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comment by cliffelam
cliffelam  ·  4983 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: I Just Paid for Dick Cheney’s New Heart, Now Who Will Pay for My Daughter’s?
Really? I'm one the most conservative people you know I bet. Do you think I act that way?

Quick, how many kids has the author of this piece adopted? Now how many has Michelle Bachman adopted?

-XC





thenewgreen  ·  4983 days ago  ·  link  ·  
Sorry just got to a computer and this response deserved more than my iPhones limited abilities.

To answer you're question, you are one of the most conservative people I know based on the popular definition of conservativism from 1988. You're what I would refer to as an Alex P. Keaton conservative. You're decisions seem to be made largely on pragmatic grounds and not idealistic ones. From what I've gathered, you don't seem to be one to mingle unproven concepts and policy, in fact you seem stridently opposed to such things. Based on todays fundamentalist christian usurpage -(is that a word?) of the term "conservative", I would not place you anywhere near that camp. Perhaps you would, I wouldn't. I would however place you pretty squarely in the libertarian camp.

Much of the policy makers on the right, certainly Bachmann, wear their theology on their sleeves and use those sleeves to pen policy that effects all of us.

Do you think and I act that way we can tackle this one off line ;-)

-no, i don't.

cliffelam  ·  4983 days ago  ·  link  ·  
I would venture to say that American policy is less driven by religion today than at any point in our history.

Rick Santorum, for example, would have been considered not particularly religious as late as 1950. At least as a candidate for high office.

-XC

thenewgreen  ·  4983 days ago  ·  link  ·  
I don't recall politicians of the past personalizing their relationship with God as much as they do today. Great speeches from Presidents of the past often reference God in formal ways, for example the Gettysburg address uses the word "god" once.... "one nation, under God".... you know the rest.

Santorum doesn't just refer to God and his personal relationship with God etc.. he actually sites Satan too.

    And the Father of Lies has his sights on what you would think the Father of Lies - Satan - would have his sights on: a good, decent, powerful, influential country - the United States of America. If you were Satan, who would you attack in this day and age? There is no one else to go after other than the United States and that has been the case now for almost two hundred years, once America’s pre-eminence was sown by our great Founding Fathers.
-Santorum 2008.
cliffelam  ·  4983 days ago  ·  link  ·  
It was totally included in their world view, and everyone would have recognized it.

Reread The Scarlet Letter.

Rick has to say it out loud and explicitly.

Reread The Handmaidens Tale.

_XC

thenewgreen  ·  4983 days ago  ·  link  ·  
Good, then let's speed up this evolution!
cliffelam  ·  4983 days ago  ·  link  ·  
I dunno, if you draw a line from Washington through Lincoln to Obama the trend is mostly downward.....

-XC