MISSION STATEMENT

While most Blogs are nothing but a vent for the frustration of right thinking Amiricans, this is not my cause. I am building a link to help gather resources and take a proactive stance against the tide of socialism. My posts are meant to inform you and, when possible, help you better explain and defend our principles. We are all leaders, we are all FREEDOM FIGHTERS!

Our goal is to help coordinate as many local political groups as possible in order to create a strong and organized local movement. We would suggest that you either start a meetup group or join one that's already in place. For help go to http://www.meetup.com/ or 912 Project USA.com / For The Sake of Liberty! . With your effort and support we can become a strong force against the socialization of our great nation. If you have a suggestion or want information, please e-mail me at flounders70@aol.com .

Sunday, December 20, 2009

Street Light Politics

Many people think that conservatives are opposed to government, they are wrong. The fact is that we want to keep government as small as possible, to oppose it would be anarchy.

Think of it this way... Every street corner is an open door to a serious car accident. The government puts signs up at those intersections in order to help prevent those accidents. This is good government because it provides the greatest amount of help with the least amount of interference.

Some intersections get very busy and a simple sign becomes restrictive to those who travel in one direction while encouraging others to pass in the other. The solution for this imbalance is to provide a signal light at that intersection, this allows equal opportunity for those who wish to choose their own direction. Again, this is good government.

The hard part for this government is deciding where those traffic lights should be placed. Politicians (of both parties) tend to want to place signs and lights where they are most likely to guide traffic to that destination which favors their own agenda. They are often inclined to make passage difficult for those who oppose them by putting up stop signs in strange places and call it "necessary for the betterment of society".

Conservatives want to keep the traffic flowing as much as possible which allows for a certain amount of risk while encouraging those who travel to be responsible for keeping that risk at a minimum. They would keep the basic signs in place but offer as few traffic signals as possible. The result of this is a fast paced network of traffic that is regulated mostly by those who frequent those roads.

Liberals see the risk of accidents inherrent in the conservative system and react in fear. They see a potential for danger at every intersection regardless of how busy it is, so, in order to protect us from those risks they tend towards placing traffic signals at every single intersection and thus seriously impeding the flow of traffic. I know you've gone down a busy street where there is a traffic light at every corner and sometimes you feel like you've been stopped at every one. This works to lower the risk of accident in two ways, it prevents people from coliding into each other through regulation and it causes many to refrain from traveling down that road through frustration. Once every road is that heavily regulated, most people will simply tire of traveling all together.

This is the flaw in the liberal ideology, they discourage economical progress through regulation designed to prevent economical risks. You see, Liberalism is not the opposite of Conservatism, it is the opposite of Anarchy.. Conservatism is the fulcrum between the two.

11 comments:

flounder said...

The cell phone debate is a great example. We hear about countless accidents caused by texting while driving. What we do not hear is that less then 2% of those who admit texting while driving actually cause an accident.

The conservative solution is to punish those who cause an accident for causing an accident. It makes no difference whether they caused it by texting, putting on makeup, receiving oral sex while driving or they just wanted to wreck something. The fact is that they were responsible for an accident and must be held accountable.

They liberal solution is to make all of those things independently illeagal, regardless of how great the percentage of people who are capable of those actions without interfering in their driving skills.

It's a battle between reason and emotion, logic and fear!

Bloviating Zeppelin said...

An excellent analogy, indeed.

"It's a battle between reason and emotion, logic and fear!"

PRECISELY, flounder!

BZ

Clint said...

great post!!

flounder said...

Thank you Clint and welcome. Make sure you check out my post explaining General welfare.

Silence DoGood said...

"Conservatives want to keep the traffic flowing as much as possible which allows for a certain amount of risk while encouraging those who travel to be responsible for keeping that risk at a minimum."

Interesting notion. But on Earth, corporate trucks that use certain routes will weight the cost benefits for travelling fast and unsafely. In some cases the costs of penalty fines and the safety of the worker who drives the truck is acceptable in exchange for greater profit. Corporations aften do this and skirt the responcibility thing.

The weakness of the conservative approach is that all people are either logical or will do the right thing after being punished for their action once.

That often does not happen on Earth. Corporations and politicians are expert at passing the penalty off the someone else and continuing safely or not.

