Bush supporters' aftermath thread

The few.....and they do seem to be few....intellectually honest spokespersons for the Democrat Party--I reluctantly include James Carville among that group--maintain the Democrats lost because they simply didn't have a message. All they had were the same vague platitudes that translated to elect us and you'll never have to worry about terrorism, crime, poverty, health care, social security, jobs, the economy, the deficit, or world peace every again because we'll fix everything instantly. They had those and bashing Bush and neither got the job done for them this time. So they lost a lot across the board from national to local levels.

I wonder what Democrat values are. Does anybody know?

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JustWonders wrote:

Einherjar - Thanks

The "Comments" section of the link I posted are interesting, too, if you want to check them out

The Oppinion Journal must be slanted to the right, there was not a single dissenting oppinion among the readers responses.

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Foxfyre wrote:

I wonder what Democrat values are. Does anybody know?

Liberty unless very good reasons exist for restricting it.

Social responsibility, securing everyone food and shelter at the very least. Raising minimum wage to a point which can sustain a single provider with a child.

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In response to the question "what are Democrat values?" Einherjar writes

Quote:

Liberty unless very good reasons exist for restricting it.

Social responsibility, securing everyone food and shelter at the very least. Raising minimum wage to a point which can sustain a single provider with a child.

I think Republicans have the same values, but Republicans are less likely to make food, shelter, minimum wage, etc. an entitlement and are more likely favor creating a social and economic environment where people are encouraged and enabled to provide these things for themselves.

It is the equality of outcome that is the liberal definition of fairness that costs them so dearly I think.

In my e-mail awhile back I got a little essay that went something like this:

The young woman was fervent in her zeal to make the world a better place and in a discussion with her conservative father, she berated the Republicans for their greedy and selfish ways.

"How are you doing in school this term?" her father asked.

"I have a 4.0 grade point" she replied proudly.

"How is your friend Amy doing?" the father asked.

"Terrible," she answered. "She parties all night and almost never studies. She's barely getting by. She'll be lucky to pull out a 2.0 this term."

"Well," continued the Father, "Why don't you speak to the dean about sharing your grade point with Amy? If you give 1.0 to her, then you'll both have 3.0."

"But that would be so unfair!" she replied. "I've worked damn hard for my grades and she hasn't worked at all. Why should she be entitled to any of mine?"

"Welcome to the Republican party," the father smiled.

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Einherjar wrote:

Foxfyre wrote:
I wonder what Democrat values are. Does anybody know?

Liberty unless very good reasons exist for restricting it.

Social responsibility, securing everyone food and shelter at the very least. Raising minimum wage to a point which can sustain a single provider with a child.

Very good ideals, nothing to be ashamed of for any reason. But as Foxfyre said, the devil is truly in the details. Republicans and Democrats differ in the "why" and the "how", just not in the "what". A particularly good essay I truly enjoyed reading is here:
http://www.ornery.org/essays/2004-10-06-1.html

It's a little long, but it goes through and outlines several of the main reasons I am a conservative. The argument is not truly between Democrats and Republicans, but instead those who believe people ought to be pulled up to a certain level and those who believe we simply ought to throw a strong rope or ladder down to those below us.

Perhaps the most telling current policy/program which outlines the difference is Welfare.

Democrats traditionally wish to expand welfare programs to include more and more people and to further improve the lot of those on the dole. This isn't wrong, per se, but taking into account it's affect on society and government, there are plenty of (avoidable) problems:
-Two-parent families are given significantly less benefits, punishing the basic unit of society is never a good idea. Pulling families apart causes an incredible string of problems. It's well documented that two-parent families are vastly more socially productive and stable.
-Real work gives people a sense of purpose essential to a fulfilled life. A truly basic part of our human psyche seeks purpose. Sitting around the home with an able body (even if it is only partially able, there are handicap access laws and equal access laws and hiring laws and OSHA regulations, there is no excuse for minorly handicapped people) robs a person of their sense of self-worth, they are not producing or giving back anything, they have no purpose.
...to name just a couple.

