Politics
William F. Buckley Jr. with President Ronald Regan
As mentioned on the “About” page, I consider myself a conservative Republican. In the past 32 years, I have voted for Democrats, Independents, and Republicans, including in the presidential general elections. My political views aren’t something I recently picked up from someone, some website, or from a radio or television show, they have come from three decades of careful consideration of both major parties and the independents that have come along, the actions of those parties, and the results, both intended and unintended, from bills passed by those parties.
I believe in the “rugged indivualism” of the American people, which is one of the reasons America has become the greatest country in the world. Ordinary people doing extraordinary things. Government intervention and intrusion hinders this, so I believe in a limited government with limited taxation to allow Americans to persue excellence. Success should not be punished, taxation should never get to the point of making one question whether or not to invest.
Government doesn’t have to the “the bad guy”, but it often gets in the way of excellence. For example, it was recently said by one of the presidential candidates that “the Civil Rights Movement wouldn’t have taken place without the US Government.” That is very wrong…the Civil Rights movement took place in spite of the government. There were those in the government that supported it, but none of them particularly helped it until it was obvious that the movement might succeed. Our current energy problems are another example. Liberal activists within our own government have prevented the building of oil refineries and nuclear power plants, ground has been broken for neither for three decades! This has left us at the mercy of foreign countries…many who really don’t like us, they just like our money. And these same liberal politicians still refuse our pleas for energy independence, preferring to appease their liberal constituents, who’d rather we ride bicycles or take public transportation. Not them, have you, just everyone else.
The liberals like to point out the deficiencies in our education system, that we are far down the “international list” in education, and more money is required to improve that system. How can that be? Our public education system is by far the most expensive in the world! We are already among the highest taxed people in the world. How will taxing us more improve that system? Fortunately, our local public school system is excellent.
I have many problems with my own party. When the Republicans took the House and Senate in 1994, I really thought that many of the problems in Washington would be corrected. And many would have been, but much of the leadership, people that had already been in Washington for years, really didn’t care much for Newt Gingrich’s “conservative revolution”, hadn’t cared much for Ronald Regan, and didn’t care for the new conservative membership. They were quite happy just taking over from the Democrats, doing the same old thing, more worried about getting reelected than making changes. In other words, they’d rather sit on their asses than actually do real work for us, the taxpayers, their bosses. Out of sheer laziness and stupidity, they lost both houses in 2006, leaving far too many problems uncorrected.
President George W. Bush isn’t and never has been particularly conservative. He hasn’t served his party well as the conservative leader he should have been, and the party as a whole has paid for it.
The current political climate today has gotten pretty scary. The liberal activists in this country have drummed up so much hate for President George W. Bush and the Republican party that things have gotten rediculous. The Democrat leadership has gotten caught up in this, and promotes it whenever possible. It is a proven fact that the people in the media are 90% Democrat, and have allowed themselves to lose all objectivity. Largely, they don’t even investigate or report anymore, prefering to get “the news” from liberal websites like “mediamatters.com” and “The Daily Kos”. So the American people are bombarded with a constant stream of venomous, hate-filled charges against anyone that doesn’t totally agree with them, much like the Russian people prior to the Bolchevic Revolution, and the German people prior to the Nazi party taking over.
Yes, I am conservative, but I am not blind to the real domestic problems that the Democrats champion. One of these is health care.
We in the United States have the finest health care system in the world. People from all over the world, including those countries with socialized health care systems, come to America for treatment. The life expectancy of Americans has increased greatly in the past two decades due to the wonderful system we have. Unfortunately, for many reasons, heath care has gotten rediculously expensive. So expensive that those without insurance can’t afford to get sick or hurt. Personally, I do have a job that offers reasonably priced insurance, and I am very thankful for it, in early 2008 my wife was diagnosed with a cardiovascular condition, and required treatment. After all of the costs were tallied, the treatment and outpatient surgery (that took about 25 minutes) cost about the equivalent of our family pre-taxed income for a year. Doctors and hospitals aren’t really interested in payment plans, so if we hadn’t have had insurance, we’d have had to declare bankruptcy as many others, which is one of the reasons that health care has gotten so expensive.
What is the answer? I don’t know. Something has to be done. BUT>>>something reasonable, something that won’t damage the system we have, and I feel that socialized medicine will do that.
Another big problem is the loss of manufacturing jobs in America. Our manufacturing base is one of the biggest reasons for our great success in the last century. That has been steadily dwindling over the past four decades. Taxation, environmental regulations, and cheap overseas labor has driven far too many manufacturing jobs from our shores in that time, and more leave daily. Some companies are returning, preferring the high productivity of American laborers, but too many others aren’t.
What is the answer here? Isolationism isn’t, free trade has created a lot of jobs here. But service and information oriented jobs don’t strengthen the dollar like a strong manufacturing base.
