My politics

I recently joined a social networking group centered around an activity that tends to attract a lot of liberals. Someone started a discussion thread on politics, and more than one lefty jumped in with the usual talking points. I haven’t so far seen anything from a conservative. Here’s the entry I’m thinking about submitting.

1. War is a horrible, horrible thing. It’s a complete failure of the higher purposes of civilization. Unfortunately, there are things worse than war.

 a. The time to worry about the questions of “just” war is before the fighting begins. The time for worrying about the cost of the war is after the war has been fought. While troops are in the field, the only concern should be how to win. To my way of thinking, anything else is treason. b.I think that what we’re seeing in the Muslim world is their equivalent of the Protestant Reformation, and the only reason that the Western world is being attacked is because we represent where the reformers want to go. The reformation in the Christian world took centuries, and cost thousands of lives BEFORE modern weaponry. We can’t allow that to happen in the Muslim world. The war in Iraq was a way to short-circuit that reformation, and it appears to be working. c. I can't imagine a more racist act than leaving the Iraquis to the tender mercies of people who will send a retarded woman into a pet store with a bomb strapped to her chest. We have to finish what we started. We can argue about the rest of it later. 

1. I’ve worked in the private sector, I’ve worked in the government, and I’ve worked on government projects as part of a contractor organization. Anyone who thinks the government can do anything better than the private sector is living in a fantasy world.

   a.Many people think that the profit motive corrupts, and the only way to keep an organization “honest” is have the government take it over. What they’re missing is that no matter how lofty the initial goals may be, any government organization will eventually degrade to the point where it’s only real mission is maintaining it’s own budget.

   b.The profit motive serves as a reality check on the organization. The fact that private-sector organizations need to keep bringing in revenue from voluntary customers (rather than taking it from unwilling taxpayers who have no choice about paying) more than makes up for the corrupting effect.

2. I believe in charity. I believe in helping those who need help. I DON’T believe that this should be handled by the government. If I don’t have a right say “yes” or “no”, it’s stops being charity and starts being theft.

   a. If you have a cause you think should be funded, convincing a large portion of the population to voluntarily donate (rather than convincing a small number of politicians to steal it for you) is better for both the giver and the receiver. When you factor in the 50% inefficiency of government operations, you’ll probably come out better.

   b. Government social programs are NOT “entitlements”. The only person who’s “entitled” to the money I’ve earned is ME.

   c. There’s no such thing as “welfare rights”. No one has a “right” to the fruit of someone else’s labor.

   d. Health care is NOT a “right”. No one has a right to the fruit of someone else’s labor.

3. Corporate welfare is just as repugnant as personal welfare. I believe in letting corporations succeed or fail on their own. The role of the government in business should be in preventing the creation of businesses that are “too big to let fail”.

   a.If your company or industry needs money to make itself more competitive overseas, you should be talking to your banker, not your senator.

4. I believe that letting 30% or more of the voting population get away without paying federal income tax is a recipe for disaster. If it’s right for any taxpayer to bear the cost of government, then it’s right for all taxpayers to bear that cost. Representation without taxation is as much of an injustice to the taxpayers as taxation without representation.

   a. I think that the day we start letting the government decide how much income is “enough”, and who is more “deserving” of wealth than the person who created it, we stop being citizens and start being subjects.

   b. We should implement a “fair tax” scheme; tax consumption (and therefore wealth) rather than income via a national sales tax, and rebate everyone the equivalent of the tax on a “subsistence” living (with the rebate amount adjusted to inflation and not to tax rates)

   c. I think that corporate taxes are a complete waste of time. They cost jobs and raise costs. They give politicians the ability to impose an indirect tax on all of us without taking any heat for it.

5. I believe that “diversity” is another term for “cultural suicide”. If a culture isn’t confident enough of it’s own values to expect immigrants to adapt to them, then it doesn’t deserve to exist (and in the long run, it won’t).

   a. Assimilation was the engine that created the unique and immensely successful American culture. “Diversity Training” is an idiotic attempt to fix something that wasn’t broken.

   b. If you want to speak your native language at home, dress your daughter like a beekeeper, and raise your kids to be citizens of the “old country” (the one you left because it sucked), that’s your right. Just don’t expect to live the American Dream, and don’t expect it for your kids.

   c. I don’t care where you came from, you don’t have the right to demand that the rest of us adapt the workplace to your culture. If you can’t abide by the rules that everyone else has to follow, then go get a job where you can.

   d. Can someone please explain to me how it is that six months of immersion education is considered enough to become fluent in a language, unless the transition is from Spanish to English?

   e. Any country that’s not willing to secure it’s own borders isn’t long for this world.

6. I like green trees and chirpy birds. Really. But I think that the modern environmental movement is full of organic fertilizer.

   a. It’s amazing to me how the environmental movement’s goals have basically merged with the communists of the last generation; eliminate business, give the government the control over the means of production, redistribute wealth.

   b. There’s not a single aspect of your personal life that the environmental movement doesn’t feel it should have the right to control. These guys make Maoists look like libertines.

   c. It’s not a scientific movement, it’s a political one. From what I can tell, 90% of environmentalists haven’t taken a science class since eighth grade. The ones that can claim the mantle of scientist are also dependent on a pro-environmentalist grant system, yet are the first to call anyone who disagrees with them a “shill for the oil companies”.

   d. Anyone ever notice that there’s no actual qualifications for “environmental activist”? All you need is an opinion and a business card. Birkenstocks and an air of smug self-satisfaction help, but aren’t actually mandatory.

   d. The greenhouse global warming theory (and it IS a “theory”) is full of holes. There is absolutely no proof that the concept is valid, and plenty of evidence that it’s wrong. Any other theory would have been abandoned years ago as hopeless.

7. I believe that racial issues in this country are being addressed in exactly the wrong way.

   a. The gains of the civil rights movement were real, lasting, and amazing. I don’t know of any situation in human history in which a minority population was able to achieve parity in a single generation without an armed uprising. But they weren’t a matter of minorities wrenching power from whites. They were brought about by the white majority accepting responsibility for the injustice of the situation and changing the way they acted, the way they thought, and the way they did business. And they institionalized these changes as law.

   b. There are certainly still white bigots out there. But to the widest extent possible, those people are marginalized, fringe figures, and there are laws to keep them out of power. There are also minority bigots out there, but I can’t say the same about them.

   c. The problems facing the minority communities today, the “performance gap”, drug use, illegitimacy, and black-on-black violence can’t be laid at the feet of white people.

   d. The idea of establishing a black culture separate from the white middle-class has proven to be an abject failure. We advance when we work together; apart, we all become victims of the race-baiter’s obsessions with past injustices.