Adams County Republicans

Advancing conservative ideals in Adams County, Colorado

The Fundamental Differences Between Liberals and Conservatives

The fundamental differences between liberals and conservatives
by Michael Rosen
The Denver Post, 8/6/86
 
IT HARDLY MATTERS whether the debate concerns economic policy, social issues, defense or foreign affairs; it just seems that all too often the fundamental differences between liberals and conservatives are simply irreconcilable: I think that’s because they are. The only valuable, productive disagreements are between those who fundamentally agree. How can we come to terms on the details if we can’t accept each other’s basic assumptions? Between those who fundamentally disagree, especially in politics, we have not discussion but rhetoric, debating games and grandstanding.
 
If you’d like to better understand the irreconcilable differences between liberals and conservatives in this country, I’d recommend James Burnham’s classic book, “Suicide of the West.” First published in 1964, it’s just as insightful, or more so, today. Burnham addresses the basic conflict in world view and the order of values between liberals and conservatives. As a matter of fact, you may want to take this test yourself. First, let’s list and define the key values Burnham isolates, then we’ll prioritize them.
 
Liberty — Defined as national independence and self-government; sovereignty.
Freedom — In the sense of freedom, or liberties, of the individual.
Justice — To mean distributive justice of a social welfare sort; economic and social “justice” inclined more toward equality of result than merely equality of opportunity.
Peace — The absence of large-scale warfare among major powers.
 
Burnham observes that most people believe in all four of these values to one extent or another. We are frequently, however, forced to choose between one or another of them or, at least, to place them in order of relative importance.
 
Would you, for example, jeopardize peace to maintain liberty, or sacrifice individual freedom to achieve justice?
 
So here’s the tough part: Rank these four values in order of their importance according to your own social and economic view of the world. In Burnham’s judgment, the rankings might be:
 
Liberal             Conservative               (Libertarian)
Peace               Liberty                                    Freedom
Justice             Freedom                      Peace
Freedom          Peace                           Liberty
Liberty                        Justice                         Justice
           
Today’s liberals have elevated pacifism to a principal value; they remain committed to the welfare state; and they increasingly oppose nationalism in favor of internationalism. To liberals, tradition is an obstacle. Their philosophy is Utopian: Human nature can be changed; man is perfectible; disarmament is achievable; war can be eliminated. (Woody Allen once prophesied: “The lion and the calf shall lie down together, but the calf won’t get much sleep.”)
 
The conservative’s order of values reflects a traditional view of human nature and society. It recognizes that the world is often a harsh and competitive place, populated by imperfect — and imperfectible — beings; that there are limitations to what public or private institutions can do to ameliorate this condition. Conservatives believe that the American experiment in democratic capitalism has produced the greatest measure of political freedom and economic achievement the world has ever known, and that it is threatened by serious adversaries both within and without. Conservatives believe that change can be for the bad as well as the good. (Someone once described a conservative as someone who doesn’t want anything done for the first time.)
 
Liberals may not like the Soviet version of. communism in practice, but they do not share the conservative revulsion to the theory of communism. As Burnham notes, liberals are “infected” with the promise of communism. They share many ideals: peace, egalitarianism, secularism, collectivism, full employment, free social services. How can liberals oppose communism when they share so many principles? The Soviet constitution — if it weren’t a fraud — sounds, to some people, better than ours.
 
Liberals’ preferred enemy is always to the right: South Africa, South Korea, Chile — never, to the left; Cuba, Nicaragua, even the Soviet Union can be apologized for. To be fair, conservatives also apologize for right-wing governments, but that alliance tends to be pragmatic, not ideological. Liberals are genuinely sympathetic to the ideology of the left; they respect the intentions of leftist regimes, if not their results.
 
It may well seem to many of our native liberals that they have more in common” philosophically with redeemable, “progressive” Nicaraguan or Russian communists than with hopelessly “reactionary” American conservatives. Don’t look for much in the way of detente in the war of ideas on the home front.
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Pick a party and get in game
by Mike Rosen
Rocky Mountain News, 5/5/2000
 
Roughly a third of Americans vote Republican, about a third Democrat, just under a third could be called swing voters, with the remainder falling into various fractional categories of extremists and single-issue voters. The swing voters decide elections. The trick for a candidate in a contested race is to attract enough of them to win. That’s why major-party office-seekers tend to move toward the political center during election campaigns. For better or worse, this is simply the way things work in a two-party system like ours. Third parties candidates, with rare exceptions like Minnesota Gov. Jesse Ventura, are mostly a distraction. Although they seldom win, they can affect the outcome, helping or hurting either the Democrat or the Republican.
 
