Check out MadIsh32's #13 and #14 (those are identical) and #17 and #18 as well as GeronL's #16. MadIsh32 is a $$$ obsessive who wants to part ways with social conservatives. Can't happen soon enough for me.
Regarding $$$ as the issue we can get to AFTER we have parted ways suggests that MadIsh32 is an ally of the loony left on babies, marriage being reserved to ONE MAN and ONE WOMAN per marriage, has no problems with fudgepacking perversions posing as "marriage," and the oh sooooo current campaign of Obozo to attack religious freedom of Catholics and others by forcing pro-life and pro-family religions to pay for babyscraping and contraception in all opf its forms including the abortifacient kinds via Obozocare.
On your home page, you confess libertarianism, inter alia, but take care as MadIsh32 does not to distinguish your views on foreign and military policy from the neo-Neville Chamberlain lunacy of the thankfully retired Ron Paul as MadIsh32 does not.
OTOH, you do not distinguish yourself, as a libertarian or as a Libertarian, from the other views which you may well share with MadIsh32 and which I have noted above. I used to be a Libertarian Party state officer when I was in law school. Then I read Roe vs. Wade (with which I had thought I might agree), realized the perfidy of Herod Blackmun, the utter emptiness of Blackmun's naked power grab to cram the butchering of babies (a perfidy less colorfully noted by his far more noble colleague Byron "Whizzer" White) down the throat of each and every state. This issue, not endless haggling over federal budgets and who gets taxed to benefit which special interest group, is the defining issue of our nation and what remains of Western Civilization in our time. I resigned my Libertarian Party office and have not looked back, having become a grown up.
If, in addition to actually defending MadIsh32, you also agree with his apparent hostility to Western Civilization, then my advice to you is identical to my advice to MadIsh32. Just try and carry elections without the social conservatives (babies, guns, God, conventional marriage, resistance to perversions, military strength, etc.). The tail shall not wag the dog. You only express difference with the libertarians on military. That's nice but not enough.
There is a de facto alliance between economic conservatives and social conservatives. As Ron Paul has repeatedly learned (or been taught) the hard way, libertarianism does not suffice as a comprehensive worldview capable of supporting a viable American political movement. Many conservatives lack enthusiasm for the $$$$ agenda but do not allow that to prevent alliance with economic conservatives. If economic conservative want allies, they can swallow and support social conservatism or see what kind of deal Obozo and his pro-abortion, pro-perversion, anti-God, anti-gun, anti-military, anti-American (did I mention anti-capitalist???) ilk may wish to offer to libertarians. OTOH, libertarians may choose to beef up the anemic ranks of ruling class RINOs. No likely majority there either.
It would be very easy to restructure the conservative movement by replacing the $$$$ crowd with socially conservative (babies, guns, God, etc.) Americans of modest means (remember Reagan Democrats???). God loves people of modest means and that is why He made sooooo many more of them. Beef up Social Security and Medicare which Obozo has been gutting (note MadIsh32's resentment of Medicare Part D enacted by Dubya), re-establish Workfare with teeth, restore the US industrial base at the expense of those who have moved the jobs abroad, abrogate "free trade" treaties especially GATT and the WTO, abrogate as many sovereignty sapping treaties as necessary to restore American sovereignty, examine the history of PRIVATE SECTOR labor under Green and Meany (before the AFL-CIO went Marxist-Leninist and when it generally excluded government workers as members because private sector workers would have to pay their salaries) which created the great Middle Class of the 1950s-1970s. Perhaps, take advantage of labor law to compete in the private sector only with today's faux AFL-CIO, emphasizing collective bargaining and the grievance process only, thereby re-creating labor as it was originally intended. Encourage homeschooling and private schooling to replace the political training ground of P.S. 666, with an eye toward abolishing "gummint edjamakashun" in favor of actual education controlled by the parents. Encourage private employers NOT to use left institutions like colleges and universities to "credential" their potential employees. Let the employers decide what they want to employ and then abolish "human resources" departments in favor of competent review of job applications and actually conduct interviews. Drive the utterly ridiculous price of brick and mortar higher education back down to tolerable levels by stripping it of advantages and gummint subsidies. As a movement, develop competing forms of internet based quality higher education and aggressively market them. This will give economic libertarians something profitable to do to keep them busy and to prove their understanding and success at free enterprise rather than their mere rote repetition of the concededly brilliant ideas of Ludwig von Mises, Friedrich von Hayek, Robert Nozick and Milton Friedman. Attack, attack, attack!!!
The rest of the world might not like us any more??? Fine, repudiate the national debt insofar as it is owed to other nations and possibly the rest of it as well. If nothing else, that will insure that we won't be borrowing any more money for the foreseeable future and the government will thereafter be setting a moral and prudential example for our citizenry. If this idea makes libertarians queasy, then let the libertarians hold bake sales to pay the creditors. Include all T-bills, state and municipal bonds in the effective bankruptcy as well. After what Obozo did to General Motors' preferred stockholders, the left will be in no position to complain either.
I know what I know and you don't have a very good idea of what I know.
You are in the wrong movement
“Beef up social security and medicare”
The only way to do is via generational theft, coercion by the government and the consent of the sheep who are now being slaughtered.
You are simply a statist, just like the current White House occupant, but want the state to legislate things you like.
Some people here view him as being out of step with the forum because he doesn't agree 100% with them. What thinking person agrees 100% with anyone? He seems to me to be authentically conservative.
However, given the irrational mentality of some, I won't be surprised if they succeed in getting him banned.
You wanted me to expand on my views.
I value truth and rationality.
I definitely believe in the values Western Civilization. I believe that some cultures are superior to others and I believe that Western Civilization is the superior culture.
I have a lot of respect for Dennis Prager.