How can anyone with AS be a conservative?

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These are your words, from previous posts: f**k, bitter curmudgeon, self-aggrandize, b***h, a**holes, misdiagnosed.

Some more from this post, not counting those already used in previous posts: old, personality disorders, diseased minds, caustic loathing.

These are ruveyn's: pinko stinko, commie loving, liberal, collectivists.

Are you seriously trying to paint your words as 'telling the truth' and ruveyn's as 'dishing out insults'?


I don't hate you. I'm just pissed off at your silly insults.

I was at work, some us do it for a living.

Some of us are conservatives. I'm a conservative. But not of the "religious right" kind which is what so many socialists and lefties (particularly in the US) misrepresent all conservatism as.

That's because so much of the right in recent decades has been hijacked by religious lunatics, much like in the Islamic world. I remember hearing years ago how traditionally secular Republicans had approached Democrats to ask how they could get their party back from the religious right.

-Bill, otherwise known as Kraichgauer

In Europe, conservatism is determinedly secular which is why we look at American lefties characterising all conservatives as religious cranks (which I doubt is true, even in more conservative areas of the US).

As usual, it's the loudest and most obnoxious of them that get heard. UK conservatism is generally very secular though, apart from the - quite small - faith, flag and family wing.

Trust me, speaking as an American, the right in my country has been taken over by evangelicals, and to maybe a lesser degree, conservative Catholics.

-Bill, otherwise known as Kraichgauer

to conservatism is pointless in principle, if it's good enough not to need changing it probably wont be changed.

There were Fundamentalists north of the Mason-Dixon line. There were also people living in Dixie that were beginning to have misgivings about slavery. What solidified the people of the South was being attacked by Union forces.

Slavery is unsustainable in a modern industrial society. It died a natural death (without civil war) in Brazil in the 1890s. The economics of slavery made it unsustainable.

Modern industrial capitalism needed inexpensive labor. Slavery when you factor in feeding the slaves and keeping them from escaping is very, very expensive.


ruveyn

^This.

Helping others is not about giving away a handout. It's about giving a hand up. Everyone, at some point or another, needs a hand up. Some people have a lot of outside support. It can be a supportive family who helps pay for college or provides free childcare. It can be in the form of personal connections that open doors. It can come in the form of large financial gifts or inheritances, etc. Very, very few people acquire wealth without any assistance whatsoever. Most often, the assistance is taken for granted. I'm sure most conservatives on this forum also enjoy some assistance. Maybe some of them live at home with their parents. Maybe some receive government healthcare. Maybe some go to state universities and have some of their tuition subsidized.

There are many people in this country who are not so fortunate. The programs that conservatives want to get rid of are hand up programs - not hand out programs. Childcare subsidies are a big one. Think about it. You're a single mom of 2 small children. You want to work or go to school, but then how are you going to pay for childcare? It's insanely expensive. In my area the going rate is about $12/hour. An entry-level job certainly isn't going to cover that expense, let alone pay for rent. Without some sort of support here, what is she supposed to do?

What other programs are we cutting? Planned Parenthood, WIC, heating subsidies, after school programs, college grants, etc. So how does that help? We'll have more kids being born to people who can't afford them. Then once they're born, the lack of basic nutrition and heat will result in more illnesses. As they get bigger, they'll be latchkey kids with no guidance and when it's time for college they'll be SOL because either they spent their afternoons with bad influences and their grades suffered or they good good grades, but can't afford tuition. We the taxpayers will be paying either way. Is it better to support a kid in college or to support him in jail?

Poor people don't want welfare checks! They want some help to better themselves and their situations. Supports like child care subsidies and college grants are investments towards a healthier and more self-reliant society. Most conservatives have no idea how hard it is just to exist in poverty, let alone how hard it is to climb out of it. They've never had to make the choice between medicine for their sick kid, or heat for the family. It can also be more expensive to be poor. When you don't have transportation to get to the grocery store 5 miles away and you have to shop at the corner store, it adds up real fast. When your a self-pay patient, the bill is usually double because you don't get the negotiated price that insurance companies get. It's a hole that's simply unimaginable to those who've never had experience with it.

Hah!

Simpson and Sampson, PLUS keeping the customer reasonably dissatisfied. If it ain't broke don't fix it has never neen enough for all of us.

Besides which, Consevatism has little to do with conserving, just as Liberals are notiriously ungenerous.

My boss and I were just talking about something similar the other day. I work in social services, for a nonprofit disability service provider. Part of my job is helping people navigate 'The System' and indentify financial aid resources to help them pay for our services, when possible.

Our company receives government funding, but also markets to others who can afford to pay for our services on a private basis. The revenue generated from selling our services to those who can self-fund goes into subsidizing our mission work for low-income individuals who are struggling. (The term being used now for organizations like ours in an 'entrepreneurial nonprofit,' and there are more like us developing as a means to stay afloat and continue to provide critical services, even when government funding gets cut). We understand some cuts need to be made and are trying to adapt to changing times, but with the economy and more and more requests from people in need, we are still not able to assist even close to all of the people who turn to us for help, even during the times we do have limited gov't funding.

A number of individuals I've worked with over the past few years through our low-income grant-based services are very fiscally conservative and involved in the Tea Party movement, despite being on fixed incomes and relying on government programs, like LIHEAP, Housing Choice Vouchers (aka 'Section 8') and Food Stamps. They voted for Republican candidates in the last few elections and are now up in arms and giving me earfulls about how they are not receiving the same types of assistance they were in the past.

