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Canadian Liberals and Conservatives get kind of blurry from my point of view. Canadian Liberals and Conservatives argue passionately over what degrees of socialism are to be pursued in Canada. In the USA we really have three groups: Libertarians, Conservatives, and Liberals.

Libertarians are the real conservatives in that they want the bare minimum government needed to secure our borders and maintain national security.

Conservatives of the modern day tend to resemble 1930's New Deal liberals in their policies and etc.

Liberals in the USA lack the moderate aspect of most liberals in Canada. Where most Canadian liberals pursue gradual change in Canada you needn't provoke an American liberal too much before they show their true colours. They use coercive language and tactics and violence almost on a whim. The most violent episodes in the USA in recent years are the riots the liberals started when protesting the World Trade Organization. There are no comparable civil disruptions by libertarians or conservatives in recent years.

I was at the pro-Bush rally at the Calfornia State Capitol in November 2000 where 25,000 people protested for Bush.

There were about twenty liberal counter-protesters.

Three of them were detained by the police (CHP) for using their placards as weapons and then released. Subsequently, the twenty or so liberals were surrounded by about sixty CHP, Sacramento Police, and Sacramento Sheriffs Deputies.

All while the 25,000 conservatives went about their rally completely unguarded.

American liberals would force churches closed if they could and people like Senators Boxer & Schumer routinely say things of this ilk and the media laughs about it.

For all the complaining I see on this site about Bush and American conservatives and religious types I wonder what Canada would do with a self-righteous American liberal hegemony that'll seize Canada "for the children". American conservatism might be dangerous to America, but American liberalism is dangerous to everyone because American liberals are beyond reasoning.

   

"Deep Integration" and NAFTA are opposed by libertarians and a core of conservatives.

So-called "free traders" like Rush Limbaugh pushed for NAFTA and now regret it.

Liberals orignally opposed NAFTA and now want more of it.

   

Yes. As far as that goes.


That's either wrong or irrelevant. It's never been a part of anything in the conservative movement, and I think most American conservatives either, a) don't accept the argument, or b) never heard of the "Project for a New American Century". (And by far, mostly 'B').


Doubtful in the extreme.


Across the board cuts in legislatively mandated growth. (i.e. growth by 5% instead of 10%).


????


To severe criticism by Conservative critics.


Homeland Security. A special case.


Only insofar as there has been anti-terrorism legislation. Again, a special case brought about by wartime conditions.


Misconstrued this way, sure.


And there's been a hugh push for the 'ownership society' where people either own figuratively or literally the fruits of their labor. (i.e. individual investment accounts, et c.)



Q.E.D.

(But meaningless... )





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I don't think a lot of "paleo-conservatives" are comfortable with the socialist leanings of the neo-conservatives. Libertarians have no time at all for neo-conservatvies.



Not really. Economics 101. Or maybe you think that governments run programs more effciently than the private sector?

And though you nitpick at my points, it's a verifiable fact that governmetn has gotten bigger under Bush, government spending has gone up under Bush (The Economist or for all the gory details try The Cato Institute). Centralization of federal power and creation of new bureaucracies are evidenced by the creation of an intelligence czar, the Department of Homeland Security, and the centralization of legal matters to federal ourts and federal executive power.

Protectionist trade policies include, most notably, obscene agricultural subsidies, but also by maintaining tariffs that have been repeatedly ruled illegal by vaious bodies including NAFTA and the WTO. For evidence of the limiting of individual freedoms one only need look as far as the Patriot Act, or the abduction and rendition to Syria of a Canadian citizen.

So you may say that my points are misconstrued, but they are all verifiable.

The ownership society business is great talk, but deeds speak louder than words. And the deeds of the Bush administration point to socialism.

   

It's not nitpicking when you don't have any left...



I've already said that expansion of terrorist defensive bureaucracies are a special case. It was certainly not planned in 2000.

You see no difference between creating a bureaucracy in response to a crisis and doing the same out of an ideological commitment?



Verifiable, but they don't mean what you pretend. (I've already shot them down once, here goes twice):

"obscene agricultural subsidies" no significant increase from previous administration.

