Conservatism Sucks

A different approach and view of Conservatism.

Sarah Palin at CPAC 2014 Must See Values and Leadership

Would that the Republican "leadership" thought like this, and stood for Conservative principles. Then educated low information voters while standing up for a change to the players in the Beltway.

Marketing the Conservative Brand of Politics...Coke vs Pepsi...Conservatism vs Progressivism

This is a brilliant analogy of what happens as a result of a bad marketing strategy. The Republican Elite have it in their heads that becoming more Leftist and rejecting Conservative Principles will win more elections. It's been proven time and again to be a failure. It also drives home the point Conservatives must continue to campaign against RINO's as much as Democrats\Leftists\Totalitarians. Both are about taking power from Citizens and amassing it for themselves.

Bill Whittle, once again is spot on.

Dennis Prager's Top 10 Ways Liberalism Makes America Worse

Long but so well worth it. We have, as a nation, embraced those very things that are destroying us. From Leftists view of Conservatives to any sense of propriety, here's a list of ten things that have brought us down. At one time the opposite of theses were seen as good. No more.

Gov. Chris Christie Republican Convention Keynote Address

Draws good distinction between principles of free minds and limited gov't and top down central control the Democrats desire and work for. A masterpiece speech. 

http://youtu.be/61uCHhDLWh4

Explaining Conservative Economics in 25 Quotes

Compiled by blogger John Hawkins on Townhall. This captures the conservative mind. Think while reading these, Leftists believe the opposite. They don't believe in property rights, free enterprise, keeping your own money, limiting the government in citizens's lives...just for starters.

1) "I am for doing good to the poor, but I differ in opinion of the means. I think the best way of doing good to the poor, is not making them easy in poverty, but leading or driving them out of it." -- Benjamin Franklin

2) "The great danger to the consumer is the monopoly — whether private or governmental. His most effective protection is free competition at home and free trade throughout the world. The consumer is protected from being exploited by one seller by the existence of another seller from whom he can buy and who is eager to sell to him. Alternative sources of supply protect the consumer far more effectively than all the Ralph Naders of the world." -- Milton Friedman

3) "Nobody spends somebody else’s money as carefully as he spends his own. Nobody uses somebody else’s resources as carefully as he uses his own. So if you want efficiency and effectiveness, if you want knowledge to be properly utilized, you have to do it through the means of private property." -- Milton Friedman

4) "A claim for equality of material position can be met only by a government with totalitarian powers." -- F.A. Hayek

5) "Either immediately or ultimately every dollar of government spending must be raised through a dollar of taxation. Once we look at the matter. In this way, the supposed miracles of government spending will appear in another light." -- Henry Hazlitt

6) "The larger the percentage of the national income taken by taxes the greater the deterrent to private production and employment. When the total tax burden grows beyond a bearable size, the problem of devising taxes that will not discourage and disrupt production becomes insoluble." -- Henry Hazlitt

7) "There ain't no such thing as a free lunch." -- Robert Heinlein

8) "The prudent capitalist will never adventure his capital... if there exists a state of uncertainty as to whether the government will repeal tomorrow what it has enacted today." -- William Henry Harrison

9) "Were we directed from Washington when to sow, and when to reap, we should soon want bread." -- Thomas Jefferson

10) "A rising tide (in the economy) lifts all boats." -- John Kennedy

11) "The basic idea behind the relationship between tax rates and tax revenues is that changes in tax rates have two effects on revenues: the arithmetic effect and the economic effect. The arithmetic effect is simply that if tax rates are lowered, tax revenues (per dollar of tax base) will be lowered by the amount of the decrease in the rate. The reverse is true for an increase in tax rates. The economic effect, however, recognizes the positive impact that lower tax rates have on work, output, and employment--and thereby the tax base--by providing incentives to increase these activities. Raising tax rates has the opposite economic effect by penalizing participation in the taxed activities. The arithmetic effect always works in the opposite direction from the economic effect. Therefore, when the economic and the arithmetic effects of tax-rate changes are combined, the consequences of the change in tax rates on total tax revenues are no longer quite so obvious." -- Arthur Laffer explains the concept underlying the Laffer Curve

