A Conservative Viewpoint - Politicians Ignore Societal Values

Article by Bob >Steinburg
- Edenton, North Carolina: Cradle of the Colony

The Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank, argues that Americans are becoming more politically liberal. They point to a five point scale contoured by pollsters following the 2008 elections as proof. Those numbers indicate that 34 percent of us now identify ourselves as conservatives, 29 percent as moderates and a combined 31 percent as liberal or progressive. Two percent identify as Libertarian.

Gallup polls conducted from 1992 to 2008 found the nation’s ideological divide to be fairly consistent with 40 percent identifying as conservative, 40 percent moderate and 20 percent liberal. So, what gives?

In examining numbers more closely, Economist.com states that “if it were not for the economy trumping every other issue in the final weeks of the `08 elections, nothing has really changed that much. We’re still a center-right nation.”

It appears they’re analysis is right. Late last August, a Reuters/Zogby poll gave Sen. John McCain, R-AZ., a five point lead over former Sen. Barack Obama, D-IL. McCain trailed Obama most of the summer, but suddenly picked up momentum. McCain’s poll numbers were improving in spite of President Bush’s unpopularity, fighting a divisive war in Iraq, an economy headed into recession and a poorly run campaign. Then the unraveling economy shifted voter preference to the candidate of “change.” The nation’s economy determined our next president, not a great ideological shift toward the left.

If liberalism were growing, why do political candidates cringe at being called a liberal? Perhaps that’s why many liberals are now re-defining themselves as progressives. While the name is different, the message is not.

Liberal/Progressives continue to believe the answers for everything wrong with America lie in a bigger government nanny-state; one that will care for people from cradle to grave. Anything can be accomplished by simply creating another government program and funding it’s initiatives through a redistribution of wealth.

Progressives want to see that “their” judges appointed to the bench; judges who can find logic in circumventing the constitution to disarm the citizenry.

A progressive sees any moral code as a hindrance to individual freedoms pertaining to gay marriage, abortion and illegal drugs. They don’t understand the very moral code they reject is the glue that’s held our society together for over two centuries. But holding this society together is the antithesis of their new world order; an order that seeks to render meaningless the very freedoms and liberties our founding fathers so wisely bestowed upon us through our U. S. Constitution and our Bill of Rights.

The American electorate is difficult to understand. Why does the majority often support candidates who claim they represent traditional values but end up voting the opposite?

The most important vote legislators cast is their first one; that vote will determine the majority’s leadership for the coming year. And it’s the leadership that drives the legislative agenda.

In the North Carolina House, which the Democrats have controlled for eons, our “moderate to conservative” Democrats voted to re-elect Dem. Rep. Joe Hackney, D-Orange, as their Speaker. Unfortunately for conservatives and moderates, he’s the most liberal member of the House. Is that the kind of leadership most North Carolinians expected their representatives to support?

In the state Senate, Democrats re-elected Sen. Marc Basnight, D-Dare, as their president pro-tem. Basnight, arguably the most powerful politician in the state, has been called many things, but fiscal conservative isn’t one of them. With the state struggling with a budget deficit of nearly $4 billion, is this the best man for the job? Basnight is one of the ones responsible for getting us into this mess in the first place.

The Democratic leadership in Raleigh has absolute control over its members. They continually vote in lock-step, bending to the will and whim of their leadership; a leadership that is fiscally and socially out of step with a majority of North Carolinians.

Struggling with a nearly three billion dollar deficit, and the fourth highest unemployment rate in the country, why are Gov. Beverly Perdue and her fellow Democrats even considering increasing spending and taxes? Something is clearly wrong.

Washington’s no different. Democrats control the House. They elected as their speaker one of the most liberal members of their party, Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Ca.
Congressman G. K. Butterfield, D-N.C., who’d like his 1st District voters to believe he’s a conservative or at the very least a moderate, voted for Pelosi and her liberal agenda.

Butterfield also supported the pork-laden stimulus and omnibus bills. His office told me he is personally against abortion but supports a woman’s right to choose. Run that by me again? You can’t have it both ways and be truly representing the majority of your constituency.

Butterfield’s record reflects other inconsistencies. While he says he opposes open borders because it encourages illegal immigration, he voted no on placing a fence along the Mexican border. Butterfield has supported legislative initiatives that have included provisions for sanctuary cities.

The congressman from the 1st District has also repeatedly assured blacks here that he has their best interest at heart. He’s told them they’ll never have to compete with illegal immigrants for entry level jobs. Yet, Butterfield has supported legislation that grants unlimited access to illegal immigrants for agricultural work. Is Butterfield truly representing the majority of voters in his district? He says he is, but his voting record speaks otherwise.