Generally, republicans tend to favor welfare-to-work programs such as were instituted several years ago in California (amazingly). Such programs put deadlines on people on welfare, generally around 3 years, with odd-case personal checking by case-workers if there are circumstances which make this deadline difficult. These programs support the truly downtrodden while gently (and eventualy forcefully) urging them onto their own feet again. There are some people who just do not want to work and it is not societies fault or responsibility to care for them in these cases. Think of Aesops famous tale of the Grasshopper who fiddled all summer while the ants worked, then winter came and the ants, who during the summer had encouraged the grasshopper to work even a little, would not let him eat of their carefully stored supplies. "The world owes me a living" the grasshopper crowed. The world owes nobody a living except those who have first given to the world.

Therein lies a major difference between Dems and Repubs. I don't believe most of the campaign rhetoric that is spouted about person X from party Y wanting to take away the grannies medicare of other livelihood. Nobody in their right mind would want to do that. The difference is so much more subtle.

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Foxfyre wrote:

I think Republicans have the same values, but Republicans are less likely to make food, shelter, minimum wage, etc. an entitlement and are more likely favor creating a social and economic environment where people are encouraged and enabled to provide these things for themselves.

I think the whole point of having "securing everyone food and shelter at the very least" as your values is that you feel that food and shelter, at least, should not be withheld on the basis of who "deserves" it. Should not first need to be "earned". It is the sense that no man deserves hunger or homelessness, no matter what mistakes he may have made and no matter what lack of talent he may suffer from - and that any nation as rich as Einherjar's, mine or yours can and should afford to make sure noone does end up hungry or homeless.

It's like a bottom line. To leave it up to people's ambition, ingenuity and talents to achieve everything beyond that, from just a decent working job to a house with a swimming pool, fine. But for a country as rich as ours to allow people to go without food or shelter and maintain that its none of our business and just all up to them, seems heartless. You probably call it "tough love" - I call it the disappearance of community.

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That was a post worth repeating, nimher.

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Indeed.

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I agree, and I'd bet Fox does, too, that safety nets for people who have either fallen upon hard times--or become elderly or are mentally or physically disabled are quite useful and necessary.

The US provides healthcare and an income for these people. What we won't do is dole out a living for people who can work, but prefer to live off the government. Before the Welfare to Work, we found that Welfare was the "family business" for generations of families.

It is this that is unsupportable.

I agree with Fox. No one is born entitled to goods and services.

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i'm here to shamelessly gloat , i predicted the win over all , and correctly predicted every single state . But i would like to say even thou i am a bush fan the the liberals are needed , with out a couter balance to keep the right from going to far right , we would be no better off than with a liberal in office

So who's next Any ideas?
i just started a new thread for it

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Let me see if I've got this right. No one should have too little, no one should have too much, and the difference between those two points should be very small. Is that it?

Since that flies in the face of everything we know about human nature, I suppose that is why we need someone to decide what everyone should have, and then enforce it. Now what sort of government espouses that sort of approach to economics and society?

I don't think most Americans would vote for such a thing, but I suppose those superior beings who know whats best for us can keep on trying.

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Asherman wrote:

Let me see if I've got this right. No one should have too little, no one should have too much, and the difference between those two points should be very small. Is that it?

Who are you replying to, Asherman? Not me I assume ... I didnt say anything about "too much".

Hey, personally I actually happen to be one of those socialistically inclined folks who believe too much unequality can be a bad thing, but that certainly wasn't the point I was making here, and I'm sure it wasn't the point the others were joining me in.

Merely this: no human being deserves to actually be hungry or homeless. Not in a society as prosperous as ours. No matter how stupid he's been. And thats all.

There's few places in the world where a call for a basic minimum food+shelter standard is automatically construed to be a call for a socialist society in which "no one should have too much, and the difference between [the rich and the poor] should be very small". But this is one, apparently.

The incessant, apparently instinctual need for those on both of America's damned two sides* to continually put up straw men to use to justify one's own "side"s ideology is driving me to distraction. No one just reads what you write and responds to that. No, the response is 90% of the time addressed to some preconceived ideological boogeyman - what the other expected you to write. Projects you to be writing.

