jeffchr
Well-Known Member
i can't think of any off hand. i'm on-board with the major issues. how about you, any you agree with?
Conservative Does No Mean Christian.
- Thread starter RickWhite
- Start date
Stoney McFried
Well-Known Member
Hey, I've got a new game! Every time Rick uses his shiny new word "dogma",everybody has to take a hit. And go!
Johnnyorganic
Well-Known Member
At this point I would like to point out that there is a rather large gulf between the Conservative movement and the Republican Party. The latter was co-opted by the Religious Right. Many Republicans, Neo-Cons for example, are not Conservative at all.
And the Republican Party has bought into many Progressive initiatives and programs over the years. Although, in the wake of the Tea Parties, we're gonna hear the word 'Conservative' uttered by a lot of candidates and Republican pundits this election year.
They can say 'Conservative' pretty well, but it's a sham. Even if they were to espouse concepts like 'liberty' and 'freedom' it would be nothing but lip service.
The Republicans would do themselves a great service by taking the Democrat's approach to religion.
And the Republican Party has bought into many Progressive initiatives and programs over the years. Although, in the wake of the Tea Parties, we're gonna hear the word 'Conservative' uttered by a lot of candidates and Republican pundits this election year.
They can say 'Conservative' pretty well, but it's a sham. Even if they were to espouse concepts like 'liberty' and 'freedom' it would be nothing but lip service.
The Republicans would do themselves a great service by taking the Democrat's approach to religion.
abe23
Active Member
Well said, Johnny. To me, the religious right is what fucked up the republican party....when conservatives make that many compromises in order to woo over the christian crazies, they often end up looking like hypocrites. "Liberty, individual responsibility, but don't grow pot or have abortions" is a tough message to sell. The same thing happens on the left to some extent, with the unions and other interest groups, but not quite to the same degree.
If the republicans went back to the rockafeller, bill buckley types who actually had well thought-out policy positions and a clear, properly articulated message, I would actually feel like I had real choice when voting. But the republican party has been taken over by these religious hypocrites, hawkish neocons who have no respect for civil liberties or diplomacy and hateful, angry people in general, so the choice becomes really easy for me. The fact that most republicans consider me a criminal who wants to poison their children with pot doesn't help either...
If the republicans went back to the rockafeller, bill buckley types who actually had well thought-out policy positions and a clear, properly articulated message, I would actually feel like I had real choice when voting. But the republican party has been taken over by these religious hypocrites, hawkish neocons who have no respect for civil liberties or diplomacy and hateful, angry people in general, so the choice becomes really easy for me. The fact that most republicans consider me a criminal who wants to poison their children with pot doesn't help either...
FlyLikeAnEagle
Well-Known Member
Couldnt agree with you more JohnnyO. I actually agree with a lot of the old time conservative views but it is the hijacking of this new republican party by the religious right and the hypocrisy by some of them that gets me. They are certainly not doing the party any favors.
RickWhite
Well-Known Member
I too would like to show the religious right the door. Religion should never be brought into politics and I feel doing so undermines ones credibility. Intelligent people should be able to make their case logically. I have yet to see a particularly sound, non-religious argument in favor of making abortion illegal and I think this position is harmful to Conservatives. In most cases, I would argue that abortion is a stupid decision and that if women could see the issue with perfect clarity they would seldom choose it. However, there are cases in which it may be preferable to the alternative. Growing up just outside of Detroit I have seen things most can not even imagine and I can only believe that abortion is the better choice in some instances. Unpleasant as it may be, outlawing it is just too much of an intrusion into people's private lives and I have not heard a compelling argument to do so.
As far as neocons being hateful and all that other nonsense, that horse has been beat to death.
As far as neocons being hateful and all that other nonsense, that horse has been beat to death.
ChChoda
Well-Known Member
You're full of it John. Always have been. You would like nothing more than to see the hobbling of the Republican party, so that you could play the erudite moderate philosopher king roll from here to your eternity.
The Republican party IS the home to people of religious faith, AND conservatives. It has been so since it's inception. The Rockefeller Republicans, like John, can't stomach that. So, they try to do what leftists have tried to do to the institution of marriage. They try and so distort, so waterdown the original concept, that it no longer has any substantive foundation. It's what John does on the abortion issue, too. "It's not about life, it's about privacy!"
