Conservatism’s core beliefs

[top gun]

Just how does any of this qualify you to discuss political ideologies with any kind of certitude?

BTW: you are only 10 years older than I am- and I once ran for the U.S. Congress as a write-in candidate to insure that an incumbent in a gerrymandered district had a challenger so a general election would be held.

How could it not?

The certitude one brings to the table is their overall life experience. I have a basic college business education. I've worked in the private sector starting multiple successful businesses and creating jobs. I've also worked for two large corporations. And I've been very active politically both in getting myself successfully elected to a couple positions and working on multiple campaigns for others three being national campaigns.

Oh... and I didn't even mention I also couched school kids middle school through high school level in both football & basketball as a side job for 10 or 11 years at the same time because I felt compelled to give back and help kids stay in school and be productive.

As far as the me being 10 years older. You're the one being all sensitive. You threw yourself out there like some super expert to others on this board and I guess my experience told me that might be a pretty good time to jump in and throw trump... so I did.

 

[top gun]

We could talk about Obamaville instead...

Or Bushvilles that President Obama is simply trying to clean up.

 

[BigRob]

Or Bushvilles that President Obama is simply trying to clean up.

Point being, voters are tending to disagree with that sentiment, even if the White House does not.

 

[top gun]

Point being, voters are tending to disagree with that sentiment, even if the White House does not.

Point taken.

It's true that eventually it's always the President in charge now that takes the heat for the economy no matter what he inherited. My observation is that a huge amount of economic factors are now consistently, be some somewhat slowly, getting much better. We get the last piece of the puzzle the unemployment rate to drop just a couple points in the next year and that will really send the signal that we all want.

 

[BigRob]

Point taken.

It's true that eventually it's always the President in charge now that takes the heat for the economy no matter what he inherited. My observation is that a huge amount of economic factors are now consistently, be some somewhat slowly, getting much better. We get the last piece of the puzzle the unemployment rate to drop just a couple points in the next year and that will really send the signal that we all want.

I still have reservations about the trillions in toxic assets that remain on bank balance sheets. Given that economies are cyclical, what will change when the next downturn comes? We could be set up to face the same problem.

Moody's warns that our AAA credit rating is under pressure, we have record debts, potentially rising inflation, and welfare programs on the verge of bankruptcy. Getting the economy to grow does not solve our problems, and I think evidence to date that the stimulus etc have actually done anything is antidotal at best.

 

[flaja]

I've been participating in online forums since 2005 and I've yet to meet someone espousing Anarchist views while calling themselves a Libertarian.

This depends on how you define anarchy.

Do you support minimum wage laws?

Do you support pure food and drug laws?

Do you support laws to regulate the banking industry or the transportation industry or the insurance industry?

 

[flaja]

How could it not?

The certitude one brings to the table is their overall life experience.

That life experience comes with a lifetime of bias meaning you define and affix labels without any objective criteria.

I used to fall for the libertarian rhetoric about low taxes and market deregulation and was foolish enough to believe this was conservatism because people like Ronald Reagan and Rush Limbaugh said it was. But with more education and a better understanding of history along with more exposure to non-libertarian opinions, I now know that what libertarians tout as conservatism is seldom really conservatism.

 

[GenSeneca]

This depends on how you define anarchy.

Anarchism is a political philosophy encompassing theories and attitudes which consider the state to be unnecessary, harmful, or otherwise undesirable, and favor instead a stateless society or anarchy.

 

[GenSeneca]

And these old welfare policies and new welfare policies saw to it that the British economy did not suffer as much during the Great Depression and had a faster recovery than the U.S. did.

They were already in a recession, they didn't have the declines that we saw in the US because they didn't have far to fall.

The British didn't recover faster because of their welfare policies, they recovered faster because they went on a war footing years before we did.

The US didn't come out of the depression until we went a war footing, sent half the male population overseas and that resulted in a massive drop in unemployment, just as it had in Britain.

Great Britain did not see the massive decline in per capita income that the U.S. had during the Great Depression period.

They didn't have a market bubble artificially inflating the per capita income... which you admit in the next sentence:

Britain never saw U.S. type economic prosperity, i.e., the economic bubble

Again, proving my point that the British didn't fall as far as the US because they didn't have as far to fall.

No it was not the Treaty of Versailles.

More than simply reparations, Germany lost large swaths of land with vital natural resources to the treaty... Yet you argue that it was the welfare state that collapsed Germany while you claim the welfare state helped Britain...

I am also aware that Germany had an unemployment rate of over 40% by 1932.

Less than 30%.

Do you realize what you are doing? On the one hand you claim that Britain’s modest welfare system didn’t help that country avoid the Great Depression, but then on the other hand you argue that Germany’s more extensive welfare system didn’t exacerbate the Great Depression. Make up your mind.

On the one hand, you say the Brittish welfare state (which was found inadequate, reformed and expanded to be more like the German model) helped them in the great depression. On the other hand, you claim the German welfare state collapsed the nation during the same depression... Perhaps you should make up your mind as to whether welfare states help, or hurt, a nation hit with a depression.

I am not talking about printed money.

Of course not, you have no defense of the policy.

increasing the money supply but only in bookkeeping records.

Yet you fail to see how that has a negative impact and leads to bank failures?

Also, the stock market crash came in 1929. The U.S. did not abandon the gold standard until 1933 on President Roosevelt’s orders- not the FED’s.

Now you're arguing against strawmen. The fed printed more money than we had gold to back it. You cannot argue against that fact. Rather than changing the policy of the fed to no longer allow them to print more money than we had gold to back it, the gold standard was abandoned and we began using fiat currency - perfect for the type of Keynesian economic policies you support.

