What do conservatives think about equality ?

[Zorkorist]

It'll be a miracle.

 

[Zorkorist]

I joke, but it really isn't funny.

I'm a 45 year old, single man.

I don't have kids that need to try and grow up in your "only 400 Billion" Deficit world.

I hope you do have kids.

 

[Zorkorist]

I didn't mean to say that in a nasty way, I just meant think of the kids (and buy them Chinese classes)

-John

 

[Tom]

I joke, but it really isn't funny.

I'm a 45 year old, single man.

I don't have kids that need to try and grow up in your "only 400 Billion" Deficit world.

I hope you do have kids.

i have 6 and 13 grandkids. I don't want a $400 billion deficit, it's a reasonable goal for Obama's 3rd year.

I prefered Clinton's budget surpluses, which might have saved us from Reagan and Bush 1; which is why I voted for Gore..

 

[Zorkorist]

It's OK...

Who couldn't like Obama..

I'll go with you and hope for $400 Billion deficit in his third year.

 

[Patranus]

The basis of liberal ideology is that rights are inherent and that is people who give govt its powers.

The governing body gives us nothing but what we give it.

That is the complete opposite of what liberals believe in.

Where can I get some of what you are smoking.

 

[fskimospy]

Then there's people like yourself. People who have the gall to tell me that I didn't actually earn what I worked for. That I profited from the work of others and in a sense received a "gift". You have not one fucking clue son what I did to earn a living, what I have sacrificed and what I may sacrifice in the future to have what little I have. People like yourself would like to take away what I have. You wrap your petty, selfish, childish thoughts up in a neat little socialist wrapper that makes you feel justified in your laziness. I came into this life with nothing. I have inherited nothing. Everything I have is because of my labor.

Keep looking for shortcuts in life or act like a man, roll up your sleeves and start making it happen all on your own. My guess is you'll be looking for a handout for quite some time.

There is so much projected anger here it's not even funny. You're the quintessential 'self made man' who never has enough self awareness to realize just how much help he's actually had.

I grew up in an abusive family until my dad left and then I was raised by a single mom who was a public schoolteacher. She didn't make shit. I went to a war, I put myself through school without a single dime of anyone else's money, I beat cancer, and I do just fine financially. I'm willing to bet I've been through some things you've never seen. I for one however am not so fucking stupid as to think that I was able to do all these things because I'm just some sort of self-made superman. I have the humility and the respect for my fellow human beings to understand that I had some help along the way.

Grow up man, you would do well to learn the same lesson.

 

[Zorkorist]

You are close to superhuman, Eskimopie, don't sell yourself short.

-John

 

[werepossum]

i have 6 and 13 grandkids. I don't want a $400 billion deficit, it's a reasonable goal for Obama's 3rd year.

I prefered Clinton's budget surpluses, which might have saved us from Reagan and Bush 1; which is why I voted for Gore..

Holy cow, you're overpopulating the Earth and causing global warming! LOL (2 & 3 here.)

I suppose I should not say that liberals support equality of outcome, but rather that liberals see disparity of outcome as evidence of systemic inequality, usually due to prejudice or racism or sexism. That reasoning usually takes us into programs that take away opportunity (as well as resources) from some in order to "level the playing field." Since kids who grow up with dysfunctional parents are never going to succeed at the same rate as kids who grow up with functional parents, the bar keeps getting set lower and lower, which does help a small additional percentage of kids succeed but also teaches even more that success is not something one works and sacrifices for, but rather something one is owed. Eventually all these kinds of programs end up discouraging the very thing they set out to promote. New programs are started, although the old programs generally keep on goin' and growin' as well.

For surpluses and deficits, remember that Congress spends money, not the president who can only sign or veto the whole spending bill. Only when a president and Congress are of the same party can the president really control spending, up or down. His budgets are DOA, and Congress crafts its own budgets which the president can only sign or veto since the Clowns in Gowns took away the line item veto. Even Reagan, who had the strength of personality & support to get the defense spending he wanted, never got the promised domestic spending cuts. Thus Clinton, who if memory serves only vetoed bills to add back spending, deserves little credit for the surpluses; those budgets were from the Republican Congress. Certainly his first two years showed no fiscal restraint, unless you count tax increases. That same Congress spent like drunken sailors for six years under Bush, who shares the blame as he could have vetoed bills to cut spending. The Democrats won Congress in 2006 and spent even more, although I still fault Bush a bit because it's easier for a president to veto and cut spending than to veto and raise spending. Now the Dems have a far left president, a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate, a good majority in the House, and a deep recession to justify pretty much anything. As Rhambo says, "Never waste a good crisis."