Republicans, and conservatives, embrace people of faith for the same reason they embrace people without faith. Because their ideology is based on the belief that this is a great nation among nations. They believe that the Constitution holds the answers to our dilemmas, and that demagogues, like John, can speak freely, but should never hold the reigns of power for long.
The Republican party needs nothing more than a major pruning and some time to grow. And it will once more be the promise of freedom it was founded to support.
RickWhite
Well-Known Member
Faith, also is centered on the notions of responsibility, personal integrity and ownership of the consequences of our own choices. There are things Conservatives deeply believe in and Liberals fear most.
No Liberal ever wants their conduct judged or their lifestyle called into question, and they certainly don't want their freedom curtailed by responsibility or concern for consequences.
I am reminded of the scene in the Austin Powers movie when he is thawed out and says something along the lines of, "as long as we are free to experiment with drugs and have unprotected sex in a consequence free environment I am all for it." The line was an obvious jab at the folly of the hippies that were the root of modern progressivism.
No Liberal ever wants their conduct judged or their lifestyle called into question, and they certainly don't want their freedom curtailed by responsibility or concern for consequences.
I am reminded of the scene in the Austin Powers movie when he is thawed out and says something along the lines of, "as long as we are free to experiment with drugs and have unprotected sex in a consequence free environment I am all for it." The line was an obvious jab at the folly of the hippies that were the root of modern progressivism.
Johnnyorganic
Well-Known Member
It's simply amazing how you know my mind so well.You're full of it John. Always have been. You would like nothing more than to see the hobbling of the Republican party, so that you could play the erudite moderate philosopher king roll from here to your eternity.
The Republican party IS the home to people of religious faith, AND conservatives. It has been so since it's inception. The Rockefeller Republicans, like John, can't stomach that. So, they try to do what leftists have tried to do to the institution of marriage. They try and so distort, so waterdown the original concept, that it no longer has any substantive foundation. It's what John does on the abortion issue, too. "It's not about life, it's about privacy!"
Republicans, and conservatives, embrace people of faith for the same reason they embrace people without faith. Because their ideology is based on the belief that this is a great nation among nations. They believe that the Constitution holds the answers to our dilemmas, and that demagogues, like John, can speak freely, but should never hold the reigns of power for long.
The Republican party needs nothing more than a major pruning and some time to grow. And it will once more be the promise of freedom it was founded to support.
For the record, I am personally against abortion, smart guy, but I understand it is a Constitutional issue of privacy just as the Supreme Court did. There is no contradiction there. I prefer the rule of law to the rule of the mob, or the rule of the Papacy.
I am not a Rockefeller Republican. In fact I am not a Republican at all. When I was a Republican I was a Goldwater Republican. But I did not abandon the Republican party, it abandoned me.
If I am a demagogue as you seem to think, I am a demagogue for liberty and freedom. I suppose I am a Constitutional Demagogue according to you. Unfortunately your pea brain will never recognize the contradiction there.
Modern Republicans represent few Conservative principles I can recognize. Republicans happily trample the Constitution right along with the Democrats whenever it suits them.
You choose to dismiss the Constitution. So spare me your lectures on what it means to be a Conservative.
ChChoda
Well-Known Member
It's simply amazing how you know my mind so well.
For the record, I am personally against abortion, smart guy, but I understand it is a Constitutional issue of privacy just as the Supreme Court did.
Goldwater? How far you've strayed, John...
Why don't I let a conservative set you straight John...
excerpt-
REHNQUIST, J., Dissenting Opinion
SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES
410 U.S. 113
Roe v. Wade
APPEAL FROM THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE NORTHERN DISTRICT OF TEXAS
No. 70-18 Argued: December 13, 1971 --- Decided: January 22, 1973 MR. JUSTICE REHNQUIST, dissenting.
The Court's opinion brings to the decision of this troubling question both extensive historical fact and a wealth of legal scholarship. While the opinion thus commands my respect, I find myself nonetheless in fundamental disagreement with those parts of it that invalidate the Texas statute in question, and therefore dissent.
http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/historics/USSC_CR_0410_0113_ZD.html
ChChoda
Well-Known Member
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Blackmun
This guy's path is the path you're on, John.
