Posted on 04/08/2008 7:02:06 AM PDT by njweave
Hi, I'm Nick and I am from Illinois. I'm writing on this page because I have been brought up to be very liberal on every issue dominating the upcoming presidential election. I feel like I kind of been brain washed into thinking this way and have this image of every right-winged supporter to be a redneck, gun crazy racist. Now I know that this is sure as hell not the truth, but the real truth for me is that I really do find it hard to agree with a lot of Republican ideals especially when dealing with illegal immigration and abortion. What I'm asking is for somebody to give me some things that you feel are very positive contributions the GOP makes for our govt. I hate the idea that I'm prejidice against right-winged ideals but I would like to have some direct input from somebody who is conservative and why they choose to be.
Or the other option is just to tear me apart for being a northern liberal...either one i guess is gonna happen haha
Nick
The wisdom of Thomas Sowell, American Economist
http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/t/thomas_sowell.html
Actually lowering the cost of insurance would be accomplished by such things as making it harder for lawyers to win frivolous lawsuits against insurance companies.
Balanced budget requirements seem more likely to produce accounting ingenuity than genuinely balanced budgets.
Both free speech rights and property rights belong legally to individuals, but their real function is social, to benefit vast numbers of people who do not themselves exercise these rights.
Capitalism knows only one color: that color is green; all else is necessarily subservient to it, hence, race, gender and ethnicity cannot be considered within it.
Each new generation born is in effect an invasion of civilization by little barbarians, who must be civilized before it is too late.
Elections should be held on April 16th- the day after we pay our income taxes. That is one of the few things that might discourage politicians from being big spenders.
Facts do not speak for themselves. They speak for or against competing theories. Facts divorced from theories or visions are mere isolated curiosities.
Freedom has cost too much blood and agony to be relinquished at the cheap price of rhetoric.
If the battle for civilization comes down to the wimps versus the barbarians, the barbarians are going to win.
If you are not prepared to use force to defend civilization, then be prepared to accept barbarism.
If you have always believed that everyone should play by the same rules and be judged by the same standards, that would have gotten you labeled a radical 60 years ago, a liberal 30 years ago and a racist today.
Imagine a political system so radical as to promise to move more of the poorest 20% of the population into the richest 20% than remain in the poorest bracket within the decade? You don’t need to imagine it. It’s called the United States of America.
It is amazing that people who think we cannot afford to pay for doctors, hospitals, and medication somehow think that we can afford to pay for doctors, hospitals, medication and a government bureaucracy to administer it.
It is hard to imagine a more stupid or more dangerous way of making decisions than by putting those decisions in the hands of people who pay no price for being wrong.
It takes considerable knowledge just to realize the extent of your own ignorance.
Liberalism is totalitarianism with a human face.
Liberals seem to assume that, if you don’t believe in their particular political solutions, then you don’t really care about the people that they claim to want to help.
Like a baseball game, wars are not over till they are over. Wars don’t run on a clock like football. No previous generation was so hopelessly unrealistic that this had to be explained to them.
Mistakes can be corrected by those who pay attention to facts but dogmatism will not be corrected by those who are wedded to a vision.
Much of the social history of the Western world, over the past three decades, has been a history of replacing what worked with what sounded good.
Mystical references to society and its programs to help may warm the hearts of the gullible but what it really means is putting more power in the hands of bureaucrats.
One of the common failings among honorable people is a failure to appreciate how thoroughly dishonorable some other people can be, and how dangerous it is to trust them.
One of the most pervasive political visions of our time is the vision of liberals as compassionate and conservatives as less caring.
People who enjoy meetings should not be in charge of anything.
People who have time on their hands will inevitably waste the time of people who have work to do.
People who identify themselves as conservatives donate money to charity more often than people who identify themselves as liberals. They donate more money and a higher percentage of their incomes.
Prices are important not because money is considered paramount but because prices are a fast and effective conveyor of information through a vast society in which fragmented knowledge must be coordinated.
Socialism in general has a record of failure so blatant that only an intellectual could ignore or evade it.
Stopping illegal immigration would mean that wages would have to rise to a level where Americans would want the jobs currently taken by illegal aliens.
Talkers are usually more articulate than doers, since talk is their specialty.
Tariffs that save jobs in the steel industry mean higher steel prices, which in turn means fewer sales of American steel products around the world and losses of far more jobs than are saved.
The big divide in this country is not between Democrats and Republicans, or women and men, but between talkers and doers.
The first lesson of economics is scarcity: there is never enough of anything to fully satisfy all those who want it. The first lesson of politics is to disregard the first lesson of economics.
The least productive people are usually the ones who are most in favor of holding meetings.
The march of science and technology does not imply growing intellectual complexity in the lives of most people. It often means the opposite.
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology accepts blacks in the top ten percent of students, but at MIT this puts them in the bottom ten percent of the class.
The most basic question is not what is best, but who shall decide what is best.
The most fundamental fact about the ideas of the political left is that they do not work. Therefore we should not be surprised to find the left concentrated in institutions where ideas do not have to work in order to survive.
The next time some academics tell you how important diversity is, ask how many Republicans there are in their sociology department.
The people made worse off by slavery were those who were enslaved. Their descendants would have been worse off today if born in Africa instead of America. Put differently, the terrible fate of their ancestors benefitted them.
The problem isn’t that Johnny can’t read. The problem isn’t even that Johnny can’t think. The problem is that Johnny doesn’t know what thinking is; he confuses it with feeling.
The real goal should be reduced government spending, rather than balanced budgets achieved by ever rising tax rates to cover ever rising spending.
The real minimum wage is zero.
