What do Conservatives have to offer America?

No one knows what the political landscape will look like in a few years' time. Will the Republican Party survive Mr Trump? Will the Democrats have a civil war? Will we see one or more viable new parties rise up from the ashes of the old ones?

I have not a clue. There may be a half dozen Black Swans winging their way toward us at this moment. The rise of China may suddenly manifest itself in some leap forward; a financial crisis and depression could derail everything; the Israelis could make some bold move, or have a bold move made upon them, that would turn the world upside down. No one knows.

The Russian Social-Democratic Labor Party (Bolsheviki) were a nearly unknown force outside of Russia, and not a major one within it, until WWI drove the Russian people to seek radical solutions to their problems. The National Socialist German Workers Party got 3% of the vote in 1928, and 37% five years later. Don't think we are immune. We arguably have more social fracture lines within our society than either Germany or Russia did before their plunges into the abyss. The bigger they come ...

In this thread I'd like to open a discussion about the following topic: America has some serious social problems.

As an exercise, let us imagine that both major parties have collapsed, and that you are a delegate at the founding convention of one of the emerging new parties. In order to keep this discussion focussed, I will assume that there are two emerging new parties, one roughly on the Center-to-Left, the other on the Center-to-Right. (Unless there are overriding issues of tribal [ethnic, religious] warfare, this is basically how most parties divide up: as someone put it, the Unsuccessful. vs the Successful)

I propose that this thread be about delegates to the 'Center-Rightish' party ought to be proposing. Let us assume that this party does not want to just 'bear witness', as the Libertarian Party and the Constitution Party do, but wants to hold power, or at least to keep its rivals on the Left from exercising too much power. That is, it wants to put together an electoral majority.

So my question is: what should this party stand for, what should it try to do if it wins office?

I propose two:

One of the most prominent problems in the US is (relative) poverty. (This is related to, but not the same as, general inequality. A family with an income of $100 000 a year is far from being equal to our billionaires, but is not poor in any sense.) In the US, this is a 'racialized' issue: there are plenty of poor whites, mainly 'invisible' in areas like Appalachia, but when people think 'poverty' in the US they mainly think of Blacks and Hispanics.

This is a dangerous situation, especially as the white dominance of the US fades away towards a situation in which whites will be the largest minority, but no longer the majority.

Clearly, if major advances could be made in changing the economic situation of Blacks and Hispanics, so that the distribution of income in these communities more nearly mirrored that in other communities, and that young people from these communities could look forward to a better life -- that would be a blessing devoutly to be wished.

But how to make progress in that direction?

I suggest six things for discussion:

1. Education. Carry on with 'school choice', but impose on schools that break out of the system, a far more rigorous approach to teaching, school discipline, teaching content and factual knowledge, than you will find in many Charter Schools today. (In fact, from what I have read, Charter Schools don't seem to get better results than state schools.) Look at the Harlem Learning Zone and the KIPP schools, and Michaela School in the UK, for examples. Google 'Marva Collins' on YouTube and see an example of a Black-run school that matches this approach. And look up the results of 'Operation Follow Through', and see which approach -- the permissive progressive or the highly structured -- got the best results.

2. Jobs. It should be possible for anyone who wants to work for a living wage, to do so. Can the state play any role in this? Government intervention already sustains hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of jobs in the US: it's called military spending. If we didn't have to spend so much on the military, could we usefully spend it on other beneficial things?

3. Drugs. Decriminalize them. Destroy much of organized crime around the world overnight.

4. Foreign policy: begin to pass the burden of self-defense on to others, who for sixty years have had a free, or reduced-rate, ride. Take the long view of the way to undermine and eventually transform authoritarian states: by building up their educated middle classes, via trade and 'cultural' exchanges.

5. Health Care: look at how ferociously-capitalist Singapore deals with healthcare and other 'welfare' issues: basically, by forcing people to behave sensibly.

6. The military: look for ways to revive the Colonial militia system. Every American should have the right to receive military training, and to participate in the Reserves. This ought to be possible without it taking a continuous three-year bite out of your life: basic weapons training and familiarization with military procedures can be done in three months. For the basic Military Occupational Specialities, a few more months are all that's needed: an infantryman can be trained on more advanced weapons in three months.

