It is good to know that there are others out there that have a good grasp of what is taking place, and have rational reactions to it.
TigersEye, what you bring to my mind is the fact that CompassionateConservative is never a place to govern from. We should expect compassion where appropriate, but it is somewhat juvenile to define yourself in those terms when so many actions depend on you being taken seriously as an adult leader of the free world.
When Iran looks at us, do you think compassionate puts terror in their hearts? Do the democrats view our leader with apprehension? IMO, they have the idea they can hit him with paint balls all day long day after day, and all he’ll do is make some bland statement at some point.
No. We must let the other side know, that when they do some of the things they do, that the punishment is going to be swift and set them back decades for having pushed us too far.
Instead I see us being pushed back decades ever closer to the abyss. When I say pushed back decades, I don’t mean to 1960 standards. I mean that we are pushed so far back, that it will take us decades just to get to the 1960s again, if ever.
I personally believe that we will never get back there, but that should be our goal. We should never settle to live this life when common decency is there for the taking.
To heck with leftists and their brave new world. It’s time to push back. It’s time to push them off the cliff. The time for compassion is over, unless finally at last the compassion for the true victims of the left and has been taking place.
Everyone wants to talk about compassion these days. The left has assumed the position of being the ones in possession of compassion for about three decades now. Instead of dealing with the false premises that notion rests upon now we have mushy Republicans like Pres. Bush trying to simply wrest the claim away without defining any difference to base it on. I found the following article to be a clear statement of what both liberal and "conservative" compassion really is.
In light of this way of viewing "liberal" compassion, which is to say that it is not compassion at all, strength and aggressive action cannot be said to be in and of themselves uncompassionate. That was just my point in saying that those who promote chaos through moral relativism, progressives et al, should not expect to continue to be treated civilly in the name of compassion.
As a Buddhist that is not what I have been taught about compassion. In the beginning, when my views were first being formed, I was often told "sometimes the most compassionate thing you can do for someone is beat the living crap out of them."
Ronald Reagan's "peace through strength" policy is a shining example of that kind of wrathful compassion. The Soviet Union did crumble economically under his forceful confrontation. But he prevented them from continuing to commit themselves to endless wars and possibly a nuclear holocaust. Here in the west we normally view Reagan's actions from the POV of what he did for us. But it can't be denied that he clearly saved them from actions that would have resulted in even greater suffering and a much worse demise than economic collapse.
So when I use the phrase "compassionate" conservative I put the word in quotes to indicate the false premise underlying it. When you say that we need to "let the other side know, that when they do some of the things they do, that the punishment is going to be swift" I fully agree to this extent; we do need to stand strong and draw a line in the sand. As for "punishment" I see that more as a need to apply true compassion, wrathful compassion, rather than as a punitive measure in the sense of vengeance.
I realize that that is a bit of a semantic nitpicking. But I don't accept the idea that a strong defense is somehow uncompassionate towards an aggressor. That is part of the false premise the left tries to move conservatives into in order to immobilize us. Preventing someone from committing harmful aggressions on others is as much an act of compassion towards them as it is a selfish act of defense.
We are dangerously close to the point where the left is going to force us to accept violence from them or fight back. So I would say the time for true compassion has come. It is time to kick the living crap out the left, metaphorically, before we all descend into a fight where no one is concerned with what is best for all of us.