NP asks a great question. He wants to know what makes the Conservatives and Liberals at WIS tick.
Adamelijah, Terp, and JHWhicker, please tell me what makes you a conservative and how your reasoning is guided by such values.
I can’t really begin to express my gratitude for such a wonderful question. Many times on both the right and the left look at each other like they’re stupid. Its really a difference of Worldviews.
What NP hits on is that Conservatives and Liberals come at problems from an entirely different viewpoint.
At the core of my belief system are principles, beliefs, and values. I share a lot of the same goals as liberals do. I want people’s lives to be better, I want them to be well-educated, and have the best economic opportunity. However, my beliefs and values lead me an entirely different direct than my friends on the left.
Now, I’m going to take the rest of the week responding to this, because this is too big for one post.
Welfare
My views on a lot of issues like Welfare is defined by experience. When I was a kid, I listened to Rush Limbaugh and read his books because of the pro-life things, because of reports of goings on in the Clinton White House. But when he’d talk about welfare and poverty, and I’d think (and still think) its a bit harsh.
My view of welfare and government support in general has been framed by seeing it in action. I was helping a lady on SSI out at a time when I was struggling to get by and have my family survive on one income. She’d been on SSI for a while and she’d develop an entitlement mentality. We’d buy food for her when she ran out and she’d complain the food we’d gotten wasn’t good enough.
There’s a drive to be and do that’s basic to us as human beings. The six weeks I was on unemployment were some of the toughest of my life. I felt utterly useless. I’m not physically skilled, but I was willing to go out and pick berries, just to have that feeling of providing something for my family. When we create a system that discourages work and encourages sloth, we make victims of the people we try to help. We stop people from achieving their potential. We take away their sense of self-worth and turn them into beggars.
Thus, I believe in the idea that government help must be temporary and targeted to the idea of making people independent, teaching them to fish rather merely throwing them scraps from the table, with high government overhead.
I don’t trust bureaucrats. In Speech Class in College, one of our speech topics was to speak on something that government did well. One of my cynical classmates, with whom I had many disagreements, said it best when he answered, "Waste, fraud, and corruption."
As such, I see no reason to trust government with things such as Health Care or trying to make us "be good" at things like diet. The idea that we’re going to learn responsibility and self-control from the government is Prima Facie ridiculous claptrap.
The Role of the Federal Government
For the Federal Government, as the founder’s wrote, the powers were to be few and defined. I believe in the inalienable rights of states to screw up their own state as long as it doesn’t harm the others around them or violate rights clearly granted in the Constitution.
Its none of the Federal Government’s business what a state’s abortion law is, who’s allowed to marry, whether kids pray in school, or whether people choose to smoke marijuana. I don’t believe in No Child Left Behind, for the same reason I don’t believe in the Department of Education. There’s no right granted in the Constitution for the Federal Government to interfer in education. No Constitutional duty to provide all health care for all Americans. No constitutional requirement or allowance to create the world’s biggest ponzi scheme in Social Security.
I believe as a matter of economics that people will do better than the Federal, State, or Local Governments: Time and Time again! I believe that people are more able to handle their own money and run their own businesses. I believe in economic freedom, because that is what is propserity?
Did American prosperity come through the power of American government? Look at the third world countries that build up big governments. No nation taxes or governs itself to prosperity. More often than not, gargantuan government steals and robs from people. It embezzles money. It increases itself through its own largesse.
I believe that individuals when given control of their lives and empowered to make the right decisions will make it more often than government. I believe in neighbors and family as the answer to poverty, not the state. I believe in the power of people to take control of their lives and their communities.
Its been said that Government is at best, a necesary evil, at worst an intolerable one. This I subscribe to, and this I believe with all my heart and soul that government is a roadblock and not a bridge to most of our goals. The Federal Government has been fighting poverty 40 years, and the casualties of the war have been generations caught in a cycle of dependency. The Federal Government has been fighting drugs for 30 years, and the casualties have been some of our most fundamental Constitutional Freedoms. The War on Drugs represents the rape of the 10th Amendment. The unconstitutional War on Drugs has brought about the nightmares of the anti-federalists as the Federal Government has invaded private homes.
The Federal Government is charged with limited roles: national security, coining of money, regulating interstate commerce, and all those Article 1, Section 8 rights given to Congress. Instead, they’ve become the masters of the states, untamed wild beasts chewing on the carcasses of our freedom.