AMERICAN CONSERVATISM IN 2008 AND BEYOND

The real future for blacks and other minorities have been and will continue to be the Republican Party. Conservatism offers the real future of opportunity and freedom, instead of the hopelessness of mirages and promises of being taken care of on liberal plantations.

Is that the reason why most minorities - and even the middle class - suffered since GW Bush took over the white house? We now count the unemployed at some 25 million Americans. If that's what conservatives offer minorities, they'd better watch their purse strings, because they'll be stripped of that too - by the conservatives.

Conservatives look upon minorities as takers from the rich. That message is a common one even on a2k by such posters as okie, ican, and a few others.

okie can't keep his story straight from one post to the next; just like the forked tongued GOP members of congress.

CI, you need to stop drinking the liberal Kool-Aid so that you can think clearly. Liberals look at minorities as dependent slaves on their plantation and their numbers have been increased by millions ever since Obama was elected. You and your liberal friends spew falsehoods just by opening your mouths, but we know the truth and the truth is: liberals are never going to champion the little guy or minorities. Liberals talk the talk to get votes, but they never deliver. Liberal democrats have been using and abusing minorities and the little guy since day one, the only true champion of all Americans are Conservatives.

Liberals need to start the new year off with a healthy dose of reality - Conservatism is All-American and it's Conservatism that will
put this country and all of her people including wayward liberals on the path to recovery and becoming exceptional once again.

Liberals themselves provide the most convincing testimony to the, at best, ineffectiveness of the policies they have designed and implemented to address the needs of the poor and minorities.

The Civil Rights movement in the US is generally agreed to have spanned the period 1954 to 1968.

LBJ's Great Society began its War on Poverty in 1964

You would be hard pressed to find any liberals during this period of time who did not believe that the achievements of the Civil Rights movement and The Great Society were monumental and that if they were not all that was needed to vanquish discrimination and poverty they were major victories and took the battles from defense to offense. It's hard to imagine what LBJ and his fellow liberals wanted for the Great Society that they were not able to obtain.

Let's assume for the sake of debate that there wasn't a single Republican or conservative who supported either the Civil Rights movement or the programs of the Great Society. If so, they were fully the proud achievements of Democrats and liberals. Surely if there was meager politically motivated support, those Republicans and conservatives who provided it had to be dragged kicking and screaming to that position.

Now some 66 years after the beginning of the Civil Rights movement and 46 years after the start of the War on Poverty, we find Democrats and liberals who tell us today that the improvement realized during those decades was so minimal as to be virtually meaningless, or that the situation for the poor and minorities has actually gotten worse!

If this is indeed the case, then either the mid-century reforms and programs have been utterly ineffective or worse...detrimental, or the forces that opposed them (GOP and conservatives) have never been more determined to make the lives of the poor and minorities miserable.

I'm sure there are many who leap to the latter alternative: For the last 50 to 60 years, conservatives have been systematically dismantling the achievements of the past --- despite the fact that successive Republican presidents have supplemented them during this period of time.

The fact of the matter is that for Democrats, and Establishment Minority Leaders, the problems will never be solved...they can't be. They have far too much to lose if the War is ever won.

Excellent summary, Finn. Liberalism essentially wants equality of misery, equal outcomes, so that everyone ends up suffering. A good analogy is North Korea, Cuba, and other obviously leftist experiments of shared misery.

Finn, you are correct about the Great Society. I have been one to repeatedly point out the failure of that program. In fact, conservative blacks could tell cicerone imposter how LBJ's welfare programs helped destroy the black family and help foster the rampant and widespread inner city blight that is so commonly observed in today's society. Single women found out they no longer needed a man to profit from having children, and we now see the results of that. I believe much of our economic problem is interwoven with the cultural and moral breakdown of society. One of the best sources of becoming more informed about how all of that went down - can be found on the National Black Republican Association. There are in fact a few voices crying in the wilderness out there, trying to inform blacks, minorities, and liberals, so that they could finally wake up to the failed policies of liberalism and hopefully turn to the tried and true principles of conservatism, which are freedom and personal responsibility.

I suggest again the following link for any liberal or minority that is interested in seeing minorities leave the liberal plantations.

http://www.nbra.info/

okie, Please provide evidence that Liberalism means "equal outcomes?" When you make such claims, you must provide evidence for it; otherwise you're talking b.s.

Who is saying this, specifically? Or is this just a straw-man you've created.

Cycloptichorn

Yep.

Socialism is all about spreading the wealth, so that the outcomes are more equal. Surely you have heard the liberal buzzword, "Social Justice?" Liberals perceive one man living better than another as unfair and socially unjust. I hope you are perceptive enough and smart enough to have figured that much out, ci?