For example, take Colorado’s 2nd District Congressional race this year. Freshman Democrat incumbent Mark Udall would normally be considered the favorite in this Boulder-centered district. But the Green Party, a zealous hodgepodge of radical environmentalists; socialists; anti-business, anti-technology, neo-Luddite types; pacifists and other assorted malcontents, is running a candidate, Ron Forthofer. Forthofer won’t win, but he might steal enough votes from Udall to enable a Republican to win. This is precisely what’s happened in New Mexico, where in recent elections, Green Party candidates in a heavily Democratic state have siphoned off enough liberal support to elect a Republican governor and two Republicans to Congress. People who vote for Greens or other leftist fringe parties aren’t “wasting” their vote, as some say, they’re using it unwittingly to get Republicans elected. Thank you. Unfortunately, anti-abortion activists have been similarly self-destructive when they help Democrats get elected.
 
Does this mean that in a two-party system it comes down to choosing between the lesser of evils? You bet it does. And it can’t be any other way. If you say you don’t like the choice between George W Bush and Al Gore, then you pick two candidates and we’ll see how many people don’t like your selections.
 
When I hear people say there’s no difference between the two major parties, frankly I’m puzzled. Unless you’re terribly uninformed or so far out on the radical fringes that left-center and right-center blend together, the differences in the two parties’ philosophies and agendas are stark. Just a few examples:
 
• Taxes – Democrats want to soak the rich (and, inevitably, the middle class). Republicans want across-the-board tax cuts.
• Government spending – Democrats always want to increase spending, especially for income-transfer “entitlements.” Republicans want to reduce government’s share of national income.
• Social Security – Democrats want to continue the Ponzi game until it collapses, then soak the rich. Republicans want to privatize it.
• Defense – Democrats want to continue to defund and emasculate the military. Republicans want to restore our capabilities and maintain a permanent, effective and credible fighting force.
• Health – Democrats want socialized medicine in stages. Republicans want to maintain private delivery of health care, funded with subsidies for the poor, and tax incentives, like self-directed medical savings accounts, for everyone else.
• Labor – Republicans believe in free markets, competition and right-to-work protections. Democrats are in the pocket of big labor unions.
• Education – Republicans believe in basic academics, rigorous standards, accountability, competition, choice and vouchers. Democrats believe public schools are laboratories for social engineering. As a wholly-owned subsidiary of the teachers unions, they’re committed to spending more money and protecting the government monopoly on the delivery of education.
 
If you want to truly influence public policy, choose your lesser evil and get in the game. It’s the only one in town.
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The continuum from Left to Right
By Mike Rosen
Rocky Mountain News, 3/22/2002
 
The political center is valuable turf. Americans are leery of extremists. That’s why politicians, interest groups and media types are so fond of mushy terms like “moderate.” When we talk about liberal bias in the media, we’re talking about a crowd that clusters around the left center of the political spectrum. When media liberals protest that there are others further to their left, they’re correct, of course, but so what. Yes, the late Gus Hall, perennial head of the Communist Party USA, was to the left of The New York Times editorial board, but that doesn’t make the Times middle-of-the-road, much less conservative. Colorado is south of Wyoming but it’s still considerably north of the equator.
 
Discerning consumers of news, opinion and political rhetoric filter what they read, see and hear. They’re sensitive to the source. It’s important to know where someone sits before he tells you where he stands. So here’s a little drill, the point of which is to show gradations in ideological positioning along a continuum from left to right, with 1.0 being far left, 9.0 far right, and 5.0 smack in the center. I was assisted by my radio listeners in the relative placement of a sampling of people, publications and groups. Any such exercise is subjective, of course, and complicated when you lump together a hodgepodge of economic, defense, foreign policy, domestic and social issues to come up with a single, numerical rating that reflects an average score. Consider this a starting point for discussion:
 
1.0 – Communist Party USA, Socialist Workers Party, Cord from Boulder. [Note: "Cord from Boulder" is a man who regularly calls in to Rosen's radio show.]
 
1.5 – Mother Jones, Maxine Waters, Noam Chomsky, Howard Zinn, Earth First!
 
2.0 – Democratic Socialists of America, The Nation, The Progressive, Molly Ivins, Michael Moore, Bernie Sanders, Ralph Nader, PETA.
 
2.5 – Los Angeles Times, James Carville, Elinor Clift, National Education Association, Children’s Defense Fund, People for the American Way, Environmental Defense Fund, Ted Kennedy, Hillary Clinton, Alan Colmes, Diana DeGette, Ellen Goodman, Dianne Carmen, Mike Littwin.
 
