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Age vs Political Idilogy

I am a .....

  • 18 to 30 Year old Liberal

    Votes: 10 22.7%
  • 18 to 30 Year old Conservative

    Votes: 7 15.9%
  • 31 to 45 Year old Liberal

    Votes: 5 11.4%
  • 31 to 45 Year old Conservative

    Votes: 2 4.5%
  • 46 to 65 year old Liberal

    Votes: 9 20.5%
  • 46 to 65 Year old Conservative

    Votes: 10 22.7%
  • 66 and Older Liberal

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • 66 and Older Conservative

    Votes: 1 2.3%

  • Total voters
    44
If you say so. You've really got a knee-slapper going. I can hardly contain the laughter. As usual, derailing is always funny. But, TheGirlNextDoor loves your answer so it's gotta be just the way it is.

By your posts...you must be a true patron of political philosophies...or at least one, perhaps. And you probably didn't stoop or bend over a bit to pick it did ya?

Plucked from the branches from the Tree of Knowledge.
 
You are far too logical to be a Conservative and you can't say anything good about the President either. What did you think of Clinton when he balanced the budget?

I loved it. I was a backer of Ross Perot and a member of the Reform Party. To me, I think Bill Clinton turned out to be a darn good president. As for President Obama, I think he has done a real good job on the foreign scene, on the domestic side it is mostly the financial as I can't support anyone who runs up trillion dollars deficits. I never supported Bush when he was running up 500 billion dollar deficits, so support Obama in this would be hypercritical. I was happy as I stated when he finally came out for gay marriages, his common sense approach to the youngsters of lillegal immigrants suited my fantsy to a T. I disagreed big time with him on his massive health care bill and particuallar in the way it was passed. But I agree with the goal. There just were a bunch of better and cheaper ways to achieve this. Frankly I support the president on some issues and am against him on others.
 
I use child labor.

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Same with prostitution.

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I was much more conservative when I was younger and naive. I used to belong to my College Republican group. However, getting older and wiser and getting out in the real world and understanding life, I became much more liberal. I have increasingly become more liberal as I have had more life experiences and have raised a family.
 
In a way. A principled conservative would be a person who recognizes ancient sources of power (behavior, ideals, etc) of his civilization that ought to be maintained or restored because they could continue to serve as sources of power in contemporary times. In all likelihood, the degree to which such sources of power truly existed or can exist is overstated, but even if they existed to only a tiny extent, that can still make all the difference between whether society succeeds or fails.

For example, at the onset of the Roman Empire, Augustine used his new found authority as emperor to restore long lapsed religious rituals and festivals from the Republic Era because such policies had a demonstrable civilizing (strengthening) influence on a culture long exposed to the chaotic influences of excessive populism, partisan politics, and civil war, in the same way modern prison conversions have demonstrable deterring influence on future crimes. In both cases, a religious imperative is instituted that compels less overtly aggressive and socially dividing behaviors than existed previously, whether among American criminals or Roman citizens. Fact is, reviving these religious institutions tied directly into centuries of Pax Romana.

As a rule, social elites (like Augustine) tended to be most conservative partially because their vantage point offered them a commanding view of the advantages of pursuing such policies, both for themselves and for society as a whole. As a rule, the extent to which their exercise of conservatism was legitimate was the extent to which "themselves" aligned with "society as a whole" -- that is, they supported the maintenance or restoration of policies that ultimately provided the necessary benefits for society as a whole to flourish and grow, not just for their own standing or power (which ultimately must be incidental to the exercise of true conservatism by elites).

The only place where American social elites live up to that lofty ideal is inside their own heads, if they bother to think about it at all. As practiced, their standing and power doesn't depend on the success of the United States so much on their ability to exert multnational influence through globalism, which as administered is not beneficial to the American people, or really, almost any human being who is not one of the 10% wealthiest Americans.

They are mistaken to believe the source of their lasting power ought to be invested in non-American sources, but multinationalism can be a misguiding influence.

I was assuming you meant Augustus rather than Augustine of Hippo? I think it's largely correct in assuming that conservatism in many respects meant preserving a culture, and a preservation of the elites view of preserving society. I think of Cato the Elder as well.
 
No, what is being called "conservative" in modern-day America has nothing to do with conservatism, they've simply adopted the label to mean something that has no bearing on what conservative used to mean. There is nothing in the modern Republican party that says personal responsibility, small government, fiscal responsibility, etc. That's what being a conservative is. The liberals-turned-Republicans just stuck a "neo" on it and pretend that they're actually conservatives.

They're not.

And you think that's what conservatism is-personal responsibility, small government, fiscal responsibility? It certainly is conservatism, but it isn't the only conservatism. The conservatism that predates that conservatism, even in our own country, would hardly believe in those mottos. In many respects, that conservatism would find your small government policies....liberal: too new, too free, too liberating. They would likewise be immensely skeptical if not outright worried about most of our democratic impulses. Conservatism exists in a state of contradictions, both historically and in the present.

The neoconservative label is likewise complicated. In many respects, it was a label thrust upon individuals who thought themselves Truman/Kennedy/Johnson Democrats, but increasingly found themselves on the outskirts. In other respects, the moderate conservatism espoused by the likes of Nixon, and then the even more disillusioned viewpoint of the Reagan administration appealed to many of them. A rejection of the counter-culture (a conservative trait), increased skepticism about the effectiveness of government social policy (another conservative trait), mixed with the belief that government is competent for many areas but not in others (a moderate trait) and that the United States had an obligation to be wholly anti-communist (a hawkish stance), allowed those who believed in at least one thing I mentioned-to be seen as "more" conservative than liberals but "less" so than Goldwaterites (but also "more" conservative than Rockerfellerites). For those growing up in the GOP of Nixon and Reagan, they identified themselves more as conservatives than as members of the party of Carter. Hence their viewpoint that they are conservative.
 
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I was assuming you meant Augustus rather than Augustine of Hippo? I think it's largely correct in assuming that conservatism in many respects meant preserving a culture, and a preservation of the elites view of preserving society. I think of Cato the Elder as well.

Augustus was the only one I could have been referring to. Odd I didn't spot it in editing.
 
I was a liberal until college, I studied a bit of economics and Ayn Rand and began calling myself a libertarian or classical liberal. Now I'm just a Capitalist, I don't want anything from the Government but my rights and to be left the hell alone.
 
Just a curiousity of your party affiliation vs your age. I used to be on liberal side now lean towards the conservative side

You forgot moderate. So I voted liberal.
 
I'm 66 (Oh poo, how did that happen.), and I'm still a design engineer.
 
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