 

[flaja]

Anarchism is a political philosophy encompassing theories and attitudes which consider the state to be unnecessary, harmful, or otherwise undesirable, and favor instead a stateless society or anarchy.

Let me get this straight; you complain when I don’t accept your opinionated definition of conservatism, liberalism and libertarianism, but you want to get technical and precise when I want to use a broad definition of anarchy based on my opinion?

If you want to rely on the “proper” meaning of anarchism then consider the “proper” meaning of conservatism:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conservative

“Conservatism (Latin: conservare, to "save" or "preserve")[1] is a political attitude and philosophy that advocates institutions and traditional practices that have developed organically,[2][3] thus emphasizing stability and continuity.”

Thus if you reject traditional behavior and institutions (such as monogamous heterosexual marriage, the proper nuclear family unit, churches and public education) don’t call yourself a conservative because you are not a conservative.

If you favor social upheaval over social serenity call yourself a liberal or a libertarian because you are not a conservative.

If you want an unstable unsustainable dog-eat-dog economy that is fueled by greed and wasted natural resources so the rich can oppress the poor and the strong can attack the weak call yourself a liberal or a libertarian, but don’t call youself a conservative because you are not one.

 

[flaja]

They were already in a recession, they didn't have the declines that we saw in the US because they didn't have far to fall.

You don’t get it.

The size of the U.S. and British economies before the stock market crash is not the issue. What happened to these economies after the market crash is what matters in this discussion.

Unemployment may have been higher in Britain before the crash than it had been in the U.S. before the crash (I don’t know since I don’t have stats for Britain), but unemployment in the U.S. after the crash was far more severe than it was in Britain after the Crash.

Economic output may have been higher in the U.S. before the crash than it had been in Britain before the crash (again I don’t have any stats for Britain), but economic output in the U.S. declined more than it did in Britain (in terms of the time needed to recover to pre-crash levels).

Per capita income may have been higher in the U.S. before the crash than it had been in Britain before the crash, but per capita income fell more in the U.S. than it did Britain after the Crash.

There was essentially no Great Depression in Britain and the British social welfare programs likely deserve the credit.

Britain may have been in recession before the stock market crash (this is likely wrong; Britain may have had a smaller economy relative to the U.S. but did that economy actually meet the textbook definition of recession?) but much of America was also suffering recession before the crash. American farmers were deep in debt and suffered from market prices that were often lower than the cost of production. And American farmers enjoyed little of the alleged economic prosperity of the Roaring Twenties (much of the boom of the 1920s was fueled by electrical appliances but by the 1930s only 10% of American households had electricity).

But because America did not have Britain’s social welfare system the stock market crash allowed that recession to become the Great Depression in the U.S. The market crash did not do as much damage to the British economy as it did to the American economy because Britain had a social welfare system that keep the recession from being as deep or as long as it was in the U.S. Get over it.

 

[flaja]

Now you're arguing against strawmen.

You are the one arguing that the FED took us off the gold standard in response to the stock market crash when it was FDR who did it several years after the crash. Historical facts don't math your libertarian anti-FED rhetoric so you make up other facts and hope that everyone will be ignorant enough to believe you. If you want to have a discussion like this you should be sure of any “fact” that can be documented to the contrary. Otherwise you look like a fool.

BTW: Do you have any documentation at all for your claim that the FED can print money since this power is reserved for Congress?

 

[GenSeneca]

Let me get this straight; you complain when I don’t accept your opinionated definition of conservatism, liberalism and libertarianism, but you want to get technical and precise when I want to use a broad definition of anarchy based on my opinion?

Anarchism, of any kind, is very narrow in its definition because its varients are all based on the elimination of government. There's no wiggle room there. Conservatism, Liberalism, Libertarianism, and all the rest are very broad, ranging from anarchy to totalitarianism with all stops in between.... Which you'd know if you read your own link.

From your link:

Social conservatism

Social conservatism stresses the conservative attention for social stability and order. In order to maintain that order and social peace, also the lower classes have to be integrated into society (cf Benjamin Disraeli 's risk of Two nations, as described in Sybil).

In Europe, social conservatism has played an important role in history, being the direct parent of christian democracy.[22] [23]

Christian democracy provided the ideological basis for the conservative, corporatist or christian democrat version (neo-corporatism) of the welfare state.(Esping-Andersen)

Nowadays, the christian democratic family (European People's Party) is the largest in the European parliament. The double heritage of the EPP (conservatism and its political heir christian democracy) explains the EPP's current composition.

The evolution of conservatism into social conservatism in Europe also explains parts of the differences in political culture between the United States and Europe.

Sounds like someone we know...

If you want an unstable unsustainable dog-eat-dog economy that is fueled by greed and wasted natural resources so the rich can oppress the poor and the strong can attack the weak...

If you want an economy like that, support Mixed and Planned economies.

 

[GenSeneca]

You don’t get it.

You clearly don't understand the impact that an artificially inflated economy has when the bubble pops.

But because America did not have Britain’s social welfare system the stock market crash allowed that recession to become the Great Depression in the U.S.

I know, you still persist in claiming the welfare state of Britain saved them while the German welfare state sank that country... Very consistent.

You are the one arguing that the FED took us off the gold standard

I said no such thing, which is why you're arguing against a strawman.

Get over it.

Get over yourself.

 

[flaja]

Anarchism, of any kind, is very narrow in its definition because its varients are all based on the elimination of government.

Then why are the terms conservative, libertarian and liberal not equally narrow in their definitions? If no one can alter the definition of anarchism, what gives you the authority to alter the definition of conservatism?

And how is calling for the abolition of things like the FDA and public schools not calling for the elimination of government?