Conservatism

Most of Iraq is very stable. Only 14 of the 18 provinces are even contested. And as palerider once pointed out, 90% of the attacks are within a 50 miles radius of Baghdad. If we secure Baghdad (which this surge is currently doing) then we will secure the country. And since the media focuses on Baghdad more than any other part, when the Shi'ites leave (like al Sadr last month), they are effectively retreating from center stage.

Hey folks

Yup. one thing liberals suffer from that conservatives don't is their lack of understanding for the other side. I understand both sides. That's why I'm a conservative. That whole thing you wrote can I guess be looked at in a comical way but in a serious way, it lacks any small comprehension of why conservatives think the way they do which arrives them at their conclusions. Personally I think most liberals are tricked into becoming one.

Yup, you're right conservatives can definatly understand the other side, unlike liberals. That's why liberals fight for others while the conservative ideology encourages policies that helps themselves.

That's why conservatives are dumbstruck by the fact that there is an insurgency in Iraq which pretty much any liberal could have told you because they understand that most people don't like getting invaded.

That's why conservatives try and force their beliefs on people through law and policy while liberals support a state in which every person is free to determine their own beliefs.

That's why conservatives support ideas like the Trickle-down-effect where if it were to work it benefits the rich. But since it doesn't work it still benefits the rich and craps on the poor.

That's why conservatives believe that poverty indicates one's own failure as opposed to the result of a system that is prejudiced against them.

Exactly what is to be gained if you fight for the other side when the other side is wrong? It is the lack of understanding and foresight that make liberals the kings of unintended consequences. They fight for policy and time after time see that policy do more damage than good and then expect to be judged on their intentions rather than their results.

Conservatives are not dumbstruck. Moderates are. Myself and every conservative I know predicted this and suggested going into iraq with overwhelming force, establishing a curfew very early on and killing anyone in violation.

When I look at my life, and the rules that I must live by, the majority of them were put in place by self righteous liberals who believe that they know better than I how I should live my life. If you would like to compile a list of examples of liberals forcing their beliefs and conservatives forcing their beliefs, I will be happy to demonstrate exatly how wrong you are. Hell, here are a few examples of liberals forcing their beliefs on me right off the top of my head with no research at all.

Seat belt laws - helmet laws - laws that say that a business owner can't allow smoking in HIS OR HER own establishment - laws that make it illegal for me to carry more than 10K in cash - laws that require my bank to report me if I deposit more than 10K in cash - speech codes - laws that require me to get a building permit before building a structure on my own property that is more than 144 sauare feet - laws that prevent me from using my own property if it collects water from rain long enough to grow a certain kind of wetland grass - laws that prevent christmas displays - - - and the list can go on ad nauseum. There is a group that pushes their beliefs on everyone, but it is not conservatives.

That is support of a belief, not enacted law. Show me the trickle down law. Liberals support ideas like minimum wage which in effect, takes those who can very least afford to lose their jobs out of the job market because they lack the skills to be worth what liberals say they must earn.

Your good intentions are worth very little to those who lose their livelyood or can't get that first job because employers can't afford to pay all of the benefits that liberals demand.

There are very few living in poverty in this country whose poverty can't be traced back to their own foolish choices and decisions.

everything else you said before this was atleast somewhat accurate. but then you get carried away, and type this little nugget.

In 2001 the Census Bureau reported about 33 million residents living in poverty in the United States, or about 12 percent of the total population.

So by "very few", you are saying that about 30 million people are living in poverty because of their own foolish choices and decisions.....?

I only have two questions, Where did you grow up and have you travelled around the country much? Because the above statement is one of the most ignorant things i've read on these boards.

I didn't grow up in any one place. My dad's profession reqired that we move every 4 to 6 years. And yes, I have lived in 23 states and there is only one that I have not visited.

Further, I stand by my position that in this country, if you are living in poverty, it is, in all likelyhood, due to your own bad decisions and or foolish actions.

