--- Marlon Menezes <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Likewise, your bunching of groups into two political > categories, viz, liberals and conservatives is > overly simplistic. There are many of us who would > like to see social security, welfare, medicaid and > other excuses for excessive government spending > abolished. We would like to see unfettered free trade > and an end of immigration quotas to allow the import
> of unlimited labor from abroad to allow industry to > reduce its labor costs and to use the best the world > has to offer. Coversely, we do not want a big, > intrusive government imposing its moral values on us > or telling us how to behave or think. > > While the conservative crowd has generally been pro > business (although this is not a hard and fast rule, > specially wrt open immigration), it has an > increasing component of the intolerant religious > right. > Mario opines: Marlon, you have listed a bunch of philosophically pure ideas from "many of us", all of which you will find in the libertarian end of the "conservative" agenda and nowhere in the "liberal" agenda. Therefore, while you are absolutely right that there are many shades of political philosophy, it essentially boils down to the 2 broad categories for the practical purposes of getting elected, because no credible and viable political party exists to represent each shade. The tight balancing act of getting elected, without which nothing can be accomplished, is what dictates the devils that lie in the details. Someone once said that watching a democracy in action is like watching sausage being made. Winston Churchill once said, "Democracy is a terrible form of government, except for all the other forms of government out there." Regarding immigration, I support a "liberal" guest worker program for those that can and want to work here, who can later go back home or apply for immigration if they wish, plus much tighter border security. This is also supported by the 3 most popular conservative opinion makers, Limbaugh, Hannity and O'Reilly, but the politicians are dragging their feet, mainly out of fear of the Hispanic lobby, which seems to support total immigration anarchy. Right now the bad guys may be strolling across both big borders along with the good guys every day of the week. The problem for this issue as well as unfettered free trade, which I also support as beneficial to most Americans, is that both viable parties have begun to depend on small shifts in the immigration and labor lobbies to get elected, and so end up pandering to them. Regarding the intrusiveness of Uncle Sam, the door gets pushed open for the politicians when citizens demand involvement by the government in the economic sphere, and then it depends on who is in power and whose ox is getting gored. One is left to choose, always on balance, which side's intrusiveness one can live with. The intolerant secular left can be just as intrusive as the intolerant religious right, depending on one's personal point-of-view, and it is up to the rest to keep both of them in control. I think the checks and balances built into the US model of government have done a good job so far, with very few exceptions.