12) "What pays under capitalism is satisfying the common man, the customer. The more people you satisfy, the better for you." -- Ludwig Von Mises

13) "With regard to the idea of whether you have a right to health care, you have to realize what that implies. It’s not an abstraction. I’m a physician. That means you have a right to come to my house and conscript me. It means you believe in slavery. It means that you’re going to enslave not only me, but the janitor at my hospital, the person who cleans my office, the assistants who work in my office, the nurses." -- Rand Paul

14) "Don’t knock the rich. When did a poor person ever give you a job?" -- Laurence J. Peter

15) "America’s abundance was created not by public sacrifices to 'the common good,' but by the productive genius of free men who pursued their own personal interests and the making of their own private fortunes. They did not starve the people to pay for America’s industrialization. They gave the people better jobs, higher wages and cheaper goods with every new machine they invented, with every scientific discovery or technological advance—and thus the whole country was moving forward and profiting, not suffering, every step of the way." -- Ayn Rand

16) "We don’t have a trillion-dollar debt because we haven’t taxed enough; we have a trillion-dollar debt because we spend too much." -- Ronald Reagan

17) "Companies are not charitable enterprises: They hire workers to make profits." -- Paul Samuelson

18) "It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest." -- Adam Smith

19) "Wherever there is great property, there is great inequality." -- Adam Smith

20) "Four things have almost invariably followed the imposition of controls to keep prices below the level they would reach under supply and demand in a free market: (1) increased use of the product or service whose price is controlled, (2) Reduced supply of the same product or service, (3) quality deterioration, (4) black markets." -- Thomas Sowell

21) "Politics offers attractive solutions but economics can offer only trade-offs. For example, when laws are proposed to restrict the height of apartment buildings in a community, politics presents the issue in terms of whether we prefer tall buildings or buildings of a more modest height in our town. Economics asks what you are prepared to trade off in order to keep the height of buildings below some specified level. In places where land costs may equal or even exceed the cost of the apartment buildings themselves, the difference between allowing ten-story buildings to be built and allowing a maximum of five stories may be that rents will be twice as high in the shorter buildings. The question then is not simply whether you prefer shorter buildings but how much do you prefer shorter buildings and what price are you prepared to pay to mandate height restrictions in your community. A doubling of rents and three additional highway fatalities per year? A tripling of rents and six additional highway fatalities per year? Economics cannot answer such questions. It can only make you aware of a need to ask them." -- Thomas Sowell

22) "In a small town, an idiot breaks a shop window. He’s called a vandal, until someone points out that a window installer now must be paid to replace the window. The window installer then will have enough money to buy a new suit. A tailor will then be able to buy a new desk. And so on. The whole town apparently gains from the economic activity generated by the broken window. Of course, if this made sense, cities should hire people to run though town, breaking windows.

But it doesn’t make sense. It’s a fallacy because the circulating money is seen; what is not seen is what would have been done with the money if the window were still whole. The shopkeeper, instead of paying the window installer, might have expanded his business, or bought a new suit or a new desk. The town is worse off because of a broken window." -- John Stossel

23) "A thousand restaurants close every month. They re-open, and that's good for America. Nobody's rescuing them. They employ people, too. If we let them go bankrupt, the factories don't go away, the creative people don't go away. They get employed more productively by others." -- John Stossel

24) "Suppose I hire you to repair my computer. The job is worth $200 to me and doing the job is worth $200 to you. The transaction will occur because we have a meeting of the mind. Now suppose there’s the imposition of a 30 percent income tax on you. That means you won’t receive $200 but instead $140. You might say the heck with working for me — spending the day with your family is worth more than $140. You might then offer that you’ll do the job if I pay you $285. That way your after-tax earnings will be $200 — what the job was worth to you. There’s a problem. The repair job was worth $200 to me, not $285. So it’s my turn to say the heck with it. This simple example demonstrates that one effect of taxes is that of eliminating transactions, and hence jobs." -- Walter Williams

25) "How many times have we heard ‘free tuition,’ ‘free health care,’ and free you-name-it? If a particular good or service is truly free, we can have as much of it as we want without the sacrifice of other goods or services. Take a ‘free’ library; is it really free? The answer is no. Had the library not been built, that $50 million could have purchased something else. That something else sacrificed is the cost of the library. While users of the library might pay a zero price, zero price and free are not one and the same. So when politicians talk about providing something free, ask them to identify the beneficent Santa Claus or tooth fairy." -- Walter Williams

