Posted on 06/10/2006 6:20:18 AM PDT by FerdieMurphy
Conservative Republicans held such hopes when Pres. Bush was heralded into office and the Republicans gained control of the Congress. That was then, this is now.
According to recent polls, conservative republicans are perplexed by the non-conservative actions of this president and the Republican-controlled Congress.
As I probed this latest confusion I found that I, and millions of other citizens, are f-o-s-s-i-l-s. According to Wikipedia Encyclopedia online, we are "Paleo" or "Old" conservatives. We are living fossils, 'about-to-become-extinct' hangers-on of the Grand Old Party which no longer appears to represent traditional conservatism.
The Republican Party in its essentials has been taken over by a mutation. Wikipedia describes this line of thought as "Neo" or "New Wave" conservatism. It's tenets are not really new, just enjoined by present-day politicians and citizens as the direction our nation should pursue. But it is contrary to many basic "Paleocon" principles.
"Paleocons" believe in the principles of limited government, limited spending and borrowing, limited intervention into citizens' lives, and states' rights. They also believe in restraint of foreign entanglement, a strong national defense and traditional family values
"Neocons" believe in an agressive foreign policy, empiric intervention in other nations to spread democracy, and global economic-trade policies. Weak on domestic policies, they lack emphasis on national issues. Their vision includes motivating our nation towards what I believe Pres. Bush's father referred to as the "New World Order." Include growth of government and overspending too.
Sound familiar? Now we know why the media refers to Pres. Bush and his administration as "Neocons." Many congressional Republicans belong in this catagory too.
The Republican-controlled Congress has acted and evolved in accordance with the mutant Neocon concept of overspending and overgrowing government, ignoring the burgeoning National and Public Debt approaching $40-60 trillion, most of it owned by foreign investors.
Recent crises and scandals such as social security, medicare, tax reform, earmarks, budget deficits, illegal aliens and gasoline prices gain the media spotlight for a few days or weeks. Then they seem to fade away, crammed together on the "we'll deal with you later"shelf. Always later.
My wake-up call came the morning I woke up to Howard Dean saying, "The first thing we want is tough border control, we have to do a much better job on our borders than George Bush has done." Though I knew this was blatant political rhetoric, it was shocking because I completely agreed with him.
Pres. Bush and the Congress have ignored domestic security of our homeland, borders and ports until it was raised by the people! But if I agree with a liberal democrat, that does not a democrat make.
It is clear that the Grand Old Party has evolved and mutated which leaves a large conservative group, the Paleocons, scratching their heads and wondering what happened? I, for one, feel isolated from the GOP. The Party has entombed the Paleocons on the sidelines, bleached fossils, puzzled eyes peering at the GOP's total embrace of Neo-conservatism.
There is excited talk about Congress gearing up and acting on a few issues before the upcoming elections so they won't lose voters. I've got news for them. They have already lost citizens like this old fossil, who have reflected on the last five years of non-conservative actions.
Where's the limits on spending, limits on growth in government, adherence to the U.S. Constitution? Where's the traditional values and seeking the good of the nation as a whole instead of the corruptive influence of special interests? Yes, there are a few "Paleocons" in Congress but they are not listened to nor even heard amongst the clamor of "Neocons" and "Liberals" calling each other names.
I am a living fossil as are million of citizens, which brings me to the point. Where's the party that speaks to my conscience? I am past that retort: "Oh no! you must vote Republican or the Democrats will win!" Oh Please! I say so what? Has it made any difference?
The Grand Old Party appears to have accepted this "Neocon" mutation, to move towards a world economy policy, open borders and the "New World Order." Why would I, this old fossil of white-bleached bones, vote for any republican candidate? No longer does the Republican Party speak to or for my "conscience."
As for this Paleocon, I am searching for a party that matches my "conscience." This is the one freedom citizens still have in this country a citizen's privilege and responsibility to vote his or her "conscience." This old fossil takes this duty seriously.
Thanks!
Thanks... I'll take a look.
The article said that the numbers of the Crane district had changed during his career. It did not give a demographic breakdown.
Also, assuming a treason conviction, this stands for the proposition that the rogue Union regime had the disposition to bully Captain Nobody to seize his ship but lacked the intestinal fortitude to indict far better men than the Union cabinet and generals like Robert E. Lee and Longstreet and Hood and Stephens and Breckinridge and....
I suppose you will also defend Sherman's March to the Sea which deserved to be treated to a Nuremburg trial of its own but for the fact that the Union bullies won. Like many Conferederate sympathizers, I have zero ancestry in the Confederacy but every sympathy for it.
Finally, unless Greathouse was serving a hostile FOREIGN power in time of war, Lincoln's agents had no legal business interfering with his ship under maritime law. The blockade was an illegal exercise and the incident you reference seems likely to have been an act of piracy by federal revenue agents. The Union argument was that the Confederacy was in rebellion. The Union never conceded the sovereignty of the south until the south had been conquered and the Union acted opportunistically in massacring international law.
I haven't heard your answer as to how Congress's approval was necessary to the "re-admission" of eleven states which, according to Union mythology, never left in the first place, much less with constitution-changing state legislative acts required as a precondition.
I am also waiting your response to the specific language of the Ninth and Tenth Amendments which prohibited Lincoln's actions.
The Court upheld the Treason convictions, yes.
Theft (of the vessel) seems perfectly consistent with the left.