3.0 – NPR, E.J. Dione, Maureen Dowd, Bill Moyers, Sierra Club, The Washington Post, The New York Times, Dick Gephardt, Tom Daschle, Wellington Webb.
 
3.5 – PBS, The Denver Post (editorials), Brookings Institution, Time, Newsweek, Mark Udall, Dick Lamm (old), Bill Clinton*.
 
4.0 – The Denver Post (news pages), CNN, NBC, CBS, ABC, George Stephanopolous, Bill Clinton*.
 
4.5 – Rocky Mountain News (news pages), U.S. News & World Report, USA Today, Wall Street Journal (news pages), Chris Matthews, Tim Russert, Bill Clinton*.
 
5.0 – Brian Lamb, Tim Russert, Jeff Greenfield, John McCain, John Breaux, William Cohen, Olympia Snowe, Elizabeth Dole, Jesse Ventura, Chuck Green, Dick Lamm (new), Bill Clinton*.
 
5.5 – Ben Wattenberg, Zell Miller, Ben Nighthorse Campbell, Bill O’Reilly, Rudy Giuliani, Bill Clinton*.
 
6.0 – George W. Bush, Brit Hume, Fox News Channel, Scott McInnis, Jack Kemp, George Will.
 
6.25 – Mike Rosen.
 
6.5 – Ronald Reagan, Wall Street Journal (editorials), Weekly Standard, Peggy Noonan, Rocky Mountain News (editorials), Vincent Carroll, Bill Owens, Wayne Allard.
 
7.0 – William F. Buckley Jr., National Review, Heritage Foundation, Rush Limbuagh, Sean Hannity, Mona Charen, Linda Chavez.
 
7.5 – Joel Hefley, Tom Tancredo, Bob Schaffer, National Rifle Association.
 
8.0 – Pat Buchanan, Pat Robertson, John Birch Society.
 
8.5 – David Duke, Michigan Militia.
 
9.0 – KKK, Aryan Nation, Timothy McVeigh.
 
* Bill Clinton’s position subject to change based on daily polling data.
 
I’d place the ever-shifting American mainstream, now, slightly right of center, somewhere between 5.0 and 5.5, with the Left Coast and the Northeast at about 4.0, and most of those counties colored in red that George W. Bush carried in 2000 at about 6.0. But then again, a liberal once told me that labels don’t mean anything anymore. The only people who still use them, he said with a straight face, are those ultraconservative right-wingers.
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Liberals losing definition
by Mike Rosen
Rocky Mountain News, 9/17/2004
 
In a recent letter to the editor, a proud, unabashed, self-avowed liberal sought to turn the tables on “right-wingers,” as he labeled them, who would use the term “liberal” as a slur. He said he welcomed the label. Citing Dictionary.com as his definitive source, he instructed us ignorant right-wingers that a liberal is one who is broad-minded, not limited by traditional or, authoritarian attitudes or dogmas, one who is free from bigotry, favoring new ideas for progress, tolerant of the ideas and behavior of others, etc. You get the idea.
 
Well isn’t that special? While library bookcases are overflowing with volumes on this subject, our liberal friend confines his search for truth to an entry of a few dozen self-serving words in an online dictionary that treats the term behaviorally, rather than as a political agenda. Dictionaries are wonderful tools, but they have their limitations. They’re a starting point, not the oracle. Would he rely on Dictionary.com to explain the meaning of life? And I don’t mean the meaning of “life.” I mean the “meaning of life.” Maybe he could also sum :up the collected studies of philosophy, theology, mythology, metaphysics, history and science in a couple of sentences on that subject too.
 
Another convenient cliche is that liberals are progressive and conservatives are against change. Really? This generalization has severe and disqualifying limitations. How is it that conservatives are the ones that want to do away with the income tax, end the public school monopoly and privatize Social Security, while liberals staunchly defend the status quo in these areas?
 
Once upon a time, the status quo was government oppression in the form of monarchy and serfdom. Eighteenth century revolutionary thinkers like Locke, Burke, Hume, Montesquieu and Adam Smith advocated a break from that tradition, asserting natural, God-given rights to individuals. In the form of political economy, this movement later became known as “classical liberalism” and is the foundation of modern-day conservatism. It ultimately took the form of self-determination private enterprise, property rights, free trade, limited government, self-reliance, individual rights and responsibilities, and an aversion to high taxes. Over the years, the terminology has morphed, with big-government leftists – true to their confiscatory instincts – even expropriating the term “liberal,” which has lost its intrinsic meaning and is now simply a label identifying those on the left.
 
