[GCFL-discuss] Fwd: FW: Bumper stickers for your liberal friends

Sat Apr 11 19:43:59 CDT 2009

Reciting a comedy one-liner as the definition of "conservative" is
exactly what I was talking about. William F. Buckley, Jr. was usually
wrong, but at least he could talk on any subject from twenty different
angles and cover the ground thoroughly.

Conservative can be defined historically, or by root word meanings.

Historically, conservatives demanded powerful government, obedience, and
everyone knowing their place, generally inherited. Think of landed
gentry, manors, banks, kings and nobility. Only the aristocracy are
allowed to own guns, of course.

Liberals, by contrast, advocated free trade, laissez-faire open markets,
everyone gets to vote (or at least all the right people), and as little
government regulation as possible.

By those terms, Ronald Reagan was a liberal -- he would have had more in
common with Gladstone than with Disraeli. Disraeli would have more in
common with Obama than Gladstone would, which is not to say that Obama is
a conservative, any more than he is a liberal.

By root word meanings, conservatives would conserve. A conservative
revolution is a contradiction in terms. Nature preserves are,
accordingly, a conservative measure.

Health care will never be free. But I know what is costs now -- last year
it cost me about $1500, and that is with medical insurance. Did anyone
notice how the same people who ran the "Harry and Louise" ads have now
brought us exactly what they said we should fear from the Clinton health
plan? The only difference is, its being run by the "private sector,"
which is telling us what we need, how much we should pay for it, what we
can or can't have, which doctor we can go to, and tripping us up on all
kinds of odd little fine print to surprise us with what we do or don't
owe.

P.J. O'Rourke is serving the same function: if he can discredit any hope
that the health care system could improve, then the same people who run
it now, who are very happy to spend billions of dollars of other people's
money (mine, Lance's parents, all of us) can continue to keep control.

I noticed in TIME magazine a letter from that bastion of liberalism, Elk
Grove, California (in case you didn't know, its one of those towns where
they say the pledge of allegiance every day at the start of school,
whether the federal district judge approves or not), who noted that in
his non-profit health plan

1) medical decisions are made by doctors
2) medical records have been on line for years
3) copays are low
4) there are no cutoffs for cost of surgery
5) prescription drugs are covered
6) premiums are lower than for-profit health plans.

I know a little about his plan, it has its flaws, but its better than
what most of us have now. I would, as I said before, settle for a
high-deductible policy and a health savings account, just to keep things
simple.

Back to the government sayings:

Mark Twain's comments are timeless, because they apply whether
Republicans or Democrats are in the majority, and he never pretended
otherwise. It is in the nature of the beast, not whether you like the guy
who won the election.

Today, "liberals" and "conservatives" both advocate rights, but disagree
on which ones are important, both lampoon government, but expand the
powers of government in whichever direction they consider necessary, and
both have a "party line" which defines what is "politically correct" in
their own circles.

Sic semper tyrannis.

Siarlys

Winston Churchill ALSO offered Franklin D. Roosevelt "earnest best wishes
for the success of the greatest crusade of modern times" -- he was
talking about the New Deal. This points out the danger of taking one line
someone once said and trying to explain exactly what it was supposed to
mean.

James Bovard is correct, but everyone who quotes him has their own idea
about who is the sheep (themselves) and who is the wolf (anyone with a
different idea). At its best, his observation points out that there are
some things even a majority vote cannot take away from an individual or
family.

Reagan was the head of state for eight years, so anything he said about
"government" he was, by definition, saying about himself. That goes right
along with Nancy saying "For eight years, I was sleeping with the
president of the United States. If that doesn't give you special access,
I don't know what does."

Voltaire wrote when France was a monarchy. There  have been a few
revolutions since then.

On Fri, 10 Apr 2009 09:22:46 -0500 "Discussion of the Good, Clean Funnies
List" <gcfl-discuss at gcfl.net> writes:
I am a conservative, and I know what these words mean: "You think
healthcare is expensive now, just wait till it's FREE!"

Back to my navel...

jp

On Wed, Apr 8, 2009 at 23:45, Discussion of the Good, Clean Funnies List
<gcfl-discuss at gcfl.net> wrote:

Frankly, these bumper stickers all sound like they were written by
liberals.

No facts. No logic.

For the last 40 years at least, nobody who called themselves a liberal,
and nobody who called themselves a conservative, has had the slightest
idea what either of these words mean. Now if these two bands of
loud-mouthed, self-centered, navel-contemplating idiots could go off in a
corner somewhere and rip each other to shreds, the rest of us could get
on with life, work, putting our country back together again, maybe even
ENJOYING life for what it is, rather than debating what is or isn't
missing.

I note with pleasure that the date for "change" that the author "can
believe in" is Jan 20, 2013. I too expect Obama to serve for eight years.

I will add a more respectful note on the last sticker, which is a genuine
quote from a genuine, sincere, and utterly misguided conservative,
Margaret Thatcher. What she misses out on is that capitalism, as we know
it today, also spends a great deal of other people's money. Consider, for
example, the Savings and Loan scam of the 1980s, and the derivative
scandals which have nearly crippled our economy and raised unemployment
to 10% or so, as the collateral damage to making a few people very rich
on our money. When she broke up the modestly "socialized" economy of
Great Britain, she did it much the way the economy of the USSR was broken
up under Yeltsin. A small number of well-placed insiders (in the USSR
these were called communists, and they were very good at becoming
rapacious capitalists, given the chance), took over government assets,
and then treated them as private property. One of the enterprising souls
(in Britain) leveraged some national railway assets bought at fire sale
prices into a multi-continental enterprise, that has now bought
Greyhound, and also bought the company I drive for, but I haven't noticed
that anything has changed where the rubber meets the road.

Siarlys
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