Come GWJ conservatives, we must chat

Wired, that was just a joking way to hint at my point, that's all. Not snark, not implying... I don't know what that might have implied. Sigh.

My point is that the Reformation seems to me to have *increased* religious strife in the West, and thus political strife and even warfare. But that's for another thread. Please don't read more into it.

Not sure if you are just joking, but I'd say an institution that burned people at the stake for translating the Bible into the common language in a pure attempt to hold on the the power and corruption it afforded them was a bad thing, especially when they had twisted the method of salvation in said Book from a free gift to all, regardless of race, sex or nationality into a series of fundraising ploys and overcomplicated rules and regulations.

Yes, that's also true. But in my view, the opening wide of biblical interpretation to whatever someone wants to read into it is a bigger problem. It was inevitable in many ways, but it was also quite harmful over time, much more so than a period of burning witches. We can take that to another thread if you like.

I'm sorry for the derail; I didn't think that observation was quite so contentious, and I didn't mean anything against Wired in my response to him.

Can we end the derail with the acknowledgement that the burning of witches was both a Protestant AND Catholic thing, that in fact the common idea of the Middle Ages as when all the backwards and ignorant things happened and then it was all sunshine and roses once the Renaissance hit is a big crock, that while we're on the subject, it should be noted that the period for burning witches actually coincides with the Reformation?

My problem these days is that I don't really fit into any group. 10 years ago I would have labeled myself a conservative... but these days I don't really find much alignment.

1. I believe in the American ideal of the meritocracy. I think that exceptional people should be able to achieve exceptional rewards.
2. I also believe that the duty of a just society is to ensure that food, shelter, healthcare, and education are covered for all citizens as a top priority.
3. I believe in the rule of law, that without government oversight that bad people will take advantage of the weak.
4. However I am chagrined that the current US legal system is skewed towards favoring those with money. The threat of a lawsuit can unjustly change behavior.
5. I believe in the free market, but I recognize that we don't have one. Money and politics are mixed, law favors those with means, etc. I favor any changes that level the playing field.
6. I am a staunch believer in the concept that if what you are doing doesn't harm others, it's none of society's business. This covers gay marriage and most drug substances.
7. I tend to favor pragmatism over rigid ideals, and I believe that religions should be celebrated, but have no place in government.

fangblackbone wrote:

I am really appalled that we liberals felt the need to come in here and slap a reality check down.

I find P&C interesting because it gives me insight to the liberal reality. I read another message board on a nonpolitical website where the conservatives have beaten the liberals off it, and it is a crazy fun house mirror of P&C.

I want to vote for people that will take the best ideas from both parties and actually attempt to solve our problems. The partisanship is ruining the country (e.g. the fiscal cliff). We need real leadership, but quality leaders seem to be rare in politics today.

Greg wrote:

I want to vote for people that will take the best ideas from both parties and actually attempt to solve our problems. The partisanship is ruining the country (e.g. the fiscal cliff). We need real leadership, but quality leaders seem to be rare in politics today.

Agreed. If there's anything this thread has shown me, it's that when you can back off to 20,000 feet and take a look at what most people believe, we're all in agreement. I used to call myself a Libertarian, although now I have a hard time calling myself anything, there's too much grey area. In the end, what I know for certain is that neither of the 2 parties in power have our country's best interests at heart. I read things like bandit0013's list and think pretty much everyone can agree on that.

It saddens me even more that this kind of common ground never makes it into the discourse, because everyone is too busy rooting for their team.

I think the problem with the label of American Conservatism is that we have allowed it to be hijacked by lunatics whose aim is not to "conserve" anything. Talk about your fun house mirror. When icons of the Republican party and of historical Conservatism like Teddy Roosevelt, Dwight Eisenhower, and Ronald Reagan would be shouted down our primaried out of existence as "RINOs" or "Socialists", something has gone seriously and sincerely wrong.

I read this article in the Post yesterday and thought it pretty well nails the current mindset as well as the problem.

link

In the introduction to my book, I took note of a sick political culture where “facts are so easily twisted for political purposes and where strange armies of ideological pseudo-historians roam the biographical fields in search of stray ammunition.” That sentence is now cited on right-wing Web sites as evidence that I hold them in contempt. True enough, one of the few accurate things that I’ve read from them. I do hold some of them in contempt, not because of their politics, nor because of their dislike of Obama. Political debate and disagreement are the lifeblood of American democracy. No, I hold them in contempt for the way they disregard facts and common sense and undermine the role of serious history as they concoct conspiracy theories that portray the president as dangerous, alien and less than American.
Ranger Rick wrote:
Greg wrote:

I want to vote for people that will take the best ideas from both parties and actually attempt to solve our problems. The partisanship is ruining the country (e.g. the fiscal cliff). We need real leadership, but quality leaders seem to be rare in politics today.