Here is one simple link to support my assertion.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_justice
"These policies aim to achieve what developmental economists refer to as more equality of opportunity than may currently exist in some societies, and to manufacture equality of outcome in cases where incidental inequalities appear in a procedurally just system"

okie wrote:

Show proof of this? You lie and make assumptions without providing any evidence. How do you do that? Your simple mind belongs in the tenth grade where such opinions may get received with challenge, but here on a2k, you will be challenged.

Okay, show us evidence that ?

BTW, you posted an article about religion and equal justice. How does that fit into our democratic republic with a capitalistic economy?

I just gave you evidence. I made no assumptions and I did not lie. If you would at least study some of the worst tyrants and most ruthless dictators in history, you would know that almost all of them talked about social justice, and that they would make things fair and more equal, and although they did not tell the people ahead of time, they were willing to murder or let millions die to accomplish it. Sheesh, ci, I thought you were more educated than you apparently are?

What he stated about liberals was a very defensible opinion. Certainly the progressive wing of the Democrat party openly espouses the need for government action to redistribute wealth. Okie overstated it a bit, but it is hardly a novel or unusual idea requiring proof. I see you expressing numerous opinions here about issues and about other posters, some rather outrageous and offensive, but never with any proof. Why add hypocrisy to all that?

I guess if you want to argue that the Catholic Church is "liberal" then you could make that argument.

Okie is not merely "overstating" the case. He is making an extreme argument that has little to do with the evidence he is presenting. Even you have to agree that progressive taxation is not an attempt to make everyone have the same amount of money yet that is the argument okie is presenting.

How is the tax policies in the US a transfer of wealth to the poor?

It's a matter of the more wealthy to pay more in taxes to reduce the national debt. Reducing the national debt is not transfer of wealth to the poor; it's a matter of keeping our country financially secure. Do you know what's happened in Greece, Ireland, Spain, and Portugal? Is that the same result you want for the US?

I, as a retired American, have voted to pay more in taxes during the last election to fund more money for our schools. That nobody in my immediate family goes to school doesn't mean that I don't feel the need to support our children's education.

Your conservative meme of doing all for yourself rather than government programs shows you are bankrupt in your thinking.

At least okie thinks liberalism means an equality of misery unlike the oligarchs in power who have been providing 80% of the American work force with misery for the past 30 years. okie endorses the oligarch's policy of 90% of the goods, services and wages going to the top 1%.

But that was not the point in question. You have the odd habit of selecting an often narrow offshoot of the topic in contention and either arguing from only that or trying to put words in your interloqutor's mouth.

Okie asserted that many liberals seek to equalize economic outcomes for most of the population. I noted that he overstated the proposition a bit, but that the underlying principle was indeed largely true of the progressive wing of the Democrat party. Quibbling about progressive income tax rates (which we have had for about a century now) has nothing at all to do with that proposition.

You just told us that okie's position is just stupid.

You wrote:

If you truly believe this, how can you agree with okie's position in any way that the liberals are trying to equalize wealth?

Do you truly believe liberals are going to change the progressive income tax rates any time in the future?

There is no doubt that our income tax policies amount to transfers of wealth. The negative tax features of earned income credits are directly redistributionary. The graduated income tax itself, when combined with government social and economic benefits is also redistributionary. I don't object to this in principle or in fact, though I do have concerns about the adverse economic and siocial side effects of some government programs and, as well, the overall negative effects of a high government share of our GDP on our overall economic performance in a still very competitive world.

You appear to assume that the only way to reduce our deficit is through higher taxes. I believe that we should look first to reduced government expenditures and reduced interference in free economic activity by all. That, by the way, is what is going on in the European countries you listed.

You are fairly liberal in your criticisms of others here, but quick to praise yourself. Your vote to supplement public school budgets was merely a palliative for an already highly dysfunctional system that needs fundamental reform. Why do first grade teachers need tenure? Why does their union resist accountability for their performance in any and every form?

Our government(s) have looked at reducing expenditures, but if you know anything about the federal budget, most of the cost goes to social security, medicare, defense, and interest payments.

If you bother to look at these major programs, they benefit both democrats and republicans. Where would you have them cut?

I agree that government spending exceeds responsible management of the budget, but that happens in both democratic and republican majority administrations and congress. Don't forget, Bush approved extending the drug benefit for seniors/handicapped which only increased our deficit. All while he cut taxes.

That's totally irresponsible - and our only solution is for the wealthy to pay more taxes. You can't bleed a turnip; the poor isn't in any position to pay more in taxes.

That's what democracies do; they try to upgrade the standard of living for all its citizens. It's worked pretty well until this Great Recession, and some countries who's population isn't growing while they get older.

What would you have them do? Activate death panels?