Not necessarily - sometimes yes, sometimes no. It's a bad idea to generalize. I've lived on both sides of the poverty issue. There was a good book I read looking at the complexity of poverty in America (without making judgements) - looking at geography, towns, following individual families and people, employers, employees and their skills and work ethics (or lack of them), and programs. It was called something like "The working poor in America". The problem is both Liberals and Conservatives tend to generalize when it comes to poverty.

You're right -- liberals do talk more about helping others, but that's where their sympathy for others end. Conservatives (especially Christians) are more charitable than liberals (as results from a study last year indicate). The reason for this is that liberals, contrary to their title, believe in big government, and thus, see it as the government's job to help everyone.

Conservatives believe in the sovereignty of the individual, and the virtues of self-reliance and personal responsibility where they are free to chose for themselves whether or not they wish to be charitable.

Dumbstuck? And who's being invaded? We removed their dictator, gave them free elections, countless personal liberties, and many other freedom which the vast majority of the population cherishes. The U.S. wants to get the hell out of there ASAP. We're certainly not invading or occupying.

Liberals however, are fearful of armed conflict and wish to surrender the a fraction of the population that remains loyal to Saddam or to the Islamic cause.

Wrong. Our schools are the battleground for political indoctrination and liberals control this front overwhelmingly. The other battleground? The media.

Liberals are in control of the means to try and force beliefs on people, so it is absurd to suggest that conservatives even have the capability to force their beliefs on people.

Liberals hate opposition and debate. If they had their way, the U.S. would be a 1 party system.

You clearly don't know a whole lot about conservative economics. The trickle-down is meant to use the rich as a vehicle for benefitting the poor.

And here's the fundamental difference. Liberals hate taking responsibility. It's always the fault of "the system" or "the man". It's never the individuals fault. They're not rich? Well obviously the system is prejudiced against them.

The system might be prejudiced against laziness, but not much else.

There's not really much of a difference. With conservatives, it's always the fault of the liberals.

Well now, there's a difference. That's because it always is the liberals' fault.

Yes we invaded Iraq. And no, we didn't come to bring them democracy or Big Gulps or Get Smart reruns or whatever. We invaded their country and occupied their cities and put their old enemies in power, just because we were pissed off after 9/ll and it seemed like a good way to let off steam and corner the market on some cheap oil while we were at it. We weren't there to liberate anybody, and we shouldn't have expected the whole rose-petal parade treatment. You dumbass, gullible neocons won't face the fact that we invaded Iraq, and invaders generate counter-insurgencies.

And all you need for an effective Counter-Insurgency is a few hundred urban guerrillas (with a much bigger base of civilian supporters). And the counter-insurgents have to have the backing of 100% of the local civilian population. So they're never going to run out of young men. And no overwhelming force short of neutron bombs will solve the problem. It doesnt matter how many troops you put into the country.

Which brings us to another very interesting question, the future of genocide and nuclear weapons. But as long as we're wimping around with this "no nukes" rule, there just ain't no kind of overwhelming force that can convince every testosterone poisoned Iraqi kid to join the Pepsi Generation. Consult your own experience, remember what young males are like? Remember high school PE? How hard would it have been to get those guys, Beavis and Butthead times 80, to plant a bomb or shoot a sentry if they thought they could get away with it, or better yet, be seen as heroes by their fellow countrymen? Teenage boys are the cannon fodder of any guerrilla war, and teenage boys are nothing but weasels who stand on their hind feet sometimes.

Keep that in mind when neocons and media types try to hand you our next piece of total crap:

Do you really think the Iraqi's want Democracy and peace and all that kind of stuff? No. In fact, HELL no! Look around the world and you'll see that people are divided into ethnic gangs, like the planet's one big San Quentin. All they want is for their gang to win. If they have any ideology beyond that, it's more of the God stuff, and you need Thorazine to cure that. Godfearing gangbangers, that's exactly what we ran into in Somalia, 1993. Half the population of Mogadishu turned on our guys who were trying to provide aid for the starving. They didn't want peace, democracy or any of that ****. They wanted their clan to win and the other clans to lose. And if stopping the aid convoys from getting food to those enemy clans was the only way to win, they were ready to make it happen, ready to die fighting our best troops backed by attack helicopters and APCs.

