Wulf9 said:
I agree. The left has some pretty extreme folks.
However, my real concern is with the right. The man who lied to start a war is treated like a saint. The "conservatives" control the three branches of government, and are spending like irresponsible liberal (instead of tax and spend, it's borrow and spend). Civil liberties are giving way to government snooping. Big government and big business have paired up to make sure that there is not a free market and that competition is squelched in favor of monopolies and oligopolies. Federal laws are increasingly used to override state laws - in favor of either business or religions. The government is handing out huge subsidies to various industries to make sure that competition does not occur.
To me, these are extremist positions and should be anathema to any thinking conservative. Instead, this is treated as mainstream thinking by the right.
For the record, for every "extreme" conservative, there's an "extreme" liberal to be his counterpart. To be honest, there really aren't many exremeists in our government. It's the folks overseas that I think most have their eyes on in that regard. Furthermore, the ideas of subsidies and favor of monopolies? That's not liberal or conservative. That's flat out in the direction of totalatarian government, and both sides share the blame.
Anyway, I'm a conservative. I think a lot. I wish I had someone to vote for who was more conservative - that is, more traditionalist conservative (good for all of us Cyburbians, because it is technically anti-sprawl!) - than President Bush. Of course, he's the better of the two. I am pro-state rights, and though I try to keep it on the down-low, I really don't care as much about saying this: I'm borderline pro-Texas secession. Looooong story there. In any case, the point I'm trying to get to is that no, conservatives of any kind are out of control of the judiciary. For that matter, I don't think anyone is in control of our black-robed dictators.
And pardon me for saying, but the market is getting towards being more free, at least for now. You want true competition, the government's got to get out, which is why I don't support the billions of dollars wasted on the airlines (when trains are better) or bailing out certain corporations (Chrysler still sucks, so in the end, we're no better off), and I certainly don't support "welfare" or medicare or even social security. Note: it has social in it and it's connected to the government? It probably ruins our country. It just wastes tax dollars. And while I'm on that subject, y'all tend to still be wrong on the taxation issue. What should happen is not cut and spend, and certainly not tax and spend, but rather, why not cut and cut? It's beauracracy and waste (mostly of money) that is so in the way of the kinds of things we want to accomplish in this nation, and the less crap there is clogging the way the better.
And how about that civil liberties issue. It's gotten so bad, I've begun to hate that term. Last I checked, the primary goal of the "evil, all powerful" PATRIOT act was to unite the branches of our military and intelligence, such as the FBI and CIA, to work together better. Funny, my liberties are still in check. Sorry to ruin all the doom-sayers. All in all, I'm not a big fan of big government (I don't mean it like that, because there is no "big business" or "big tobacco" - hey, I lost two grandparents to it, but I still can't blame the business, and why are liberals complaining anyway? I thought drugs were good...) and our "big government" needs to lose some serious weight.
Heck, I don't really support "war", per se, I'm really more "anti-Saddam" and
"anti-dictator/failed '70s foreign policy/terrorist/murdering bastard/waste of times" than anything. That's my position on the war itself: we were cleaning up our mistakes, fixing what we did wrong. After all, we made sure Saddam was in power, and so everything that happened there came as a result. If anything, we should have acted truly unilaterally (a long time ago, agrees my uncle who was a Lieutenet Colonel in Desert Storm) because no one else really had anything to do with our installing such dictators. I never cared about WMD, and if you want proof of terrorist conncections, how about money to families of Palestinian homicide/suicide bombers? Or of off and on training camps in the vincinity? That's what I thought.
Fine, you can call me an extremist if you like; I won't be hurt by meaningless insults hurled in my general direction. I mean, come on, isn't it great having a young, college-bound, conservative guy on what amounts to "your side"?
I honestly want to say more now, but first, I've written a ton here, secondly, I can't think of more to say, and finally, I'm as tired as all get-out, so going to bed would be rockin'.
I'm praying I won't have more political dreams. Too many have involved Geraldo. I
hate Geraldo...