Posted on 01/31/2004 6:27:08 PM PST by softengine
I am both. "Christian duty" was the same nonsense our RINO governor in Alabama gave last year for his massive proposed (and failed) tax increase. It's garbage. Using the force of government to compel people to do what you think are good works, at gunpoint, is NOT Christian charity.
Why are you complaining about medicare and your money when the government spends so much money on needless things--like aroma therapy, monies sent to the UN, monies sent to Palestine, monies spent in congressional salaries.
Huh? YOU are the one that brought up Medicare, IIRC. It's no worse, in my opinion, than any of these other things that you list (except for congressional salaries, which are at least constitutional, if inflated).
But your idea of doing away with medicare might be right but it is not done overnite.
I don't expect it to be done overnight. The U.S. has a responsibility to give the benefits to those from whom they've been withholding the Medicare premiums all these years. I'm willing to pay taxes to do that. But a massive spending increase is NOT incrementalism to the right but the left, I don't care how you want to spin it.
REmember, change takes time and unless you trust your president (which I know you don't) then you will not see the whole picture.
I used to trust the President. Go dig up my posts from 3 years ago if you doubt that.
Trust me, give an inch of medicare monies to private enterprise and not to government and then we will be heading toward less government.
Pure fantasy. In 1999, President Clinton proposed investing a significant portion of Social Security in private stocks -- are you telling me he was a proponent of smaller government?
And you really think that we as conservatives would do better with a democratic president. HUh!??
Only on some things, not on others. The issue of judicial appointments is certainly the biggest drawback of having a DemonRat president.
Support the president--keep him on tract with conservatism, but don't walk away into the open arms of the liberals. You only hurt yourself and me and the rest of us fighting to prevent liberal views.
Many here are fighting to prevent liberal Democrat views. They are prefectly happy to support liberalism if the proponent has an '(R)' next to his name.
Having said that, I understand the troubles that would result from an immediate dismantling of Medicare. But a gradual reduction I am in favor of. To start with, states are capable of picking up the slack, and constitutionally, it really is their role, not the federal government's. There are certainly other ways as well, as you suggested, that cuts could be initially targeted towards those who are healthy enough to bear them. But I don't think it needs to get any more complicated than that. "Retirement accounts" and various public/private partnerships that have been proposed will make things unnecessarily complicated, and ultimately will make it more difficult for the federal government to extricate itself from something it had no business being involved with in the first place.
And how soon you forgot it too.
I worked to help get His Slickness impeached. What have you done?
Quite the late starter, aren't you. Actually, I began in the conservative movement as a 6 year old kid passing out Goldwater bumper stickers in the 1964 election in stunchly Kennedy-enraptured Rhode Island. I've had the pleasure of being a living witness and participant in the long view of progress in the Republican conservative movement over the past 40 years.
Quite a number of us "worked to help" Clinton get impeached. Is there something extraordinary you'd care to share that you did personally in this regard? What have you done lately, besides making yourself little more than a useful idiot and malcontented pawn ideally suited to the divide and conquer strategy of the Democrats?
The shame is, that if you voted for anybody else except Bush 41 in 1992 (I wouldn't be surprised judging by the way you and others are down on Bush 43 on these threads)YOU helped "His Slickness" get elected, and I credit you for Clinton's being there in the first place.
Proud of yourself, now?
You neglected to mention the spoiler, Perot (C), Is there a reason for the omission? (BTW I voted for him. AS an adult, I take responsibility for putting Clinton in the WH..... Unlike the liberals who blame everyone else. I am truly sorry for my action.
That is a very honorable admission. Let's not forget Pat Buchanan's famous dissembling, Republican party rending non-campaign in 1992 too. I think it is poetic justice that he single handedly destroyed the Reform Party, and in spite of Buchanan's presence on the FL ballot in 2000, he failed to compromise Bush's ultimate victory.
Strategic conservative movement thinker you are not either, unfortunately.
Turning this ship of state around will take more patience than you and your lot of Constitution Party 0.0000001%-ers will give it.
Think: The Courts.
Your impatience would lose the entire prize, because you and your self-styled "purists" simply don't know the battles to fight, or what hills to die on.
You and your other malcontents are like a football lineman who refuses to block the opposing team because you don't happen to like the quarterback. So you rationalize to yourself, that you'd sooner throw the game and watch your quarterback get sacked by the other team, lose the game, and walk away from the game acting like you were the most valuable player.
As we witness conservative successes in 2005 and years to come with a stronger, better entrenched and better unified Republican Party, we'll not have any of you grousing self-styled "conservatives" to thank for any of it.
And maybe that will be just as well.
Actually, they (and you) are the ones worked up in the lather. I'm just bursting their self-delusional bubble, if the candidate they vote for for "conscience's sake" can only muster an infinitessimal level of support, and a Democrat wins for their having done so.
Their actions will only dilute the vote of those other basically like-minded individuals who if by sticking together can actually make a difference in bringing to pass the principals they all so "righteously" claim to champion and claim to hold dear.
You can take that point up with all your other disaffected "conservative" friends. The Dems never had better allies.
I voted for GHWB in '92. And '88. And Reagan in 1980 and 1984.
What have I done lately? Hmmm... help to put on counter protests against the ANSWER crowd, help to put on "support the troops" rallies in our nation's capital, attend Forest Service public hearings to try and stop bad environmental regulation (roadless area policy), attend rallies to show support for the Darby farmers, analyze a draft DEIS regarding the New River Parkway and handed a copy of that analysis personally to Helen Chenoweth Hage back when she was in Congress (it was also published here on FR), provide several pre-publication reviews of the book Natural Process: that environmental laws may serve the laws of Nature to the author...
My first political rally was the Judgment Day rally on the Capitol Steps in December of 1998. There were about 500 of us there. It was a major FR event. (Not quite the March for Justice, which I was prevented from attending by my ex-wife, but it was a be there or be square kind of event)Where were you?
I have been a conservative since about 1990 (I credit Rush for beginning that process).
So to answer your silly assed picknose missive, Yeah. I'm proud of myself now.
I don't know; you sounded pretty driven at #433. And over such an incredibly small percentage as you describe, which would have essentially no chance of affecting the outcome of the election one way or another.
The Dems never had better allies.
Uh-huh. Guess that explains why their media allies are giving the Constitution Party so much free publicity. Of course, we all know they'd never do that with the Green Party.
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