People are superstitious tribalists. Democracy comes about 37th, if that. Nobody wants to face that fact: we're tribal critters. We'll die for the tribe. More to the point, we'll kill for it. We don't care about democracy. And I'm not just talking here about people in tropical hellholes like Somalia, I mean your town, your street. Most Americans are the same as the Iraqi's.

Loyal to Saddam or the Islamic Cause? OK, lets wake up to some reality here. The way you love your country is way deeper than how you feel about the people running the country. I hate W., the little draftdodging oil-money phony, but if any foreign army tried to "liberate" the US from him, I'd die trying to stop them. Do you realize how your country is so much to you, even if you hate the ****ers running it, you'd sooner have them than a bunch of foreign troops.

And then there's the wuss factor. Getting 'liberated' means you couldn't handle the situation yourself, you're a pussy. I've sat through a lot of action movies, and I didn't want to be the girl who gets rescued, I wanted to be the guy who rescues her. Getting liberated is like getting castrated: maybe it was necessary, but you have a hard time feeling grateful. Like the French when we liberated them from the Nazis. They thanked us, but....

Occupations always go bad, because armies aren't nice things. They were never meant to be. Armies are scary. Armies are where you dump all the guys you hated in high-school PE, the ones who thought it was so funny when you were too fat to do the rope climb. Or they're the guys who got an option from the judge, "Either you go to the pen or you join the Army." Now you've got 100,000 guys like that marching down Saddam Street. Foreign thugs with guns who don't speak a word of the local language. You really think you'd be cheering?

Right about now I can hear all you angry patriotic types limbering up your typin' fingers to send me messages like, "Saddam was a monster! Any Iraqi who'd rather have Saddam than the US Army is a loser raghead!"

Well, calm down and try to think like an Iraqi for a second. The thing is, Iraq ain't Ohio. THEY AIN'T LIKE US. Why is that so hard for people to get? Saddam probably seemed pretty familiar, pretty natural and cozy to your average Iraqi. Like the editorial-page types love to say, "Democracy is not an Iraqi tradition." So maybe they never saw why Saddam was so horrible. Just like most of you out there don't think it's so weird that a couple hundred oil-billionaires from Bakersfield and Texas own everything in America. Everybody's life feels natural to them, and that goes for Iraqis too.

So children born into poor families with no means made bad decisions? Get over your self righteous self

Richer areas of the country attract more qualified teachers, investors, businesses, etc. Those in poverty do not always end up there because of choices. They end up there because that's where they were born. The biggest problem with "your" conservatism is that you think the country is a reflection of YOU. You obviously never experienced Poverty, having moved around a lot and visited all gut 1 state.

and Conservatives see it as the Gov't job to enrich the rich.

you failed to mention the 600,000 that have died since we "liberated" them.

really? that's like me interpreting the conservative position as wanting to carry out genocide against Islam in the name of Christianity.

What is the liberal control of education? Conservatives want god in schools because religion gives the conservative base the foundation to be followers and not thinkers.

Conservatism dominates the mainstream media.

Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell, Rupert Murdoch, please....

Actually, the results of that study are very deceptive. Conservative Christians give more to religious "charities" - ie, their churches, which are considered "charity" whether they go out and rebuild homes for Katrina victims or use it to build a new mega-church or buy a televangelist a new mansion.

I think overall you'll find little difference between the charitable efforts of conservatives or liberals. It's the individual, not the ideology, that matters.

Ultimately, you're probably right. However, when you look at countries that are capitalist in nature verse those that are socialist -- there results are too glaring to ignore, and this has to do with ideology, in my opinio.