I did a home visit for a client last week who supports extreme fiscal conservatives, but was complaining to me that he is now living on dandelion greens he's picking from his front yard, since his benefits were cut and he cannot afford to buy groceries. This particular guy has a lot of health problems and is supposed to be on a specialized diet. If this continues, his health is going to decline further and I can pretty much guarantee he will end up in a nursing home. (For those who don't know, nursing home care costs tax payers an average of $70,000 a year for Medicaid or Medicare-dependent consumers. Basically, when you cut critical community-based services that allow people to stay living out in the community, people with disabilities and the elderly end up having to enter institutions in larger numbers and it actually costs taxpayers more in the long-run).

It's hard for me to understand what people thought would happen when critical programs got cut. I get frustrated at times with liberals who don't seem to think of the consequences of their spending, but I get just as frustrated with conservatives who don't seem to understand the consequences of their cuts. I can respect philosophical differences and, as someone who works inside the system, really hate to see waste and people taking advantage of social service programs. On the other hand, though, it upsets me when people vote and politicians make choices without having a full, working knowledge of the systems they are cutting. I extend this to people of all political persuasions. I respect how some of these Conservative clients of mine believe in personal responsibility, but I think that includes a responsibility to be an educated voter. Otherwise, it's hard for me to be sympathetic when they start complaining to me later.

I owe no more (and probably less) to "my country" than I owe to myself and my family. I see patriotism as rational self interest written in capital letters. The nation is not a God nor is it an Idol to which sacrifices must be made. It is a way for individual people to organize themselves for mutual protection and the benefits of specialization of labor. Tom Paine pointed out that -society- is a blessing and government is at best a necessary evil. Read -Common Sense- by Tom Paine.

ruveyn

Last edited by ruveyn on 13 Aug 2011, 10:50 am, edited 1 time in total.

I'd tend to believe that you're dealing with an industry and individuals who are really the highest priority, though the situation of the current 'squeeze' between agencies and push from the nursing home unions adds to the esoterics of the picture and how particularly annoying things are in Pennsylvania right now (in that sense its amplified - cuts plus state political drama). Some of the stories you've told me in the past on this kind of thing have been chilling but it also reminds me that I doubt many other sectors are dealing with life, death, and personal independence in quite the same way aside from the medical field itself.

What is that supposed to mean? A Google search just gives me something about Piaget which makes no sense in this context.


They still probably would not be pulling in a personal income of a quarter million dollars annually. And a company with close to 100 employees is certainly stretching the notion of a "small business" quite a bit.


Yes, it is what's happening. Middle-class folks like you may actually be gullible enough to buy in to the rhetoric, but you're just useful idiots for the people at the top. The GOP agenda is to transfer the burden of government off of the wealthy and onto the middle class, while doing everything possible to diminish the protections and support given by the state to the middle and lower classes.


The conversation is strange because you keep shifting goalposts about. You know damn well what I'm talking about here- the constant right-wing masturbation over meaningless buzzwords like "self-reliance" while in practice conservatives are always more than happy to take a hand-out for themselves. And yes, you were promoting those sort of ideas earlier in this thread.


How on earth is that a straw man? Bachmann seeks to destroy programs like Medicaid for other people even as her family has taken huge amounts of money from it. That is hypocritical.


Conservatives don't want to pay their fair share.


BS. Most of the Tea Party people have no idea what Washington is doing with "their" money.


You're not really that dumb, are you? No one pays those tax rates. Most of the big recognizable corporate names in this country pay 0 in federal taxes. Nothing. Zilch. Nada. We do not have the highest corporate tax rates in the world. It only appears that way on paper- in reality other developed countries have high tax rates that are listed as something else (often eg the VAT), and then our tax system has a large number of loopholes that corporations exploit.

Will think 'wouldn't it be great if....' but never think about the consequences, when the consequences hit they don't learn anything - just pick up the ball and go on to their next big idea.


They still probably would not be pulling in a personal income of a quarter million dollars annually. And a company with close to 100 employees is certainly stretching the notion of a "small business" quite a bit.[/quote]
No, people with significantly less than 100 employees would have more than a quarter million on paper, ESPECIALLY in places where unlike Ohio housing isn't dirt cheap.

Instead of just calling this a debunked myth how bout showing me the numbers?


You're killing me. So the notion of IRS reform and tax simplification was all smoke and mirrors - its the last thing the republicans wanted but they did it just bilk their base into 'believing' that they wanted to. I can't see myself hanging in with this debate much longer, especially if its going this far in the gutter.


No, I don't.


And Ron Paul wants to pull all military bases in the world back. Its a pretty diverse party. I'm highly doubtful as well that she 'seeks to destroy' and literally just throw these people out. Revamp, rebuild? Possibly. A new agency in its place? I don't know. The problem is - I know you're blowing off wild hyperbole here - if you weren't I would have already heard of it, conservatives would see this kind of thing as highly risque and scandalous - they'd step away from her and you'd hear other candidates denouncing her choice.


This isn't even a conversation, it just sounds like you're looking for a roe right now?

Lol, yeah, that's exactly what I was saying- that I have no idea that there are currently loads of loopholes. The republicans in the House fought valiantly - tooth and nail - to keep us from having that resolved or, even worse, getting a balanced budget amendment.

If they removed the loopholes they wanted to lower the rates. They did not want revenue to increase. That's not a mystery. Corporate tax burdens would not go up. They just fought tooth and nail against closing a few loopholes in fact. So your final point has little to do with your first point. You are making him chase you in circles.

And the balanced budget amendment was never realistic. John McCain called teabaggers "bizarro" for trying to bring it up. It can't pass today. It's just posturing for the base. It's theater.