The simplest and most psychologically satisfying explanation of any observed phenomenon is that it happened that way because someone wanted it to happen that way.
The welfare state is not really about the welfare of the masses. It is about the egos of the elites.
There are few things more dishonorable than misleading the young.
There are only two ways of telling the complete truth - anonymously and posthumously.
Too much of what is called “education” is little more than an expensive isolation from reality.
What ‘multiculturalism’ boils down to is that you can praise any culture in the world except Western culture - and you cannot blame any culture in the world except Western culture.
What is ominous is the ease with which some people go from saying that they don’t like something to saying that the government should forbid it. When you go down that road, don’t expect freedom to survive very long.
Would you bet your paycheck on a weather forecast for tomorrow? If not, then why should this country bet billions on global warming predictions that have even less foundation?
You will never understand bureaucracies until you understand that for bureaucrats procedure is everything and outcomes are nothing.
lol
First good laugh of the day..
Huh? You asked questions, but are encouraging another to find his own answers? I don't get it.
Hey, everybody ... I got an idea. Maybe this is just a troll, maybe it's not. Let's give "Nick" the benefit of the doubt here and instead of giving some of the responses I see here, try answering his question. If we've already got him on abortion an immigration, he's not far off. I little encouragement might bring him around.
There's your problem.............Stop feeling and start THINKING.....................
TRUE CONSERVATIVES KNOW:
- That government that governs least, governs best.
- That as government expands, freedom contracts.
- That government should never do for a man what he can and should do for himself.
- That societies are judged by their treatment of the most vulnerable; the aged, the infirm, and the unborn.
Free Republic Conservatism - from our founder Jim Robinson:
As a conservative site, Free Republic is pro-God, pro-life, pro-family, pro-Constitution, pro-Bill of Rights, pro-gun, pro-limited government, pro-private property rights, pro-limited taxes, pro-capitalism, pro-national defense, pro-freedom, and-pro America. We oppose all forms of liberalism, socialism, fascism, pacifism, totalitarianism, anarchism, government enforced atheism, abortionism, feminism, homosexualism, racism, wacko environmentalism, judicial activism, etc. We also oppose the United Nations or any other world government body that may attempt to impose its will or rule over our sovereign nation and sovereign people. We believe in defending our borders, our constitution and our national sovereignty.
OB1: Read and re-read these words of wisdom. Contemplate its meaning and its applications to your life. Come out of the darkness and into the light.
Simply read the constitution, that is the Conservative platform. You might also want to read “Atlas Shrugged” if you want to see where your liberal policies lead. BTW, liberal/progressive ideals match very well with Karl Marx’s positions. Liberalisism=socialism=fascism.
Do you preface your thoughts with “I feel...”?
If you can distinguish between a thought and an emotion then you might be able to discriminate between socialist (what you were brought up to feel and ‘believe’) and free principles.
Every lefty I know, with one exception, is a weepy, emotional prevaricator.
They also tend to be defiantly semi literate and easily confuse their, they’re and there, of and have, then with than and use phone text talk in all but the most formal correspondence.
Is that you?
If we disagree on a matter of principle such as amnesty for illegal aliens then am I “closed minded”?
Can you define situational ethics or moral equivalence?
Do you know who Che Guevara was?
Do you know who Hugo Chavez is?
Do you feeeeeeeeeeeeeel that Canada’s health care system is superior in most ways to ours?
Will you kill someone who is in your home and threatening your family?
Do you think it’s ok to take what little hard earned money I have and give it to someone else?
Are you willing to sacrifice and possibly die for your country?
What rights does the federal government have?
What rights are given to you by the federal government?
Should the federal government be the primary agent for social change in this country?
Is the Constitution a living document subject to reinterpretation through the lens of modern society?
Don’t skim these questions. Go back and reread them, this time without feeling.
There are a whole host of questions like these that are litmus tests. Undoubtedly there are better questions and I hope (not in the Obamunist sense) that others pepper you with a few more.
Unless you can separate your beliefs and thoughts from your feeeeeeeelings you’ll never be anything more than a tax paying leftist drone.
The Founding Fathers predicated our political system on intellectually involved voters.
NJ huh? Which exit?
Tell the truth or don't post at all.
Start by understanding that government poses a problem more often than it does a solution.
And Gun Nuts...
I see you live in Michigan too. Thanks for the new word. It comes in handy around here.
Tell me, young Nick, do you consider your life, liberty, and constitutionally enumerated freedoms precious enough to be worth defending, even to the point of death, from those who would take them from you? How about the lives, liberties and freedoms of those you love?
Do you place any value on the blood that has been shed on your behalf, to ensure the life, liberties, and freedoms you enjoy today have been preserved?
Do you believe in principles of limited government power, put forth by the brave men who founded our Republic when they wrote our Constitution?
None of these questions require an answer to me. They are merely questions you should honestly answer for yourself. If you are not sure, I would suggest you read what our founders wrote, and read what they actually said as they were writing the documents that forged our Republic.
Regards,
H-T
The Toons were the impetus for me, but it was the internet that really paved my way. Lots of info at my fingertips. No more depending on the usual suspects who had their own axes to grind. I think there are two kinds of libs: the ignorant, and the ideologues. I was one of the former.
I actually stole it from another FReeper, but I’m sure that they won’t mind. And yes it is very fitting for MI. I tell my fellow MIchiganders that we should work hard to export the MI economy to the rest of the nation and vote for Obama/Hillary!
Conservatives value individualism and responsibility.
Make the most of yourself and help others.
Liberalism depends on others and places blame.
They would take what’s not theirs and encourage failure.
Good luck and God Bless! - Steve
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