[Rhodes22-list] Labels

[Robert Skinner]

A slight change in viewpoint might get us closer to
a more comprehensive truth.

Economics

If you look at conservatives as have experienced a
schism somewhere around the Eisenhower administration.
One subset could be considered "old" conservatives -
conservative in fiscal, natural, and social areas.

The other (granted that there are degrees of
difference, but follow this admitted
oversimplification) branch could be called "new"
conservatives, following a progression that has
resulted in the "neocons" of today.

The neocon fiscal policies culminated in
"trickle-down".  As seen by liberals, it is regarded
as providing benefits to those who don't need them
on the premise that the excess will eventually get
to those who do have real need.  This is not popular
among the poor.  The neocon sees it as a means of
consolidating wealth so that corporations and other
putatively productive segments of the economy can
get about the business of the nation, creating
wealth that will lift the whole country.  The
history of this theory has been checkered.

Somewhere along the line, one has to ask where the
cost of any economic policy will fall.  Pushing it
off into the future hardly seems responsible, but
it seems to be the general approach of the neocons,
quite the opposite of the way that the "old"
conservatives would behave.  Roosevelt has been
pilloried by old Republicans for creating national
debt, but more has been created in the last 8 years
than in all before.

Etc.

A discussion of social issues, etc. would reveal
greater diversity in viewpoints in these areas - at
least fragmentation, if not one or more continua -
certainly not the simple binary division that is
being offered as the framework for discussion in
the current election.

Some say that the GOP is now the party of hate and
fear.  While it is true that it seems more hawkish
than the Democratic approach, that characterization
is no more valid than regarding the Democrats as
misguided economic leaches and treacherous perverts.

Perhaps we are more confined my our two party
system than we think.  There is little place for
the multi-dimensional thinker.

Time for a bit of rational thought, doncha think?

/Robert
---------------------------------------------
pdgrand at nospam.wmis.net wrote:
> I once read something that stated that most conservatives think liberals
> are just plain stupid and that most liberals think conservatives are just
> plain evil.  I thought it was funny and maybe just a little bit accurate. 
> Not that liberals are stupid or conservatives are evil, but that each
> thinks a little that way about the other.
> 
> Paul
> 
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