Can you be Conservative and Atheist?

Inflation in 2010 was 1.64 percent
Inflation in 2009 was NEGATIVE 0.34 percent

Hmm in America where inflation is so bad no one can afford to purchase anything. We all have homes, food, autos, and wow, computers! Yep, inflation is so terrible here in the good old USA, I think I will go into hiding and raise my own food.

 

Charities in America are great, the starving mother of ten, whose husband just died gets nothing, and the often wealthy survivors of 9/11 get free college for their kids. Sorry, I prefer fair government disbursement of charity.
We disagree, I believe that America has provided you with the means to become proud, and independent, but because of that, they have the RIGHT to get something back for those that are NOT so proud and so independent.

I am not greedy, I do not mind sharing.

 

And, if everyone in the USA becomes a millionaire and our social programs make the Nazis proud, then what.
I prefer to go down fighting for both at the same time.

 

Look back at what I said and put up where I said "inflation is so bad no one can afford to purchase anything". I said the prices going up is a result of the debt we are allowed to have. Look at the housing bubble and the prices of homes skyrocketing. Once the deregulation of availibility of getting home loans to people that couldn't afford it did we get a surge in home prices. Now that there is more stingent banks giving out fewer home loans do we see the market correcting itself. If it isn't easy for the population to get store credit cards at places like Old Navy or the GAP, the prices of their jeans or shirts would be 50% less than what they actually cost now. The availibility to spend more than we make gives the retailers and sellers of goods the chance to raise the prices.

 

Now that is some heavy duty blinders on. "Fair government disbursment of charity"? Like how some tornado stricken areas get FEMA aid while others that votes against the current administration gets none? Please, government "charities" are nowhere near benevolant as you seem to think.

I don't mind sharing either, I just prefer to be able to determine who recieves my money vs the massive corruption of the government bureocrats making the decission of where my money goes and how much they choose to STEAL from me to give to their buddies.

 

Then we are still all better off than if we are all broke, slaves, but can marry anything we want. There is no call for regression of civil liberties, just asking people to put the social aspect on the back burner till the economy which affect everyone gets turned around.

If you really want to fight for both, elect Ron Paul. Obama and the left experiment with the economy while trying to salvage their power through social reforms. And most of the righties want to continue with their asinine ideas that they should keep marriage as as opposite sex like club.

 

Really great post. I think I echo the sentiments of millions when I say "I did not leave the Republican party... the Republican party left me."

I'm going to say it was around 1980... ahem.

 

Well, we do have problems, but that is about all we do agree on. Nothing goes on the back burner from my point of view.
Oh, and Ran Paul is to me, nothing but a constitutional, libertarian, kook, from Texas, with delusions of KNOW-IT-ALLNESS.

 

YEAH!! How dare he believe that the government should be restrained within the bounds of the document that this country was founded upon! How dare he believe in a responsible government and a less oppressive one at that!! The bastard!

 

I've known quite a few.

 

Conservatives believe the safety net should be through personal actions and churches, not the government. Most of us do act on our charitable requirements. We don't think that being forced to give charity (i.e. through taxes) is a charitable act. Capitalism is natural. Christ uses many capitalistic examples in his parables (parable of the talents, for example).

 

I've never met a left-wing liberal who said he believed in working for a living. I am an atheist. I've always been an atheist. I have been a conservative since I was about thirty. I believe quite sincerely it's important to live within your means and pay your bills. Therefore, I can't be a liberal. I think it is wrong, and unconstitutional, not to allow gays to have civil unions with all the benefits and responsibilities of a married couple. I do not insist that this equality absolutely has to include the word marriage. So I can't be a liberal. I think people are responsible for their actions so I can't be a liberal.

Yes, an atheist can certainly be a conservative.

 

There is absolutely NOTHING about the progressive direction that denies the value and importance of work. Work is NOT the issue. The issue comes when people are unable to work. For example, if someone works their whole life in a coal mine and ends up with black lung and no pension, what should be the outcome? When someone has a mental deficiency that leaves them pretty much unemployable, what should be the outcome?

So, we have social security, medicare, medicaid, food aid and other such programs.

But, the right wing today believes Jesus would have them kick these people to the side of the road where they may die. As such, they have been (and continue to be) strenuously opposed to each and every proposed method of aid to those who end up in such condition.

Sorry. I see no possibility that Jesus would accept that behavior.

 

PJ O'Roarke comes to mind. Trump seems like an atheist, but he is not even close to being a conservative. I am sure there are many conservatives in America who are really atheists but they dare not reveal that if they ever plan to run for office as that is doom for a Republican candidate.

 

Being an atheist has nothing to do with anything else.
An Atheist can be anything, or nothing.

