Posted on 01/02/2012 7:39:47 AM PST by fwdude
Anyone?!
Can we even recognize conservatism anymore?
See post #44
Good luck getting a supermajority of Republicans in both houses of Congress, much less a supermajority of conservatives.
Ahh, you do not need a supermajority of conservatives to control the house or senate... all you need is 10% with the balls to form a caucus... let me explain.. the house and senate are usually pretty close to 50-50.... if you have 10% firm, nothing passes or fails without your votes.. this gives you the power to get anything you want on the floor for a vote... and the power to pass anything that makes sense... if not, then the liberal republicans lose everything that comes to the floor... would take gonads, but a 10% caucus would do it... that would be 54 congressman and 10 senators... that is a doable number
Cool - so what was that objective, solid, non-negotiable, self-evident definition?
If you support everything on your list, but believe Government should stay out of the bedroom are you not conservative?
If you believe everything on your list but believe that States have a right to license firearms, are you not a conservative?
If you've ever been divorced, can you be conservative?
If you've voted for an amnesty bill, can you be a conservative?
If you've ever changed position on any issue, can you be a conservative?
If you believe a living Constitution means one that stretches the 1st Amendment to cover the Internet (which it clearly does not address, literally) then you're not a conservative?
If you believe everything on your list, but are an atheist, are you a conservative?
The problem was nailed in post 12 by Migraine. There IS no definition of conservative, and too many paying lip-service to being conservatives aren't really that at all - they're closet fascists who believe "my way or the highway".
There is no place for someone who holds 99.9% of your personal belief of conservatism, for many here if someone holds one position in contradiction to their own - they're no longer conservative.
We should remember the words of a President who was divorced, union member and union President, who signed amnesty legislation, signed tax hikes, grew Government, and gave us liberal judges on the Supreme Court (not to mention never took up the "right to life" issue as a central theme of his career):
"When I began entering into the give and take of legislative bargaining in Sacramento, a lot of the most radical conservatives who had supported me during the election didn't like it.
"Compromise" was a dirty word to them and they wouldn't face the fact that we couldn't get all of what we wanted today. They wanted all or nothing and they wanted it all at once. If you don't get it all, some said, don't take anything.
"I'd learned while negotiating union contracts that you seldom got everything you asked for. And I agreed with FDR, who said in 1933: 'I have no expectations of making a hit every time I come to bat. What I seek is the highest possible batting average.'
"If you got seventy-five or eighty percent of what you were asking for, I say, you take it and fight for the rest later, and that's what I told these radical conservatives who never got used to it.
The great, shining beacon of modern Conservatism - Ronald Reagan - espoused the very thing so many here fight so hard to resist: compromise. And that's why I think so many fight against Gingrich and Perry - they've "compromised" and thus are no longer considered "conservatives". Sorry - that doesn't work, but relegates conservatives to a fractured, ever-shifting, internal-backbiting morass of permanent minority status.
The liberals and socialists have gotten as far as they have because they'll take the small hits, and small gains over the years. They'll accept incrementalism - and it's worked for them. Too many conservatives are unwilling to use the same approach, and the movement as a whole pays for it.
Wars are not won in a single battle, but by hundreds of thousands of small conflicts where you win a higher percentage than your opponent.
I learned a great deal from your cheesy post.
I have a new respect for cheese.
Seeing your line of what passes for reasoning, I'd bet you have absolutely no idea how contradictory and asinine this statement of yours is.
If there is no definition of conservatism, how do you apply any standard to those who you judge as not conservative?
By your own admission (by action and word), a definition does exist.
There IS no definition of conservatism.
There is actually a spectrum, and I’d say it runs from total State (liberal/socialist) to balanced (conservative - sometimes you need Government to protect the rights of the individual) to anarchist (individual and individual alone).
There are conservative positions on individual questions - right to life, keep and bear arms, fiscal responsibility, etc. But as a whole? Is there a definition you can point to? Is the right to life inviolate? Is the right to keep and bear arms ever to be infringed?
How about individuals? Is Newt Gringrich a Conservative? Was Ronald Reagan a Conservative? Is Ron Paul a Conservative?
A spectrum can be a useful analogy, but is an inherently flawed one because the inference to the natural principle deals with morally neutral properties, and conservatism DOES deal with morality - whether one wants to admit it or not - as does modern liberalism. That's why the modern notion of "political moderate" is so insane, because it posits that just the right admixture of Liberalism (in the most modern sense) and Conservatism as the "ideal."
Is perfect health, and the quest for it, somehow an "extreme" position to hold? Should we, instead, shoot for some degree of illness mixed with health to mollify a certain demographic. Is this tactic ever sane?
The tactic of holding to the perfect at the expense of moving TOWARDS the perfect - which is what many (and apparently you) espouse - is suicidal.
Will you answer any of my questions?
Was Ronald Reagan a conservative?
Is Newt Gingrich a conservative?
Is the right to life inviolate?
Can the right to keep and bear arms ever be revoked by the State?
The problem with this false dichotomy is that many of those who you characterize as wanting to move towards the perfect will be revealed for their true beliefs when/if the march toward the perfect is more fully realized. There will come a point when they will inevitably say that the position sought is becoming too "extreme" (the moment of conception as the beginning of human life, re-criminalizing homosexual sodomy.) Here we get back to the insane notion of the "moderate." What is a moderate but someone who wants to get a liberal idea reclassified as conservative?
How is it a false dichotomy? You prove it yourself by refusing to even answer if Ronald Reagan was a conservative.
Just a single answer - but you can’t, because you know that means “compromise”, and that’s not hoding to the ideal. So you dance around.
Was Ronald Reagan a conservative?
If you can’t (or won’t) answer, then it proves no dichotomy exists - it proves there are quite a few “conservatives” who refuse to accept anything but 100% ideological purity - and who, at the same time - cannot define the purity test they so vociferously insist upon.
Was Ronald Reagan a conservative?
Yes, Reagan was a conservative, with a very few flaws. But we are not arguing over a few debatable flaws with the current crop of candidates. Why do folks major on the pock marks when the cancerous tumors are running rampant?
That was awesome about the cheeze, but it would have been more awesome if the links worked.
Mea culpa! Mea maxima culpa!! I must have hit the one link that didn’t work. Nicely done.
Yeah, you’re right. I responded to a silly, pointless, diversionary comment, and I got a silly, pointless, diversionary response back.
Romney and Obama are vastly different.
Romney held a real job, Romney was a Governor of a state. Romney has a religion that isn’t anti-American, All Obama can do is run for office. I don’t like Romney but even I can see he is vastly different.
LOL! So are Obama and Carter.
So what’s not conservative about Gingrich, Santorum, Perry? You started this vanity, why do you think they’re not conservative?
What’s YOUR definition of conservative - it’s your vanity, lay it out.
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