You’re asking me to justify my decision to walk away from conservative ideas as though I didn’t. Reread my post. There’s no ambiguity there. No, I don’t delve deeply into a point-by-point refutation of supply-side economics, for instance, but read more of what I’ve written at S&R and draw your own conclusions. In any case, it doesn’t require a rocket surgeon to look around the economic landscape right now and see what voodoo economics hath wrought.

No, the crux of my post is pretty straightforward. Whatever ideas the GOP may once have had, by 1988 there were no ideas left. The party had been reduced to three items of dogma: ban abortion, smear the queers and slash taxes. And the Jesus stuff was center stage.

Even if I grant that the GOP had been a font of many brilliant ideas once upon a time, it doesn’t matter, because it abandoned them all.

So please, let’s skip the attempts at redirecting the conversation in a direction where I might be more productively mired down. My point is pretty damned clear.

It is failing in the UK. Socialised medicine is being redefined and is increasingly supported by private enterprise (however they disguise it), the benefits culture has led to unemployable Brits who refuse to work – so we have to rely on migrant workers to fill jobs – from the once Red Zone of Eastern Europe and that great experiment in mass comprehensive education for everyone is failing…so the private sector is being looked to, called upon and being ‘blackmailed’ to help out.

Socialism can work only if we were all created equal and the same in the first place – and this is patently absurd for humans are different and diverse with differing strengths, intelligences, hopes, aspirations and priorities.

I could not be a Socialist because as soon as I see someone else not doing their bit but managing to con the Socialised system in place (and they do it in their millions here) I think crap what is the bloody point? The rat-like cunning of the human mind will sniff out the goodies every time…

State as the parental provider is not a good thing, IMO.

Not at all true. Socialized medicine is the norm outside the United States, and while we pride ourselves on our medical facilities, we’re WAY behind industrialized nations with socialized health care systems on infant mortality and deaths from respiratory illness. We’re only average on deaths from diabetes, we’re in the bottom third in life expectancy at birth and at age 65 for both men and women, we’rein the bottom quarter for acute care beds. The only thing we kick butt in is MRI and CT machines – medical technology.

In nearly every way that matters, Canada’s much maligned socialized healthcare system is better than ours.

My data, in case you care to inspect it yourself, is from the OECD October 2007 report on health care.

I see a lot of derision and condemnation toward those who do not agree with you (politically and theologically) but I could not identify where your logical thought process was to drive you away from the GOP. Was it just you did not like the people you were associated with? Do the ideas still have merit? i.e. if you could be conservative and have itellectuals and thinkers join you, would you still be with the GOP? Or are there actual point by point arguements (in an aristotelan definition) as to why you feel conservatism is not a good idea? For instance (on the opposite side), Socialism has failed everywhere else in the world–why are we still trying to get there?

Perhaps I am missing something, but it seems like it your leanings are more feeling driven versus being thought through.

BTW, I am only commenting on your comments as to why you left the GOP. You have every right to cheer on and think what you will about Jesus, McCain, and the GOP. But ideas always have consequences.

Lorne Babcock Sr. speaks for me:

All religions are fruit of the same poisonous tree.

I don’t think many women are aware of this. But if a man goes to church, synagogue, or mosque voluntarily, odds are that church has a hidden — or not-so-hidden — political agenda. Whether it’s anti-abortion and gays for Christians or anti-west for Muslims or anti-Muslim for Jews. There has to be that “value-added” to religion for a man to go to a house of worship.

Great post; deserves to be widely read.

No congress has spent more recklessly or pushes through more earmarks than the Republican congress that followed the Gingrich revolution of 1994, which by the way, was fomented with promises of fiscal responsibility. This was particularly evident between 2000 and 2006 when the Republicans went HOG wild with pork legislation knowing full well that the Republican President would not veto it no matter how outrageous.

No political party in history has violated the Constitutional separation of Church and State like the Republican Party has over the last 28 years.

The Republican Party has been a three issue party (taxes, abortion, anti gay rights) now for almost 30 years and two of the three issues have been 100% based on the belief that States’ and the Federal Government should go into people’s bedrooms and doctor’s offices to heavily regulate the personal lives and choices.

It seems to me that just about every issue that GOPers claim as their reason for being Republican in no way applies to today’s Republican Party and this is directly and specifically attributable to the hijacking of the party by fundamentalist Christians on the conservative religious right (which ironically are anything BUT fundamentally Christian or conservative).

I think this is essentially what this commentary is stating.

Many more people are nominal Christians who would disavow Christian Dominionists and Christian Reconstructionists. Much like the more moderate German citizens ignored the Brownshirts and believed they could not possibly gain power or pose a threat to their personal safety.

Perhaps nominal and semi-secular (OK with gays, no stoning of adulterers, OK with evolution, etc.) Christians see their more dogmatic and fervent brethren as necessary saber-rattlers who can be reined in easily and won’t be of harm to their own more lukewarm Christian beliefs. (Should it ever come to that.)

The writers of the constitution recognized that governance brings in ambitious and ruthless people. They saw it in the monarchies in Europe, and read about it during their studies of Latin & Greek. So they devised system that separated power, so no one person or cabal could impose their will on the citizens. Worked pretty good until cotporations came along with their billions. Bush, Rove & that criminal gang just used the money to reward & punish to gain compliance from the other republicans.

To adequately comprehend American politics and the American right-wing authoritarian cult, it is important to acknowledge their main goal; their animating basic, essential, assumption that all their nonsense is engaged in service to…..the Queen, as it were, of their game of Chess. And THAT is the total concentration of all legitimate authority in Property, rather than in the voters (mob rule to them !).

All the religion, bigotry, bullshit, fear mongering, lying, cheating, corruption, and assorted evil bullshit is all geared to that one goal.

Whatever hard-headedness may be coming at you from the left, it is political, it is secular, and right or wrong makes its argument based on the empirical. We can debate all we want, and we SHOULD debate, but nobody on the left is looking to legislate your morality based on “faith,” a word that has been much over-valorized of late.

You got faith, that’s fine, but rational people don’t make policy on mythology. Period.

In any case, the unholy bedfellowship of Trailer Park and Country Club has been horrible for the country, and if McCain can be the crowbar that pries them apart, even if only temporarily, we will owe him a debt. This doesn’t mean we should vote for h…