Agreed. If there's anything this thread has shown me, it's that when you can back off to 20,000 feet and take a look at what most people believe, we're all in agreement. I used to call myself a Libertarian, although now I have a hard time calling myself anything, there's too much grey area. In the end, what I know for certain is that neither of the 2 parties in power have our country's best interests at heart. I read things like bandit0013's list and think pretty much everyone can agree on that.

It saddens me even more that this kind of common ground never makes it into the discourse, because everyone is too busy rooting for their team.

I guess the issue for me is we did get someone who would take ideas (whether they are the best or not is of course another matter) from both parties and actually attempt to solve our problems.

His name is Obama.

He basically took a Republican solution to health care, and put the Democrat solution of single payer off the table from the start. We whine and whine about partisanship, and then when someone genuinely interested in working with the other side shows up, we go 'meh'. I don't feel like we're rooting for the other team, I feel like we're rooting for team Mythical Unicorn. I feel like pretending the two parties are the same has become the way we absolve ourselves of responsibility.

Paleocon wrote:

I think the problem with the label of American Conservatism is that we have allowed it to be hijacked by lunatics whose aim is not to "conserve" anything. Talk about your fun house mirror. When icons of the Republican party and of historical Conservatism like Teddy Roosevelt, Dwight Eisenhower, and Ronald Reagan would be shouted down our primaried out of existence as "RINOs" or "Socialists", something has gone seriously and sincerely wrong.

One thing I'd say is that the Republican party wasn't so much hijacked as it was taken over by the golem it built. I agree Reagan wouldn't stand a chance in today's Republican party, but he did a lot to put the Republican party on the path to where it is today.

Maybe we could outline some of those? And try to avoid being overly verbose and tit for tat about it. (all of us)

We may have longer memories than most of the general population but that doesn't mean we have long memories, especially with politics when we have been bombarded with revisionism for decades.

fangblackbon, outline some of what? I'm unsure of what you're asking about.

CheezePavilion wrote:

I guess the issue for me is we did get someone who would take ideas (whether they are the best or not is of course another matter) from both parties and actually attempt to solve our problems.

His name is Obama.

He basically took a Republican solution to health care, and put the Democrat solution of single payer off the table from the start. We whine and whine about partisanship, and then when someone genuinely interested in working with the other side shows up, we go 'meh'. I don't feel like we're rooting for the other team, I feel like we're rooting for team Mythical Unicorn. I feel like pretending the two parties are the same has become the way we absolve ourselves of responsibility.

I think the bolded part does in fact matter a lot as to whether or not we should be cheering for him. On the other hand, I have never really faulted him for trying, nor do I think he's nearly as partisan or crony-centric as some of our recent previous Presidents and hopefuls.

That being said, the President is still just one man. It'd be really nice if the hundreds of other policymakers in Washington and the various state buildings across America would start following his lead in that regard. Every four years (and, honestly, most of the time between), we seem to hang all our hopes or anger on a single position in the great machine.

Bloo Driver wrote:
CheezePavilion wrote:

I guess the issue for me is we did get someone who would take ideas (whether they are the best or not is of course another matter) from both parties and actually attempt to solve our problems.

His name is Obama.

He basically took a Republican solution to health care, and put the Democrat solution of single payer off the table from the start. We whine and whine about partisanship, and then when someone genuinely interested in working with the other side shows up, we go 'meh'. I don't feel like we're rooting for the other team, I feel like we're rooting for team Mythical Unicorn. I feel like pretending the two parties are the same has become the way we absolve ourselves of responsibility.

I think the bolded part does in fact matter a lot as to whether or not we should be cheering for him. On the other hand, I have never really faulted him for trying, nor do I think he's nearly as partisan or crony-centric as some of our recent previous Presidents and hopefuls.

That being said, the President is still just one man. It'd be really nice if the hundreds of other policymakers in Washington and the various state buildings across America would start following his lead in that regard. Every four years (and, honestly, most of the time between), we seem to hang all our hopes or anger on a single position in the great machine.

Definitely. I think the important thing is to be honest about what our priorities actually are--maybe sometimes we *do* prefer someone who is more partisan, but also more in line with what we believe. Asking for real leadership sometimes means asking for a leader who is going to do things you don't agree with. I think it's far more realistic to ask for a leader who will take the okay ideas from each side, the ideas we personally might not think are the best, but still move the country in a positive direction. If we're waiting for someone who will not only be non-partisan, but will be non-partisan in exactly the way we would be non-partisan, we're not asking for a leader: we're asking for a Mary Sue.

