annatar1914 wrote:That is, once the virus, the cancer, of liberalism and leftism is contained.
How do you do that though? Your model came to fruition essentially under white male Anglo-Saxon leadership. It has steadily declined as the political paradigm has shifted. The Westward expansion required a Civil War to kill off slavery, lest we have an economically divided system. The Industrial Revolution saw massive European immigration, suffrage for women, followed by an embrace of welfare. The 1965 immigration reforms basically rejected the European-ness of America, and we have been heading downhill ever since. What makes you think that we can really save America?
Llamamal wrote:However, I have one major problem with American conservatism if we start from the basic philisophical position behind the idea. The problem is that Thomas Jefferson himself believed that we should rewrite all laws and the Constitution itself every 19 years, because acting under the laws of the previous generations would be effective slavery to them. Thomas Jefferson knew that the ideas of his peers and himself would become outdated and should not be imposed on future generations if they would never have agreed to live under them.
I don't agree with a lot of Jeffersonian precepts, but I do think all laws should have a sunset clause that requires their re-enactment.
Llamamal wrote:The ideas of past generations are not relevant to the ideas, needs, & wants of current Americans.
A lot of them are very relevant. The problem with not re-enacting laws is that the reasons for their existence are not remembered. Decriminalizing sodomy for example may have made gay males feel a lot more liberated, but 10s of millions of them worldwide have died from AIDS. Also, education is not the answer for a lot of people, since many people don't avail themselves of information, weigh the pros and cons and then make a decision. They follow cultural norms, which are often set and enforced by law.
Llamamal wrote:I`m not suggesting that we disregard the Constitution. It was the document that our country is based off of, and it has a lot of cultural & political significance. I respect that. However, we shouldn't carry it around as if it is unmatched in its wisdom. It is not perfect.
It's actually a very well written document, and perhaps the very reason that it survives. However, it has not protected against the conspiracies of unionised government employees conspiring through unions to subvert the intent of the constitution; it has not protected against indirections like the progressive income tax, which effectively renders minority economic rights meaningless, etc. It was however, a very well written and elegant document.
quetzlacoatl wrote:Very well. You must also then agree with the system of corporate governance put in place after the American Revolution:
"Corporate charters (licenses to exist) were granted for a limited time and could be revoked promptly for violating laws.
Corporations could engage only in activities necessary to fulfill their chartered purpose.
Corporations could not own stock in other corporations nor own any property that was not essential to fulfilling their chartered purpose.
Corporations were often terminated if they exceeded their authority or caused public harm.
Owners and managers were responsible for criminal acts committed on the job.
Corporations could not make any political or charitable contributions nor spend money to influence law-making.
One doesn't have to agree with it, since these are merely laws that can change with time. However, your last point is interesting, because the 14th Amendment introduced the notion of a corporate person into the constitution itself--one that wasn't necessarily the same as "the People" in order to grant citizenship to freed slaves. Consequently, corporate person-ship enjoys the same privileges and immunities of a natural person. The Supreme Court has upheld it too. That's the interesting thing about Obama is that he doesn't quite seem to get that the 14th Amendment doesn't quite equalize everything the way that many people think.
nucklepunch wrote:It began to combine a social agenda based on racial resentment and theocratic inklings with extreme economic libertarianism.
This is mostly a fraud perpetrated by proponents of a welfare state to keep blacks voting for the Democratic party. Blacks voted overwhelmingly for the Republican party, because the Democratic party would not allow them to register as Democrats. That began to change with Roosevelt. Social security was a huge economic benefit for blacks in the South, and they began trending to the Democratic party even though the Southern Democrats resisted the Republican Party's efforts at a federally enforceable civil rights act.
nucklepunch wrote:It appears now that so is the Religious Right, unfortunately this doesn't "fix" what's wrong with Republicans as it seems to me they are being replaced by more dogmatic libertarians.
Well that's a separate question. Quetzlcoatl suggests that if you agree with the founders, you must also agree with limiting corporate charters. By extension, you must also agree with slavery and no suffrage for women. Much of what the Religious Right opposes is the wholesale destruction of the family unit, which started with female suffrage and accelerated dramatically with liberal divorce laws, birth control, abortion and aid to single mothers with dependent children (no man in the house rule).
nucklepunch wrote:All the Republican presidents from Lincoln to Ford were more or less part of this tradition but Reagan shifted the direction of the GOP yet even he today would be run out of the party (assuming he was a modern figure with more or less the same views instead of a quasi-mythological figure) for not being ideologically doctrinaire enough.
