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Started By
Message
re: "Conservatism" has to be more than just a defensive posture
Posted on 4/15/24 at 11:18 am to RollTide71
Posted on 4/15/24 at 11:18 am to RollTide71
quote:
You left out desanctimonious.
Youre so obssessed.
Unlike MAGA, I'm not bound to one personality. Yall will return to the left when Trump is gone.
2
Posted on 4/15/24 at 11:18 am to RogerTheShrubber
While I would love for the intellectual equivalent of Thomas Sowell to suddenly be electable to the Presidency, the reality is that the first order of business is to kill the goose laying liberal golden eggs.
IDENTITY POLITICS.
Until this dead, buried and shamed beyond all recognition, there is no route back from the insanity liberals have built not just in the US, but throughout the west.
IDENTITY POLITICS.
Until this dead, buried and shamed beyond all recognition, there is no route back from the insanity liberals have built not just in the US, but throughout the west.
Posted on 4/15/24 at 11:22 am to Wishing Well
quote:
While I would love for the intellectual equivalent of Thomas Sowell t
Bad example. He laughed at Trump's economic policies.
Posted on 4/15/24 at 11:26 am to burger bearcat
PART ONE:
Reagan era Republicans lowered the top income tax rate from 70% to 28% with a majority Democrat Congress in both chambers.
Those would be the last people you could make a case for working within a "fantasy system."
That's exactly what you are advocating in this very post. More about that in a minute.
First, what you are advocating is embracing populism just like the left has for so long. You want to be like the left. You don't realize it, but abandoning principles in favor of "being practical" is the populist justification that you envy on the left.
You mean how the left wants to seize the assets of "rich people" to pay black people reparations?
That's no less moral, no crazier, no more outrageous, and no more the result of a lawless populist mob mentality than what you just proposed.
"A bunch of people took out loans of their own free will and don't want to pay them back. Aw frick it, we'll just seize someone else's money and pay it back with that."
It's completely immoral and irrational, and it's what happened in many communist countries.
Define "meaningless university degree," please. Who gets to decide that and upon what criteria?
Keep in mind that aerospace engineering was in the top five recent list of unemployed degree holders that was posted here. Surely you aren't going to be such a moron that you define "meaningless degree" so that it includes that major.
The obvious point with student loans is that any school that didn't engage in fraud by guaranteeing a student taking out a loan to attend it employment or a certain salary upon graduation (which would be virtually all of them) did nothing wrong.
quote:
There are alot of reasons we lose. But one of our main issues is self imposed rule setting the right and conservatives have created for themselves, that we insist on following, while the left completely could care less about these boundaries. We are always going to be at an unfair advantage because of this.
Now, I am not advocating for the right to engage in immoral practices to achieve their ends, but we should work within the reality of the political system that is in place, and not the fantasy system that boomer, Reagan era Republicans dream up, that does not really exist and quite frankly, never has.
Reagan era Republicans lowered the top income tax rate from 70% to 28% with a majority Democrat Congress in both chambers.
Those would be the last people you could make a case for working within a "fantasy system."
quote:
Now, I am not advocating for the right to engage in immoral practices to achieve their ends
That's exactly what you are advocating in this very post. More about that in a minute.
First, what you are advocating is embracing populism just like the left has for so long. You want to be like the left. You don't realize it, but abandoning principles in favor of "being practical" is the populist justification that you envy on the left.
quote:
For example. In regards to the student loan situation....We should propose to seize funds from the university endowments and use that to pay back the loans.
You mean how the left wants to seize the assets of "rich people" to pay black people reparations?
That's no less moral, no crazier, no more outrageous, and no more the result of a lawless populist mob mentality than what you just proposed.
"A bunch of people took out loans of their own free will and don't want to pay them back. Aw frick it, we'll just seize someone else's money and pay it back with that."
It's completely immoral and irrational, and it's what happened in many communist countries.
quote:
We should use it as an opportunity to shut down all meaningless university degrees, and force these institutions to act more financially responsible and throwing money into lazy rivers and ridiculously fancy student housing.
