I agree with a lot of your post. I agree that America can compete and that closing up our economy would do more harm than good.
However I don't think - "Conservatives want to end this." - is really accurate.
Conservatives are among the strongest supporters of a lot of the things you mention as positives about the US.
1. We have terrific location. We border on the Pacific and the Atlantic. We are in the middle of things when it come to the Pacific Rim and we are in the middle of things wrt the Atlantic community. Nobody else has that kind of location.
2. We have good natural resources for farming, fishing, and for energy production (coal, oil shale, sun, forests etc.).
3. Our language is for all practical purposes the universal language.
4. We virtually own the Internet. We started it and we control it. We have Google.
5. We are the leaders in technology.
6. We have diversity. We bring together the smartest people in the world. And they bring with them, the best that their world has to offer. And we put it all together.
1 is just a geographical fact, not a political issue. 2 is in some ways the same as 1, but conservatives are more likely to support fully developing and using those resources instead of locking them out of production. As for 3, conservatives support a greater effort to make sure people can speak, and read and write English as opposed to putting them in bilingual educations courses that are mostly teaching them in Spanish or some other language. 4 - Conservatives are less likely to support turning over the governance of the internet to an international body. 5 - Again not a very political statement or one that touches on the battle between conservatives and liberals. Both of them want the US to be a technology leader and most people in both groups would probably agree that it is.
As for 6 I'll deal with your sub points individually.
They want to close things
To generic to really respond to.
They want to bring religion into the classroom where they teach science. It is not enough for them to be able to teach religion in places of worship or in religious schools. They want to force religion into where it does not belong.
I suppose you could accurately say that "some conservatives" want to do this, but certainly not all. In fact not all of those who would be described as "social conservatives" or "religious conservatives" want extensive religious teaching in public schools and these groups are far from being the only members of the larger group that would be called "conservative".
They want to use force to bring other people in line with us.
Again rather generic unless you are using this as a code phrase for Iraq. If so I can understand why you might think of our involvement in Iraq as being misguided, but it certainly is not an example of closing things. If successful it will result in a more open Iraq. It also is an attempt to allow people to vote for their rulers rather than having forced used against them to bring them in line with a dictator.
They want to keep out all foreigners.
Nonsense.
They want to turn back the clock - they are afraid that we can't compete in open competition.
That would apply to a subset of conservatives, but also a subset of liberals. It doesn't apply to the whole of either group.
Tim |
