Re: 2nd Term Part 5: Big Brotha
Most people I know do not agree with a politician of any stripe 100% of the time. They do agree with the politician or a political viewpoint most of the time and are willing to look beyond the disagreements to advance an agenda. This is called "compromise" and it's something this country was founded upon and we used to be really good at it. However somewhere along the way the leaders of both parties became more interested in purifying their ranks and almost everyone who was moderate was primaried out of existence (or those in office shifted allegiances enough to not get primaried).
As for your insinuation that we're pod people or have some sort of "group think" remember to repeat those criticisms any time more than 1 conservative comes to the defense of another poster. If you miss it, I can help point them out to you.
If the subject is education, business or budget* related, I'm a conservative. Equality, gun control, immigration, religion, military*...I'm not a conservative. I can't follow a party because neither of them has an agenda that aligns with my beliefs.
I get in trouble with you guys because my approach to solving social problems isn't to throw money at them. I do believe that consistent dependence on social programs is bad for the person and I believe the distribution method is wasteful.
In all seriousness, if you could divorce yourself from the confines of a political party, you might be willing to admit that whatever we are doing, it isn't working. But, you've been raised to respond to any suggestion of a different approach with "so, you want all the people to starve?!?!?" or "you are a racist". It is the default response from any liberal if you suggest that we rethink the volume, delivery or requirements of a social program. You look at the data of people below a certain level of income and suggest it is the 1% holding them down. I look at the same data and say we've been expanding social programs for 40 years and it doesn't seem to be improving the results.
You look at our educational performance and think we just don't spend enough money, I look at countries that spend far less per student but produce better results...but i don't have to cater to a huge union...you can't consider real educational reform because it would be treason. And before we go there, I'm not suggesting teachers are 100% of the problem (another great default response), i believe we have too many administrators, too many school districts, too many social experiments etc. The average teacher is not the problem...the union they belong too represents more than just the average teacher.
Any complicated question...I get frustrated with you and Rover and a few others because anytime someone disagrees with you the same insults, the same generalizations and the same "you are a republican" tripe spills out. You don't really want to discuss anything, you only care that there are more people who think like you on here and they can drown out anybody else with a concerted effort of insulst, name calling, misrepresentation etc.
It can be fun to poke at you guys because you present yourselves as thinkers and rational people but you are as thin skinned as anybody and the game really should be how many posts it takes for the rest of us to get one of you to use one of your 10 standard answers.
Oh, and whoever said I changed the subject should go back and read the posts around the one I responded to...I was just commenting among the current flow of posts, I didnt change the subject.
