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Originally Posted by joshgirls
My politics are in crisis. People think i'm ignorant & racist just by calling myself a republican. After the leadership of the past 8 years, after a lily white male republican convention, after Sarah Palin, this is understandable.
The reason i call myself a republican instead of a democrat is because in social studies in high school, they taught us about the foundations of the left & right, specifically in how the constitution is interpreted. Republicans are supposed to be "anti-federalists" while dems have always been "federalists". I have always agreed with the republican way, that government power should be limited so that the peoples freedom is maximized.
But obviously todays politics are much more complicated. The last 8 years we have seen the ascendancy of social conservatives, who are "federalists" in that they want the government intruding on the peoples private lives (gay sex & marriage, abortion, shiavo, 2257) while the democrats are the "anti-federalists" who want states & the people deciding for themselves how to run their lives.
& recently i have found all the right wing thinking i find on the web to be trivial, stupid, & miopic. I cannot listen to Limbaugh & hannity. They are insane. When Rush says Powell supported obama because of race (based on nothing at all except race), its embarassing. I can understand how everyone under 40 thinks republicans are morons.
But i grew up hating democrats since Reagan, & i feel the dems are only in power because 1) the republicans fucked things up that badly 2) Obama is a unique generational politician whose political skills are Tiger Woods/Michael Jordan like. I don't think the country would have liked a Hillary presidency & the repubs would be back in 2-4 years if not for Obama.
But in no way can i call myself a democrat. They are obsessed with identity politics. They are no more friends to porn than republicans. Any of you who think dems are any different than repubs on porn can go back to the COPA law passed in 1998 & count the votes. They also have no BALLS. They voted for the Iraq war before they opposed it.
So whose gonna create a center-right party that believes in balanced budgets & gay marriage? This is the idealogy that will eventually replace the republican party.
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It's republicans that have no balls for any enemy capable of fighting back. They only like quick dirty realpolitik wars. When it comes to the real thing they put their tail between their legs and run... you can see this in the fact that very few, if any, republican leaders ever served in the military, although they're totally gung ho about getting everyone else's kids killed. They wanted to sit out WWII as well and it was 'bleeding heart liberals' that forced them into it, kicking and screaming. Democrats didn't want the Iraq war because it was a stupid war, and there was no reason to fight it. I think that's pretty obvious by now.
Also republicans ARE our enemies when it comes to porn, much worse than democrats. If there was no pressure from the right, you would never hear the word 'porn' coming from a democrats lips. It's the right-wingers who want to take books off the library shelves, label everything 'indecent' and shut us down.
Federalism is a good thing as long as you have a representative govt., it always has been. The whole idea that conservatives are anti-govt. came about because they used 'states rights' as a euphanism for being pro-slavery. There are to this day no republican leaders who give a flying fuck about states rights, except that it's the only way that they can get out of enacting anti-discrimination statutes.
Maybe, since this is SUCH a difficult decision for you, you can take a moment and ask yourself: When - in all of recorded history - have the Conservatives EVER been proven, over the passage of time, to have been correct about ANY major issue? Just once, show me where they were on the right side of an issue.
It's a fucking mystery to me how people can agonize over such a simple debate as right or left. If our educational system was worth a flying fuck, and half our politicians weren't anti-intellectual, there would be no debate at all. There's a reason why a HUGE percentage of college graduates are democrats or lean left. It's what happens to you when you actually know government and you've learned enough to not be so easily demagogued by any redneck asshole with a megaphone.