I'm trying to be true to my purpose and not have too many fights about specific political incidents (though naturally I'm falling into it a bit anyway anyway) so let's just say if I don't respond about a point you made about very specific incident that's not meant to be ceding the field and saying I agree that's what happened. Fair enough?
"A conservative is someone who stands athwart history, yelling Stop, at a time when no one is inclined to do so, or to have much patience with those who so urge it." As William F. Buckley once put it.
Yes, I've seen that quote. I don't think an effective government can do nothing but yell "Stop" and still be doing its duty to its citizens, though. The truth is that there's always new problems, new crises, and old problems that have gotten bigger. The world is always changing. I hope and believe that there's genuinely room to solve these problems with competing conservative and leftist solutions. Every year there's a government where not much gets done, though, it's like not doing any maintenance on your house. You can get away with it for a while, even a long while, but then when finally there does have to be a maintenance project it ends up being a big one... and you might have done permanent damage.
That's not quite accurate. There's a reason most systems, including ours, don't operate on pure democracy, and in fact have explicitly anti-democratic systems set up to check democracy, to put some questions outside the reach of mere majorities. Those mechanisms of course have thier own fail states (that Texas law is the result of 50 years of fighting after one utterly lawless SC decision undemocratically imposed judicially invented rules across the entire country), but overall the intention was to create a system where major changes take sustained effort and engagement.
Yeah, but our system has a lot of veto points compared to most other governmental systems. I think Boris Johnson over in Britain is not a politician I agree with, but you know what, he has his Parliamentary majority and he can do pretty much whatever he wants and there's no hiding behind a filibuster or courts or not having won both an executive and a legistlative election. The American system can work, but it's sort of built around the idea that a lot of more compromise happens than happens in nearly any other nation's political system. And right now... that's a problem.
That's why I keep asking what conservatives want to do. And to be fair, I've gotten some responses in this thread. Most substantially in the form of links to tax proposals. (And of course, that is a very common liberal joke, that the conservatives think the solution to every problem is a tax cut. Sorry, and to be fair we were discussing tax stuff in context.) But like, there is so much anger and the conversation keeps running back around to what leftists have done or need to do or want to do. But I feel like there's a lot of liberals who could come on board if conservative ideas were presented to them as 1950's style guys with pens in pocket protectors, "Here's the specific problem and here's how this thing we want to do will solve it."
The liberal criticism is that conservatives have lost faith in the ability of government to solve problems, and I'm not sure I've gotten a lot of pushback in this thread to say it ain't so.
YOU are trying to understand, reach a compromise and work it out with us. Understand you ware the tiny minority. Your mistake is thinking people want to do that back and forth. I have noticed that is not longer the case, and the vast majority of progressives have taken the path of zealotry that it shall be their way or the highway.
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Sobek... thank you for taking the time to write all of that. All I can say is that from the other side, it doesn't seem like that at all. For every leftist extreme position or hypocrisy you talk about, I could get an essay written about how that's not how I understand my side's position. But I don't know man, what's going on in the world where our two points of view are so far apart? I'm sure I'm getting some echo chamber effect. I'm sure there's some stuff where the more extreme positions on my side are getting less play. But at the same time, I don't recognize the leftist movement you describe. I don't think I could be deceived to that extent.
There is an idea that a writer I follow floated, which is that we are being lied to by being told the truth. I'm coming around to it. Basically, the idea is in a country of hundreds of millions of people you can always find an extreme position or an outlier position that is the worst and most extreme example of the other side. Then you publish that position and it gets shared a 1000 times and it becomes the other side in everyone's mind. And mind you, this extreme example is absolutely true. But you're still hearing about the other side's worst.
That's why I try to concentrate on laws and regulations and shit. Because any fool, even a politician, can write a crazy op-ed. But passing actual legislation is skin in the game. And mind you, I understand that some of what you were complaining about is actual laws or at least proposals. Sure, sanctuary cities are the government doing something. But at least with that it's possible to go to the source and look at what it's actually doing and deciding how extreme it really is for yourself and what measurable effect it actually had on the world.
Part of the problem of finding the common culture is that the Left has been trying to destroy the foundation of our common culture. The nuclear family (Mom & Dad plus kids) has been in the targets of the Left for over a century. It's developed from some...interesting places I can go into if you like. Essentially, the Left wants to replace the family with the Government.
I see the "Left wants to destroy family" message so often, actually I think there's some truth it, but do conservatives understand why? It's not because leftist people are just bad or depraved or something.
I think there is at least a portion of the Left that wants to replace dependency on the family with the ability to depend on Government. And honestly, I can at least understand their point of view. I could got to a lefty forum and find you a hundred stories about people who grew up in a really shitty family or had a really shitty marriage or relationship, but didn't have a way to survive on their own. That is where, in my opinion, the project comes from. The idea is that people shouldn't be trapped with a family that makes them miserable, that if you're treated like shit you should be able to walk out and not worry you're going to end up homeless on the street.