If the root of the word relates to individual freedom, it would hardly apply to the collective and coercive public policy agenda of liberalism, today imposing quotas, politically correct behavior, regulations and taxes. It’s been said that a liberal doesn’t care what you do, as long as it’s mandatory. Modern-day liberalism is hopelessly utopian, as Leonard Peikoff put it, “A cry from one heart to another, bypassing any intermediary such as the brain.” Moving beyond epithets and simplistic dictionary definitions, the practical differences between contemporary conservatives and liberals are best observed by contrasting their values, beliefs and positions on fundamental arid enduring public policy questions. Here are a few samples:
 
• Conservatives believe in individual freedom and responsibility. Liberals believe in sacrificing individual freedom for socially desirable outcomes. Liberals believe that one of government’s primary roles is social engineering.
• Conservatives believe in limited government. Liberals believe in intrusive government to achieve societal needs: (Exception: social-issues conservatives advocate government intrusion on matters like abortion, drugs and pornography.)
• Conservatives believe in free markets. Liberals believe in government controls and central planning.
• Conservatives believe that some problems have no solution, that they can, at best, be mitigated. Liberals believe that most every problem has a government solution.
• Conservatives are concerned about the production of wealth. Liberals are obsessed with the redistribution of it and believe that people will work as hard for the benefit of strangers as they will for themselves and their families.
• Conservatives believe in equality of opportunity. Liberals believe in equality of outcome.
• Conservatives believe that human nature is what makes us imperfectible. Liberals believe that human nature can be changed and perfected.
• Conservatives are nationalists. Liberals hope for world government.
• Conservatives believe in peace through strength. Liberals believe in peace through cooperation, trust and goodwill.
 
P.S. – When liberals use the euphemism “progressive,” they mean progress on the road to socialism.
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Long live the differences
by Mike Rosen
Rocky Mountain News, 3/25/2005
 
Some people believe that all social problems have solutions; other people believe that some problems cannot be solved, only mitigated, and that public policy is a matter of trade-offs. People in the leftist camp tend to fall into the first category, those on the right, in the latter. 
 
In the Political Junkie Handbook, Michael Crane offers a provocative listing of “100+ Differences Between the Left and Right.” Here’s a sampling with some embellishments and additions:
 
Left: Human rights are more important than property rights. Right: Property rights are the foundation of all rights.
Left: Karl Marx. Right: Adam Smith.
Left: Humanity. Right: Individuality.
Left: Quotas. Right: Merit.
Left: A fair and living wage. Right: Wages must be based on productivity.
Left: Protectionism. Right: Free trade.
Left: Wage and price controls. Right: Supply and demand.
Left: Regulate. Right: Deregulate.
Left: Coercion. Right: Volunteerism.
Left: Idealism. Right: Common sense.
Left: Counterculture. Right: Judeo-Christian tradition.
Left: Feminize men/masculinize women. Right: Men and women are equals on opposite poles.
Left: Boys and girls are the same, except girls are better. Right: Respect the differences between the sexes.
Left: Herstory. Right: History.
Left: Nurture. Right: Nature.
Left: Mass transit. Right: Automobiles.
Left: Marijuana. Right: Cigars.
Left: Welfare. Right: Charity.
Left: Differently abled. Right: Handicapped.
Left: Visualize peace. Right: Peace through strength.
Left: Feelings. Right: Thoughts.
Left: Centralization and government planning. Right: Decentralization and free enterprise.
Left: Cooperation. Right: Competition.
Left: Alec Baldwin. Right: Charlton Heston.
Left: Alger Hiss. Right: Whittaker Charnbers.
Left: John Maynard Keynes. Right: Frederich Hayek.
Left: John Kenneth Galbraith. Right: Milton Friedman.
Left: Jean Jacques Rousseau. Right: Edmund Burke.
Left: Gore Vidal. Right: William F. Buckley Jr.
Left: Michael Moore. Right: George W. Bush.
Left: 2+2 = whatever. Right: 2+2 = 4.
Left: Public schools as laboratories for social engineering. Right: Basic and rigorous academics.
Left: Government school monopoly. Right: Choice and competition.
Left: Veggie soyburgers. Right: McDonald’s.
Left: Granola. Right: Wheaties.
Left: Communes. Right: Gated communities.
Left: Mom & Pop’s Organic Food Emporium. Right: Wal-Mart.
Left: Boulder. Right: Mayberry, RFD.
Left: Sandals. Right: Wingtips.
Left: Ward Churchill. Right: Bill Bennett.
Left: Hunter S. Thompson. Right: Thomas Wolfe.
Left: Demonstrators. Right: Cops.
Left: Pacifists. Right: Marines.
Left: Takers. Right: Doers.
Left: Tax receivers. Right: Taxpayers.
Left: There is too much inequality of wealth. Right: Free people are not equal; equal people are not free.
Left: Redistribute wealth. Right: Create wealth.
Left: Equality of outcome. Right: Equality of opportunity.
Left: Security seeking. Right: Risk taking.
Left: Labor unions. Right: Right to work.
Left: A rat is a pig is a dog is a boy. Right: Mankind is the pinnacle of creation.
Left: Environmental purity. Right: Environmental/commercial trade-offs.
Left: Windmills. Right: Nuclear power plants.
Left: Bicycles. Right: SUVs.
Left: Volvo. Right: Lexus.
Left: Self-esteem is an entitlement. Right: Self-esteem is earned.
Left: Al Franken. Right: Rush Limbaugh.
Left: Capital punishment is uncivilized. Right: Murder is uncivilized.
Left: World government. Right: U.S. constitution.
Left: Foreign aid. Right: Foreign investment.
 