The result at your cross road is a corporate trunck runs the stop sign and hurts someone, is penalized with a fine, runs the stop sign and hurts someone, is penalized with a fine, runs the stop sign and hurts, etc. etc. - you get the idea.

flounder said...

Under the conservative system, the corporations supply jobs to many and product to others. If that corporation is hurting people then the people have the option of stopping that corporation by firing them (stop buying the product). In our system, nothing is too big to fail and the government does not need to control it, that's our job.

Silence DoGood said...

Again this is the major weakness in conservative thought: assuming that most of the people are fair minded, honest and would do just do the same right thing and not be deceived by corporations or politicians.

If the founders believed this they would have put one grand king in charge and let us all vote them in or out periodically. But they knew better. And they had seen what a shambles Europe was in when they left it. Kings and Church (monopoly corporations of the time) had failed the people completely. The founders wanted a new system based on human complexity and failing and balancing the infighting and the fact that most peole do not magically rise up and do the same right thing together.

People disagree about what is right or moral and that is America's strength. And that is why american conservatives are linked with christian-government types. The myth that we will all just do the right thing requires the 2nd myth that we believe similar things. And christian-governent types and ready to supply the "what" we "believe" (or should beleive) part. This requires the 3rd myth - that this is or was started as a Christian country.

And yes I also think forcing Atheism is just as wrong as forcing Christianity. and I have spoken out about that to my so called liberal friends. Same evil - different hat.

flounder said...

This is exactly what I mean. A government strong enough to help people is strong enough to hurt them as well. A corporation, on the other hand, is dependent on the market and thus subject to the peoples power. There is no legal imperative for a corporation to be moral but there is a market interest in morality. It is not so much about morality as about knowing what you're getting into.


If one chooses to enter a situation with trust that a government will protect them then they get what they deserve. It is lazyness and ignorance that allow corporations to do bad things, it is law and power that allows governments to do bad things. I prefer to take my chances with the former (as did our founders).

Anonymous said...

You have really not debated the points I am making so I will leave that as is for others to think about.

But thanks for listing (again) two of the major "free-market-will-save-us" myths.

"A corporation,... subject to the peoples power." Myth #1 - What nonsense - just like Big Government, when Big Corporations get big enough they really are not subject to peoples power. "We can just vote out", "we can just stop buying" are both difficult after a certain size.

"there is a market interest in morality" Myth #2 The market has nothing to do with morality, good vs. evil, niceness, hearts and flowers, politics or anything like that. The market is driven by cheaper, faster, shinier. Morality be damned - watch people shopping sometime. They consulting their wallets and their neighbors stuff, not their Bible.

flounder said...

simply calling it a myth does not make it so, it is the people who define morality so if people support immoral companies then how do you expect them to vote. at least we can choose not to obey immoral but popular companies, the same cannot be said about government

Silence DoGood said...

"simply calling it a myth does not make it so" - um yeah that's why I made some pretty good points to back up what I said. I will leave them for others to consider.

"at least we can choose not to obey immoral but popular companies" Not true - when corporations get large enough they become entwined with government. Look at lobbies and payoffs and influence. You cannot refuse a big corporation if they have made lawmakers make laws that influence or even force you.

Try it! If you are fed up with the way car insurance companies try to force you to buy car insurance - refuse it. Get all moral and free market and don't buy car insurance - you be ticketed and eventually arrested if you refuse to comply. The insurance lobby has arranged to make NOT buying their product illegal.

Fighting big government is similar to fighting big corporations - they become one.

In fact I would argue that big corporations are even more powerful than big government because corporations can take the last step - go multinational, bigger than any one government.

Unless you are one of the one-world-governemnt conspiracy theorists. And then we are back to them being the same.

The flaw in the free market only system is thinking all business is the cute little mom and pop corner store, lined up with other corner stores and you can sit back and actually choose. Really! What cartoon is that from? As people we always have a choice of course but government and corporate greed is always hard at work to muddy the options or take them away.

That doesn't even harken back to a past time - it never has been like that. Go back and live and work trapped in a company town and tell me how many choices the company gives you. I live by one of those historical (defunt) towns from around 1800-1900 - it might as well have be called The Peoples Socialist Town - one store, one doctor, one bank, one of everything controlled by the elite governemnt. And as a slave of debt - you could not leave.

 
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