Hence some of us have our problems with modern conservatism.

PS: It’s “MerryJ” (my parents weren’t being cutesy, they tagged me with someone’s surname) and the “J” is not “Jane.” But what’s suspicious about “maryjane?”

Ask a liberal for their 3 principles and see the blank stares…been there.
Repeat repeat repeat repeat…do not improvise or get into side topic-changing…
Why national Repubs need to send me so many “surveys” is beyond me…principles guide you…not hit and miss opinions of others.
Just be sure you can articulate defense of those principles.

This does not apply to most iberals because they are emotions-utopia based humans that rarely can be convinced to change…so we must expose and defeat them…
they detest real debate…another trait of the modern liberal (aka secular socialist) not found in conservatism…we LOVE real fair debating…you know, the kind without talking over, smears, topic-shifting and profanity.

A great concept, and carried off brilliantly.

Well done.

Tsk, tsk. Projective thinking is what extremists do (both right and left). No, I’m not buying into anything, you must’ve either misinterpreted the comments or missed an earlier entry in the continuum. I understand that all of the tyranical “isms” are on the same side of the R-L scale regardless of the time and location of that scale; it’s the labels that are fluid, not the pathologies.

To clarify what I mean by reactionism (being extreme on the political right) with a relevant example, the pro-life/abortion debate: We on the pro-life side lost the Roe v Wade-debate, not because we were wrong or in a true minority but, partially at least, because the loudest, most consistent shouting on our side was from those determined to include an absolute ban on all forms of artificial birth control into the anti-abortion mix (come to think of it, maybe it was radical activists deliberately trying to discredit pro-lifers; I jest, but the point is made).

With the possible exception (and I’m not even close to convinced) of contraceptives that include spermicide, banning birth control is not about preserving life, it’s about controlling others’ behavior. There is a distinction in that the desire to control (in this and similar instances) is on an individual, personal level and not accompanied by the power to control. Should that happen, it would leapfrog the governing ideology over to the opposite side of the scale and into one of the statist groups.

http://www.trivia-library.com/b/origins-of-common-words-sinister.htm

The collective farms in the USSR, obviously.

But what does the IRS do but COLLECT.

Leftists suffer from a COLLECTIVE insanity.

Sweeping the congress clean will allow us a COLLECTIVE sigh of relief.

If prescribed in general enough terms, outcomes are predictable and people will be able to predict what their best course of action will be at any given time.

When laws are contorted into all kinds of specificity and riddled with exceptions, the purpose of the law (guiding right behavior and a civil society) is not served.

Anyway, IIRC something I read recently by Burke. The most natural moral laws in the world are conservative at their core. Think: 10 commandments and the Bill of Rights and then contemplate the travesties wreaked in our congress.

I’ve obviously not read deeply on natural law, so forgive my muddleheadedness.

Sorry if I seemed to be a little confused about what planet I’m on

That “extremism in pursuit of liberty is no vice, and (something something I can’t recall) is no virtue” quote: I didn’t realize it was from Rand, I remember Goldwater saying it, but I didn’t realize he was quoting. He got a lot of static for it (but he got static for everything).

They call themselves progressive, but I’m with Toby/Levin. Let’s call them statists.

Good diary EPU.

We allow the lefties to define us and don’t stop and correct them before answering the questions. Liz Cheney is the best I ever saw at just REJECTING the pre-loaded questions.