Compiled by John Hawkins on Townhall

Explanation of Right to Left Government and the Consequences

This is a good presentation of politics, the political spectrum (usually mischaracterized) and how it influences freedom and capital.

http://youtu.be/SBlCyeurT9Y

“The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground.” 
Thomas Jefferson 

Why Progressive Institutions Are Unsustainable

A short vid comparing Classical Liberalism (modern Conservatism) and Modern Progressivism.

http://youtu.be/m3m0EyCCs8U

I've written a short history of modern Progressivism here. They have always been about the State taking away individual liberty while saying liberty can be found only in individuals' obedience to the State. That's a brain twister, huh?

You Might Be a Conservative If...

I hope my Liberal friends will use some self honest evaluation, and see if any of these principles apply to you. These are Conservative principles based on Russell Kirk's writing. I hope my Conservative friends will use this to more clearly articulate our Principles.

You might be a Conservative if you believe that there exists an enduring moral order. Do you believe that there is right and wrong, that there are, and have been, constant moral truths throughout human history.

You might be a Conservative if you believe we should adhere to custom, convention, and continuity. Do you believe these things are needed to have people live in peace, that just throwing out custom, convention, and continuity like revolutionaries advocate is destructive to peace and a functioning society.

You might be a Conservative if you believe in what may be called the principle of prescription. The principle of prescription states that the experience and precedents of ideas and practices going back centuries we should abide by, that really there's nothing new that will dramatically alter an improve our human condition. Do you believe in the accumulated wisdom of our forebears.

You might be a Conservative if you believe that we should be guided by the principle of prudence. Do you believe that society is so complex, humans must be reflective and slow, and determine to the best of our ability, the consequences of our decisions.

You might be a Conservative if you believe that you should pay attention to the principle of variety. Do you believe people should be equal before the law, and if you're a religious person add equal before God; and equal in those only. Social class, ability, and other natural orders of human institutions create and support diversity. Enforcing equality of outcome promotes uniformity.

You might be a Conservative if you believe and are chastened by the principle of imperfectability. Humans are flawed, and at best we can have only flawed society.
If some men try to order society according to Utopian principles, that will only lead to rebellion and violence (examples, German Nazism, Communism, Italian Fascism). At best we can accept that our flaws and imperfections will be reflected in society, and we can change and adjust to the best of our ability to improve upon those; that because of our human imperfections, no perfect society can be created.

You might be a Conservative if you believe that freedom and property are closely linked. Private property teaches personal responsibility, and is the foundation of social stability and productivity. Without personal property, only people with power will determine how everyone will live their lives.

You might be a Conservative if you believe in voluntary community, as opposed involuntary collectivism. We should help our fellow man voluntarily within our communities, and not leave it to centralized authority. One size does not fit all, even helping people. This does not mean that large political bodies or organizations should not be involved, but even then decisions should be made by local people.

You might be a Conservative if you believe the need for prudent restraints upon power and upon human passions. There will always be persons or people that will want to dominate the citizens. Conservatives want limits with constitutional restrictions, political balances, and the enforcement of existing laws. The French and Bolshevik revolutions failed and ushered in even worse tyranny because there were no limits and checks to power.

You might be a Conservative if you believe that permanence and change must be recognized and reconciled in a vigorous society. Conservatives accept and promote change, but wants stability and continuity at the same time. Change should be in the from of increased talents and abilities, and at the same time prudent. Nothing should be wholly new or wholly old old, but continually linked one to another.

I've copied the principles Kirk has stated, and paraphrased his explanations, hoping this disclaimer avoids any plagiarism or copyright violations. To get Kirk's full statements of principle and summations, go here. I've done this to introduce these principles to some, to clarify some Conservatives' thinking, and for my Liberal friends, that maybe they'll re-assess what they think of Conservatives, and their own political values. My own transition from Marxist to Conservative took about ten years. That came about because I realized that I only knew about Conservatism what my fellow Leftists were saying, decided for intellectual honesty and integrity, and began reading Conservative writers.