re: American Conservatism is Fiddling While Rome Burns

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But sure, lets blame conservatives and conservatism.

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I don't. I blame the framework. It incentivizes and necessarily becomes more and more leftward due to its very structure.

If conservatives were their own rulers, they couldn’t conserve? Conservatives don’t consider themselves sovereign. They are subject to their progressive neighbors as a matter of principle. Progressives have demands too, and if conservatives are going to compromise, then yea some things they value will have to go. They accept this, I’m saying they don’t have to. Are conservatives subject to Europeans? Ought the be? One world government then? I doubt it. So extend that principle to progressives and politically disassociate.

Yea, I agree.

What I mean by that is that I think conservatives should start thinking like American revolutionaries instead of thinking like the British. Do conservatives and progressives have to be subject to one another forever? Split up.

I just don’t see a solution. This isn’t 1862 with a clear dividing line between the two sides. And as much as the government sucks, at the end of the day the root of our problems can really be attributed to the shithead citizens among us of which there is no shortage. At a certain point, reconciliation is also impossible when two sides can’t agree on a starting premise for reality much less share a general vision for the future of the nation.

It’s one thing to overthrow a corrupt government, but how do you remake a morally bankrupt and mostly stupid society?

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You stop paying people to be morally bankrupt

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Well, how do you get control of that?

By eliminating the federal entitlement system, abolishing federally backed student loans, and completely dynamiting our tax code to replace all our current federal taxes with a national sales tax via the FAIR Tax Act.

I mean your solution would work, but it will also never be implemented realistically.

Think the only real path to something better is to collapse the entire fricking thing and hope something better rises from the ashes. The question then is how best to do that.

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Even worse (for Conservatives and the country), Conservatism requires that one be a counter-intuitive thinker. You not only have to have a minimum level of intelligence, you have to be able to hold two competing ideas in your head and argue them on the merits.

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Well said.

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No, I mean how are you going to be able to do such things?

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Start with the obvious reforms via the FAIR Tax Act and go snipping around the edges of entitlements (reimbursement rates for medicare/medicaid, raising retirement age, work requirements, raising federal requirements for SNAP, changing qualifications for disability, shorter unemployment insurance, reforming how the welfare cliff functions and rewards mothers of multiple children, etc)
Then, as each reform makes entitlements more and more efficient and less capable of abuse, you start piece by piece spinning responsibilities and decision making authority for programs down to states, starting with blunt funding that slowly tapers down to nothing.

Step 1: closing opportunities for fraud and cracking down on punishment

Step 2: adjust eligibility requirements to make entitlements easier to get off of and harder to get on without serious need, and to eliminate perverse financial incentives to make otherwise bad economic and personal decisions (Children out of wedlock, corporate buyouts, always leasing rather than buying, spending rather than saving, co-habitation rather than marriage, remaining in the same location rather than seeking work, refusing work for fear of losing benefits, using the ER for routine medical services rather than primary care doctor, etc)

Step 3: slowly transition responsibilities and decision-making from feds to state.

Basically, you creep by creep pass the buck off to the states where it belongs while reducing federal taxation accordingly so that states can raise the difference. States are better vehicles for managing entitlements because they can tailor them to the cost of living in their states and their population’s specific needs, they can be more responsive to citizens, they can set their own standards so people can vote with their feet, and they have to balance their budgets every year, so they can only grow their entitlement systems so fast.

You go for the fraud and abuse to show there are real consequences, then you reform the system to make it more and more fiscally sustainable while eliminating policies that incentivize bad behavior, then you slowly pass the buck.