Conservative
A place to discuss pro-conservative stuff
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We are a Pro-Conservative forum. Posts must have a clear pro-conservative, or anti left-wing bias. We are interested in promoting conservatism and discussing things that might get ignored elsewhere. All sources are acceptable, however reputable sources with a reputation for factual reporting are preferred.
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I would describe conservatism as the belief that changing things can make them worse, which can manifest (or appear to manifest) as a fear of change.
Im a libertarian-leaning socially-liberal economically-conservative person rather than a standard Republican so I don't know how representative I am, but here are my conservative values: the people of the USA are amazingly free, wealthy, and safe. I am an immigrant; my family got enough government support to survive when we came here with almost nothing, I attended excellent public schools and went to college with a generous scholarship, and now I live a secure upper-middle-class lifestyle. For me, the American Dream is very much real.
I worry when I hear people (most of whom had great opportunities like I did) claim that America is exceptionally bad and demand drastic change. I would say that they want to kill the goose that lays the golden eggs, but many of them are worse than that because they apparently don't recognize that the eggs that the goose is laying are even golden. I'm not claiming that there's no room for improvement, but improvements must be made slowly and carefully in order to avoid breaking what we do have already, which is both precious and fragile.
And most of those things have gotten significantly worse because of "conservatives". And the people who want "drastic change" are the progressives who want to restore the old values. What you already have is getting worse all the time.
Because the problem in the US is that political left is seen as the same as progressive and political right is conservative. And the right opposes government interventions in the form of social safety nets, free education, etc. Those are not conservative values, but since the US only has 2 parties, they've become conservative value because the conservatives are also right-wing.
If you're a libertarian, I don't see how you even support tax-funded programs like these.
I don't think these things have gotten worse, but my perception is based on looking at immigrants in NYC, which isn't a Republican area. With that said, I don't disagree with you. A lot of current Republicans are willing and even eager to break things - the distinction between them and the most extreme Democrats seems to be which "utopian" vision they want to reach by burning down the current system, and IMO that willingness to destroy what we already have should be unacceptable to reasonable conservatives.
As an aside: I'm not captial-L Libertarian. I lean towards libertarianism because I really don't like being told what to do and therefore I oppose both Democratic "nanny state" policies and Republican moral busybodies. However, I think that government is the best tool for providing a level of social services that almost everyone is willing to support out of basic human decency, and I also think that these social services make good economic sense from a purely selfish perspective too - I pay a lot more in taxes than I ever received in social services so the USA got a good deal on me.
I’m a republican and I do think the moral majority is too much involved in the party. Abortion is a perfect example. A small government republican would leave it up the woman to make her own decision. Instead we have people pushing Jesus as the answer.
Why? A huge amount of what we already have fucking sucks. Why should it be unacceptable to get rid of it?
Because it's better to fix an existing system than to have none at all.
Why is more government always the answer?
Fix != more