Reagan was politically very adroit. He'd win today, because he was a nationalist. There are no major "pro-American" politicians in the country today.
Drlee wrote:Reagan was not a conservative.
Reagan was a social conservative and a nationalist.
Drlee wrote:His notion of trickle-down economics would have been appalling to the founders.
Uh... they held slaves--i.e., they whipped people into physical submission and compelled people to labor on a race basis for their own profit. I doubt they'd be appalled by "trickle down" economics, except for perhaps considering it way too liberal.
Drlee wrote:He spent like a drunken sailor. Did not even try to balance the budget. His deficit numbers make President Obama look very conservative indeed.
Reagan's deficit at its worst was 5.7% of GDP during the recession of 1983--induced by Paul Volcker to kill the post-Vietnam War inflation. One could argue that Reagan "inherited" this situation as Obama does constantly, but on Reagan's watch, the deficit as a percentage of GDP at its worst was 5.7% of GDP. Bush had a pretty decent economic record until Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats took over the house. Then, Bush and Pelosi pushed a $500B stimulus package and TARP, which means Bush left office with a debt level that looked like Reagan's at its worst. When Obama came into office, he passed the largest spending program in American history sending the deficit to GDP ratio to 9.8%--the largest it had been since WWII. So as a point of fact, Drlee is wrong.
As for debt-to-gdp, Reagan inherited a level of debt that was similar to Johnson's when Johnson assumed the presidency. As a percentage of GDP, it dropped under Johnson as welfare spending and Vietnam War spending surged. The spending situation had to come to an end, and ultimately did as the Vietnam War came to an end. The remaining social spending led to the stagflation of the 1970s. Reagan slashed taxes and tax rates to stimulate aggregate demand and used the deficit to soak up cheap money--thereby balooning debt-to-gdp to about 65%--about where it was through the Eisenhower years. Debt-to-gdp shrank during the Gingrich-Clinton years, with debt-to-gdp falling to about 55%. George W. Bush increased that back to a Reagan level of about 65%. When Obama assumed office, he increased spending so much that debt-to-gdp ballooned to over 100% of GDP. The highest it has ever been was 120% of GDP during WWII. Note that we aren't fighting a world war. So the worst economic record in terms of debt-to-gdp deficit-to-gdp outside of a world war context belongs to Barack Obama. Again, Drlee is completely wrong (obviously your PhD isn't in economics).
Drlee wrote:Reagan raised taxes in 7 of his 8 years in office.
Reagan's cut of the top rate and simplification of brackets led to increased tax revenue in 7 of his 8 years in office. He also cut tax breaks for interest on consumer debt and increased the FICA social security tax--saving social security.
Drlee wrote:He was the king of income inequality and had unemployment rates nearing 11%.
Reagan took labor participation from a low of 63.5% of the labor force to nearly 67%. When he took office, unemployment was 6% and rising. It peaked as Drlee suggested at 11% and then fell to 5% when he left office.
Labor force participation maintained late-Reagan year levels, peaking at the end of Clinton's term, and held steady throughout the Bush years--even through the financial crisis. Labor force participation collapsed under Obama--falling all the way back to 62% as it was under Jimmy Carter. Obama has kept the unemployment numbers artificially low by not including people who don't continually look for work. In actual fact, the unemployment rate under Obama when adjusted for the labor participation rate is substantially worse than it was under Reagan.
Drlee wrote:Reagan claimed to be for small government but government grew a whole lot on his watch.
Government spending as a percentage of GDP was about 21% when Reagan took office and ballooned to 24% as tax rates plummeted and spending increased. When Reagan left office, it was about where it was when he took office. It began a precipitous drop when Gingrich assumed the Speakership in the House, and declined to 19% of GDP when Gingrich stepped down. Under Bush, it increased to 21% and held steady. Then, when Obama assumed the office, it shot up to 24%. So if you love Obama, you'd love Reagan even more.
Drlee wrote:He created a new government agency with 300,000 employees.
The post office? He just turned it from a government department into an agency.
Drlee wrote:Reagan gave amnesty to three million illegal aliens.
