| | I will grant almost all of your rhetoric, Ryan, but I have a problem with your use of "conservative." Well, not really you, but let me explain. My parents identify themselves as conservatives. Not as members of the right, but as conservatives. For them this means opposition to excessive taxation, excessive regulation. Support for a strong defensive national policy with the use of the military to support our actual allies and interests. Support above all for constitutional government. They will allow for policy disputes but not violation of the Constitution.
They don't see themselves as crusaders to end public schools and medicaid - but they would not oppose reasonable actions to privatize education and to move charity cases to actual voluntary charity. They are suspicious of "illegal aliens" and "drug dealers." They are not about to crusade for open borders or full legalization. But they do not oppose these things on principle, or support the use of force to continue such policies when force is identified as such.
For example, my father, who long opposed it, now says we ought to let the damn illegal aliens stay so long as they register and pay a reasonable fine (say $5,000) for entry. He sees them as cheaters, and the illegality as a problem, but not foreigners as evil.
The bottom line is that they are sense of life conservatives, not explicit libertarians. Maybe you think they should call themselves libertarians, and maybe they would not deny the title. They support peaceful co-existence, self-sufficiency, constitutionalism and the rule of law. They do not want to outlaw homosexuality, racial miscegenation, the immigration of infidels, abortion in the first trimester, or require school prayer. There are a hell of a lot of decent people in the silent majority who are just like them. They may be philosophically incoherent, and if that's the case, the fault may be theirs. But they do listen well to reason. Is there a point in alienating even them?
What is the rhetorical benefit of defining "conservatism" not as they do but as identical to the extreme racist religious right? Does it help to characterize the debate in the terms of the left? It is the left that wishes to put the conflict in these terms, that the essence of conservatism is white supremacist, militant statist Christian fundamentalism. Should we let them define the terms of the debate?
(Edited by Ted Keer on 9/07, 9:52pm)
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