Archive of entries posted on 18th November 2008
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An Incoherent Rant About Political Coherency
Why do we have RINOs? They’ve been making a resurgence as of late, trying to argue that if we were just watered down Democrats we could totally win elections. So let’s give up on our principles because then we can win that center who is primarily defined by not knowing or caring much about politics.
Of course, they don’t put it that way. They instead single out social issues as the problem — even though that’s something we share with the blacks and Hispanics we’re supposed to be adding to our ranks. They argue that fiscal issues are the important ones, and our even mentioning social issues in passing might be scaring away people who would support our visions of limited government.
Now, the main problem with that argument is by experience we know that about every Republican who is a squish on social issues can also be expected to be a squish in the areas of taxation and government expansion. It’s possible for someone to be hugely conservative on fiscal issues and liberal on social issues just as it’s possible for someone to have one eye that’s blue and one eye that’s brown, but it’s not something you’d want to base a political party on.
So how are abortion and low taxes related? Conservatism isn’t made from just picking and choosing different issues; it’s a philosophy inherent to about anyone in America who does a hard day’s work and has a family to take care of and bills to pay. Basically, it comes down to trust. A conservative trusts himself and his fellow man. That’s why he doesn’t feel the need for a giant government because he knows he and his fellow man can take care of himself. He also doesn’t worry about owning a gun or if his neighbor has one because again he trusts himself and those around him.
And that’s where the social issues come in. If you have someone with radically different values — like someone who thinks sucking the brains out of a baby is just peachy — the trust is not there anymore. If you have a politician who doesn’t understand fundamentals issues of morality, can you really trust he gets the other issues even he does say the right things?
And that’s something we have to be wary of: A person can parrot conservative issues without really understanding them. But if someone doesn’t have a coherent political philosophy, you can’t expect him to be stand strong on the issues you care about. That’s why we need to be cautious of anyone calling himself a conservative who has been in politics his whole life. To really be a conservative, you have to live a conservative life; it’s not just about saying the right things. And that’s where experience trumps smartee-soundingness every time.
But the RINOs simply are politicians who can say the right things on a couple issues but don’t have a coherent political philosophy they believe in. They just like being politicians — which isn’t very conservative. If a RINO can get more political power by going against the party, they will every time because there isn’t anything more important to them than that.
So why do we have RINOs? Because we tolerate them. Sometimes they’re useful because they’re the best that can be elected in a few liberal districts. But if we ever can do better, let’s not pretend that squishiness and lack of principles is a virtue. RINOs are an ugly necessity at time, but they should never be who we rally around.
lolbama! Part 1
Consensus appears to be that we should be mocking both terrorists and Obama. Since these posts tend to be a bit labor-intensive, I’m going to alternate between the two themes every week. So submit for either, and you’ll get in eventually. Unless your entry sucks too terribly bad.
Please note that it’s the same e-mail as lolterizt, since I’m too lazy to start a second account.
Meanwhile, pass ’em around, spread the love, and if you make your own, don’t be shy about dropping a link to your pics in the comments. The more, the merrier.
NOTE TO READERS: Hovering your mouse over the picture activates closed captioning for the l33t-speak/txtmsg impaired.
From Mike:
From G Fresh:
This one’s a little languagey, so here’s a link
And here’s one for you guys to play with:
PRODUCTION NOTES:
#1: When creating lolbama! pictures, please caption with either black or white text, as colors like red and yellow tend to blur badly when I compress the images.
#2: Standard image size for these posts is 350px wide by whatever high. If you can have your images 350px wide before you caption them, I won’t end up shrinking your captions into illegibility when I re-size the images.
MAKE YOUR OWN: The free lolbuilder from I Can Has Cheezburger.
STYLE NOTE: Short captions are usually better. Your goal is 10 words or less, with humor value tending to increase exponentially as the number of words approaches 1.
Send your submissions to lolterizt@gmail.com and – if they aren’t obscene (IMAO is a PG-13 site) and don’t suck too terribly bad – I’ll post them for you. Remember to include your name (and blog URL, if applicable) so I know who to thank.