Define "meaningless university degree," please. Who gets to decide that and upon what criteria?
Keep in mind that aerospace engineering was in the top five recent list of unemployed degree holders that was posted here. Surely you aren't going to be such a moron that you define "meaningless degree" so that it includes that major.
The obvious point with student loans is that any school that didn't engage in fraud by guaranteeing a student taking out a loan to attend it employment or a certain salary upon graduation (which would be virtually all of them) did nothing wrong.
Posted on 4/15/24 at 11:27 am to wackatimesthree
PART II
It's a victimhood-addict populist fantasy to think that colleges can and should only offer majors that have high employment results. For lots of reasons. Chief among them:
1. Employment prospects change. Employment prospects were probably pretty limited for computer science majors in the 60s and early 70s. I guess those were "meaningless degrees" that we should have loaded up the pitchforks and torches and "seized" college's endowments to stop back then.
The internet and the availability of information alone has changed the demand for college degrees immensely in the past 25 years, and most of the degrees that are becoming extinct are not what you think they are. They are composed mostly of specific math and science degrees, with a healthy splash of classical languages and English Literature thrown in.
2. Employment prospects are not the only reason people choose a particular field of study. And in fact, if all college is supposed to be is a high-tech trade school, then I don't think we need to be supporting that with public funds anyway. We should all save the tax money and we should let businesses train applicants in their own schools and programs. Why are taxpayers paying for individuals to get better jobs (if that's the only reason colleges exist?). Those individuals need to be paying for themselves to get better jobs.
The conclusion is obvious. Colleges cannot and should not be responsible for the value of a degree to any particular student. The student has to determine that value themselves. They are the only entity who can.
Furthermore, colleges cannot and should not be responsible for a student's success after they graduate, regardless of their degree. They can't control how much the student studied vs partied in school, can't control how hard the graduate works at his or her job, gets along with people, whether he or she has addiction problems or not...I could go on, but the point is obvious...it's completely ridiculous to make the college responsible for a graduate's inability to pay loans back.
Again, the conclusion is obvious. Graduates have to be responsible for their own success. If they make poor choices (whether those choices are about choice of major or whether they involve doing things to alienate other workers at their jobs, or being habitually late, etc.), those choices have to be on them.
Trying to make anyone else responsible is simply absurd.
And all you have to do to stop lazy rivers and fancy buildings is stop issuing the loans. The simplest thing possible. Students aren't capable of making wise decisions about their majors? Then you need to stop giving them loan money to squander.
I'm not going to respond to all of your issue points, but I am going to address your moronic conclusion, trusting that this one example is sufficient to blow up your narrative.
Sure, taking someone else's money because some people don't feel like paying for the ride they took is easy. Why do you think the left has been after everyone else's money for over a hundred years now?
And sure, it's easy to get the average person on board with a mob. The average person is a slobbering moron when it comes to these topics.
Sure, that's exactly why the left wins so often...they appeal to populists just like you. People to whom it never occurs to hold the person actually responsible for something responsible for something. It's always someone else's fault.
"Let's get 'em!" Is always a crowd pleaser.
But then what? What happens when it's your money someone wants to "seize" to pay reparations instead of a university endowment? What happens when enough people to constitute a majority (or even a significant minority) decide that you, being a white male, do not deserve the same treatment under the law that minority citizens enjoy? What happens when you are the "'em" that the mob wants to get?
You can't cry "private property" or "personal responsibility" or "equal justice under the law" then.
Because those are "muh conservative principles"...you've already gone on record dooking on all of that. Adhering to principle is like understanding that you can't gorge yourself on candy and cake without consequences. Populism is just trying to grab as much candy and cake to shove in your mouth as possible, then blaming someone else when you get a stomachache from it and finally demanding that someone else pay for your diabetes when you give yourself that result over time.
