Republicans and marijuana

[hoosierdaddy]

You are absolutely correct. Neo-Con Progressive Republicans do not want it legalized. They are a dying breed though and thank God.

Religion is in fierce decline in the US. Once that variable is out of the equation I believe true conservatism will come back to life.

Socially Moderate, but fiscally conservative and strict adherence to the Constitution when it comes giving the power to the states. Freedom from the federal government and an isolationist foreign policy. Bring the whole military home.

That's the banner of real conservatism, not that Neo-Con pop culture definition that the likes of Palin spews and that's been shoved down our throats for decades.

The fucking Pope hijacked and completely killed what was left of my political philosophy decades ago. I believe now, after 100+ years, we are starting to remember why we are supposed to hold those values dear.

I agree with much of your stance, however I think you will find that religion is actually on the incline in the US at this point in time. Even saw a recent clip stating as such.

And I am wondering what exactly the "neo-con" is to you? What exactly of Sarah Palin's stances do you not like? What distinguishes her political stance from what you would consider a "true" conservative?

And a comment...if the founding fathers were to see the fall of religion coming in the future, I think they would have predicted the fall of us.
Our nation was founded around religion, not in opposition to it. The constitution, and the papers surrounding the document of that day attest to that fact.

 

[ColBatGuano]

Our nation was founded around religion, not in opposition to it. The constitution, and the papers surrounding the document of that day attest to that fact.

Exactly. Founded around religion. Not on it, not by it, not for it, and not with it. The separation of church and state protects religion from the government, and establishes a secular government. Unlike the Declaration of Independence, which theocrats mention as proof of our founding as a Christian nation, the Constitution is a set of laws. It sets down the highest laws of the land and states that our nation was derived from the people, not from a deity. The preamble is where you will read "We the people, in order to form a more perfect union . . ." (which is itself an oxymoron, as nothing can be made "more" perfect.)

The fact that the Constitution is signed and dated as "the Seventeenth Day of September in the Year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and Eighty seven," has nothing whatsoever to do with Christianity. The reference to "in the Year of our Lord" is merely a literal translation of 1787 A.D., which is abbreviated from the Latin anno domini.

The Treaty of Tripoli, ratified in the late 1700's, was prepared near the end of Washington's term as the first president. It explicitly states, "As the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion . . ." The treaty was prepared by diplomat James Barlow, and approved by Washington. When ratified under the presidency of John Adams, Washington's successor, it was signed with this declaration: "Now, be it known, that I, John Adams, President of the United States of America, having seen and considered the said treaty, do, by and within the consent of the Senate, accept, ratify and confirm the same, and every clause and article thereof."

Indeed, our system of government was founded on principles found in Saxon common law, which existed before their introduction to Christianity. The letters of Thomas Jefferson, the principle architect of our nation, clearly states this many times over in his writings. During his presidency, Jefferson wrote this declaration to Danbury Baptists to rationally explain why the separation of church and state is necessary:

"Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between man and his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legislative powers of government reach actions only and not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should `make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,' thus building a wall of separation between church and state."

If you are actually inclined to know and understand the "founding fathers" of this nation, then the letters of John Adams, James Madison, and Benjamin Franklin will interest you. They each defend the separation clause, while being Christian men themselves. Madison's "Memorial and Remonstrance Against Religious Assessments" (fifteen reasons why government should not favor any religion) will be of particular interest to you. George Washington was particularly quiet about his beliefs, and according to the clergy of his own congregation, did not regularly attend services, nor to their knowledge, had ever taken communion.

Despite the widely held "belief" that settlers of our nation came in search of religious freedom, it was in fact monetary considerations which led most of them to the colonies. Lynn Buzzard, director of the Christian Legal Society (a group of Christian lawyers) even conceded that as few as five percent of the population of our nation were members of the church in 1776. Historians, who deal with facts, and not wishes or beliefs, tend to agree that our country was perhaps ninety-percent secular through much of the first one-hundred years.

The Christian founding fathers argument is unfounded by anyone with a critical or rational understanding of the history of the United States. Sorry, but those are the facts.

 

[SpasticGramps]

I agree with much of your stance, however I think you will find that religion is actually on the incline in the US at this point in time. Even saw a recent clip stating as such.

(CNN) -- America is a less Christian nation than it was 20 years ago, and Christianity is not losing out to other religions, but primarily to a rejection of religion altogether, a survey published Monday found.

It's a dying a slow death.

And I am wondering what exactly the "neo-con" is to you? What exactly of Sarah Palin's stances do you not like? What distinguishes her political stance from what you would consider a "true" conservative?

A neo-con is someone who flies the conservative banner, but doesn't understand true conservative philosophy. They are the pop-culture definition of Conservative. True conservatism hasn't existed in American in nearly 50 years. It started to really die after WWI.