Essentially, this is the National Guard, but easier to get into and stay in. As the US withdraws from trying to bring LGBT rights to Afghanistan and defending Russia from Germany (or is it the other way 'round?), we can supplement our professional army with a mass citizens' militia. This would have lots of advantages: having a military caste which does the fighting and dying for hedonistic civilians is a bad idea; it would go a long way to satisfying the gun owners who are worried about government usurpation of liberty in the future -- knowing how to operate an M252 mortar or an M240 machine gun (and having an arsenal stocked with them near your home, where you periodically refresh your knowledge accompanied by your neighbors) is a far better guard against tyranny than your personal ownership .357 revolver or 30-30 deer rifle. Fire-and-maneuver takes a disciplined team.

Freedom is not free, and it's wrong to make the Marine Corps pay everyone else's share.

So ... ideas for discussion. I've only adumbrated the basics. The devil is in the details, especially how to pay for it all. I deliberately haven't touched on 'social issues' like gay marriage, divorce, abortion. My own instinct is leave these matters up to the states: Mississippi can outlaw homosexuality, California can make it compulsory, everyone's happy.

 

First conservative Republican was Thomas Jefferson. He and Madison formed Republican Party in 1793 to stand for freedom and limited govt. Republicans still have that to offer while Democrats still have the opposite to offer. Do you understand?

 

Does 'limited government' include the CIA and NSA and FBI, and 400 military bases all over the world?
Does it include Social Security and Medicare? The Federal Minimum Wage?

If you think it doesn't -- which would be consistent with what you're saying -- then ... what party do you support? Certainly not the Republican Party of today.

In any case, you apparently disagree with the following:

And as for the "modern Republican Party,"

Whoops!

 

Interesting ideas. Eliminate the minimum wage and there will be more jobs than workers. A humane wealthy nation would subsidize low income unskilled workers.

 

if Dirty Donald is the best they have to offer, I would hate to see the worst they have to offer us

 

we would become like China

but your right, either corps need to pay people living wages or the tax payers have to subsidize sub living wage workers

 

My goal as a conservative would be to look at making sure the government is able to fund itself. I'd be all for a balanced budget, which would include paying down our outstanding debt. I would want to include both automatic tax increases that would take place whenever the budget is out of balance along with automatic reduction clauses. And I'd make it so that none of these measures could be avoided more than every other year.

 

The two things that keep me going republican are gun rights and free market. If dems would stop trying to control everything, there would be a lot of switchovers (myself included).

But lets be honest... the progressive agenda is precisely about controlling everything, and the dems are about pushing progressivism.

 

I think we all -- liberals as well as conservatives -- need to start thinking about these things, because it may the case that everything will soon be thrown up into the air.
Most people I know, liberals as well as conservatives, stick with 'their' party because there is no other place to go. They have to accept what the Party tops propose -- knowing that even what they propose they're unlikely to carry out. But suppose you could 'start over' ......

 

Eliminate the minimum wage for unskilled labor and individual skilled workers will be among those able to hire unskilled workers.
Corporations are not the only employers.

 

everyone that works 40 hours a week should earn a living wage or the tax payers have to assist

we live in a country now where half the country attacks people working 40 hours a week for min wage, imagine if they were payed less then min wage

if Walmart could pay people less then min wage... woudl they?

"Wal-Mart Memo Suggests Ways to Cut Employee Benefit Costs " 2005

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/26/business/26walmart.ready.html?pagewanted=all

"Wal-Mart executives said the memo was part of an effort to rein in benefit costs, which to Wall Street's dismay have soared by 15 percent a year on average since 2002. Like much of corporate America, Wal-Mart has been squeezed by soaring health costs. The proposed plan, if approved, would save the company more than $1 billion a year by 2011."

"Ms. Chambers acknowledged that 46 percent of the children of Wal-Mart's 1.33 million United States employees were uninsured or on Medicaid."

we need public housing and insurance for these people earning below a living wage

 

Judging by recent primaries, more tRUMP.

 

Doubtful. IMO, at least 90% of employees are earning above the min wage.
So, the min wage has next to ZERO effect.

And those earning min wage, likely gets some gov't assistance.

