sure, some hunters are NRA members, but first and foremost the NRA serves gun fetishists and the firearms industry. (fetish: 1. An inanimate object worshiped for its supposed magical powers or because it is considered to be inhabited by a spirit. 2. A course of action to which one has an excessive and irrational commitment.)
In 2011, nearly 14 million Americans hunted, while NRA members number about four million?fewer than half of whom actually hunt.
http://www.flashinthepan.net/?p=961
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"The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently" -Nietzsche


Next....
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"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants."
- Thomas Jefferson
sonofghandi you're right; the NRA is a terrorist organisation! They not only give weekly hands-on classes at their Fairfax HQ but also sponsored them them at local shooting ranges across the USA. Also web based learning and lectures via webinar almost daily.
Topics include but are not limited to:
- Improvised explosives and IED's. What you need to know
- Tips on going postal while ensuring maximum body count
- So you want to be a unabomber? Lessons learned from Ted Kaczynski
- How ZOG is a threat to the American way of life and what YOU can do
- Attacks against soft targets and how to identify them
- Black helicopters; a prelude to The New Order
- How to mock and and belittle anti-gun gun owners
And may many more.
Yes, the NRA will end civilisation as we know it. Fire and brimstone coming down from the skies, rivers and seas boiling, forty years of darkness, earthquakes, volcanoes, the dead rising from the grave, human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together... mass hysteria!
Of course, nothing can be done about it because of all the money donated by huge, exploitive, and greedy corporations in addition the protection of corrupt republican politicians.
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"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants."
- Thomas Jefferson
What's with the hunting? There are plenty of people who don't hunt but just like to shoot firearms at the shooting range, or who want a gun for protection. I'm not completely opposed to hunting, but I think hunting is much less morally neutral than shooting up pieces of paper or tin cans with assault rifles.
And I don't think whether something is an assault rifle or not is very relevant in how dangerous the weapon is. Even the military people ususally shoot their rifles semi-auto instead of full auto.