(BTW, have you ever seen someone who was so dumb that he couldn't realize he was that dumb and instead was convinced that people much smarter than himself were the dumb ones? Here's a tip...you have. You just may not have realized which side of that scenario you were one).
You're just like the idiots on here the other day wanting prisons like the one in El Salvador. That's NOT the purpose of politics. We could reduce crime to near zero within one year. That would be a "good outcome" to many of you. Except that I guarantee you wouldn't want to live in this country if we did what was necessary to achieve it.
You can create policy without a foundation on principles or without regard for the potential unintended consequences and without regard for what happens when someone applies your precedent to another situation. The left has been doing it for a long time now. But it's not a good idea, or even a sustainably workable idea. The only reason the US hasn't already gone over the cliff yet is because there were some people around who didn't succumb to the mob mentality you're advocating for.
But that mob mentality is becoming more and more popular and pretty soon there will be no more adults in the room to stop the idiocy. I hope I'm no longer around to see it when it happens.
It's a victimhood-addict populist fantasy to think that colleges can and should only offer majors that have high employment results. For lots of reasons. Chief among them:
1. Employment prospects change. Employment prospects were probably pretty limited for computer science majors in the 60s and early 70s. I guess those were "meaningless degrees" that we should have loaded up the pitchforks and torches and "seized" college's endowments to stop back then.
The internet and the availability of information alone has changed the demand for college degrees immensely in the past 25 years, and most of the degrees that are becoming extinct are not what you think they are. They are composed mostly of specific math and science degrees, with a healthy splash of classical languages and English Literature thrown in.
2. Employment prospects are not the only reason people choose a particular field of study. And in fact, if all college is supposed to be is a high-tech trade school, then I don't think we need to be supporting that with public funds anyway. We should all save the tax money and we should let businesses train applicants in their own schools and programs. Why are taxpayers paying for individuals to get better jobs (if that's the only reason colleges exist?). Those individuals need to be paying for themselves to get better jobs.
The conclusion is obvious. Colleges cannot and should not be responsible for the value of a degree to any particular student. The student has to determine that value themselves. They are the only entity who can.
Furthermore, colleges cannot and should not be responsible for a student's success after they graduate, regardless of their degree. They can't control how much the student studied vs partied in school, can't control how hard the graduate works at his or her job, gets along with people, whether he or she has addiction problems or not...I could go on, but the point is obvious...it's completely ridiculous to make the college responsible for a graduate's inability to pay loans back.
Again, the conclusion is obvious. Graduates have to be responsible for their own success. If they make poor choices (whether those choices are about choice of major or whether they involve doing things to alienate other workers at their jobs, or being habitually late, etc.), those choices have to be on them.
Trying to make anyone else responsible is simply absurd.
And all you have to do to stop lazy rivers and fancy buildings is stop issuing the loans. The simplest thing possible. Students aren't capable of making wise decisions about their majors? Then you need to stop giving them loan money to squander.
I'm not going to respond to all of your issue points, but I am going to address your moronic conclusion, trusting that this one example is sufficient to blow up your narrative.
quote:
These are all.easy and obvious steps, but dumbass Reps and boomer-cons are too twisted up with their mental gymnastics and muh "conservative principles" that do nothing but hamstring them.
Sure, taking someone else's money because some people don't feel like paying for the ride they took is easy. Why do you think the left has been after everyone else's money for over a hundred years now?
And sure, it's easy to get the average person on board with a mob. The average person is a slobbering moron when it comes to these topics.
Sure, that's exactly why the left wins so often...they appeal to populists just like you. People to whom it never occurs to hold the person actually responsible for something responsible for something. It's always someone else's fault.
"Let's get 'em!" Is always a crowd pleaser.
But then what? What happens when it's your money someone wants to "seize" to pay reparations instead of a university endowment? What happens when enough people to constitute a majority (or even a significant minority) decide that you, being a white male, do not deserve the same treatment under the law that minority citizens enjoy? What happens when you are the "'em" that the mob wants to get?