 

many republicans want to control your religion, many on the right support the war on Marijuana and give tax cuts to the rich.. that is why many people do not want to support them

most of the left wants people to choose for themselves, we want less discrimination and less of nanny state government, government shoudl be there when you 'ask' for help, not to force their will on you with things like mandatory vaginal probes and such, not to force religion on your children, ect....

 

many want to... but they're not trying to.
you're preaching to choir on marijuana...
and while the cons cut taxes for the rich, the dems wanna raise taxes for everyone, including the poor. not much difference there.

the problem is progressivism wants to coerce people to stop discriminating. the right to choose includes the right to choose wrong.

i dunno wtf ur talking about with vaginal probes...

 

the left does not want to raise taxes on the working class on down, the right blacks any tax cuts that doesn't give the rich a huge tax cut... look at the trump tax cut for the middle class, lol, it was a huge tax cut for the corps, not a huge tax cut for the middle class

businesses open to the public should not be allowed to discriminate based on race or gender, that is just common sense, if you want to discriminate, open a private members only business, no one is stopping you

republicans pushed doctors to give mandatory vaginal probes to women that did not need or want them at the women's expense

 

What strikes me first is that your decision on what is a 'social issue' to leave to a state, and what is a social issue that you include in your agenda is not well delineated. Why does your agenda not leave drug legalization to the states, and oblige the country to require homosexuality? Why is your plan for public education and charter school improvement part of a national policy and all these militias not under state control? I guess the most fundamental missing link here is that you do not mention the Constitution at all. Did it disappear? Did the precedent setting decisions over the last 225 years disappear as well. Those details might interfere with this scheme of yours. Without that Constitution there is no framework to unify the states into a federal union to protect .

 

1. NOthing you do is going to help if you can't turn off crab pot syndrome.
If you can manage that and it won't be easy, there are a hell of a lot of infants masquerading as parents these days, then start teaching people how to think and inculcating in them a desire for knowledge. Please note this is a far more difficult challenge than teaching them to regurgitate what you want them to believe. The latter of which is what we primarily get in schools today, which is why we are graduating so many kids that are functionally illiterate little snow flakes that can't handle adversity abd think everything wrong in their lives is someone else's fault.

2.Nice plan we outlaw entry level jobs by pricing them out of the market, guaranteeing a permanent underclass of the unemployed and unemployable, then we blame Mr. businessman for the havoc our stupid policies have created and pay those now worthless people we have created through our disastrous policies to keep voting us in to office, oh wait that's what progressives have been doing for more than 80 years now. I think it's time for a change.

3. Lot's of luck. ON the other hand you do create more worthless people, who can't get a job due to tainted urine, that you can then mine for votes.

4/ Oh gee the first part of that sounds exactly like what Trump is trying to do, for which he has been routinely castigated by neocons and leftists. And the last part of it sounds like what we have been doing since WWII. Let me know when it succeeds in removing even one dictator.

5. Oh legalized drugs and forcing people to behave sensibly interesting juxtaposition, to say nothing of self contradictory.

6. The colonial militia system was largely a disaster. It would be worse today.

 

American workers, including those who operate small businesses have plenty of menial jobs that need to be done.
They cannot afford to pay unskilled Americans to do them.

 

Eliminate the minimum wage for unskilled labor and the market wage - the wage employers can afford to pay will be discovered instantly.

Subsidizing those workers would be in everyones best interests.

 

So, you sort of agree with him on #4.

 

Well I agree that our allies should pay for their own defense at lest to the tune of what the treaty called for.

On the other hand been exporting our stuff into various lands run by dictators for decades when we can, I have yet to notice even one such dictator being overthrown because of it.

 

I think a CIA, FBI and NSA are critical to national security. However we need agencies without the corruption. No we don't need military bases all over the world. That has resulted from our government's desire to be the planetary police force, a role they should give up. Social Security and Medicare are not an appropriate role for government and never should have happened. Minimum wage serves to hold down wages and also should never exist.

Support a party? I don't think political parties are good for our society at all. They represent organized power grabbing and that is never good.

I would simply apply it to all political parties.

 

There would be more support for America's foreign policy "geniuses" if America had managed to achieve even one clear benefit from war since 1945.

 

"most of the left wants people to choose for themselves, we want less discrimination and less of nanny state government, government shoudl be there when you 'ask' for help,"

They have a funny way of showing it. Everything that I see from them proves the opposite.