For me librals vs. conservatives has always broken out this way:

1. Liberal, all for social services (democrat)
2. Conservative, not for social services (republican)

 

I couldn't agree more. Its a lose lose situation we have. damned if we do, damned if we don't.

you can't help people that don't want to be helped.

 

That's a common mistake. Conservatives use the term to be derrogative. I've been called a liberal for not supporting traditional family values. Being a liberal for not supporting the patriot act. Being a liberal because I have no problem with gay rights. Its a real shame. Here is a technical definition:

Broadly speaking, liberalism emphasizes individual rights. It seeks a society characterized by freedom of thought for individuals, limitations on power (especially of government and religion), the rule of law, the free exchange of ideas, a market economy that supports free private enterprise, and a transparent system of government in which the rights of all citizens are protected. In modern society, liberals favor a liberal democracy with open and fair elections, where all citizens have equal rights by law and an equal opportunity to succeed. (wikipedia).

My personal view is that a person has the right to do whatever they want in so far as it does not take away from anybody else's right to the same. If I want spend my life with a man, no problem. If I want to beat someone up, well that's no good.

As for my qualifications, they are the same as yours. Ultimately this is our government as what they do is for us. We pay for it, we elect it. The results of it's actions are eveident on the news everyday.

They Cheney comment doesn't really belong in this disscussion. If you want I will explain how I have arrived at that conclusion some other time. Clinton comments dont phase me one bit. Definately not going to vote for another one again. If I wanted a monarchy we would have one.

What I am going to try to do is setup a dicotomy between views on Iraq and social welfare. I don't see much of a difference, and while I don't have a solution to the problem, I certainly don't think that more of the same is the right approach.

Nor does generalizing views as 'liberal' or 'right-wing-nut job'. All it does it alienate people, so that you have a population that is either glum that 'their' party is in power, or so disgruntled that the other party is in power that they will do silly things like vote against a party and not based on a candidates stance. Ultimately this is the fundamental flaw in the two party system of which the founding fathers were so aware. The problem is with modern media, the talking heads (will not mention names) scream that liberals are destroying family values! Conservatives are trying to impose religion! I hate all of them, and refuse to watch/read any media outlet that supports one of them. As with agressive advertisements the only way to make them go away is to ignore them, without an audience these people have no outlet to spew their extremeist view.

The problem with social programs is that no-one wants to pay for support for someone else, yet expect support when they need it. In my experience even the die hard conservatives I know would want help when a hurricane comes through and floods their house. Now, I find that most conservatives have no problem with this type of government support, but issues with other types of governmental support.

So I am interested, what are your views on:

Government money for:
Enviromental Protection
Education
Emergency Services
Research and Defense (I'll include NASA here)
Healthcare
Immigration Reform
Welfare

The last one is the biggie, drives most people concerned with government spending nuts. And although you have already labeled me a democrat and
a liberal, you may be surprised to know that I don't believe that there should be unlimited support by the government, there need to be limits.

For expamle, even as a 'liberal democrat' I don't think the government should be willing to blindly offer people supprt as I believe it to create a dependent "welfare" class. I don't think that it does society any good. The result is what happened in New Orleans, a bunch of people unable or unwilling to help themselves. I know as a cop you see it every day, I see it as a volunteer in EMS. People who don't care to be productive, don't care, and don't have to because the government is content to give them money. It's a complete shame.

So barring name calling, lets have an honest discussion on the situation in Iraq. Now I know talking about my views on welfare is a strange into, but it will make sense.

Now I don't claim to have intimate knowledge about the inner workings of the Iraqi people or government. I aproach the problem as all people approach all problems, based on their own experiance and use their own judgement to come up with a viewpoint. So here is how I approach the issue.

1. Saddam was a bad man. I think we can all agree on that one. He did not deserve to be in a position on power, I consider his a wasted existence.
2. The general pretext for the invasion of Iraq was that there was the immanent threat "famous smoking gun - mushroom cloud" argument. This inteligence has since proved to be inaccurate.
3. By invading Iraq we broke the society. Sure it was a pretty screwed up society already, but consider for example if you go into a art store and push over a really expensive statue that already happened to be damaged. Oops, still your fault.
4. The Iraqi people have had four years to improve their situation. I don't see too much effort. What I do see is a secrtarian war between groups of religious fanatics, who have been fighting the same war since someone first declared that their god is better than someone else's god.
5. Our presance in the region has developed into keeping these warring factions apart. We have no organized enemy. We are policing the general population who despite hating us for being there want us to stay. Every time someone has a problem with something they take out their anger violently.

So what have we done? We have created a forign welfare state that depends on our presence to exist. It's no different from our own personal welfare class.

Honestly, I much rather prefer having the fundamentalists attacking armed troops over in Iraq getting attacked by suicide bombers than kids at the mall. And as such I don't endorse the idea of a quick nor even total pull out of Iraq, they will just follow us home. I think it is folly to leave now, but I hope you see that by staying indefinately we are providing a crutch that gets harder to remove the longer it is used. It is indeed a type of welfare that you dislike here at home. Iraqi's need to step up, but like welfare there is no real punishment if they don't.

 

Wow! If you do decide to change America's system of government to a monarchy, can you set me up with a position of power within it?

 

has it been demonstrated that the Iraqi populace actually still wants us there?

that might be a good starting point for discussion governing decisions moving forward.

or are we essentialy using iraq as a base of operations for our military benefet?

 

I've read in the Washington Post that for the most part, everyone (the Iraqi populaiton) hates us for being there but they dont want us to leave as it would mean chaos.