They also believe their belief in God gives them licensee to make social decisions. That's progressive ideology just as the left saying that Big government is better suited to make your decisions. They all revolve around the principle that the power doesn't revolve around WE THE PEOPLE, but rather God or government.

A true conservative would have nothing to do with military engagements overseas unless attacked. Isolationist foreign policy. Other countries can build standing armies to protect themselves. Little to no alliances. America is not an exporter of freedom, but a beacon. Lead by example, not force.

We do not know better than anyone else what is right or wrong. Live and let live or die. That's is conservative. It doesn't sound nice. It's not free stuff for everybody. It's hard choices.

Our nation was founded around religion, not in opposition to it. The constitution, and the papers surrounding the document of that day attest to that fact.

That's incorrect. This nation was founded in direct opposition to religious institutions. They founded father's agreed that a God existed and that religion had no place in governance.

The fact neo-cons believe the nation will die if Christianity dies is the same sad song you here from the Federal Government.

"Oh, but if we cease to exist then all is lost." Lies, lies, lies and fundamentally flawed logic IMO.

 

[hoosierdaddy]

Gramps, a lot of what you are saying is based on your opinion alone.

A neo-con is someone who flies the conservative banner, but doesn't understand true conservative philosophy.

So, can I consider you a neo-conservative, since you obviously have your own view of what a "true" conservative is? Do a little research on what the definition of a "true conservative" is, and you will have to admit that you are doing what you are claiming Sarah Palin is doing. BTW, do you know what she thinks true conservatism is? Have you seen where she states these things so you knew?
See where I'm going here?

They also believe their belief in God gives them licensee to make social decisions.

Who has stated this and gave you this impression? Could it possibly be that your loathe for religion, and in particular Christianity, influence your thoughts on this? DO you have any evidence of a so called "neo-conservative" actually doing this blatantly, or is this another example of you just having this perception?

We do not know better than anyone else what is right or wrong. Live and let live or die. That's is conservative. It doesn't sound nice. It's not free stuff for everybody. It's hard choices.

I'd really be interested if you could point out a known conservative that states this philosophy.

This nation was founded in direct opposition to religious institutions.

No, unless you continue the sentence to read; ...having any control or influence in the issues of government.
The only institution that our founders were against was the church of england, and/or any that would try to impose church values and doctrine on the congress.
Our founders did not have the loathe for religion that you seem to have.

 

[BabyHuey]

The only institution that our founders were against was the church of england, and/or any that would try to impose church values and doctrine on the congress.

Religious conservatives would like nothing better than
to do exactly that.

 

[ChynaRyder]

Uh, I used to be a republican...until they continued to grow the size of government at the same rate or more than the Democrats. I have switched my party affiliation to Libertarian, as that is truly all I want from my government, Liberty. (That means leave me the fuck alone, and do only what the constitution bids you to do)

I know a lot of Republicans that I have smoked pot with, dropped acid and gone to dead shows with, and basically engaged in standard male debauchery with.

Edit: Oh, I forgot to add that I go to church every Sunday too, and have found many Christians to be quite accepting of mmj, as they recognize the source of this gift.

 

[hoosierdaddy]

Religious conservatives would like nothing better than
to do exactly that.

Again, a perception I think. Got anything that would show this to be true?

 

[guest]

If you've never met a pot smoking republican it's either because you weren't looking in the right places or you look like a whacked out grateful dead following, avatar reading, living in the common unwashed marxist! hippie.

 

[BabyHuey]

Again, a perception I think. Got anything that would show this to be true?

I'll admit my statement is based on my perceptions.
However,I don't believe its a stretch to believe
as I do.Social conservatives positions on multiple
issues and the stated religious reasons they give for these same
political stances,the religious litmus applied to their
political candidates,constant claims of anti religious persecution
by the government etc..would be among the
contributing factors to my perceptions.

 

[hoosierdaddy]

The media forms more of your perceptions than reality I think.

 

[ColBatGuano]

The media forms more of your perceptions than reality I think.

Kettle, meet Pot.

 

[BabyHuey]

The media forms more of your perceptions than reality I think.

As opposed to your perceptions??
You show bias in your assumptions simply because
we disagree.

 

[hoosierdaddy]

Kettle, meet Pot.

Example?

 

[BabyHuey]

Example?

The media forms more of your perceptions than reality I think.

To attempt to dismiss my points as quoting
media talking points would be a good example,wouldn't it?

 

[hoosierdaddy]

As opposed to your perceptions??
You show bias in your assumptions simply because
we disagree.

