[Perhaps you need some other label to hang your hat on, then?]
"Nope -- “leftists” works just fine."
So you are describing yourself as a 'leftist' now??????? :)
[I think that you are off on your numbers, though. I'd be willing to venture that there are perhaps camps of roughly equal size calling themselves 'conservatives'... (A Big Government / Small Goivernment split.)]
"If that were true, we’d very likely see far more of a civil war amongst so-called “conservatives” than we see currently."
Why?????
(PS --- I notice you railing against *just one* federal department, the Education Department, which I too would like to eliminate or drastically slash... still, as federal bureaucracies go, it's hardly the most bloated in an absolute sense, nor in the amount of pork it shovels out. I find that is symptomatic of many practicing fiscal liberals [who preach 'fiscal conservatism']... they start criticizing federal spending W-A-Y D-O-W-N the list, while ignoring the big ticket items. When the fiscal liberal Dems hold power, they want to increase pork funding to their favored programs and departments, and when the fiscal liberal Reps are in power, they want to cut the Dem programs while increasing spending for the federal programs that they favor. Either way: the spending always goes up, and the size of the federal bureaucracy always increases, because the new spending always outweighs whatever measly cuts are enacted.....)
Most pols (of any stripe) have no great desire to do more then *preach* about small government and fiscal parsimony. Incumbents prefer to shovel-out government favors for their constituents, for their 'base'... at least, as long as the markets and the economy will allow them to persist in such short-sighted foolishness.
There won't be any 'wars' over brain-dead deficit spending until the debt markets raise the cost of additional debt, until debt servicing costs soar, and the public demands change.
'Something for nothing' is ALWAYS popular, 'free lunches' are ALWAYS the main dish for incumbents in Washington --- until the crunch comes.
As far as the other policy split amongst 'conservatives', the Authoritarian / Libertarian divide... it has been with us since the very founding of our Republic (just re-read some of the Hamilton / Jefferson debates), so I see no reason for it to ever go away, nor to ever be resolved in favor of either side.
Short of America falling into a 100% Totalitarian nightmare, or a 'Libertarian paradise' of limited government and individual responsibilities... neither of which seems the main chance.
Re: "I should say that some conservative leftists at times do express truly conservative views on some issues; but they are obviously not being guided by a central philosophy that leads them to express soundly conservative views generally. They are so much guided by flawed notions of “pragmatism,” they readily compromise the essential principle that under girds what they claim to believe. In the end, they become garden-variety leftists who go by other names. This describes the Libertarian Party and is why that party has no problem at all being a vulture at the rotting corpse of the GOP."
LOL!!!!!
All I can say is, 'vultures' gotta eat too!
Out of death comes life... it is the eternal biologic principle. And, out of tread-worn, internally contradictory political groupings new ones are aborn --- else we would all still be Whiggs. |