As Ayn Rand once observed, if your differences appear to be irreconcilable, the first thing you should do is check your premises.
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Conservatives and the Invention of Beer
 
[Authorship unknown, but claimed by "ImageBandit ~ American Patriot" at
http://www.sodahead.com/united-states/conservatives-and-the-invention-of-beer/question-870927/ ]
 
A brief history lesson for my friends…
 
For those that don’t know about history . . . Here is a condensed version:
 
Humans originally existed as members of small bands of nomadic hunters/gatherers. They lived on deer in the mountains during the summer and would go to the coast and live on fish and lobster in the winter.
 
The two most important events in all of history were the invention of beer and the invention of the wheel. The wheel was invented to get man to the beer. These were the foundation of modern civilization and together were the catalyst for the splitting of humanity into two distinct subgroups:
 
1 . Liberals, and
2. Conservatives.
 
Once beer was discovered, it required grain and that was the beginning of agriculture. Neither the glass bottle nor aluminum can were invented yet, so while our early humans were sitting around waiting for them to be invented, they just stayed close to the brewery. That’s how villages were formed.
 
Some men spent their days tracking and killing animals to BBQ at night while they were drinking beer. This was the beginning of what is known as the Conservative movement.
 
Other men who were weaker and less skilled at hunting learned to live off the conservatives by showing up for the nightly BBQ’s and doing the sewing, fetching, and hair dressing. This was the beginning of the Liberal movement.
 
Some of these liberal men eventually evolved into women. Those became known as girlie-men. Some noteworthy liberal achievements include the domestication of cats, the invention of group therapy, group hugs, and the concept of Democratic voting to decide how to divide the meat and beer that conservatives provided.
 
Over the years conservatives came to be symbolized by the largest, most powerful land animal on earth, the elephant. Liberals are symbolized by the jackass.
 
Modern liberals like imported beer (with lime added), but most prefer white wine or imported bottled water. They eat raw fish but like their beef well done. Sushi, tofu, and French food are standard liberal fare.. Another interesting evolutionary side note: most of their women have higher testosterone levels than their men. Most social workers, personal injury attorneys, journalists, dreamers in Hollywoodand group therapists are liberals. Liberals invented the designated hitter rule because it wasn’t fair to make the pitcher also bat.
 
Conservatives drink domestic beer, mostly Bud or Miller.. They eat red meat and still provide for their women. Conservatives are big game hunters, rodeo cowboys, lumberjacks, construction workers, firemen, medical doctors, police officers, engineers, corporate executives, athletes, members of the military, airline pilots and generally anyone who works productively. Conservatives who own companies hire other conservatives who want to work for a living..
 
Liberals produce little or nothing. They like to govern the producers and decide what to do with the production. Liberals believe Europeans are more enlightened than Americans. That is why most of the liberals remained in Europe when conservatives were coming to America . They crept in after the Wild West was tamed and created a business of trying to get more for nothing.
Here ends today’s lesson in world history:
 
It should be noted that a Liberal may have a momentary urge to angrily respond to the above before forwarding it.
 
A Conservative will simply laugh and be so convinced of the absolute truth of this history that it will be forwarded immediately to other true believers and to more liberals just to piss them off.
 
And there you have it. Let your next action reveal your true self
 

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