I used to be a liberal.I suppose I’m complicit in some way of setting this nation on the quasi-socialist path it’s on. I came to my senses(so I thought) and came to the conservative side. I did so in time to see the Republican Party become Democrat-Lite.
Liberal and conservative mean hardly anything anymore because the party elites, the academic elites, and the media elites have been allowed to define liberal and conservative. Shilling for George W. Bush had nothing to do with conservative and shilling for Obama has nothing to do with liberal.
There are those who attempt to define conservatism on the social issues but that doesn't not work for me.
I am with Reagan, and once he went from being a New Deal Democrat to a conservative, he stayed firm in defining conservatism as limited government.
Bush and his Svengali Karl Rove took office in 2000 with a majority in both houses and the first thing he did was crawl in bed with Teddy Kennedy and let the Democrats write the No Child Left Behind Act.
This was before 9/11.
If Reagan had a majority in both houses, I would have taken him at his word and the first thing that he would have done would be abolish the Department of Education not expand it as Bush did.
Conservatism means nothing if does not stand for limited government.
That is what makes these police state disclosures so maddening.
They have expanded the NSA so rapidly, that they cannot find enough people to man the spy network without depending on outside contractors who are so corrupt or so incompetent that they would not think twice about giving a 29 year old high school dropout who is little more than computer hacker a TOP SECRET security clearance.
When the citizens grow tired of being put into the boxes of Republican and Democrat, liberal and conservative and told what to think by all the elites, there may be some hope of reclaiming what is left of what was a Free Republic.