Comments on: Useful Idiots

By: Enfranchised Mind » Incompetence Rewarded

Enfranchised Mind » Incompetence Rewarded — Fri, 28 Apr 2006 00:04:19 +0000

[...] orized27 Apr 2006 04:59 pm
Incompetence RewardedFrom the desk of bhurt-aw

I’ve argued here before about how Republican incompetence is simply used as an excuse to claim [...]

By: bhurt-aw

bhurt-aw — Tue, 28 Mar 2006 14:58:36 +0000

“Don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater” is how my parents used to phrase it. But I will comment- when (if) the anti-Christ comes, he will come cloaked in the mantle of godliness. Why? What better way is there to corrupt the faithfull? The point here is that the most important time to be skeptical is when you’re being told what you want to hear. It’s also the hardest time to be skeptical- you want it to be true so badly that you may try to fool yourself.

I comment that we’ve tried real compassionate conservativism (not the sham deal that Bush and the current Republicans promote). Read up on Herbert Hoover and the great flood of 1927. Hoover strikes me as being exactly what you’re talking about. He really did care about the poor and diaster-striken, he just didn’t think that the goverment could, or should, do anything about it, that private individuals/organizations and private donations were better/more efficient.

Now compare the results of that to the great floods of 1993, when we had a Democratic President and administration actually capable of governing and a large, activist, non-compassionate conservative federal goverment. The floods of 1993 were every bit as bad (if not worse) as those of 1927- but good goverment turned them from a broad diaster into an amusing inconvience.

By: Candide

Candide — Tue, 28 Mar 2006 14:21:16 +0000

The problem, however, is that you can’t let the enemy co-opt the high ground. This is what’s happened with the Democrats, and it’s why they’re losing — they’ve given the Republicans the moral high ground because they were too tenative to hold onto it.

With Hitler, he started with making the government work and provide the services that people expected from it — just because he corrupted that into the unabashed evil that was the Nazis doesn’t mean that making the government work and providing services is a bad plan. With Stalin, the basis was equality — just because he corrupted it into dictatorships doesn’t mean that making equality is a bad plan. When the anti-Christ appears and corrupts the message of salvation, the answer isn’t to turn away from that message of salvation: it’s a time to turn to it.

So while I don’t usually identify or throw about the term “Compassionate Conservative” due to the corruption of that term, I’m not about to let the ideal get stolen away from me by those that corrupted it.