is simply that we can’t be fiscally conservative and go overboard with high-dollar publicly-funded social programs at the same time.

LH, I live in a heavily gerry-mandered district in NC, so getting people to even remotely consider the possibility that we have plenty of other options open to us that we could consider other than having a totalitarian social policy dictated to us by the federal government is really tough. Minds are closed tighter than a rusted steel bear trap!!!

But we do have options, plenty of them. There are social programs currently in place that are outdated and ineffective that are draining public funds that could be reevaluated. There is definitely a need to have mechanisms in place that prevent misuse of public funds through various social programs.

But where does process of reevaluating these programs and developing new priorities need to begin? It makes more sense to me that it should start at the state level.

You have to draw a distinction between marriage and union which you do not. Not going to get into the whole government thing as too many of you Ron Paul guys have too hard of heads and way to small of brains to discuss it further. It just seems to hard for you all to understand that government is in law, will always be in law, and will always be the enforcement on law. Take the government to as small as it could possibly be, and they are still involved in the making, writing, and enforcement of laws. That being said, you have to clearly draw a line between marriage and union or the first time a church refuses to marry a same sex couple, they end up sued.

Most of us could care less is they want to sign a union paper and have all the trials we straight married couples do. But there has to be a distinction and the government has to be the one who defines it and enforces that distinction.

As far as your dope comment, stop smoking or at least have enough respect for God and other Christians not to use the very old and BS line about Genesis. It does not take a theology expert to know that is not what the verse meant nor does it take a bible scholar to refute that ignorant excuse considering the Bible talks in length about not being under the control of substances, not being intoxicated, etc. And unless you smoke useless pot, you get high from the first toke. This would be against the Bible as a whole. The rest of the argument you made is nonsense, but lets not go into this further. Your first argument and ridiculous comment invalidates the entire thing and saves me the effort of typing more.

Anybody who has the most rudimentary knowledge of contract law knows that contracts require specific elements, such as capacity and consideration.

That’s why we don’t sanction marriage between a nine year old girl and a 50 year old guy, at least until Sharia is imposed on us-no capacity. As for consideration, the exchange requires complementarity and exclusivity-hence polygamy is a defective form of marriage, despite the clap-trap from the “sister-wives”. Desire or insistence doesn’t constitute capacity.

That having been said, marriage incorporates but encompasses more than a contract-it’s a public franchise that requires the public to respect that contract. That’s why adultery is grounds for divorce.

The “civil marriage” is still a red-herring. There’s absolutely nothing to prevent two homosexuals to form a private contract to exchange property. The vast majority of the rest of the civil apparatus for marriage-revolves around the possibility of children.

Its still quite another thing to have the STATE extend a FRANCHISE and IMPOSE a radical redefinition of marriage on me against my will, to require me to regard a union I consider objectively disordered as identical with the relationship I have with my wife.

As for that business about God giving you all the plants, he gave you nightshade too-but then again I remember something about not being a drunkard and never saw a passage that said “smoke these plants”.

You probably need to do more research if you think that the War on Drugs as it is currently waged, and the corresponding militarization of police aren’t greater violations of 4th, 5th, 6th Amendment rights (and general property or privacy rights) than any hypothetical SCOTUS ruling on car searches (which I would agree are blatantly un-Constitutional).

Its quite one thing to say the enforcement effort is excessive (I agree, there are egregious violations of the Constitution, such as property seizure) but it does not follw ipso facto that the law is defective.

I find state and municipal police tactics in “enforcing” traffic laws, such as hiding at the boittom of a hill to be excessive and little more than money oriented. Its a gross violation of my rights to be presumed “guilty” on the testimony of a machine. That doesn’t mean I think its a good idea to legalize 125mph.

He also would have favored the Shiavo law given his position on the Baby Doe case as expressed in his book on abortion and in the Evil Empire speech that covered all issues and not just the USSR.

Now, I would love for Americans via the Senate and states to reach an amendment consensus that recognized the personhood of the fetus in the womb from conception but think that is not achievable given the experience of the 80s-today despite the fact that more Americans and now a majority are “pro-life”. But the devil is in the details. And while I would probably endorse a state of Georgia law/amendment that allowed abortions for the first 60 days after conception, I would not want a national law on same because I fear that would forever memorialize murder.

But, I do not think that the number of conservatives that would reject a candidate that did not favor an national amendment for an absolute ban on abortion (or with only exceptions for life of mother, rape or incest) are very many. FTR, I only favor exception for life of mother and do not favor those for rape or incest.

That said, Fred Thompson convinced me that the better course now is for the 10th Amendment route, with the overturning of Roe and then let the states decide, at least for the foreseeable future.

For that, we must insist that any candidate for president from the GOP favor judges that would overturn Roe, even if they are personally pro-choice.

hence my support for Rudy given his changing of positions in 2007-8.

