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Originally Posted by Hume's Bastard
(Post 219259)
The Economist has never lost touch with a reality any conservatives outside of America recognizes.
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"Conservatives" outside of America lack a tradition of classical liberalism.
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The problem with this debate, and your response, is, that sometime in the 70s, American conservatives became convinced that they didn't want to live in the country FDR created.
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Hmmm....why pick the 70s? Goldwater revitalizes the movement in the 1964s; surely you wouldn't argue that Reaganite Conservatism is more anti-New Deal than Goldwater. The 80th Congress, which so upset Truman at the time, was DEDICATED to rolling back the New Deal. Until December 1941, the Conservative movement in this country was saying the FDR administration was riddled with socialists. And we know that in some cases, they were absolutely right.
I think that sometimes people on the Left confuse Republican politicians with Conservatives. Richard Nixon, for example, was no conservative.
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Starting with the Kennedy cuts, tax rates reached a nadir fit only to return the US to the 19th Century.
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The Kennedy cuts....are to large? You are saying that cutting
90% to 70% charts a path to return to the 19th century? Why not outlaw the possession of private wealth altogether, if that's how you feel?
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It's not even an either-on, zero-sum choice between two utopias. Most of the military budget, where the deficit lies, is due to health care and pensions, the same on the civilian side.
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I don't know how you get here. The deficit does NOT primarily lie in the military budget, unless you view the first duty of the state to serve as mother, doctor, and school marm rather than defense. The preparation for the successful prosecution of war is the primary purpose of a state. Everything else is second.
So if we establish the priority, we must then examine the numbers. 20% of the federal budget is spend on the department of defense, 23% is spent on Medicare, and Medicaid. The expense of the military can be limited by policy; simply avoid engagement. It can be a FIXED expense. Medicare and Medicaid are the source of our deficit problems now and in the future. I notice you mentioned SS, but not either of those.
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Social Security is solvent.
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Medicare and Medicaid aren't solvent. SS isn't really all that solvent either, but thats because of profligate spending of SS revenue as general funds. Though of course, the program wasn't meant to pay people for 30 years either. The age should be increased to 70, or 72.
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So, we don't need a permanent solution, just a compromise neither side will win
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It doesn't seem as though you list any of those compromises that your side would "lose" on. You just said SS is solvent, the military is the driver of deficits, and no mention of Medicare and Medicaid. You also mention cutting subsidies and taxes. So if I have your list right, you favor military cuts, tax increases, and cutting tax incentives.
Doesn't seem like a compromise at all, which is why I think the "reactionary conservatives" should hold fast and make sure that our priorities are met first. After all, as I said, we've been to this show before and were betrayed.
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As a matter of fact, I'll give you cuts in subsidies and watch the corporations topple. I care a wit more for one senior citizen or pre-schooler than I do for any employer.
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What else do you care more for than employers? Incompetent bureaucrats with lifetime job security and absurd pensions using children as weapons in political debates? Billion dollar boondoggles with "green energy" accepting federal handouts to justify the childish moralizing of coastal elites? Medicare and Medicaid scamming rent seekers? Racial grievance professionals?
The federal government is indeed a complicated quilt of unpleasantness.
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Any American can start a business, but no American will countenance a dying person living in disgrace or a kid who can't go to school.
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:rolleyes:
I wonder when we, as a people, are prepared to be serious and stop with this RFK rhetorical excess. Look how that kind of demagoguery has evolved from the Kennedy's to John Edwards. There are realities of statecraft which require a government to make choices with limited resources. Those choices have a cost.
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But, no, conservatives don't get cuts - not one - until the selfish traitors start paying for something other than their cash-stuffed mattresses.
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You can save talk of "treason" and "cash stuffed mattresses" for the lumpen-proletariat. I suspect most people here know better. They know that Conservatism represents the traditional American middle and upper middle class, along with the owners of production and land owners. Our opposition is the rootless cosmopolitans of the academic and financial elite. So while you rail about conservatism, blaming the woes of the United States on the industrialist or the rancher or the small business owner, it is the "mattress stuffed" banker who funds the clique of left wing intellectuals who ARTICULATE your view in the public sphere.
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Maybe if redistricting happened the way it should and not like the corrupt bargain it has, the current crop of insane Republicans would be unemployed.
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Purged? Purge the wreckers?
