antagon
The Man
- Dec 6, 2009
- 3,572
- 295
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There is a kind of disconnect here. You seem to criticize conservatives for benefitting from government programs even as they object to those very programs or principles of government that create them.
One of many components of conservativism is that it often acts against its own interests in order to embrace a higher principle. The Colonists certainly did when they decided to rid themselves from the authority of, and therefore any protection or other benefits of, the mother land. In fact they risked everything in their willingness to take their freedom by force.
Likewise, many conservatives are willing to give up certain deductions, tax credits, and various forms of security and guarantees in order to have more personal freedom over their assets and property and more options and opportunities available to them.
The fact that conservatives take advantage of such in the meantime is not damning nor hypocritical. They have had personal freedoms, assets, property, options, and opportunities taken from them by the government so that the government could give them some of that back.
The conservatives in the Tax Protest groups, Tea Parties, and similar groups, like the Founders generation did way back then, are demanding the right to govern themselves and take power of their own destinies. They do not want government to have the power to determine how their lives will be. Those who value security and what appears to be freebies more than they value their freedom of course despise the freedom movements.
i wouldnt square this criticism with informed conservatives. there's plenty of room for that ideology without reproach. i liken it to the brakes on a car. toyota anyone?
tpartiers are more the drive with the handbrake pulled types from my viewpoint a good mile and a half from the trees.
there absolutely is hypocrisy and ignorance in the combined demography and the ideology of the group. to liken them to 'partiers in 1773 is a big stretch. these folks claim patriot, not separatist, after all. some do dawn trident hats. many dont realize the give-take in the way you point out: theyre not acting as an informed conservative might, and knowingly taking a step back for two forward. there's little informed about their politics, from what i can tell.
instead, theyre dictating some extreme changes to the economy without really being the players who have to cope with them... that is, for many, if they keep getting their pensions or keep their overhead jobs. if it was a social conservatism movement, great. knowledge is arbitrary on morality. this enclave is speaking economics out of their wrong end.