You can still think they're terribly mistaken in specific policy decisions and maybe you should, but I hope that at least helps you understand the sympathetic version of the project. It's not that leftists don't want to get married and have children and stuff. Most of them do!
It's not that we're anti-corporate as Conservatives. Others have said that we love to see varied competition in order to develop better ways to meet needs. The problem is that some companies are SO large and in SUCH CONTROL (monopoly) that they are using their influence and money to get laws passed that place inordinate expenses in the way of small business that are trying to compete with these larger companies.
If I'm understanding the point of dispute here, you think leftists (and possibly conservatives too!) are being used as patsies to put laws in place that are easy for large corporations to comply with but difficult for smaller businesses to comply with, and that that is being influenced by the larger companies that see it as a way to destroy competition?
My reaction... this again seems like the "extra step" approach to solving problems that often fail to appeal to me. If companies are too big, break 'em up or tax and regulate them into submission. I don't get what's appealing about doing bank shots where we don't do anything directly, but instead just try to unshackle small companies and hope one of them will successfully compete instead of selling out to the big company once they can.
F-book would still be able to collect info on their users. They just wouldn't be able to get it from so many difference sources...Instagram and whatever other business they're buying at around 1 per week. They need to have 230 protection removed (not allowed to restrict user content), get diced up (separate the companies) just like AT&T and other companies.
Yeah, like that. I said this earlier, but I really do think there's common ground here. Leftists do not trust Facebook either, let me promise you. I know we seem to be temporarily benefiting, but we don't trust those fuckers and their algorithms further than we can throw them. I do take the position that we need specific social media legislation written, but I don't think you're opposed to that in concept, right?
So, really, why does legal immigration need to be increased?
Great for the people immigrating, great for us to have them as they produce a lot of innovations and start a lot of new businesses and contribute to social security and all that. Shouldn't the goal to be trying to figure out the maximum legal immigration capacity the US can absorb and hit that?
I know I might get a response that "we're already at that" but that's where public policy and trying to find some objective metrics we can measure fit in. Maybe try a number and the increase it every year, measuring employment and school attendance rates and ability to find housing, then level off the number when things start to dip downwards. That's just off the top of my head. Pocket projector with pens in it, all the way. It's got to be superior to "Congress randomly picks a number out of the air and then the President decides how much of that cap he wants to hit" right?
Go ahead and look it up...try and find a single representative that's got less money or even the same amount of assets as they did when they started. Then try not to be astonished when you see how much money they start 'collecting'.
Maybe we could make it illegal for congress people and their spouses to trade individual stocks?
Others have answered this one better than I could have. I hate to ignore you request and answer with “what about the left” but the right generally does understand the right and the left takes great pains to avoid understanding us.
Thanks for the reply! I wonder if the disconnect is that it's not so much what's actually being done as what we feel our leaders are directing us to do.
Leftists often feel we're told by our more moderate leaders how important it is to understand and empathize with conservatives. For every "clinging to guns" remark it seems like there are all these articles directing us to be patient and understanding and feel your pain and look for compromises and we're all Americans together. Maybe nobody actually does it in your experience, but it feels like we've been told to do it. Meanwhile, we don't see any conservative leaders talking about how important it is to understand that people in big cities are real Americans too and we're all brothers. I dunno, maybe it comes out in the more religious ones?
Wow, I barely know where to start. Our government is so big and bad and so deeply in collusion with big corporations that I’d need magical powers to even scratch the surface of my agenda.
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These are some very radical and scary changes being proposed. Even compared to things that leftists want to do, they're pretty extreme.
If you could really do these things, would you really be so confident to upend so much of the US? I think I'd chicken out myself. I'd be too afraid of all the unintended effects.
In abolishing the Department of Education, I would replace it with a National voucher system that could be used for private or home schooling.
I have to say, I have been astonished at the level of hatred for the Department of Education. I've had multiple responses telling me people want to get rid of it. What's the deal?
I get the idea that it's viewed as unconstitutional, but is just a matter of principle or do you actually not think it is or could be a tool to do anything useful.
I would essentially ban all immigration and work very hard to send back the illegals here now. Of cours,e that won’t happen, it’s it’s what I would like to see happen.
Immigration isn’t beneficial to most Americans, but even if there was proof that it was a net financial benefit, I would still oppose it. I would rather Americans be poorer with no immigration than richer with it.
A nation isn’t a line on the ground and it’s not a sheet of paper. A nation is a people with a shared culture, history, origin, sense of identity, and so on. If someone walks across the border isn’t make him or her one of my people. Giving them a sheet of paper that says “American“ on it doesn’t make them my people either, so I don’t put the same importance in legal vs illegal immigration. Immigration without assimilation is an invasion and that is what we have had in most of the Western world for decades and it will be the death of our nations and our civilization.
Respect for stating this position clearly. I don't agree at all, but respect for making it clear.