AMERICAN CONSERVATISM IN 2008 AND BEYOND

But everything you write is filtered through an extreme conservatism. Were my father to meet you, he might say that both your arms on the right side of your body, which is one of his descriptions of righties.

You also reject any form of authority. You hold yourself as a standard but you are close to alone even here on a forum that does not ask for a political stance as a condition of membership. In other words, you make yourself the measure of all things.

And, politics and economics are two different disciplines. The basic types of each can be and have been combined in different ways. here, however, I will thank you for once saying that it is your opinion and not the way of the world as you often do.

I think that as a person who rejects Newsweek as a left biased publication, you have no right to be taken seriously when you say that the left has no concept of human nature. The right sourly expresses a rather dim view of human nature and seems to always say that human progress in spiritual and intellectual terms is impossible. The left constantly works toward human improvement. You are probably unaware of the fact that the early labor union movement also produced group studies and workshops. One example is the Saturday Evening Girls who met in Boston and made pottery among other things. These working class young women, many of whom were immigrants, had a higher rate of college attendance than women from any other social strata.

Furthermore, the left is generally better educated than the right. That can be documented.

People often overcome their miserable childhoods but such childhoods just as frequently destroy individuals. One seldom knows what the toss of the coin produces. Just remember that you do not view things from a complete spectrum.

Among the many reverberations of President Obama’s election, here is one he probably never anticipated: at least 32 African-Americans are running for Congress this year as Republicans, the biggest surge since Reconstruction, according to party officials.

The House has not had a black Republican since 2003, when J. C. Watts of Oklahoma left after eight years.

But now black Republicans are running across the country " from a largely white swath of beach communities in Florida to the suburbs of Phoenix, where an African-American candidate has raised more money than all but two of his nine (white) Republican competitors in the primary.

Here is an interesting article.
Some of you on here have called repubs/conservatives racist, that there are no african-americans in the repub party, etc.

This article might upset you, because it attacks your preconceived notions.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/05/us/politics/05blacks.html?hp

Quote:

Among the many reverberations of President Obama’s election, here is one he probably never anticipated: at least 32 African-Americans are running for Congress this year as Republicans, the biggest surge since Reconstruction, according to party officials.

The House has not had a black Republican since 2003, when J. C. Watts of Oklahoma left after eight years.

But now black Republicans are running across the country " from a largely white swath of beach communities in Florida to the suburbs of Phoenix, where an African-American candidate has raised more money than all but two of his nine (white) Republican competitors in the primary.

... I do make judgements about issues based upon my foundational philosophy, which is unabashedly and proudly conservative. I believe there are many principles that are enduring and dependable, and our devotion to them will determine our success.

... I believe in one God over all, and I believe he is the ultimate authority. Inasmuch as we adhere to basic principles that are moral and right, we will succeed, and inasmuch as we do not submit to that higher authority and deny His existence, we will likely turn to an inferior authority, that of man and probably the almighty State, which will ultimately lead to very negative outcomes. I believe one of the primary reasons this country has enjoyed the high level of success, including freedom and liberty, has been the fact that we believe our rights come from God, and that a majority of the citizens have throughout history, mostly exhibited a decent level of self discipline and personal responsibility. As the percentage of people doing that become less, and as more and more people turn to the State to take care of them and solve their problems, we will inevitably lose the freedom and liberty that we have enjoyed.

Again, political and economic systems overlap and cannot exist by themselves in a vacuum, and to say that they do is one of the most ridiculous assertions ever made, in my opinion.