Trust me, all of you: 9 out of 10 times when what you are thinking can be prefaced by "Oh, so you mean that" - it is not true.

*(damned as in, the bipolarity of the two-party system in my view fosters these tendencies to perversion)

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nimh wrote:

Merely this: no human being deserves to actually be hungry or homeless. Not in a society as prosperous as ours. No matter how stupid he's been. And thats all.

yes.

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Asherman wrote:

I suppose those superior beings who know whats best for us can keep on trying.

depends on what your definition of "us" is ???

see party voting guide for more information. Rolling Eyes

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nimh wrote:

I think the whole point of having "securing everyone food and shelter at the very least" as your values is that you feel that food and shelter, at least, should not be withheld on the basis of who "deserves" it. Should not first need to be "earned". It is the sense that no man deserves hunger or homelessness, no matter what mistakes he may have made and no matter what lack of talent he may suffer from - and that any nation as rich as Einherjar's, mine or yours can and should afford to make sure noone does end up hungry or homeless.

It's like a bottom line. To leave it up to people's ambition, ingenuity and talents to achieve everything beyond that, from just a decent working job to a house with a swimming pool, fine. But for a country as rich as ours to allow people to go without food or shelter and maintain that its none of our business and just all up to them, seems heartless. You probably call it "tough love" - I call it the disappearance of community.

Well said, and , no doubt we all agree. However the devil is in the details.
We have all likely seen examples of the truly harmful exploitation of such public largesse by maladapted people, or simply some whose intent was to offend and injure the public good. For over fifteen years there was a shantytown of tents, cardboard shelters, shopping carts, etc.n the plaza outside San Francisco's City Hall. It was an unintended result of some sappy legislation "protecting the rights of the homeless". Aggressive panhandling, even robberies finally made this public place truly dangerous to even walk through. There was never a shortage oif public, subsidized, accomodations readily available for all these people - they just chose this manner of life. Finally a mayor with some common sense cleaned them out forcefully. He was pilloried for thei "heartlessness", but in fact he was protecting the public good.

I don't know of any country that has fully dealt with the problem of poverty. Moreover the physical standards for just what constitutes poverty vary with the overall levels of prosperity in the place in question.

Perhaps those countries that have dealt best with poverty are those in Scandanavia, and others in which there has been a very strong social fabric developed over a long period of time in a relatively homogenious society and culture. A side effect of this is that such countries usually don't deal well with the immigration of the poor of other countries. How does one strike a perfect balance here? Both, after all, involve the same question of the poverty of human beings.

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nimh wrote:

There's few places in the world where a call for a basic minimum food+shelter standard is automatically construed to be a call for a socialist society in which "no one should have too much, and the difference between [the rich and the poor] should be very small". But this is one, apparently.

Judging from my own discussions with conservative Americans, online and off, what makes that call "socialist" is the automatic assumption that enforcing this basic standard is the responsibility of the state, as opposed to the responsibility of civil institutions such as private charities, churches, and so forth. The leftist fallacy, in the opinion of the people who make that charge, is to assume that society and state are identical, even though we know since Thomas Paine that they're not.

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georgeob1 wrote:

Perhaps those countries that have dealt best with poverty are those in Scandanavia, and others in which there has been a very strong social fabric developed over a long period of time in a relatively homogenious society and culture. A side effect of this is that such countries usually don't deal well with the immigration of the poor of other countries. How does one strike a perfect balance here? Both, after all, involve the same question of the poverty of human beings.

True, there's a point for sure. I think the Scandinavian model works fine on most of the socio-economic topics liberals care about. But that was back in the 50s, 60s, 70s. As the world becomes ever more interconnected and population (as well as capital) flows of all kinds increase, thats one of the main things putting the system under pressure. Didnt have that problem back then. Now the left here does face an awkward moral dilemma of sorts: the more expansive, caring state arrangements might only be kept up if you keep the system relatively closed in terms of inflow from outside, to keep it from becoming unfinancable. Whereas if you take a principled stand on a freeer immigration policy, you might have to sacrifice the cosier (and more expensive) elements of of the welfare state's solidarity (in as far as they havent already been struck off).