http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/historics/USSC_CR_0410_0113_ZO.html
BLACKMUN, J., Opinion of the Court
SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES
410 U.S. 113
Roe v. Wade
Early years on the Supreme Court
Blackmun, a lifelong Republican, was expected to adhere to a conservative interpretation of the Constitution. The Court's Chief Justice at the time, Warren Burger, a long-time friend of Blackmun's and best man at his wedding, had recommended Blackmun for the job to Nixon. The two were often referred to as the "Minnesota Twins" (a reference to the baseball team, the Minnesota Twins) because of their common history in Minnesota and because they so often voted together. Indeed, Blackmun voted with Burger in 87.5 percent of the closely-divided cases during his first five terms (1970 to 1975), and with Brennan, the Court's leading liberal, in only 13 percent. In 1972 Blackmun joined Burger and the other two Nixon appointees to the Court in dissenting from the Furman v. Georgia decision that invalidated all capital punishment laws then in force in the United States, and in 1976 he voted to reinstate the death penalty in Gregg v. Georgia, even the mandatory death penalty statutes, although in both instances he indicated his personal opinion of its shortcomings as a policy. Blackmun, however, insisted his political opinions should have no bearing on the death penalty's constitutionality.
That began to change, however, between 1975 and 1980, by which time Blackmun was joining Brennan in 54.5 percent of the divided cases, and Burger in 45.5 percent. Shortly after Blackmun dissented in Rizzo v. Goode (1976), William Kunstler embraced him and "welcom[ed] him to the company of the 'liberals and the enlightened.'" During the final five years that Blackmun and Burger served together, Blackmun joined Brennan in 70.6 percent of the close cases, and Burger in only 32.4 percent.
Transition to the left
After Roe, Blackmun began to drift away from the influence of Chief Justice Warren Burger to increasingly side with liberal Justice William J. Brennan in finding constitutional protection for unenumerated individual rights. For example, Blackmun wrote a blistering dissent to the Court's opinion in 1986's Bowers v. Hardwick, denying constitutional protection to homosexual sodomy (Burger wrote a concurring opinion in Bowers in which he said, "To hold that the act of homosexual sodomy is somehow protected as a fundamental right would be to cast aside millennia of moral teaching.") Burger and Blackmun drifted apart, and as the years passed, their lifelong friendship degenerated into a hostile and contentious relationship.
From the 1981 term through the 1985 term, Blackmun voted with Brennan 77.6 percent of the time, and with Thurgood Marshall 76.1%. From 1986 to 1990, his rate of agreement with the two most liberal justices was 97.1% and 95.8%.
Blackmun's judicial philosophy increasingly seemed guided by Roe, even in areas where Roe was not directly applicable. His concurring opinion in 1981's Michael M. v. Superior Court, a case that upheld statutory rape laws that applied only to men but did not implicate Roe or abortion, nonetheless included extensive citation of the Court's recent abortion cases.
This guy's path is the path you're on, John.
http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/historics/USSC_CR_0410_0113_ZO.html
BLACKMUN, J., Opinion of the Court
SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES
410 U.S. 113
Roe v. Wade
Early years on the Supreme Court
Blackmun, a lifelong Republican, was expected to adhere to a conservative interpretation of the Constitution. The Court's Chief Justice at the time, Warren Burger, a long-time friend of Blackmun's and best man at his wedding, had recommended Blackmun for the job to Nixon. The two were often referred to as the "Minnesota Twins" (a reference to the baseball team, the Minnesota Twins) because of their common history in Minnesota and because they so often voted together. Indeed, Blackmun voted with Burger in 87.5 percent of the closely-divided cases during his first five terms (1970 to 1975), and with Brennan, the Court's leading liberal, in only 13 percent. In 1972 Blackmun joined Burger and the other two Nixon appointees to the Court in dissenting from the Furman v. Georgia decision that invalidated all capital punishment laws then in force in the United States, and in 1976 he voted to reinstate the death penalty in Gregg v. Georgia, even the mandatory death penalty statutes, although in both instances he indicated his personal opinion of its shortcomings as a policy. Blackmun, however, insisted his political opinions should have no bearing on the death penalty's constitutionality.
That began to change, however, between 1975 and 1980, by which time Blackmun was joining Brennan in 54.5 percent of the divided cases, and Burger in 45.5 percent. Shortly after Blackmun dissented in Rizzo v. Goode (1976), William Kunstler embraced him and "welcom[ed] him to the company of the 'liberals and the enlightened.'" During the final five years that Blackmun and Burger served together, Blackmun joined Brennan in 70.6 percent of the close cases, and Burger in only 32.4 percent.