And dude, please, you can't be generous with other people's money. Since government has overhead like anything else, it can't ever give away as much as it takes away. That's the antithesis of generosity.

I may be wrong, but I don't think the Chinese et al are going to keep funding us through Obama's third year with these kinds of deficits. The dollar is dropping in value must faster than Treasury notes appreciate.

 

[Patranus]

i have 6 and 13 grandkids. I don't want a $400 billion deficit, it's a reasonable goal for Obama's 3rd year.

I prefered Clinton's budget surpluses, which might have saved us from Reagan and Bush 1; which is why I voted for Gore..

Google the term "intergovernmental holdings" and then get back to us about that budget surplus.

(Hint: When you borrow money from yourself its isn't a surplus)

 

[werepossum]

Google the term "intergovernmental holdings" and then get back to us about that budget surplus.

(Hint: When you borrow money from yourself its isn't a surplus)

Yeah, that's Al Gore's lock box full of IOUs. Even in the 90s the surpluses were only using social security money. Still better than the last nine years though.

 

[ebaycj]

Your tunnel vision has led you to completely miss the point of my post. A post that was not even directed at you.

Bitter, no. Very happy to not have kids of my own. My wife has two and we have three grandchildren so far.

You miss the point of many posts here. One of them I called you out on yesterday and you still don't know what you overlooked in that one.

A movie quote for you. A movie with a tragic ending. Very apropos.

"You may think you know what you're dealing with, but believe me, you don't"

Why don't you explain it in plain fucking english, instead of having him try and read your mind?

 

[Tom]

Google the term "intergovernmental holdings" and then get back to us about that budget surplus.

(Hint: When you borrow money from yourself its isn't a surplus)

government receipts per year were greater than expenditures, that's a surplus.

however you want to look at it though, it was a lot better than the picture is now.

And the 2 largest reasons are the Bush tax cuts and the Iraq war.

 

[Patranus]

the Bush tax cuts

Um....revenues increased as a percentage.

 

[Tom]

Um....revenues increased as a percentage.

not enough to pay for the war. and not as much as they would have without the tax cuts.

as to the issue of the Republican congress getting credit for Clinton budgets, if that were true then logically things should have gotten even better when Bush took office.

 

[Vic]

That is the complete opposite of what liberals believe in.

Where can I get some of what you are smoking.

Aren't you the one who believes that the war on drugs is compatible with small govt philosophy?

 

[jonks]

I think of marriage as being an institution for kids. If you don't want to have kids, or you can't, you don't have much incentive or reason to marry.

Marriage and the nuclear family concept is a construct, an evolution and refinement of mankind's impetus to survive as a species in that it can be a pretty good way to provide a structure for having and raising kids under a very wide array of circumstances. Does it fail? Sure, humans are highly imperfect and they cannot or do not fulfill the roles they take on.

Those who advocate varietal marriage - marriage for homosexuals who cannot have kids except by adopting or, in the case of lesbians, by taking sperm from a non-spouse, polygamy, marriage to inanimate objects, etc. - are basically arguing a case for self-centeredness of some kind rather than the general welfare of kids.

Can someone who wants to marry a tree be a good parent? Maybe. But it is going to be the kids that are going to be put at risk of growing up kind of strange where the parent already has achieved that state. It certainly might be an injustice to subject children to the unbalanced vagaries of the range of human oddity and one of the core reasons for civilization is the protection of children when they are most vulnerable.

If you as an adult want to have sex with a tree, or do the same sex thing, be my guest. I don't care as long as it is a mutual consenting affair between adults. You want to raise kids in your own image, which can be highly distorted, ie NAMBLA, then you have a much harder case to make. And even notable exceptions here do not make for much of a rule.

Society is self-preservative, you want to change it to legitimize your society ending predilections, be prepared to fight to show how your tree loving contributes to the society's continuation as a viable and sustainable entity. If you can't, society owes you nothing and can and should exile you to found your own attempt at doing better, if you can.

