chevydriver1123

Is it really a trade off when it comes to liberals and conservatives?


Liberals

When liberal statism comes to mind its usually in the form of economic liberalism. Fiscal liberals typicaly believe in higher taxes for those who have achieved at the highest levels in order to help those on the bottom of the economic scale. (The Alternative Minimum Tax, Capital Gains Tax, High Corporate Taxes, etc) This in laymans terms redistribution of wealth with a happy face. Another form of Liberal Statism is National/Universal/Single-Payer Health care, which John is forced to pay for the health care for Jack and vice versa. Why should my money be force to pay for health care for people I dont know/Hate. If we were to have this type of health care system then the federal government as well as your neighbor would have the legal right to tell you how to live.



Conservatives

Conservative statism is usually in the form of social/religious conservatism. While conservatives promise economic freedom (for the most part) they arent too keen on people having too much personal freedom. Prominate anti-personal freedom conservatives would include people like Jonah Goldberg, Sam Brownback and the entire Religious Right who believe that the government should control certain aspects of personal freedom in order to quote "keep society moral" (whatever that means). A prominate example of conservative Statism is Broadcast Decency Enforcement Act of 2005 this was in the wave of seeing Janet Jacksons tit on the Super Bowl. Which in turn increased the censorship power of the FCC to tell broadcasters what to do. Interesting enough conservative statists are quite the crafty bunch when pushing their statism by using conservative religious leaders/organizations to demonize said actions in order to paint liberal and independent critics as anti-religion, communist, etc.


If you are wondering why I am bringing this up, it is because my Representative in the House Maurice Hinchey (D-NY 22) is being challenged by Republican George K. Phillips. The Republican Liberty Caucus (the so called Libertarian wing of the Republican Party) is trying to get the state Libertarian party to back him. The leader of one of the upstate groups calls this "Trading one form of socialism for another" A representative from the local RLC is supposedly going to be at our local meeting on Tuesday so I plan to grill this guy on Phillips so called appeal to Libertarians.

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My political blog; http://libertarianblue.blogspot.com/


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Ethereal

Give em hell. Post it on youtube.

obvious Child

A couple logical flaws in that argument.

First, your attack on healthcare can easily be used against insurance.
"Why should my money be force to pay for health care for people I don't know/Hate." That is exactly what occurs in the insurance market. I pay money into a system that is used by others to pay for healthcare, car insurance, life insurance, whatever and I don't know and may hate these people. Furthermore, without knowing the specifics of universal healthcare, it's hard to make a judgment about it. Ask any healthcare provider and they will tell you that they can't make a statement until they know the details.

Second, your attack on taxes is somewhat inaccurate. The AMT was partially designed to prevent super rich from getting away with low taxes. Furthermore, the more you make, the less your marginal tax rate is, at some income levels, you have a lower marginal tax rate then the middle class. The AMT tries to alleviate this. And many of those taxes go towards building stuff. Like roads, bridges, tanks, etc. In America, we have a socialistic system where companies get taxed a small amount and have large capital improvements such as roads, sewers, electrical lines all put in for them by the government. There is a reason why firms generally don't move to areas where taxes are low but the country's government won't put in capital improvements for them unless the labor saving differential is obscene.

Third, fiscal liberal doesn't dictate how one actually spends the money. Only that they spend huge amounts with no practical matter of funding that spending. Bush is a fiscal liberal, a reckless one at that and he's more or less screwed the poor and those on the economic bottom.

Fourth, social conservatives have no problem engaging in liberal tactics of more government to interfere, dictate that generally limit freedoms. Instead of less government, social Cons are for more government and more regulation. In that aspect, they are very liberal.