In response to conservatism

Email to a friend who is freshly engaging in political thinking.  She has been working in a conservative industry and so has taken on some far right views.  I tried to offer some balance ...

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I envy my friends who aren't into politix.  It can be a burden.  Sounds like you've noticed ;)  My trick is to take it less seriously.  How does the serenity poem go ...

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
The courage to change the things I can,
And wisdom to know the difference.

You and I have almost no control over our gov so this falls under the area of 'accepting the things we cannot change'.  I still enjoy following things and I look at it as a good project for my brain.  I am doing the charter stuff but my passion is finding solutions to things.  I invent stuff (mostly stuff that never leaves my notebook).  And I like to look at the worlds bigger issues and enjoy developing long term solutions.  Solutions should deliver the best long term results while taking the shortest path possible.  They are always fun puzzles.  Deliveries are one puzzle like this after another - and so I enjoy doing them.  

I am registered Green though I never vote Green because they can never win in our culture.  Because of what I have seen and my understanding of studying things, I feel that we generally are neglecting our health in exchange for money (greed).  Because currently the left (Democrats) more consistently vote green, I mostly vote Democrat.   Funny thing, back in the day, I would have been a Republican.  The right invented much of the green stuff we have now.  Roosevelt created the National Park system, Yosemite, etc.  The right pushed through the forming of the EPA and our clean water and air rules.  The right has always been the protector of the few (usually the higher income set) from the masses.  It makes sense that they would want to protect our beautiful places and keep the air and water clean and keep masses from wrecking everything.  

But times have changed.  Since we started allowing unlimited contributions to campaigns, our representatives have no choice.  In order to get elected, they have to legislate for the people/companies/industries that pay to get them into and keep them in office.  Both sides are corrupted by this fact, to different degrees.

I believe that is the solution to all the problems we are having.  If we limited campaign contributions to say 5k per eligible voter, all of the issues we are having would clean themselves up.  But that is another discussion.

Obama hasn't been that great for green.  I believe he will be remembered as the great compromiser.  Still, he is better to me than our rightwing options since he is less tied to the burn-stuff-for-energy industry.  

I agree, the governments job is to make enough rules so that we can live free in peace and prosperity.  I would argue that me and my neighbor's right to clean air trumps the right for a big company to install a coal plant up wind of me. This is where I veer sharply away from the Republican party.  

In a free country, with freedom of religion, if you are going to allow nativity scene you have to allow pagan ritual scenes too.  I think the problem is usually that it's not cool to have your tax money paying for the Christian scene when you are another religion or atheist.  That seems fair to me.  There are no laws against having your religious scene on private property.  That seems like a good compromise, private paid on private property, have at it.  I think that separation of church and state is important.  Things are complicated enough, how can we legislate around all of the different religion's rules.  

I would argue that the nativity scene is not a founding principle of the US.  As I understand it, a lot of the people who founded the US left their countries to get out from under the thumb of religion.  I think religion is great for those who need it.  We would suffer without it.  One of my conservative beliefs is don't regulate me when I am not hurting anyone.  Don't insist I wear a helmet and don't force me to align to someone else's religion.  A side note, it is a fact that you cannot be Christian and pro-war.  "Though shall not kill" is not buried in the middle of the bible, it is one of the commandments.  

We have to be careful when talking like this, to be factual.  It is easy to repeat something we heard that sounds like opinion.  You would have to give me an example when you say something like, "...dividing and conquering on a daily basis by demonizing ..."  when talking about the prez. 

I am flexible on the govt paid condom thing.  If the gov stopped paying for them, some independent company/group/person would step up.  They save lives, reduce unwanted pregnancies and keep kids from getting life long diseases so I personally think they should be available to anyone who can't afford them.  It would save the state $ in the long run.  I get that they have been deemed anti-Christian but I don't think a random religion should have a say.  

I get my news each lunch hour from google.com/news.  A computer grabs news stories from all over.  I really like that you can compare the same story from different news sources.  When I want the lefty/liberal take on a story I check out the MSNBC version.  When I want the extreme right perspective, I check out Fox or Wall Street Journal (both owned by a guy who is not even from the states).  

The environment is not supposed to be political.  It is a science issue.  97% of climate scientists claim that climate change is, at least in part, human caused.  That is all I need to know and all congress needs to know.  With that information, they are supposed to protect our future generations.  But their hands are tied by the people who fund their elections.  

I don't think we demonize the rich.  We all aspire to be rich.  The super cool rich people are calling for themselves to be taxed fairly (more) - Warren Buffett etc.  They know that in the war boom we just had, they profited, not only because they are smart but also because of all the lower class people that made their wealth possible.  The people who maintain the roads, work in their stores, keep the electricity flowing, protect the country and on and on.  A lot of those less affluent heroes are hurting now, it is ok to tap into one of the few sources of money that is not going to take food off of someones table.  No one is asking for rich peoples savings, they are raising their taxes on future income.  And not by much.  

You have to raise taxes or end the wars.  Which is it going to be?  We used to fund the wars directly by taxes.  WWII got paid for by higher taxes, 90% rate at the upper levels.  Can you imagine.  That is probably why we didn't have a war for a while.  We didn't want to pay for it.  Now all the states profit in war time because they help supply planes, guns and infrastructure and then get to kick the bill down the road.  I know conservatives complain when we feed a mexican kid lunch in a public school (like .0001% of the budget) but you never hear that the largest part of our budget is defense (25%).  Our taxes are lower than any other civilized country while we outspend the next 10 countries combined on defense. It's unsustainable.  

Other rich countries spend half what we spend on medical care and still provide a minimum level of health care to everyone for free or cheap.  Our system, even the new one, gives most of the profits to the big insurance companies.  According to the neutral Congressional Budget Office (CBO) the new health care system will be cheaper than the one we have in the long run.  No one complains about the US Post Office competing against UPS and Fedex.  Not sure why they care about getting some health care competition from the gov ... unless their campaigns are funded by insurance companies.  

My conservative thoughts:  I think the pension thing is out of control and can be cut way back.  I think the voucher school system would work if the private schools had to teach actual science and history.   Eliminate all regulation that don't protect citizens.  And a bunch more stuff.  What used to be the right is now the middle.  I see myself in the middle.  

Any of these numbers or statements don't seem accurate to you, point them out.  I'll get you a couple sources, one's that are hopefully not partisan.    

 

I'm not concerned about the progressives taking over just like I knew that the tea partiers didn't have a chance.  The extremists on both sides make up 20-25% of the population (it is the number range that I always see in poles, it's funny).  It is the middle of the road people that make all of our decisions.  And they are pretty mellow.  Obama doesn't have the control (or intentions I would argue) that you suggest.  He has to sell everything to Us to get it done.  Again, the middle wimps won't strip all our guns away just as they won't legislate to pay 10% more for a renewable energy plan to save the planet.  There is no impending doom and gloom just a bunch of media (on both sides) playing to our emotions.  

So you are going to DC to help the right.  It is good to help and be proactive in what you believe in.  Funny thing, I am planning to go to DC on Feb 17 for the Keystone rally.  We are both being supportive of our beliefs.  

Remember when I met you ...  and spent time with you, you always were cheery and everything was always great (far as I could tell).  I'm sure you are still like that but don't let dumb politics stuff bring you down, even now and then.  Be healthy and happy ....  It's a choice.  Live blissfully!