Which countries do you consider socialist? For example - Norway is considered somewhat socialist (though still capitalist) and they are big charitable contributers worldwide.

http://www.vexen.co.uk/countries/charity.html

First: Foolish choices and decisions? Like being born in a poor neighborhood. Or being unable to afford a school that doesn't have a prevalence of drugs and weapons.

I spent an entire summer at a YMCA program working with middle school city kids and was amazed at their experience. These sixth graders had siblings in prison, friends who dealt drugs, their parents are treated like trash and these kids have to watch that (one kid's teacher called his father a 'vagabond'), they all go to public schools with metal detectors at the door because of the constant threat of gang violence.
Yes your right it's absolutely their own fault when they are denied the oppurtunities that are offered to those who aren't poverty-sticken.

Second: I worked at the minimum wage in my state for several months. At the slowest hours (in a movie theater there are not many people at 11:00 am on a tuesday) I dealt with atleast ten customers per hour. At peak hours I could deal with as many as 70 customers an hour. Each of these customers on average spent about $10. At slow hours it took 5 people to run the building, at peak it took between 12 and 14. Do you really think that one hour of a workers time is worth less than $7.25 an hour. Most workers will earn more for their company in ten seconds than they will earn themselves in the entire hour. To say that companies can't afford to pay $7.25 an hour is ridiculous.

Third: I'm not sure what you're talking about limiting Christmas displays. I don't know any law that limits someone's right to put those displays on your home or private property. Anyone who argues against that is no liberal. Also building laws are in place to make sure that someone just can't put a land fill in the middle of a residential neighborhood or something of the sort.

Fourth: the money limit is meant to combat crime, I'm not sure about you, but I haven't ever had to carry $10k around.

On Iraq. The majority of conservatives who I talked with claimed that there would be no insurgency, claiming that we would be greeted 'with flowers and parades.' I suppose this point was more between smart people and stupid people. Smart liberals and smart conservatives saw that there would be an insurgency.

Policy doing more damage than good is a constant in politics. That is not a liberal specific issue.

A: I am well aware of what the Trickle Down theory is. And while it's meant to use the wealthy as a vehicle to help the poor the fact is that it doesn't work. So while the policy benefits the wealthy whether it works or fails it craps on the poor because it doesn't work.

B: "it is absurd to suggest that conservatives even have the capability to force their beliefs on people." - Oh man this one is a gem. I don't think I need to say anything for everyone to recognize how ridiculous this statement is.

C: 'Who's getting invaded?' - I don't quite know where you've been but the Iraqis have been invaded. We established and organized their government and surpressed their media replacing it with our own. Sure we might eventually leave but we will certainly not have truly left. Especially with that beast of an embassy we are building there.
And as far as dumbstruck it seems that every member of this administration had no idea that an insurgency might develop.

D: "Liberals however, are fearful of armed conflict and wish to surrender the a fraction of the population that remains loyal to Saddam or to the Islamic cause." - I'm not even quite sure what this means...

I think TVoffBrain got it quite right. You rely on this straw-man version of liberalism that doesn't exist.

The decision to stay in a geographical area that is depressed is also a decision that can lock one into poverty. There are very few who are poor in this country whose poverty can't be traced back to decisons and actions that they have made.

Wasn't it liberals who believe that drug dealers, etc are victims and have instituted a revolving door policy with regard to enforcing the law with them rather than putting them away at hard time for a very long time for violating the law?

Haven't liberals established "understanding" policies towards gang members that have resulted in arresting and subsequently freeing them over and over rather than simply locking them away for a very long time?

A worker is only worth what s/he can produce per hour and your salary isn't the only expense associated with hiring you and if you think it is, you really don't know much about business.

It seems that by your own arguments, if one isn't a victim of his or her own choices and actions, then one is likely a victim of liberal policy if one is poor in this country.