Its not exactly an either/or choice of course - lots of compromises to be made, and a "noone should have to go without food or shelter" bottom line shouldn't be affected - but it's definitely true that there is a kind of crossroads here. Some in the Greens are rather bravely developing the argument that if we truly want to tackle poverty in the world, we will simply have to accept giving up a lot of our acquired rights and entitlements that now are shielded by Fortress Europe. Whereas in the Socialists there is a certain undercurrent that is definitely willing to limit immigration etc quite strictly, if thats what it takes to save the social-democratic welfare state. Like I said, lots of combinations and middle roads still to be found, but a political-philosophical choice of sorts is definitely announcing itself. I for one think its only a matter of time before a kind of nationalist left asserts itself - pro-welfare state, anti-immigration. I think there's definitely a market for it, if it doesn't exist yet it's mostly because of a lack of unscrupulous enough leftwing politicians to jump in that game.

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Thomas wrote:

Judging from my own discussions with conservative Americans, online and off, what makes that call "socialist" is the automatic assumption that enforsing this basic standard is the responsibility of the state

Sure, fine, so let them call that specific wish/demand a socialist one, but please without automatically building a whole straw man around it that includes all the rest of what they consider socialism as well.

You know the routine: "oh, so you say that social security must be reformed? Huh, you must want to privatise it all and surrender us to the co-operations, is that it?"; "oh, you want to limit asylum procedures? You would rather keep this country all white, is that it?"; "oh, you're saying we should have enlisted the support of a larger international coalition before going to war? You want to give the UN a veto on all our foreign policy, is that it?"; or, in this case: "oh, you say the state has a responsibility to keep its citizens from falling into abject poverty? You're saying that noone should be allowed to get too rich, is that it?".

Over and over and over it goes. My second example shows it happens here in NL too, but nowhere have I witnessed such a systemic, instinctual urge of two "sides" to always again rhetorically make the other side into that enemy image that so neatly reinforces one's own "side's" position ... it totally lames reasonable discussion beyond the your side/my side strutting and its one of the main reason I'm trying to stay out of the Politics threads a little more since the election aftermath (only thread I've repeatedly posted in over the last week is the Holland one). What's so hard about just taking the position or argument the other person is submitting for what it is and says, instead of fantasizing a whole wider "you must be saying that" around it?

Nebbermind ... not important.

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nimh wrote:

I for one think its only a matter of time before a kind of nationalist left asserts itself - pro-welfare state, anti-immigration. I think there's definitely a market for it, if it doesn't exist yet it's mostly because of a lack of unscrupulous enough leftwing politicians to jump in that game.

I think there are other factors in play. For one example, the lefwing politicians who are actually in charge know that they need immigrants to save the "pay as you go" pension schemes they wish to preserve. Some leftwing politicians may be naive enough to believe that you actually can sustain a generous welfare state and generous immigration laws at the same time.

Finally, some leftwing politicians actually are anti-immigration in what they enact, though maybe not in what they say. Here in Germany for example, the tightening of the immigration laws happened under Social Democratic Chancellor Helmut Schmidt, only a few years after his social/liberal coalition greatly expanded the welfare state. But I'll grant you that they're less openly hostile to immigration than the far right in Europe. It's more like: "Everyone can work here with a permit (but nobody gets a permit.)" Or: It's ok for Polish construction workers to come here, but it should be illegal for employers to offer them jobs below the union wage. (Knowing that all Polish construction workers work for less than the union wage.)"

There are ways of enacting xenophobic policies without making them look xenophobic, and the European Left is pretty good at it.

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nimh wrote:

What's so hard about just taking the position or argument the other person is submitting for what it is and says, instead of fantasizing a whole wider "you must be saying that" around it?

Because it requires thinking, as well as considering the possibility that one may be wrong. At least that's why I never do it. Wink

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Bush supporters' aftermath thread

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