That's a lot of text for an irrelevant point. When you're ready to ban all infertile couples, all elderly couples, and all couples who don't want to have children from marriage get back to us. When you think children raised in temporary foster homes with no permanent nuclear family at all are better off that with 2 loving same-sex parents who really want a child, get back to us. When you're not making ludicrous comparisons between two humans in love who wish to get all the benefits, protections and recognitions afforded by law to married couples and people who fuck trees, get back to us.

What's great is when people like you say, "oh, I have lots of gay friends." No, no you don't. You don't have any gay friends. At the very best you have people who are gay who know you and pretend to be polite when you're around. But they do not like you.

 

[PJABBER]

That's a lot of text for an irrelevant point. When you're ready to ban all infertile couples, all elderly couples, and all couples who don't want to have children from marriage get back to us. When you think children raised in temporary foster homes with no permanent nuclear family at all are better off that with 2 loving same-sex parents who really want a child, get back to us. When you're not making ludicrous comparisons between two humans in love who wish to get all the benefits, protections and recognitions afforded by law to married couples and people who fuck trees, get back to us.

What's great is when people like you say, "oh, I have lots of gay friends." No, no you don't. You don't have any gay friends. At the very best you have people who are gay who know you and pretend to be polite when you're around. But they do not like you.

My argument is that marriage is PRIMARILY for the purpose of providing a structure for having and raising kids. It has traditionally also been a mechanism for economic survival from the times when men were men and women were in the kitchen. You remember, the good old days, when families actually stayed together and had a common purpose, ie economic survival?

You are confusing a legal definition with a comment on societal purpose. Isn't it most definitely the welfare liberals such as yourself that decided that welfare would be predicated on broken families without fathers and thereby incentivized removing fathers from households and propagated the dissolution of the black families that previously were no more likely to be broken than any other? Some claim the entire disadvantage of blacks in the United States, with well above average levels of crime, drug use, violence and poor education achievement stems entirely from liberal welfarism and the government paid disincentivization of having fathers in black child rearing households? What a legacy!

When you decide to broaden the purpose and the definition of marriage to appease those who want to dress up and play family for other reasons, especially if solely to legitimize unusual sexual practices, well, that is social engineering and we have seen how wonderfully that turns out.

I am not stopping you from co-habitating with your homosexual lover, Jonks. You and your gay friends can live great lives if you keep your sex play in the bedroom where it belongs. When you start prosletyzing that your lifestyle choices have MORE legitimacy than the norm, and isn't that a more perfect expression of welfare liberalism than any other, you infringe on the desires of most people to just be left alone.

In actuality, how many gay couples stay together year after year? Of those that achieve a long term relationship, how many want to adopt because they just cannot live life without a child participating in their home life or they have this overwhelming need to be volunteer parents and not just plant trees? (I am NOT including in these comments those who have borne a child and have the responsibility to be a good parent by doing so, in marriage or not.) How many of that number are going to actually be good parents? The number is truly miniscule, and does the society indulge them and at what cost, recognizable now or not?

When the romance fades, many marriages that I well know stay together because of the responsibility of raising kids. Maybe you think homosexual marriages would keep those couples together?

Practically speaking, you don't even need a re-definition of marriage to secure those oh-so-valuable company sponsored, and partially paid insurance policies. Why burden businesses more? Don't you have health insurance "reform" coming where everyone is forced to buy it, including the unemployed, or pay fines or even go to prison? I don't think there is going to be any exclusion premitted, not even if you are infested with syphillis, were dropped on your head as a child or wherever you personally secured your particular mental disability.

Societal disruption and cultural breakdown can come from any excess, you have to read history to fully understand my points. Maybe start with "The Fall of Rome: And the End of Civilization" by Bryan Ward-Perkins. Or "Der Fall Roms. Die Auflosung des Romischen Reiches im Urteil der Nachwelt" by Alexander Demandt to point you in the direction of some other authors.

http://www.amazon.com/Fall-Rome-End-.../dp/0192807285

As to personalizing this debate as you are so wont to do - I respect your gayness, I do not advocate for you to go straight or adopt the ways of the straight world. I hope you two live happy and societally contributive lives. Be queer and be proud! And watch out for that tree in your back yard. I heard it was making a move on your lover.

My friends agree with me, as you have not ever bought them a single beer.

 

[Carmen813]

My argument is that marriage is PRIMARILY for the purpose of providing a structure for having and raising kids. It has traditionally also been a mechanism for economic survival from the times when men were men and women were in the kitchen. You remember, the good old days, when families actually stayed together and had a common purpose, ie economic survival?