"maintaining tariffs" criticized by conservatives for this, so it wasn't a new direction for conservatism.

"Patriot Act" again, a response to terrorism, not a policy change.



Introducing private investment accounts will be the most concerted attack on the welfare state in 75 years, and be the most significant social policy change in a generation.

If he's a socialist, let's have more!





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While your arguments about Homeland Security (and other new bureaucracies) being a necessary response to 9/11 is somewhat valid, it doesn't explain Iraq. That was an unbudgeted $170 billion dollar (and counting) government program that was a choice, not a necessity.

That's bad for the tens of thousands of people dead because of that war, but not all bad for Canada. Such fiscal imprudence gives our economy a marginal comparative advantage. Now you're running the race with a ten-pound weight strapped to one ankle. (Of course Canada is too, with our endless social programs.)



I'd say that is conceding my point, as opposed to "shooting it down."


Again, more or less conceding my point.



He is indeed, and you get four more years. Now if we could just talk the Republicans out of misrepresetnign themselves as right-wing, because their socialism is giving us real right-wingers a bad name. We believe in fiscal conservatism, small government and individual liberty.

   

HELL YEAH!!!!

I've been sayng the same thing for a long time and catching nothing but hell from Republicans about it. Republicans anymore are just less socialistic than the Democrats. US voters get a choice between going down the slope to socialism slowly or quickly. Which is really no choice at all.

   

Your point, back when you had one, was that conservatives were now actually socialists, and then you cited the various trade actions, (an arguably socialist activity).

But since the trade actions were hotly contested by conservatives in the United States, clearly conservatives saw that the Bush White House had jumped the rails on this, and that conservatism maintained it's integrity.




You're saying that a program that hasn't changed, supports your thesis that conservatism has.

You might as well say that since birds still fly south for winter, the ideology of conservatism has now become socialist.


Did you say that you still plan on making sense in this thread, or is this now the Bizzaro Zipperfish?







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Real conservatives do not form a majority in the Republican party. Zip is pointing out that the people who CALL themselves conservative in the USA are just not-so-dedicated socialists anymore.

They SAY they want less government but cry when tobacco subsidies are in question.

They SAY the government should balance the budget but then they spend just as much as the Democrats on wasteful and senseless projects.

They SAY that social spending is out of control and DO nothing to reign it in.

Sorry. "Conservatives" anymore are just as bad as liberals if not worse because liberals are not hypocrites when they support socialism.

Conservatives are.

   

Whoa, whoa, whooooooa, you mean progress up to...

   

Sorry, bud. My idea of good government is less of it. Socialism tends to increase in scope and power and, by nature, it must coerce people to participate in it. In a libertarian free market you can have a Communist commune if you want and no one cares.

No socialist or Communist power would tolerate a commune of free market capitalists.

"We're from the government and we're here to help!"

Socialism is taking money from the person who earned it and giving it to the person who didn't.

Sorry, I just don't support that.

Government should do only those things that individuals cannot do for themselves such as national defence, disaster recovery, and roads and municipal infrastructures, and assert civil rights.

   

The American Democratic Party has relied in the past on Keynesian economic theory; and has done so since the 1940's.


The American Republican Party did fall into that trap. Nixon once said "We're all Keynesians now."

The conservative position was that Keynesian economics was not the answer, and that battle is still being fought in the halls of Washington today.

(And before someone suffering a massive lapse of common sense pipes in that the Iraq War is a massive employment project, it should be noted that the Iraq War is being fought by a volunteer army, a modern one without the hordes of infantry used in previous wars, and that rather than seeing it as some sort of Keynesian unemployment alleviator, it needs to be remembered that the war began and continues in an era of relatively low unemployment.)

The point of this? the Democratic Party does not spend because they cannot help it, they are ideologically committed to it. They spend on massive social programs because they believe in the governmental consumption of 'excess' wealth. Keynesian theory.

If some heretofore advocate of meaningless positions can find quotations from legitimate, leading American conservatives, (not some cousin in Regina), that conservatism has now completely reversed its economic positions, I'd like to hear them.






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