The left may work toward human improvement, but it seems like it is an effort being made without the inclusion of a God, which I believe is doomed to failure. We must first admit and believe in an authority higher than ourselves, otherwise mankind will slip from time to time to unbelievable depths. Example, Adolf Hitler, he thought he was the ultimate arbitor of right and wrong, and Hitler is but one example of many I could mention. We must have principles that are more enduring than our own passing fancy about what is right and wrong. I think abortion is a good example, leftists have not found it within themselves to declare that killing their own offspring could possibly be wrong, but to me, it is clearly a case of right and wrong, there is no way that a God over all the earth could place a stamp of approval upon it. Even David in Psalms said that God knew him when he was yet in the womb. Unless we submit and believe in a higher power, the one God of the creation, the human mind will find a way to justify what they wish to do, that is just human nature. So the principles I espouse here are not mine, true they are what I believe, but I believe they spring from certain foundational and moral beliefs that are beyond what I would have if left to myself without any belief in a God. So I believe my conservatism springs from a strong belief in a Judeo-Christian set of principles, which I also believe the country and the constitution are largely based upon as well, and so in this respect I think the United States of America has been very unique in history.

...

http://unabridged.merriam-webster.com/cgi-bin/unabridged?va=Deism&x=22&y=8
Main Entry: de·ism
...
: a rationalistic movement of the 17th and 18th centuries whose adherents generally subscribed to a natural religion based on human reason and morality, on the belief in one God who after creating the world and the laws governing it refrained from interfering with the operation of those laws, and on the rejection of every kind of supernatural intervention in human affairs

I am going to do what I have done in response to you several times over many years and that is break down my response into discreet packets.

I will begin with a response you made to me in which you seriously misquote me. Normally, this is called setting up a straw man but I do not think that is what you are doing. Such an action requires the ability to manipulate and I do not think that you are clever enough to do that. I think, as I have thought in the past, that you simply do not understand what is written and I am far from alone in thinking that.

This is not written to insult you but to be polite and to explain to you what I wrote and how you can not interpret my words in the way that you did.

This is your phrase that I will address:

Again, political and economic systems overlap and cannot exist by themselves in a vacuum, and to say that they do is one of the most ridiculous assertions ever made, in my opinion.

You made this response in answer to my words:

Again, political and economic systems overlap and cannot exist by themselves in a vacuum, and to say that they do is one of the most ridiculous assertions ever made, in my opinion.
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I am not going to do what righties do here and resort to bold faced types and red lettering. It is annoying and disrespectful but I will use capitals.

I DID NOT STATE . . . AS YOU ACCUSE . . .THAT THERE IS NO OVERLAP BETWEEN POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC SYSTEMS.

What I did say is that politics and economics are two different disciplines. There are worlds of difference between those statements. Biology and chemistry are two different disciplines. Do they overlap? Of course they do. In fact, biology is moving toward chemistry as we learn more about DNA, etc.

Do you understand how a reckless comment like yours quoted above does nothing but bring down on your head the disapproval of others . . . including the mildly right wing members of this forum?

And while you might not want to be respected by people you consider ranting leftists, do you realize that you undermine your own arguments?

No one can and no one should take seriously the arguments of someone who demonstrates such skewed perception.

I would like to address the very long and quite strangely disjunct statement you made in response to my statement that you reject authority.

Why you came back with the business about God is anyone's guess. Clearly, that was out of context.

After all, the son of God in the New Testament was very much a leftist.

Yet, you publish definitions that have nothing to do with reality. Your interpretations of Nazism, socialism, communism and Communism are as far off what those things are historically as your interpretation of my statement that I explicated in my immediately previous post.

So, you reject the authority of people who have watched countries for years as journalists . . . who interviewed the leaders and the voters . . . who have academic backgrounds in law (many journalists have legal degrees), economics and political science which enable them to write authoritatively on the politics of Italy and the fall of the Berlin Wall and the Taliban and import quotas.

You reject the authority of people who teach in colleges who studied through three degrees or more to enable them to teach, research, write and publish.

What you honor is your own definition of every -ism that can not stand up to scrutiny.

Then, you have the nerve to speak of "self-discipline and personal responsibility" when you have none. Had you self-discipline, you would make it your personal responsibility to understand what every one else says to you.

And I will address the rest of that second paragraph of yours in another response . . . because I have to do some dishes and laundry. Oh! A liberal doing responsible things? Can it be!?