As others have pointed out, pro-choice Republican Senators like Snowe and Collins (and Specter, when he was a Republican) have voted to confirm judicial nominees who would ostensibly vote to overturn Roe.

What I’m talking about here would require some movement on both sides of the social divide within the broader Republican coalition. The Snowes and Browns of the world would have to relent on trying to preserve Roe at all costs, while the Santorums of the world would have to forgo trying to restrict abortions at the federal level.

Would either side swallow their bitter pill? I don’t know. But as far as I’m concerned, they’re going to have to do that or something similar. Otherwise, I fear the GOP will eventually contract to a party that’s only competitive in places that are culturally conservative.

Gay marriage is actually the tougher issue because of the “full faith and credit clause”. If some states recognize same-sex marriage, this clause more or less requires other states to honor those recognitions.

I don’t have a great answer for that, to be honest. It seems far more likely that one side or the other is going to eventually win the day outright.

But that doesn’t have to be the case with abortion. And as much as I’d like to see abortion gone from all states, it would be nice to simply get it banned in any at this point.

The only place that an unborn human child isn’t a “person” is in the deranged mind of someone who thinks it is morally acceptable to take that life.

It is utterly absurd to think that anything about the inherent status or worth of a child changes merely by the act of passing through the birth canal.

It is true, no government has ever lived up to the ideal of being completely neutral on social issues, in much the same way that the ideal free market has never been a reality. That doesn’t mean that conservatives should throw their hands up in the air and abandon either goal. In both cases, freedom trumps the vision of the anointed, whoever those anointed should be. Just as it would be difficult to find a country which has taxed, regulated, and spent its way into prosperity, you would be hard-pressed to find a country which has legislated its way to the moral society. It is infinitely preferable, and more conducive to liberty, to allow existing institutions in society (church, for instance) to deal with societal maladies which don’t involve the direct harm of others as they will: not only is it more effective, it is also more in keeping with our traditions as a free people. As a final thought, let us remember that conferring legitimacy on government actions which impose a vision of society at the cost of freedom all but insures that one day, it will be your freedoms on the altar for someone else’s vision of society: as the phrase goes, me today, you tomorrow.

(I will also note that abortion is not quite in the same boat as gay marriage, and that it undermines the pro-life case when it is bundled together with “pro-family” issues, like gay marriage, drugs, gambling, etc. by cheapening it. Abortion by definition imposes a death sentence on a person who cannot give consent (the fetus), and is thus dissimilar from gambling, drug use, and gay marriage, given that the latter actions typically involve consent on the part of all parties involve.

We just don’t think the FEDERAL government should be involved in these issues…

That’s our beef with Social Conservatives — stop giving the Feds more power! Period! Force the States to stand up and take ownership of the problem which is where it belongs.

We may one day look back on Obamacare as the best thing* that could have happened, because it forced the States to FINALLY stand up and be counted…

(* as long as it ends up being repealed, of course…)

That’s not what I got out of their statement at all.

What I got out of it is that the mandate from voters in this election, if there was one, has to do with economic and fiscal matters….

….that we shouldn’t use the electoral victory to veer into other issues.

And, well, I agree with them entirely on that point.

Of focus on political things blinds you and Aaron. Nothing will change the abortion landscape but a act of God, so keep praying for it. In the meantime I and others will try to keep gov from gaining so much power that the adults walking around will face the loss of freedom you so desperately seek to remove from immoral women

Keep trying to stop the arsonists

At least for right now. You see, there are no social issues, (or foreign policy issues for that matter) that are about to destroy our nation.

However, our lack of fiscal discipline is about to bankrupt us. Right now it is like the choice of repairing your refrigerator, or putting out a fire in your home. The fire has to come first, in fact it needs all of our attention, and anything else that distracts will just get in the way.

That is not to say it will always be this way. But for right now, I have to agree with them.

If we had the presidency it would be different because the president is the national leader and of course always has an impact on social issues because of appointing judges. But that question is moot at the moment.

The fact that you see what GOProud said as ‘denouncing’ says more about your attitude and mindset than anything that I could say.

I am not even pushing any SoCon policies in this piece.

Right, because you never mentioned abortion or any other SoCon issue. Oops, wrong.

And the fact that you see their attitude as ‘disenfranchising’ you says a lot to me about how you view the rest of conservatism. The Tea Party built this bus and filled it with people. Then you come along and complain that the bus isn’t going to where you want to go first.

There was a mandate given by the voters this election: to put a stop to where the Democrats have been taking us. Not for social issues. That’s precisely what GOProud said.

