Limited government, lower taxes, individual responsibility, and accountability, liberty, and honoring the traditions of our constitutional republic are supposed to be cornerstones of conservatives but are any of these things really conservative? Lets take individual responsibility, how many conservatives take responsibility for the mishandling of 911? They don't, they blame Democrats. What about the most recent recession and the housing and car industry crisis? They don't take any responsibility, they blame Democrats, its a pattern that repeats itself, blame the Democrats. Limited government, for what, to pocket more money from the people that have them paid off? Traditions of the constitution? They can't even rightfully interpret the constitution, they misuse the constitution to suit their dirt and hide behind it with distortions to protect their dirt and uneven distribution of wealth and power.
The other values all Americans hold dearly, liberals stress personal accountability and responsibility and hold themselves to the same standards they hold others, unlike conservatives. We want only as much government that is needed to solve problems and believe that since Americans pay taxes into the government to pay for politicians the government should help the people that pay taxes into it and not desert the people in times of need after taking our money. We believe in lower taxes also, for the poor who work multiple jobs to feed their families.
Where are the truly conservative values? I'll tell you, their values are more money, more power and more control of the country and its resources to the ones with the most money who's willing to pay for it.
Have you considered the possibility that the Democrats are the problem?
Now, a tutorial for your edification:
1) Conservatives believe that there are moral truths, right and wrong, and that these truths are permanent. The result of infracting these truths will be atrocities and social disaster. Liberals believe in a privatization of morality so complete that no code of conduct is generally accepted, practically to the point of ‘do what you can get away with’. These beliefs are aimed at the gratification of appetites and exhibit anarchistic impulses.
2) Conservatives believe that custom and tradition result in individuals living in peace. Law is custom and precedent. Liberals are destroyers of custom and convention. To a conservative, change should be gradual, as the new society is often inferior to the old. We build on the ideas and experience of our ancestors. The species is wiser than the individual (Burke).
3) Liberals are impulsive, and imprudent. They believe in quick changes, and risk new abuses worse than the ‘evils’ that they would sweep away, since remedies are usually not simple. Plato said that prudence is the mark of the statesman. There should be a balance between permanence and change, while liberals see ‘progress’ as some mythical direction for society.
4) Conservatives believe in the principle of variety, while liberal perspectives result in a narrowing uniformity. Conservatives believe in choice of healthcare, education, religion, and various other areas. Under conservative principles, there will be differences in class, material condition and other inequalities. Equality will be of opportunity, not necessarily of result. The only uniformity will be before the law. Society will not be perfect. Consider the results of the rule of ideologues of the last century.
5) Freedom and property are linked. Private property results in a more stable and productive society. Private property and retaining the fruits of one’s labor has been proven successful from the Puritan’s Bradford, to the Stakhanovite Revolution!
6) Conservatives believe in voluntary community and charity, based on duties to each other, with the assumption that each person must do whatever he could to avoid requiring assistance, as opposed to involuntary collectivism, as in “let the government do it..” Burke's understanding that the "little platoon" - family, neighborhood, professional organizations etc - is the "first principle" of society has been consistently identified as providing the necessary inspiration for conservativism. And explains why conservatives give more to charity than liberals.
7) Conservatives view people as both good and bad, and for this reason believe on restraints on power, as in checks and balances, while liberals see power as a force for good, as long as the power is in their hands.
8) Liberals and Conservatives differ in the way to proceed. For Conservatives, data informs policy. (“More Guns, Less Crime” and “Mass murderers apparently can’t read, since they are constantly shooting up ‘gun-free zones.’”- Coulter) We use Conservative principles to the best of our ability, but when confronting new and original venues, we believe in testing, and analysis of the results of the tests. For liberals, feeling passes for knowing; it is based on emotion often to the exclusion of thinking.
9) Conservatives view results differently from Liberals. Liberals respond to success and material wealth with envy and hostility, encourage class warfare and an attempt to obviate any chance that it might happen again. The exception is when it is a Liberal with the wealth. Conservatives see success as the validation and culmination of the application of Conservative principles, most prominently Liberty.
10) Since Liberals see their view as a higher calling that that of Conservatives, they mistakenly believe that it is entirely appropriate for then to use, not logic, facts, nor accepted debating techniques, but ad hominem attacks on the physical appearance, personal history, or imaginary mental defects. Notice how the Liberal replaces intellect with emotion. This is, no doubt, based on a medieval concept of recognizing witches and demons. In fact, Liberals attempt to deal with opponents in similar fashion: recall Clarence Thomas’ “High Tech Lynching.”