He just does not believe in God.

 

I don't know what "conservative" even means in US politics today.

But, I'm sure Trump doesn't stand for it, as he doesn't stand for anything.

 

Conservative atheist here, and NOT a libertarian. I am BOTH a social and fiscal conservative, and honestly, I don't see how anyone can be a fiscal conservative and a social liberal because being a social liberal means spending money on liberal causes. George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush were supposedly conservative but grew the budget far more than Bill Clinton did, which means Clinton was more of a fiscal conservative than either of the Bushes.

I see a lot of the atheist conservatives on here are in favor of homosexual rights, which makes them not conservatives in my book. It's the main reason I dropped out of the conservative atheist group on Facebook before I was banned from FB, that no one on there was a social conservative at all, they were all libertarians going by the name of conservative.

From the Pew Research group:

% of atheists who say homosexuality…
Survey year 2014 Should be accepted 94% Should be discouraged 4% Neither/both 1% Don't know 1% Sample Size 1,098

So according to this, only 4% of all atheists are actually conservatives, whatever their views on fiscal restraint. All the rest are libertarians.

How is ****ing another dude up the ass a "human value"?

 

I never thought of it that way but it sounds like you're saying a lot of the people on the right need someone else to tell them what to think. Sort-a like drinking Kool-Aid.

 

Accepting the fact of homosexuality does not preclude someone from being a conservative.

And, let's keep the discussion rational.

 

You and I have very different definitions of "conservatism."

To me, conservatism means not being attached to any particular program at all, simply to history and community.

Maybe, so that we don't talk past each other, we should share and discuss our definitions of "conservatism." I'm a bit of a Burkean on this matter, I believe that conservatism is a political stance that accepts the-world-as-it-is and believes that individuals only have a little bit of wiggle room within the crushing confines of history and psychology. It's distrustful of utopianism and radical change.

 

The wiki entry comes a lot closer with:

 

How would you characterize the position I laid out?

This is an important question, because I think that definitions should be used primarily to indicate and discriminate. I would characterize the Wiki's description as "reactionary," which is less a set of principles than a relative standpoint.

 

What they call "Conservative" today is not what it was even ten years ago and is in many ways incompatible if not opposing to Atheism. My answer is clearly NO which is why I am no longer Republican.

 

This one is good, from dictionary.com: disposed to preserve existing conditions, institutions, etc., or to restore traditional ones, and to limit change.

This only applies to the social realm, of course, while not addressing conservatism in the fiscal realm. And you can pretty much choose just about any point in history as being better socially and fiscally than the current mess we have, whether 1980, 1950, 1920, 1890, 1860, 1830, or 1800.

So, acceptance of homosexuality is a radical change. Having 58 million Hispanics in the country, 18% of the population, is a radical change. Having white children be a minority of all children in the US is a radical change. Having the national debt be 105% of GDP while not in a war is a radical change. So I am a conservative because I oppose all of these. If you only oppose the last one, you're not a conservative, you're a libertarian. A libertarian is someone who is conservative fiscally but not socially. And as previously noted, it's very difficult to be conservative fiscally if you support socially liberal programs.

 

I would not describe this as conservatism, but as reactionary.

But again, I try to define conservatism as a fully fledged political philosophy. What dictionary.com describes is not a philosophy, but a standpoint.

I certainly don't share your disdain towards our nation.

It's been in the making for generations, as our culture continues to pull away from Christian sexual mores in general.

We never took those mores very seriously anywhere other than Puritans New England, it's just that the break is now open.

Christian sexual mores verge on Utopian, the opposite of conservative.

What matters is the change in our relationship with Mexico. This is a historical process that can't be stopped. What we can change is our reaction to it. Either we learn to share this island with another great power, or we see a kind of bitterness and anguish that Americans have never known.

An untrue statistic. I feel like I go over this multiple times a week. Whites, Hispanic and non-Hispanic, will be the majority in this country until the end of the century, barring the unknown.

For sure. It's also just not that important. Someday we'll implement the kind of tax rate that a normal country has, we'll restructure our debt, and we'll inject cash right into our treasury instead of bank balance sheets.

It'll clear up in just a few short years.

I don't oppose facts, and being a conservative I define my program in relation to what is politically possible.

Welfare can be controlled, but never ended. Modern geopolitics demands a standing military-intelligence establishment. So, spending will remain high.

If you think that it's politically tenable to "oppose homosexuality" you're not living in reality. If you think the United States will ethnically cleanse Hispanics, you must be from Mars.

By choosing a radically different America than we have today that requires politically untenable policies to attain, you're about as far from conservative as any progressive.