You can't cry "private property" or "personal responsibility" or "equal justice under the law" then.
Because those are "muh conservative principles"...you've already gone on record dooking on all of that. Adhering to principle is like understanding that you can't gorge yourself on candy and cake without consequences. Populism is just trying to grab as much candy and cake to shove in your mouth as possible, then blaming someone else when you get a stomachache from it and finally demanding that someone else pay for your diabetes when you give yourself that result over time.
(BTW, have you ever seen someone who was so dumb that he couldn't realize he was that dumb and instead was convinced that people much smarter than himself were the dumb ones? Here's a tip...you have. You just may not have realized which side of that scenario you were one).
quote:
The whole point of engaging in politics is to produce good outcomes.
You're just like the idiots on here the other day wanting prisons like the one in El Salvador. That's NOT the purpose of politics. We could reduce crime to near zero within one year. That would be a "good outcome" to many of you. Except that I guarantee you wouldn't want to live in this country if we did what was necessary to achieve it.
You can create policy without a foundation on principles or without regard for the potential unintended consequences and without regard for what happens when someone applies your precedent to another situation. The left has been doing it for a long time now. But it's not a good idea, or even a sustainably workable idea. The only reason the US hasn't already gone over the cliff yet is because there were some people around who didn't succumb to the mob mentality you're advocating for.
But that mob mentality is becoming more and more popular and pretty soon there will be no more adults in the room to stop the idiocy. I hope I'm no longer around to see it when it happens.
This post was edited on 4/15/24 at 11:35 am
Posted on 4/15/24 at 11:29 am to Wishing Well
quote:
Until this dead, buried and shamed beyond all recognition, there is no route back from the insanity liberals have built not just in the US, but throughout the west.
And while you try to do that, the left is already 2 or 3 steps ahead of you, by bringing in new political patronage networks via immigration, and creating new ones via the LGBT movement.
They fight on all fronts, and see things 3 dimensionally, in ways the right cannot see. We Will often be able to diagnose the damage after it is already been done, but we are unable to see it or.do anything about it in real time
Posted on 4/15/24 at 11:30 am to Jax-Tiger
quote:
IMO, taking 4 years to tackle a corrupt bureaucracy is worth putting some of the absolute conservative principles on hold for a while - things we wouldn't get otherwise.
This is a great point. The left has made so many gains because they have mastered the art of playing the long game. The right has never even heard of the long game.
Posted on 4/15/24 at 11:47 am to RogerTheShrubber
quote:You've done nothing but praise the quitting, knee-taker.
Youre so obssessed.
Posted on 4/15/24 at 11:54 am to SlowFlowPro
quote:
Even if we are to assume you're correct, that would take decades to see fruits, let alone make a difference. It won't work. Maybe if Reagan had started this in the 80s
I am correct, and decades long solutions are the only solutions.
It would have worked prior to the financial crisis, I haven't done a fresh analysis but you are correct it's almost certainly less attractive now.
Posted on 4/15/24 at 12:08 pm to RollTide71
quote:
You've done nothing but praise the quitting, knee-taker.
Havent brought him up. You did.
Repeatedly.
We get it. You want higher taxes.
Posted on 4/15/24 at 12:10 pm to burger bearcat
quote:
And while you try to do that, the left is already 2 or 3 steps ahead of you, by bringing in new political patronage networks via immigration, and creating new ones via the LGBT movement.
You can do the same.
But you'll be wasting your time. Most of this stuff would easily be solved with econmics.
Posted on 4/15/24 at 12:20 pm to RogerTheShrubber
quote:Maybe not here, but you certainly bring up ol' knee-taker often.
Havent brought him up. You did.
Posted on 4/15/24 at 1:01 pm to burger bearcat
quote:You seem to think I'm disagreeing with you when I'm not at all.
And while you try to do that, the left is already 2 or 3 steps ahead of you, by bringing in new political patronage networks via immigration, and creating new ones via the LGBT movement.