You are confusing a legal definition with a comment on societal purpose. Isn't it most definitely the welfare liberals such as yourself that decided that welfare would be predicated on broken families without fathers and thereby incentivized removing fathers from households and propagated the dissolution of the black families that previously were no more likely to be broken than any other? Some claim the entire disadvantage of blacks in the United States, with well above average levels of crime, drug use, violence and poor education achievement stems entirely from liberal welfarism and the government paid disincentivization of having fathers in black child rearing households? What a legacy!

When you decide to broaden the purpose and the definition of marriage to appease those who want to dress up and play family for other reasons, especially if solely to legitimize unusual sexual practices, well, that is social engineering and we have seen how wonderfully that turns out.

I am not stopping you from co-habitating with your homosexual lover, Jonks. You and your gay friends can live great lives if you keep your sex play in the bedroom where it belongs. When you start prosletyzing that your lifestyle choices have MORE legitimacy than the norm, and isn't that a more perfect expression of welfare liberalism than any other, you infringe on the desires of most people to just be left alone.

In actuality, how many gay couples stay together year after year? Of those that achieve a long term relationship, how many want to adopt because they just cannot live life without a child participating in their home life or they have this overwhelming need to be volunteer parents and not just plant trees? (I am NOT including in these comments those who have borne a child and have the responsibility to be a good parent by doing so, in marriage or not.) How many of that number are going to actually be good parents? The number is truly miniscule, and does the society indulge them and at what cost, recognizable now or not?

When the romance fades, many marriages that I well know stay together because of the responsibility of raising kids. Maybe you think homosexual marriages would keep those couples together?

Practically speaking, you don't even need a re-definition of marriage to secure those oh-so-valuable company sponsored, and partially paid insurance policies. Why burden businesses more? Don't you have health insurance "reform" coming where everyone is forced to buy it, including the unemployed, or pay fines or even go to prison? I don't think there is going to be any exclusion premitted, not even if you are infested with syphillis, were dropped on your head as a child or wherever you personally secured your particular mental disability.

Societal disruption and cultural breakdown can come from any excess, you have to read history to fully understand my points. Maybe start with "The Fall of Rome: And the End of Civilization" by Bryan Ward-Perkins. Or "Der Fall Roms. Die Auflosung des Romischen Reiches im Urteil der Nachwelt" by Alexander Demandt to point you in the direction of some other authors.

http://www.amazon.com/Fall-Rome-End-.../dp/0192807285

As to personalizing this debate as you are so wont to do - I respect your gayness, I do not advocate for you to go straight or adopt the ways of the straight world. I hope you two live happy and societally contributive lives. Be queer and be proud! And watch out for that tree in your back yard. I heard it was making a move on your lover.

My friends agree with me, as you have not ever bought them a single beer.

Man, you are such a closet homophobe. Just come out and say what you mean already. I mean, you constantly make posts trying to equate homosexuality with someone wanting to have sex with an inanimate object...it's just sad and pathetic. Do you think you are funny? Here's a hint: You are offensive. You obviously think homosexuals are inferior, so just come out and say it already.

The "good ole days" you trumpet were not in fact, all that good unless you happened to be a white male. For God's sake Texas only made it illegal for a man to RAPE his wife in the early 1990s. No one has ever said that LGBT couples should have more rights than married couples, just equal rights.

Traditionally marriage may have existed to begin the process of fostering children, but that isn't the case today. Marriage is so interwoven in our society that married individuals now enjoy significant social benefits over ALL non-married couples, heterosexuals or not. This isn't simply tax breaks, but rights to hospital visitation or inheritance as well.

The real solution is to get government out of the business of marriage entirely. No more tax breaks, no more special privileges, just let religious nuts fight over who can get "married."

Finally, as has been said before, psychological research has not found ANY significant differences between a child raised by a hetero or homosexual couple. You are simply spouting a bigoted myth that has no scientific support.

You act as if maintaining this imbalance in rights between heterosexual and homosexual couples has actually DONE SOMETHING to protect marriage. It hasn't, more couples than ever live outside of marriage, and our divorce rate is still astronomically high. I would venture a guess that homosexual couples probably are MORE STABLE than heterosexual ones simply because there are fewer partners to choose from!

I am glad that our country is moving forward, and I say this as a heterosexual married white man.