Absolutely. Congress, the Federal and State courts, state assemblies... All these need to be de-partisanized as much as possible. We need to reverse the trend of splitting the country (thanks, Mr. Attwater!) and start getting people to think of the parties as providing options for consideration. Because we sure as heck have problems that need to be solved.

CheezePavilion wrote:

I guess the issue for me is we did get someone who would take ideas (whether they are the best or not is of course another matter) from both parties and actually attempt to solve our problems.

His name is Obama.

He basically took a Republican solution to health care, and put the Democrat solution of single payer off the table from the start. We whine and whine about partisanship, and then when someone genuinely interested in working with the other side shows up, we go 'meh'. I don't feel like we're rooting for the other team, I feel like we're rooting for team Mythical Unicorn. I feel like pretending the two parties are the same has become the way we absolve ourselves of responsibility.

I think the few things Obama has managed to accomplish are OK, but he has failed to do so much it's hard not to say 'meh.' His huge civil liberties abuses and continued spending in overseas wars pretty much trumps whatever small headway we may have made in healthcare in my mind.

Ranger Rick wrote:
CheezePavilion wrote:

I guess the issue for me is we did get someone who would take ideas (whether they are the best or not is of course another matter) from both parties and actually attempt to solve our problems.

His name is Obama.

He basically took a Republican solution to health care, and put the Democrat solution of single payer off the table from the start. We whine and whine about partisanship, and then when someone genuinely interested in working with the other side shows up, we go 'meh'. I don't feel like we're rooting for the other team, I feel like we're rooting for team Mythical Unicorn. I feel like pretending the two parties are the same has become the way we absolve ourselves of responsibility.

I think the few things Obama has managed to accomplish are OK, but he has failed to do so much it's hard not to say 'meh.' His huge civil liberties abuses and continued spending in overseas wars pretty much trumps whatever small headway we may have made in healthcare in my mind.

My question isn't so much about headway as it is about rewarding the non-partisan to encourage further non-partisans. If you feel that his civil liberties abuses and continued spending are too high a price to pay for non-partisanship, then sure, I get that. However, we should be clear about what we mean by our calls for non-partisanship: how many things that we disagree with are we willing to put up with for the sake of achieving that goal of non-partisanship. Just because someone does not have the best ideas in our opinion doesn't mean they don't have the country's best interests at heart. Just because we have policy disagreements with a politician, that doesn't mean those policy disagreements are because of partisanship. Some disagreements about policy are just honest disagreements, and not Team Edward vs. Team Jacob.

tl;dr: it's easy to call for an end to partisanship when doing so means politicians doing things we like. When our commitment to end partisanship is really tested is when we face the choice between a candidate that is going to do things we don't like but who is making things less partisan, and the politician that is going to do things we do like but will make things more partisan.

I'm all for folks like Dr. Tom Coburn, whose policies I generally loathe, reaching out to sponsor bipartisan legislature. But make no mistake - the Republicans set this division as a strategy over 20 years ago. It didn't arrive naturally (although it now has a life of it's own). One side *is* at fault here, independent of their policies, but also in a way that makes me question their approach to *anything*. At this point, if John Boehner tells me it's raining, I'm gonna stick my arm out the window before I decide to take my umbrella to work.

The media that helped bring this about have gotten to the point where they can simply create their own facts. That's downright horrifying, but again, it's not something that "just happened" or that "both sides created". And it's important to realize that we won't fix the bipartisanship problem, or the divisions, until the Republicans decide that division is no longer useful, or they are simply ground to irrelevance by the consequences of the circumstances they created.

So we have to look for either serious change in the Republican leadership, or the utter social and intellectual destruction of their current methods. Nothing else will bring real change (excepting of course actual national disaster.)

Maybe one of the reason so many Conservatives and/or Republicans are shocked by what has become of their movement/party is that there was a recent event that catalyzed trends that have been building in the Republican party--and winning them elections--for almost half a century. That was Obama's landslide. I remember at the time people talking about how the conservative movement was going to have to spend 40 years wandering the wilderness, about how the Republican party looked like it would be irrelevant for a generation. What seems to have happened is that instead of rebuilding on solid ground, the movement/party latched on to things like the Tea Party or brought Santorum out of mothballs. People started wishing Palin had been the presidental nominee instead of wishing she'd never even been on the ticket.

It got the Republican party right back into government, but at what cost?

but he did a lot to put the Republican party on the path to where it is today.

Sorry, this was the list I was talking about.

The reason I want to start that far back is because I think that is how far we have to go to unravel it. And solution that tries to short change that process will likely have a less chance of having a lasting change.

fangblackbone wrote:
but he did a lot to put the Republican party on the path to where it is today.

Sorry, this was the list I was talking about.