Transition to the left
After Roe, Blackmun began to drift away from the influence of Chief Justice Warren Burger to increasingly side with liberal Justice William J. Brennan in finding constitutional protection for unenumerated individual rights. For example, Blackmun wrote a blistering dissent to the Court's opinion in 1986's Bowers v. Hardwick, denying constitutional protection to homosexual sodomy (Burger wrote a concurring opinion in Bowers in which he said, "To hold that the act of homosexual sodomy is somehow protected as a fundamental right would be to cast aside millennia of moral teaching.") Burger and Blackmun drifted apart, and as the years passed, their lifelong friendship degenerated into a hostile and contentious relationship.
From the 1981 term through the 1985 term, Blackmun voted with Brennan 77.6 percent of the time, and with Thurgood Marshall 76.1%. From 1986 to 1990, his rate of agreement with the two most liberal justices was 97.1% and 95.8%.
Blackmun's judicial philosophy increasingly seemed guided by Roe, even in areas where Roe was not directly applicable. His concurring opinion in 1981's Michael M. v. Superior Court, a case that upheld statutory rape laws that applied only to men but did not implicate Roe or abortion, nonetheless included extensive citation of the Court's recent abortion cases.
SeanIzen
Active Member
and for those who don't get it, mostly liberals trust me, there is no such thing as a consequence free environment!
Health care for all?! - depleted bank account for all!!
"stimulating" the economy back - almost matching Bush's 8 year debt in only one year!
Calling the patriot act a "shotty piece of legislature" during your campaign - asking for a 4 year extension on the right stripping bill after he's elected....
I think if everyone were to read an issue in politics like free health care then turn around and read the opposing parties article on the issue, we might be able to see eye to eye a lot better. The problem is that the media coverage of an issue on two different channels, say FOX and CNN, has amazing holes on both sides. This leaves the liberal going "how can they think that?!" and the conservative saying "how can they think that?!"
AND THAT'S RIGHT WHERE THEY WANT US!!! ARGUING ABOUT PETTY ISSUES BASED OFF OF MISINFORMATION ON BOTH SIDES WHILE THEY PUSH THEIR OWN AGENDA DESPITE PUBLIC APPROVAL
Johnnyorganic
Well-Known Member
There you go again.
I disagree with Blackmun's dissention on the invalidation of the Death Penalty. I am personally against all killing.
But the SCOTUS reversed that decision in 1976, if I recall correctly. They ruled it Constitutional after all. So regardless of my personal feelings on the subject, I have no choice but to accept it. But that does not mean I have to like it.
You see how that works?
Objectivity. It evades you.
ChChoda
Well-Known Member
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Rehnquist
Unfortunately, more than a century of decisions under this Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment have produced .... a syndrome wherein this Court seems to regard the Equal Protection Clause as a cat-o'-nine-tails to be kept in the judicial closet as a threat to legislatures which may, in the view of the judiciary, get out of hand and pass "arbitrary", "illogical", or "unreasonable" laws. Except in the area of the law in which the Framers obviously meant it to applyclassifications based on race or on national origin, the first cousin of racethe Court's decisions can fairly be described as an endless tinkering with legislative judgments, a series of conclusions unsupported by any central guiding principle.
Unfortunately, more than a century of decisions under this Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment have produced .... a syndrome wherein this Court seems to regard the Equal Protection Clause as a cat-o'-nine-tails to be kept in the judicial closet as a threat to legislatures which may, in the view of the judiciary, get out of hand and pass "arbitrary", "illogical", or "unreasonable" laws. Except in the area of the law in which the Framers obviously meant it to applyclassifications based on race or on national origin, the first cousin of racethe Court's decisions can fairly be described as an endless tinkering with legislative judgments, a series of conclusions unsupported by any central guiding principle.
ChChoda
Well-Known Member
Johnnyorganic
Well-Known Member
Really?
Subjective is supporting the killing of some (convicts), but opposing the killing of others (the unborn). Or vice versa.
Objective is opposing all killing. Yet accepting both because they have been ruled Constitutional.
It amuses me to no end that I must explain that to you.
ChChoda
Well-Known Member
Subjectivity is thinking that your thoughts and feeling feelings are pertinent, when they are not.
I, me, my... The mantra of a introspective statist.
Johnnyorganic
Well-Known Member
You made this about me by comparing me to Justice Blackmun.Subjectivity is thinking that your thoughts and feeling feelings are pertinent, when they are not.
Carping about it at this point is a little puerile, doncha think?