As opposed to what you stated.
You agreed that you were basing your statements on perception.
On what do we disagree? You have apparently formed your opinion from something...I suggest it is the media if you can't show any examples that leads you to your statements.

But see, you get upset about it. You had the balls to throw out a charge, concerning people...real people...yet you have nothing to back it up. That was my whole point, and why I engaged you on the issue. It is not just you, but it seems fashionable for some to throw out unwarranted charges at others, and have zero to back it up with.

 

[hoosierdaddy]

To attempt to dismiss my points as quoting
media talking points would be a good example,wouldn't it?

I asked the questions, and it was you who answered them. I didn't dismiss out of hand.
OK, let's assume I dismiss them out of hand,,,,give me some tangible evidence of any so called "social conservative" doing the things you stated.

 

[hoosierdaddy]

Political conservatives are typically angry, bitter people.

The OP made this statement, and it is a wrong as you were, BabyHuey. I am trying to set the record straight.

Perhaps you find these sorts of people angry and bitter too? Perhaps it is because you and them find yourselves on opposite sides of the political spectrum, and for no for no other reason you throw rocks and make baseless charges?

I know for a fact (since I own 4 of them myself) that kids of today are fucked up in the head and seem to feel that anyone who disagrees with them...at all...are haters. The term haters sucks really. It is not an accurate portrayal of a dissenting opinion. It is playing the demon card, which is right out of the leftist playbook.

And make no mistake,,,there IS a leftist playbook.

 

[hoosierdaddy]

"A Marxist begins with his prime truth that all evils are caused by the exploitation of the proletariat by the capitalists. From this he logically proceeds to the revolution to end capitalism, then into the third stage of reorganization into a new social order of the dictatorship of the proletariat, and finally the last stage -- the political paradise of communism."
Rules for Radical -Saul Alinsky

...

 

[DiscoBiscuit]

gimme, gimme...

Again, a perception I think. Got anything that would show this to be true?

Lots of peeps have a perception. Many co-opt terms like conservative and liberal with their own perceptions w/o looking at historic/literal context.

Conservative Is Not Opposite Liberal: That's Totalitarianism Quote:
Timothy Ferris Posted: February 16, 2010 10:48 AM

When I tell people that there's a symbiotic relationship between science and liberalism, it turns out that what I usually need to define is not "symbiotic," which most folks understand to mean mutually beneficial, but "science" and "liberalism."

The word science is used today to describe the work of the thousands of researchers who conduct or monitor experiments, interact in scientific organizations, and publish in refereed journals. They belong to the world's only genuinely international community, and their findings are applicable from here to the far reaches of the universe.

Prior to the rise of science, some four centuries ago, ideas were evaluated by checking them against logic and everyday experience to see whether they "seemed good"--which is the etymological root of the word "dogma." Science created a new approach, in which ideas are tested experimentally. Those that fail such tests are either discarded or modified. Those that succeed are accepted, but only provisionally--which is why scientists still speak, say, of the "theory" of evolution, although the basic mechanisms of biological evolution are as well understood as is the physics behind microprocessors and nuclear power plants. Keeping the feedback loops humming requires free, constant, and often contentious communication between scientists all over the world. That's where liberalism comes in.

By liberalism I mean the original political philosophy called by that name--the one espoused by John Locke and embodied in the Bill of Rights. Liberalism is based on the hypothesis that people ought to be maximally free, with the government intervening only to the extent required to protect their freedoms against abridgment by their compatriots or by enemies abroad. This was a radical idea in the eighteenth century, when few people had much education and the general public was routinely slandered as ignorant and untrustworthy. Locke himself feared that the public was so mired in "passion and superstition" as to be apt, as Voltaire put it, to act irrationally and "speak without thinking." Sharing such qualms, many of the American founders described the newborn United States as akin to a scientific experiment. "No experiment can be more interesting than that we are now trying," wrote Thomas Jefferson in 1804, "and which we trust will end in establishing the fact, that man may be governed by reason and truth."

Liberal democracy--the form of government in which a majority can elect leaders but not constrain human rights--has survived innumerable social experiments to become the choice of more than a third of all humanity and the stated preference of most of the remainder. (Even outright despots feel obliged to pay lip service to its inevitability, if only as a distant prospect to be realized once the populace is "ready.") Yet in the United States--and, increasingly, in parts of Europe as well--the term liberal has come to mean the political Left. This has served only to cloudy the political waters. Those on the Left are free to call themselves anything they like--such as progressive, a term many have been taking up lately--but they ought not to be called liberals. Liberalism is an independent political philosophy, with no inherent connection to either the Left or the Right.