The reason I want to start that far back is because I think that is how far we have to go to unravel it. And solution that tries to short change that process will likely have a less chance of having a lasting change.

From what I've read, you have to go back to Nixon and Buchanan in the late 60s/early 70s. The mission was to unravel the New Deal coalition by turning them against each other. The attacks on elites, the use of racial animosity, and the push to appeal to the religiously conservative population even if their ethnic and economic interests lay with the Democrats. I did a quick rundown here and in the post a couple of posts below that.

As for Reagan specifically, he popularized the idea of the 'welfare queen' to appeal to the working class, especially the white working class in an example of dog-whistle politics. He's also known for saying that the scariest words in the English language are "I’m from the government, and I’m here to help." Of course Reagan actually governed differently from what his rhetoric would suggest, and it's true that today he wouldn't get near a Republican party nomination, but you watch something like this:

which sounds more like something from a Tea Party rally than the image I think a lot of old school conservatives have of Reagan. I wonder if a lot of those people looked at the way the Republicans were actually governing as opposed to the rhetoric they were using to win elections, but that rhetoric attracted and galvanized the groups that old school conservatives are now like "WTF--where did these crazies come from!" without realizing they'd been filtering in for half a century. Eventually, they demanded to not just deliver elections, but to have their say.

Eventually, they demanded to not just deliver elections, but to have their say.

I suspect the rise of the Tea Party has more to do with the pushing of a corporate-sponsored libertarian agenda than an inadvertent attraction. That is, the Birchers and the goldbugs and others came in via corporate anti-tax lobbying and positioning through funded think tanks and the like. They were not pulled in by what was then the Republican mainstream, but by what *became* the mainstream - the anti-tax, anti-regulation, corporate personhood, privacy rights above all others businessmen who were willing to bankroll the thinkers of the fringe into the center of the party propaganda in order to try to get advantageous business rules. It took time - over 50 years for the Kochs, and they were not the only ones - but just as Ralph Reed's army of committed believers routed the traditional social liberal arm of the party, the libertarian and free-market fundies ran out the Friedmans and the "government can function well" regulators in the Party. They hit the grass roots, equated individual rights with corporate personhood, tied it all in with property as the most important element of all, and in the process they reduced the remnants of the moderates to electoral roadkill.

It's no coincidence that the Tea Party was first publicized nationally by Rick Santelli, a business reporter who is also a former commodities trader and VP at Drexel Burnham Lambert, and cheered on by commodities traders in the Chicago Exchange. Pretty rarified grass roots indeed...

You know what, never mind. Junior moderation is bad. Forget I said anything.

MyBrainHz wrote:

You know what, never mind. Junior moderation is bad. Forget I said anything.

IMAGE(http://cdn.memegenerator.net/instances/400x/24160960.jpg)

MyBrainHz wrote:

You know what, never mind. Junior moderation is bad. Forget I said anything.

For what it's worth, you were absolutely right.

That makes me nervous, coming after a post of mine as it did. Is there a problem? Message me.

I think even Reagan understood that the Birchers and the Goldwater Republicans were just useful idiots. Unfortunately, they've taken over the party.

This thread makes me wonder if the Republicans are in any sort of position to introduce a new brand of fiscally conservative, social libertarian candidate after 2012. How do you distance yourself from what is now the most vocal part of the Republican base (i.e. those who hang their banners on social issues)?

Paleocon wrote:

I think even Reagan understood that the Birchers and the Goldwater Republicans were just useful idiots. Unfortunately, they've taken over the party.

What i'm afraid of is that this is proof of what happens when people only vote during the presidential elections and ignore everything else in between. At least that's what i keep telling myself. I cant understand how most of the current party leaders got voted in to begin with. Even in my district there's some that if i knew how crazy they were i would have voted against them.

This thread makes me wonder if the Republicans are in any sort of position to introduce a new brand of fiscally conservative, social libertarian candidate after 2012. How do you distance yourself from what is now the most vocal part of the Republican base (i.e. those who hang their banners on social issues)?

They can't. If they lose the social conservatives, they lose *everything*. Bear in mind, however, that the Ron Pauls of this world also self-identify as hardcore Christians, so it might not be that the two groups are exclusive after all.

I wonder if it perhaps a lack of awareness that a significant number of people not in their circle don't feel the way they do? I mean, up here in Canada, the Prime Minister is essentially an elected dictator. Our current PM is conservative, and has publicly stated that neither he nor his government will do anything to change the status quo on abortion (legal) or gay marriage (also legal) as the overwhelming majority if Canadians do not want it to change.

The only politicians in Alberta (closest Canada gets to a bible belt) That would even consider that are the ultra-conservative ones who.