I'm merely pointing out that THIS hurdle, left undealth with will kneecap all other conservative goals. I'm not saying it's the ONLY goal.
For way too long, Republicans have tried to play, "keep our heads down" when dealing with identify politics and ceded the battlefield to liberals. Scared shitless of being called some sort of "ist", Republicans could be made to cower on basically every issue.
Posted on 4/15/24 at 1:03 pm to RollTide71
quote:
Havent brought him up. You did.
Maybe not here
You havent shut up about him yet.
Them damn conservatives!
Posted on 4/15/24 at 1:03 pm to SlowFlowPro
quote:What's your point? I know Trump isn't conservative politically. That's why it's so hilarious watching liberals act like he's to the right of Atilla the Hun.
Bad example. He laughed at Trump's economic policies.
My unicorn world would love to have Thomas Sowell's brain in every last soul in DC.
Unfortunately, that's not one of the possibilities.
Posted on 4/15/24 at 1:04 pm to Wishing Well
quote:
I know Trump isn't conservative politically.
Yet yall will still vote in droves for the guy, knowing he has no answers.
There is no conservative choice, as Conservatives are being relegated to the fringe by MAGA
Posted on 4/15/24 at 1:16 pm to RogerTheShrubber
quote:
Yet yall will still vote in droves for the guy, knowing he has no answers.
The others completely failed to confront liberal identity politics. The others completely failed to confront censorship. The others completely failed to confront even leftist violence! In fact, when the leftist violence was directed at Trump supporters in 2015, the others sided AGAINST Trump's supporters.
Oh sure. NOW that Trump finally made it somewhat fashionable, they all jumped on board. Talk about leading from the rear!
Look. Politically, in ideal world, I far prefer Cruz, Desantis and a host of others. But ALL of them showed no fricking backbone whatsoever until some fricking TV personality showed up to demand it. Which, frankly is sad, but no less true despite it being sad.
You are correct. There is no conservative choice. The reason there is no conservative choice is because conservatism isn't even on the table until the above is given it's political death. You aren't going to get any flavor whatsoever of conservatism as long as conservatives are scared shitless of BLM and white suburban women calling them names.
Posted on 4/15/24 at 2:00 pm to RogerTheShrubber
quote:
Yall will return to the left when Trump is gone.
Posted on 4/15/24 at 2:01 pm to Wishing Well
quote:
The others completely failed to confront liberal identity politics.
Trump isnt either. Dude got angry at Ron for standing up to Disney.
In fact, hes entrenched "Liberal Economics" into the right.
We need a marked difference between progressivism and conservatism. Joe and Donny are too damn expensive.
This post was edited on 4/15/24 at 2:07 pm
Posted on 4/15/24 at 2:13 pm to RogerTheShrubber
quote:Well, sorry, that's just revisionist history.
Trump isnt either
quote:Trump was wrong. Alas, Trump isn't infallible.
Dude got angry at Ron for standing up to Disney.
quote:Meh. He's entrenched a few ideas that aren't typically conservative. He's NOWHERE NEAR where the left is economically. At worst, you could argue he's where the left was............30 years ago.
In fact, hes entrenched "Liberal Economics" into the right.
quote:I agree. Where we differ is I'm telling you we aren't going to get jack shite as long as the left owns identity politics.
We need a marked difference between progressivism and conservatism. Joe and Donny are too damn expensive.
I mean shite. We STILL have conservatives that are too stupid to have figured out you can NEVER apologize to liberals. And, heck, at LEAST half the "conservative" never Trumpers most dislike him, not because of econ policy, but because he's mean and they don't like to be "mean".
Heck, MOST of the "conservative" never Trumpers, have begun to sound indistinguishable from Adam Schiff in terms of basic concepts of freedom.
Frankly, if Trump has successfully done nothing else, it's been to expose a lot of supposed "conservatives" as pretty fricking anti-freedom themseles.
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