We have a huge military presence in Afganistan (east) and Saudi Arabia (south), I dont really see the strategic importance.

 

That was quite an interesting post, and I must say that I do agree with alot of your views on creating dependent classes of people based on welfare and the Iraqis who are becoming to need us to keep their country from imploding. I do not have time to get into details on everything right now, as I have work in a bit, but I did want to offer my views on the points you brought up (as quoted).

-Environmental protection: Very nesecary, but must be balanced in a fragile economy. In other words, even though we know emmisions from cars and big rigs are wreaking havoc with the atmosphere, we can't blindly outlaw fossil fuels. There has to be a middle ground, which I have not seen as of yet. I think alternative fuels like hydrogen and such are the future, and more emphasis needs to be placed on moving these forward as opposed to the status quo simply to keep the oil companies wealthy.

-Education: One of the most important ways to spend money. The students of today are the leaders of tomorrow, period. We must spend what it takes to give them the very best. However, I feel a lot of it is wasted on those who do not want to learn. Classes are over filled with non-citizen children and disruptive students who simply take away from those who want to learn. Kids will be kids, but to a certain extent. When school systems are forced to cater to those who are dragging the system down, it is a shame. Let's try to give the very best to those who can do something with it and not worry so much about trying to force it on others. Family systems breaking down is a big contributor to this, but regardless of the reasons, it still detracts from those willing to learn and places a hefty burden on the entire system.

-Emergency services: I am obviously biased here, but... The influx of illegals, the proliferation of a welfare class with no stake in the community and other deep social problems are making crime a bigger problem than ever. Until someone comes up with a way to get rid of or fix those in our population who do not care about other's individual rights to property or even life, a heavy measure of law enforcement is needed to keep those good, contributing members of our society safe and sound.

-Research and defense: Another big ticket item that is necesary. Defense goes wtihout saying. To sit back and think we can live off of an isolationism theory is crazy these days. On 9/11, they took proved that to us. It is no longer a case of just standing by and hoping to be prepared. We must have a strong offense in order to have a strong defense. In other words, not waiting for the attack. We must bring the fight to them on OUR terms. Space exploration is very important, but to a lesser extent in my opinion. There are some very good technologies that will undoubtably come out of the space program, none of them really a s pressing as the other issues we have. Money should be allocated sufficiently to support moving forward, but not overwhelmingly so.

-Healthcare: If you work, you should get healthcare. Period. Whether it is through the employer or the govt, doesn't matter. What we don't need is a system that blindly hands out healthcare to illegals, and life long welfare recipients. In-humane to deny it, that's debatable. What is not debatable is that most of us work hard our entire lives, walking on a tight rope of doing the right thing and trying to succeed. To give it away at a very high cost is to spit in the face of each of us that get up every morning and give it our best shot, in most cases for meager returns.

-Immigration reform: This is an easy one. Spend whatever it takes, and I mean whatever, to stop the influx of ILLEGAL immigration. These illegals are the roots of most of our problems to begin with. Do some of them come to work, sure, but do they pay taxes? NO. Do they sap our resouces despite this? YES. Enough is enough, get them out, stop them from coming back start helping ourselves and those who enter LEGALY. I see no other countries offering me a better life at THEIR expense.

-Welfare: Another easy one. Blind disbursal of welfare is our bigest problem. As you accuratly put it, it has created a welfare class which does not want to or even have a reason to work. They take everything out from education, healthcare, food, money, an overwhelming use of all emergency service from police to rescue and fire services. And, they put nothing back into the system. Not one penny of tax, or any contribution to society of all. this class of people is nothing more than a burden on our entire way of life. I do whole heartedly support some type of system that provides assitence when someone comes upon rough times. It can and has happend to many of us. This can only be offered as assistence to get back on ones feet though, and not a free ride. somehow, this needs to be controled to avoid having people using it as an "instead of" working or otherwise contributing to society.

Most if not all of our problems have no simple answer. This is clear. I too hold distain for the two party system as I feel it makes for too much "either / or" type of decisions. That being said, I find most of my views, but certainly not all by any means, line up with the republican/conservative side of the house.

 

I'm not convinced yet, I need to find out a little bit more. What is a better means to solve these issues? Should we ask the government itself to create the infrastructure to solve these issues, or should we instead ask private industry to step up to the challenge. Both have benefits and drawbacks. Government departments can grow large, cumbersome and beaurocratic. Lots of people mean the system costs lots of money to run, and because it is a government agency it means it must absolutely treat all people equally. Think about the last time you went to the DMV. Would you really want this type of agency handling your health care?

How about big business then? Sure businesses usually have to find the most efficient way to perform to maximize profit, so they generally cost less and are leaner. But they will always offer preference to those with money. Doesn't sound bad if you have the money to spend, but what happens when you don't have the money to pay for that operation you need. Being a number on an actuary's bottom line is seldom a good place to find compassion. Can I trust that the employees of a company will act in my best interest? What happens when the CEO of the company wants a bigger bonus? Would be a real bummer if my insurance company collapsed like ENRON.

What about education? What about emergency services? Should they be public or private? Hell, what about the military? We have been using mercenaries to pad the ranks over in Iraq and Afghanistan. Where do you stand? Should we use the government to supply these services, or big business?

 

Have you been to the Emergency Room anytime recently at any marginally busy hospital? I think you get treated better at the DMV!

That said... I still would not want state run health care for me and my family.

 

Too many questions, NO good answers!! Glad I am not a politician!!