A huge mistake, I'm sure you would agree?
Drlee wrote:He gave weapons to Iran.
Keeping the Iran-Iraq war going, driving down oil prices, and using the proceeds to fund the anti-communist Contras in Nicaragua.
Drlee wrote:Reagan was a mess of a president though quite the effective actor.
Apparently, Drlee really enjoyed "Bedtime for Bonzo."
You wee kiddies out there: I'm not saying these things to get you to agree with me. That's not really all that important. What is important is that you learn to disagree with liberals for its own sake. What you will learn is that they lie, obscure, distort and mislead with such alacrity that they are generally not to be trusted.
nucklepunch wrote:It is about time somebody spoke the truth about Reagan. I feel like had Jimmy Carter won in 1980 conservatism would have been better off today. I am tired of hearing conservatives act like you cannot criticize Ronald Reagan. Calvin Coolidge and Dwight Eisenhower were much more conservative than he was because they believed in balanced budgets.
Reagan pretty much saved the country from going off a cliff, like it's about to do right now. You can criticize Reagan all you like, but there are very few things that Drlee said that ring true. If you didn't like government spending peaking at 24% of GDP under Reagan, why would you like it under Obama where it has been much more persistent? People like Drlee just try to muddy the waters.
Coolidge was a great president from a conservative standpoint (except for supporting women's suffrage), but you'll notice how he's basically omitted from school books for kids? Roosevelt gets all the cover.
Eisenhower was too. Eisenhower deployed nuclear-tipped Nike missiles for air defense. He was friggin bad ass. When Reagan deployed Pershing missiles to the UK, the left went bat shit crazy. That's why a lot of conservatives like Reagan. He was ready to open a can of nuclear whoopass too. With the Islamists going bonkers, nuclear war may be in our future and we need a leader that's ready and willing to use nuclear weapons if it comes to that.
nucklepunch wrote:Furthermore he escalated the War on Drugs. Although I am not for wholesale legalization, much of the way it has been waged is unconstitutional. The problem is he adopted the utopian view that a drug free society is possible, it isn't. The role of government is to police it enough to keep it to a minimum. Decriminalize small amounts of cannabis, put hard drug users in mandatory rehab, keep prosecuting dealers but obey the Fourth and Fifth Amendments. It seems we're finally waking up to this insanity.
Look: I'm okay with that analysis if you are willing to admit that it was Tom Foley that was pushing for the tougher drug laws. I believe a loved one of his died from it. Lots of liberals died from it. Robert F. Kennedy's kid, for example. Patrick Kennedy has had lots of problems--cocaine, alcohol, Ambien, etc.
nucklepunch wrote:As for ending the Cold War I don't get conservatives who argue this. Isn't the point of conservatism to believe communism doesn't work? They constantly repeat that "Obamacare is socialism (it isn't) and socialism has always failed." The Soviet Union would have fallen apart due to the unworkable nature of communism had we simply done nothing.
It wasn't just an economic competition. It was a military competition too. Control of territory plays a big role.
nucklepunch wrote:He also legalized abortion in California (and then claimed he was sorry once he left a relatively liberal state for national office, just like Romney) and supported gun control throughout his career (he banned open carry in California and supported the Brady Bill later on).
Right. Now California is Northern Mexico, de facto anyway, and Republicans cannot win here. He supported gun control to thwart the Black Panthers, who had every right to be pissed off and to carry guns.
nucklepunch wrote:Also the amnesty. If anything this encouraged illegal immigration because if they grant a mass amnesty once what is to make people think they won't do it again?
Exactly. Ronald Reagan was a great president, but this was one of the worst things he did while in office. I oppose illegal immigration and amnesty, and I am no longer a Republican for that very reason. You cite Eisenhower as a great conservative. Have you read about
Operation Wetback? Eisenhower was badass.
nucklepunch wrote:Although I strongly disagree with Murray Rothbard on many things, his writings on how Reagan was not really a free market guy in any way were spot on.
Reagan proposed NAFTA. It was negotiated under Bush I, and passed under Clinton. Clinton was certainly very much a libertarian on trade. He passed MFN status for China, which has put significant downward pressure on wages. Clinton was also responsible for the GATT round leading to the WTO. Obama, by contrast, scuttled free trade plans with Central and South America.
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