In science it often happens that confusing phenomena can be better understood by adding a dimension. Einstein laid the foundations for modern cosmology, the study of the universe as a whole, by portraying three-dimensional space as a curved continuum embedded in a four-dimensional "space-time continuum." Contemporary cosmological models involving string theory and membrane theory invoke ten or more dimensions. (They're beautiful; the jury is still out as to whether they're true.) Drop in on a scientific conference nowadays and you'll see talk after talk illustrated with two-dimensional slices of hyperdimensional "phase spaces" that may have no physical reality but aid in comprehension.

Political dynamics become a lot clearer if we do something similar, by replacing the old, one-dimensional, Left/Right political spectrum--a relic of the way delegates happened to be seated in the National Assembly circa 1789--with a two-dimensional diamond:

Such diagrams have the virtue of putting opposing philosophies in opposite positions, rather than trying to squeeze them all into a one-dimensional line. The opposite of conservatism, which cherishes practices that experience has shown to work in the past, is progressivism, which looks to the future. The opposite of liberalism is not conservatism but totalitarianism, the elevation of state power at the expense of human rights.

As the diagram suggests, liberalism is equally accessible to conservatives and progressives alike.

If you are a liberal conservative or a liberal progressive you will show up, on the old one-dimensional diagram, as a "moderate." (Most Americans are called moderate because most are liberal, in that they support human rights and are suspicious of big organizations, whether governmental or private, that threaten those rights.) When people say that they have become more moderate with age, what they usually mean is that they've become more liberal--that, having come to appreciate the virtues of freedom in action, they have strayed from the dogmatisms of the Left or Right. From this perspective there is no need for neologisms like "neoliberal," "neoconservative," or liberalism with an uppercase or lowercase "L." These words simply describe various trajectories taken on the playing field of tradition vs. innovation and freedom vs. despotism.

Science, like liberalism, has no fundamental connection to the Right or the Left. Conservatives have sometimes closed their eyes to science, as when the George W. Bush administration sat on its hands over global warming, but so have those progressives who would "democratize" science by discouraging research programs that they fear might promote social inequalities. Biblical literalists ignore empirical evidence when they claim that the earth is thousands, rather than billions, of years old--but so do progressives enthusiastic about homeopathy or progressive education, which similarly lack any scientific basis. Glenn Beck's fact-free fulminations about the Obama administration's imagined plans to "massacre" Americans have their progressive counterpart in Bill Maher's fantasies about big pharma conspiring with Big Macs to sicken and then cure us all. Such baseless alarmism used to be commonplace: Before science came along, every comet swimming into view aroused predictions of disaster. Those days are gone, but most Americans still don't understand what science is or how it works.

Science is inherently antiauthoritarian: If a theory fails experimental test it doesn't matter how smart or powerful its proponents may be. Science is also highly social: No one scientist knows enough to go it alone for long. Hence science thrives under liberalism, which protects freedom of property, speech, travel, and association. Their alliance has already freed more people from poverty, ignorance, and an early grave than every other approach in all recorded history combined.

It used to be thought that science was a neutral tool, like a shovel or an AK-47, equally serviceable for tyrants and free citizens alike. The Soviet Union and Fascist Germany perpetuated that myth by portraying themselves as gleaming powerhouses of scientific technology--but proved, once the curtains of their obsessive secrecy had dissolved away, to have been anything but. Today, China's Communist rulers are busy building laboratories, bestowing privileges on their indigenous scientists, and recruiting researchers from abroad in an effort to make China a world-class scientific power. Their efforts are unlikely to succeed, however, until the Chinese people are free.

Scientific creativity, like all creativity, is unpredictable and can be dangerous: To learn how the sun shines is also to learn how to make nuclear weapons. Global warming is the latest, and in some respects the most serious, example of this fact. It can be addressed neither by going back to ancient verities nor by marching in lockstep toward a progressive vision of a predetermined future. It may, however, yield to the potent combination of science and liberalism. Certainly there are resources available. The United States spends half a trillion dollars annually on importing foreign oil, while the world spends $7 trillion a year on energy; a fraction of that amount can put a dent in global warming. Should science and liberalism fail to meet this test, however, illiberal rule may well gain ascendance in the resulting emergency.

For as long as I have been alive, people have been saying that science is fine in its place but has inherent limitations. Science, it is said, can adjudicate questions of fact but not of value. It can weigh quantities but not qualities. It shows "how the heavens go, but not how to go to heaven." I wouldn't be so sure about that. We human beings all belong to one species, on a planet where all life is kin, and astronomers at their telescopes find no wall bifurcating the universe. To insist that we live in two worlds, one accessible to science and the other not, is to back the losing line in the winningest game ever yet played by humans. My money's on science and liberty.

You might be a liberal if.....

....you're not a totalitarian.

 

[BabyHuey]

I am not upset, my friend.
Its the Internet.