 

[QuantumPion]

Equality:

Conservatives: everyone starts the race at the starting line, even if that means putting the handicapped alongside the Olympiads. The gold medal goes to the winner, even though he may ridiculously outclass his opponents.

Liberals: everyone finishes the race at the same time, even if that means cutting off the Olympiad's feet. The gold medal goes to the judge for being so enlightened and compassionate in coming up with the idea in the first place.

 

[werepossum]

not enough to pay for the war. and not as much as they would have without the tax cuts.

as to the issue of the Republican congress getting credit for Clinton budgets, if that were true then logically things should have gotten even better when Bush took office.

Logically the Republicans would not have started spending money like drunken sailors, since they campaigned on a platform of smaller, leaner government. Go back and look at the budgets Clinton submitted to the Republican Congress, then look at the actual appropriations bills that were passed and Clinton signed. Very little similarity in discretionary spending (actually a comparatively small part of the budget.) Then look at the bills that were passed during that time frame (e.g. tax cuts, welfare reform) and look at who authored them. The vast majority were authored by the party in power, just as the vast majority of bills passed in 2007 & 2008 were authored by the Democrats, the party in power at that time.

That's simply the way our government works, whether you wish to admit it or not. That party that holds Congress spends the money, not the president, who can either veto a particular individual appropriations bill and demand less spending (as Bush should have) or veto a particular individual appropriations bill and demand more spending (as Clinton did with welfare reform.) Only when the President and Congress are of the same party can he drive the process. The lone partial exception in my lifetime has been Reagan, who had enough support and personal charisma to get the military spending he wanted. But even Reagan didn't get the reductions in the rate of increase that he wanted in discretionary, non-military spending.

 

[blackangst1]

Equality:

Conservatives: everyone starts the race at the starting line, even if that means putting the handicapped alongside the Olympiads. The gold medal goes to the winner, even though he may ridiculously outclass his opponents.

Liberals: everyone finishes the race at the same time, even if that means cutting off the Olympiad's feet. The gold medal goes to the judge for being so enlightened and compassionate in coming up with the idea in the first place.

lol

 

[Praxis1452]

There is so much projected anger here it's not even funny. You're the quintessential 'self made man' who never has enough self awareness to realize just how much help he's actually had.

I grew up in an abusive family until my dad left and then I was raised by a single mom who was a public schoolteacher. She didn't make shit. I went to a war, I put myself through school without a single dime of anyone else's money, I beat cancer, and I do just fine financially. I'm willing to bet I've been through some things you've never seen. I for one however am not so fucking stupid as to think that I was able to do all these things because I'm just some sort of self-made superman. I have the humility and the respect for my fellow human beings to understand that I had some help along the way.

Grow up man, you would do well to learn the same lesson.

And we've all been helped by the past generations throughout history so that the world we live in today exists. I mean how far do you want to take this, and how much respect do people deserve for that?

edit: In response to the original post, I don't believe people are equal, and thereby I am absolutely fine with inequality in and of itself. If there is something objectionable, it is that lack of opportunity may prevent potential from being realized. I however don't think the solution is to force equality throughout, especially in monetary terms.

 

[fskimospy]

Equality:

Conservatives: everyone starts the race at the starting line, even if that means putting the handicapped alongside the Olympiads. The gold medal goes to the winner, even though he may ridiculously outclass his opponents.

Liberals: everyone finishes the race at the same time, even if that means cutting off the Olympiad's feet. The gold medal goes to the judge for being so enlightened and compassionate in coming up with the idea in the first place.

Reality check:

Both liberals and conservatives want everyone to start the race at the starting line. The sad part is that conservatives think that's actually how the world is.

 

[fskimospy]

And we've all been helped by the past generations throughout history so that the world we live in today exists. I mean how far do you want to take this, and how much respect do people deserve for that?

edit: In response to the original post, I don't believe people are equal, and thereby I am absolutely fine with inequality in and of itself. If there is something objectionable, it is that lack of opportunity may prevent potential from being realized. I however don't think the solution is to force equality throughout, especially in monetary terms.

Well of course there's some rational limit, but it's certainly way beyond your peers working next to you. I see the same delusion here that you see on Wall Street where people haven't the slightest clue that their success is owed in part to the work of others. The same pundits who rail against affirmative action are legacy admissions to their alma mater. They're just oblivious.

The idea that people all start at the same line, or that conservatives are in any way working to make it so they do is absolutely ridiculous.