How so? And you are aware the South "liberated" an awful lot of stuff they never paid for either. Trains. Ships. States... so... Pot, Meet Kettle.
Bump. And that is only the start of the list. Their notion of wholesale catering to the left in a brazen triangulation scheme has backfired time after time, after time.
It went so far as to debase consensus on how...or even whether... to maintain party unity...
The Base put up with it only so long, and now the crowd in the White House is reaping what they have sown. The whirlwind is sucking them down. And they don't get it.
There is no such thing as "Political Center"...as Rush Limbaugh has long said. This a massive rejection of their obvious liberal world view....and the resultant policies and defamations they spew out.
Robert Novak caught sight of this, and advised the White House basically to wake up way back in 2002. What most of us never expected, and Novak himself never counted on, was that the current crowd in the White House truly are more hard-core Rockefellerian idealogues than they are pragmatists. As W has shown definitively...he would rather undermine the party than represent its values. He is at war with the base, as even Mark Steyn has hinted when he openly observed that Bush "wonders if he really does like the Base at all."
2. Admiration for Confederate generals will always outstrip admiration for just about anything Union. Lee and Jackson were among the very best men in American history. Sherman and Sheridan were not. Grant's best moment was his graciousness toward Lee at Appomattox. A lot more was necessary to put him in Lee's class as a man.
The states themselves belonged to their citizens' respectively (See Amendments IX and X) before and after secession. The trains, ships, guns, forts, real estate, etc. were given by the Buchanan administration to Confederate state militias and/or state governments not stolen by southern tax collectors. The family property of southerners of any and all persuasions burned and destroyed by Sherman were not freely given and not morally taken.
I am not going to waste my time discussing anything whatsoever with Whiskey Papa whom you have already pinged. Pinging him will be your way of informing me that your conversation with me is at an end.
2. Admiration for Confederate generals will always outstrip admiration for just about anything Union. Lee and Jackson were among the very best men in American history. Sherman and Sheridan were not. Grant's best moment was his graciousness toward Lee at Appomattox. A lot more was necessary to put him in Lee's class as a man.
The states themselves belonged to their citizens' respectively (See Amendments IX and X) before and after secession. The trains, ships, guns, forts, real estate, etc. were given by the Buchanan administration to Confederate state militias and/or state governments not stolen by southern tax collectors. The family property of southerners of any and all persuasions burned and destroyed by Sherman were not freely given and not morally taken.
I am not going to waste my time discussing anything whatsoever with Whiskey Papa whom you have already pinged. Pinging him will be your way of informing me that your conversation with me is at an end.
she is paleo too!
I disagree.
It is the distinction between murdering one's spouse and abandoning one's spouse for cause.
No. The distinction drawn is inapt. Rebellion doesn't require reciprocal invasion. Merely an attack on federal authority. Which was massively evident. And Lee invaded twice anyways.
I am also waiting your response to the specific language of the Ninth and Tenth Amendments which prohibited Lincoln's actions.
Perhaps no possible reading could bootstrap secession as a "right" into their meanings.
Amendment IXNote the highlighted text. Rebellions, which equal Secession, are expressly prohibited to the States and the People.
The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.Amendment X
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.
T'sk. I am always finding new information from his posts, and keen insight.
True only under your ridiculously broad definition of that term.
Paleos object to the use of the armed forces.
Paleos object to the use of the armed forces for nation building.
To them the question doesn't turn on whether doing something is in the vital interest of the US
No, to them nation building is seldom if ever so vital to the interest of the US as to justify the expense in dollars and blood of military force.
As examples.
Reagan was working towards a total change of the government of Nicaragua.
He changed by force the government of Grenada.
That is Nation building, whether or not you like the definition.
You can get a lot of "information" on US foreign policy from Dennis Kucinich or from Weepy Walter Jones (alleged R-North Carolina). There are those who think that Dennis the Menace or Weepy Walter have "keen insight." Of course, they are wrong on that too.
You're right. It was the Dallas School system PTA that invaded Grenada.
The CIA(and US military advisors) involvement in Nicaragua was cost free.
And of course Lebanon doesn't count because it was an exception.
How about the first Gulf War? According to the Paleo King, Pat Buchanan, that was a nation building project of the Amen Corner. Is restoring a previous legally legitimate Government OK by you?
Oops, make that two exceptions ... but Grenada was easily foreseen to be a quick operation not costing hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars.
The CIA(and US military advisors) involvement in Nicaragua was cost free.
Straw man ... I didn't say paleos thought nation building was never worth ANY cost.
And of course Lebanon doesn't count because it was an exception.
Reagan once signed a tax hike ... was he therefore not a tax-cutter?
How about the first Gulf War? According to the Paleo King, Pat Buchanan, that was a nation building project of the Amen Corner. Is restoring a previous legally legitimate Government OK by you?
Yes; if Buchanan thought Gulf War I was objectionable nation-building, I disagree.
So you agree with me. It's not a question of whether Nation Building is the American way, it's a question of whether we are trying to rebuild a large or tiny country as to whether you would agree.
The only legitimate criteria is whether it is in the reasonable American interest. Was Nation Building in Germany and Japan and.....Grenada legitimate. Why? where is it not legitimate? Why
What ever reason for either answer you give the conclusion is that Nation Building is as American as Apple Pie since the US became a world superpower. Where it should be attempted is the only issue.
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