Why is it so offensive to you that we do what the voters told us to do first? Why post on the front page about it?

n/t

The Harm Principle *is* the moral underpinning of libertarianism — and of most of American conservatism, too. After all, very few conservatives are looking into repealing the 1st Amendment to allow anti-blasphemy laws, despite the fact that blasphemy is a sin against God that was punishable by death in Old Testament times. The 1st Amendment is largely supported under Harm Principle reasoning. Usury is, similarly, not banned, largely under Harm Principle reasoning. Virtually all of fiscal conservatism is fiscal libertarianism verbatim, and most of the appeals that even cultural conservatives espouse are done so under Harm Principle reasoning (smoking, trans-fats, etc). If you want to sneer at the Harm Principle, do so at your own peril: in doing so, you render American conservatism’s firmest moral underpinnings bankrupt, and are left with a philosophy as worthless and incoherent as progressivism, and as uselessly self-congratulatory as the moderate’s “pragmatism”.

They believe that the anger they are seeing in conservatives is simply an emotional response and nothing more. They are expecting us to just “get over it”. The progressives are expecting this, too.

Not this time. The stakes are too high. The direction our country is going in HAS to change. The anger in conservatives run deep and it is a righteous anger with a life and breath of its own.

No, we won’t just “get over it”.

“The only part of the conduct of any one, for which he is amenable to society, is that which concerns others. In the part which merely concerns himself, his independence is, of right, absolute. Over himself, over his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign.” (John Stuart Mill: On Liberty)

Rights find their foundation in the individual – when you restrict the individual, you restrict rights. Some rights are inalienable – those necessary to satisfy the needs of the human condition, others are subject to limits. A woman and a man for that matter, have the freedom to do with their own body what they will:

“But though this be a state of liberty, yet it is not a state of licence; though man in that state have an uncontrollable liberty to dispose of his person or possessions, yet he has not liberty to destroy himself or so much as any creature in his possession, but where some nobler use than its bare preservation calls for it.”
(Thomas Hobbes: Leviathan)

“Those who have quitted the world, and those who have not yet arrived at it, are as remote from each other as the utmost stretch of mortal imagination can conceive. What possible obligation, then, can exist between them- what rule or principle can be laid down that of two nonentities, the one out of existence and the other not in, and who never can meet in this world, the one should control the other to the end of time?” (Thomas Paine: Rights of Man)

If you(!) choose not to have an abortion, good for you. If you teach your children to not have abortions, good for you. But if you seek to restrict MY RIGHTS because the free exercise of them offends your sense of morality, then we have:

“and in political speculations “the tyranny of the majority” is now generally included among the evils against which society requires to be on its guard.

Like other tyrannies, the tyranny of the majority was at first, and is still vulgarly, held in dread, chiefly as operating through the acts of the public authorities. But reflecting persons perceived that when society is itself the tyran–society collectively, over the separate individuals who compose it–its means of tyrannizing are not restricted to the acts which it may do by the hands of its political functionaries. Society can and does execute its own mandates: and if it issues wrong mandates instead of right, or any mandates at all in things with which it ought not to meddle, it practises a social tyranny more formidable than many kinds of political oppression, since, though not usually upheld by such extreme penalties, it leaves fewer means of escape, penetrating much more deeply into the details of life, and enslaving the soul itself. Protection, therefore, against the tyranny of the magistrate is not enough; there needs protection also against the tyranny of the prevailing opinion and feeling; against the tendency of society to impose, by other means than civil penalties, its own ideas and practices as rules of conduct on those who dissent from them; to fetter the development, and, if possible, prevent the formation, of any individuality not in harmony with its ways, and compel all characters to fashion themselves upon the model of its own. There is a limit to the legitimate interference of collective opinion with individual independence; and to find that limit, and maintain it against encroachment, is as indispensable to a good condition of human affairs, as protection against political despotism. ”

Disparage the libertarians (of which I do NOT count myself) all you want, but liberty, freedom and rights are not, or should not, be subject to the whim of the righteous. Live your life according to your morality and allow government to function in those limited areas our founding fathers envisioned for the United States:

“I go further, and affirm that bills of rights, in the sense and to the extent in which they are contended for, are not only unnecessary in the proposed Constitution, but would even be dangerous. They would contain various exceptions to powers not granted; and, on this very account, would afford a colorable pretext to claim more than were granted. For why declare that things shall not be done which there is no power to do? Why, for instance, should it be said that the liberty of the press shall not be restrained, when no power is given by which restrictions may be imposed? I will not contend that such a provision would confer a regulating power; but it is evident that it would furnish, to men disposed to usurp, a plausible pretense for claiming that power. They might urge with a semblance of reason, that the Constitution ought not to be charged with the absurdity of providing against the abuse of an authority which was not given, and that the provision against restraining the liberty of the press afforded a clear implication, that a power to prescribe proper regulations concerning it was intended to be vested in the national government. This may serve as a specimen of the numerous handles which would be given to the doctrine of constructive powers, by the indulgence of an injudicious zeal for bills of rights.” (Alexander Hamilton, Federalist Papers #84)

“I believe that the majority of the Libertarians believe that a woman has the right to do what she chooses with her own body, ” suggests that YOU have the right to determine what she does with her own body. By what authority do you claim such a right? By what authority do you control the actions of another? Not even God claims that authority.