Our elected U. S. Senator Kay Hagan, D-N.C., voted for Sen. Harry Reid, D-NV., to lead the Senate. This is the man that Las Vegas Review-Journal columnist Bill Wilson said the following about: “Reid, along with these Washington “leaders,” essentially has given up on our free-market economic system to the tune of $8 trillion in socialist-style government interventionism.”

The bottom line is this: Many of those we elect to represent us- don’t. Until we make a concerted effort to change that, conservatives and moderates are in store for even greater disappointments.

Bob is right about the consequences if we do not oppose the current liberal regime that is out of sync with the opinions of our citizens. We do appear to be center right even if we voted for radical left in the last election. However the question is how do you change people's most fervent beliefs. Republicans are losing a great number of voters over the clear impressions that we are the radicals.

It is interesting that Bob mentioned the problem many people have with Republican opposition "to individual freedoms pertaining to gay marriage, abortion and illegal drugs." Bob says this is a moral issue ... and he is right. However the most important moral issue on which America was founded was FREEDOM. I actually share most of Bob's values. However treating these three issues as moral issues is not how Republicans get into trouble. It is when we want to make them issues of laws.

Moral issues in our religion are issues of sin. When they are personal they are sins, not crimes. At least that is what most think when the bible says "render unto Ceasar that which is Ceasar's and unto God, that which is God's." Some things have to be a crime as well as a sin. Murder for instance. That is because murder is not a personal matter. It infringes the rights of others. Other sins do not. They are personal matters with your God.

I don't want to know about another person's sexual orientation. As long as they keep it private it does not infringe my rights or bother me in the least. If something happened and heterosexuals split into two camps that publicly demanded you state whether you approved of sex as "missionary style" only or "doggie style" only, it would drag us into their private lives and it would be wrong. I don't want to know. I don't want to know which camp a heterosexual is in. I don't want them talking about it publicly and I don't believe they have any right to drag this issue out into a public debate.

Yet homosexuals do just that when they demand public approval of their life style. They demand changes in laws and public morals to accommodate their feeling that I am insulting them if I don't grant them these privileges and "approve" morally of their actions. They demand we address the issue publicly. It is a private matter to me and they want to make it a public matter. That is exactly why they want same sex marriage legal. That one act would allow them to broadcast in social situations their sexual orientation in a fashion that would be as casual as someone identifying their spouse for traditional marriage. However it is just as inappropriate as a "doggie style" advocate requiring we change the laws so that there is a public label that differentiated them and told you what they do in the bedroom. Homosexuals want to shove in every one's face what they do in the bedroom and they resent it if you don't want to know. I don't. Do you?

On the other two issues, abortion and illegal drugs, Republicans have problems with people who share most of their values but still feel these should be private as well.

I believe passionately that when a baby reaches viability, it is a human being. This happens at the end of the court created "second trimester". If a child prematurely enters the world after viability, it will probably live a full life, even if it has some physical problems. Many will have no problems. Clearly it is a human being. There is no way to differentiate these from a child otherwise born at the normal time. How is possible then to deny this child the same rights as the child born at the normal time? And if the child has not been born but could live if he were, how does that justify lesser rights than one that has been born? They are both clearly human.

In the first and second trimesters, there is an argument that the embryo and fetus are not yet provably human. The problem is that we cannot have a dialog about these issues and determine democratically whether these should be dealt with through law or church. A corrupt and tyrannical judiciary has removed this discussion from public influence by usurping democracy.

On drugs, we have a right to protect our young people from the risk of addiction. Does that mean that there is any justice to criminalizing for adults use of one drug that cannot rationally be differentiated from another which is legal? Did prohibition not teach this nation anything? It is absolutely true that conservatives argue passionately for the premise that only enumerated powers belong at the federal level on other issues, and then display utter hypocrisy over the "war on drugs". That hypocrisy destroys respect and credibility for a large number of citizens who would otherwise be Republicans.

God granted us free will. Jesus accepted sinners without feeling he had to make them stop sinning by force, respecting the evolutionary process in coming to God in each persons own time. Why do Christian Republicans not ever display Christian charity to anyone on these three issues? Why do Republicans in general proclaim a desire to make certain sins a public crime instead of a private matter for each person and their God?

If we could come together on how to take certain parts of these three issues out of the public dialog and return them to private matters, conservatives, moderates and libertarians would be the overwhelmingly dominant party in this nation. That would occur if we could get people to care as much about FREEDOM, for themselves and others, as they care about their own opinions on morality.

With the fiscal disaster we are currently facing, it is time we dealt with these issues rationally and get them behind us, so we can unite to save our nation from the tyranny of socialism.