Friday, May 27, 2011

Here's why I'm a conservative

Men and women are born with the natural right to choose.  They have a right to try, a right to reep the rewards of their efforts, and a right to fail.  It'a called personal responsibility and accountability.  Yet while it's often necessary, we also have a natural tendency to HATE being told what to do.

The parent-child relationship is a perfect example.  Parents don't want their kids to make the same mistakes they did, so they often create their own personal guidelines and rules for raising their kids.  Some of these rules and guidelines have been passed on from generation to generation and have even become unwritten guidelines and rules for parenting, such as to create a sort of paradigm to make getting through life easier.

Examples of this are common sense rules such as the following:
  • Be careful picking up a wet kid, they are slippery
  • Support a baby's head
  • Keep choking hazzards away from a baby
  • Always know where your kids are
  • Let your child know who the boss is
  • Don't let the TV become the babysitter
One rule my parents had was, "Don't sit too close to the TV!"  Yet I rarely listened to this rule, and I did sit close to the TV.  Then my parents would say, "Don't sit too close to the TV or you'll go blind."  I never went blind. 

Ironically, now we sit in front of computer screens all day and you never hear about anyone going blind for that reason.  That rule was unfounded and untrue.  Yet it was a rule we had to follow.

So you see, some rules are good, yet too many rules simply cause trouble. Not only are they hard to enforce, they are irritating to the people who have to follow them.  Rules should be scarce and strictly enforced so there is a huge incentive to follow them, and that incentive is the right to maintain your natural rights. 

When my boss tells me to do something I have no choice but to do it, even if I think it's rediculous.  I hate doing breathing treatments on people who don't need them, yet doctors ORDER me to do them anyway. 

Yet one of the reasons doctors order them is not because they want to, but because the governmenet won't reimburse for a patient's admission unless treatments are ordered.  So the government telling doctors what they have to do iritates me, causes me to do useless therapies, and ultimately burns me out.

And this brings me back to my point, which is that it would be far better if poeple would simply leave other people alone.  Don't tell me what to do.  Don't tell me how to do my job, especially if you have no clue what I do.

So you can see I hate being told what to do.  I hate it when people in an office 5,000 miles away take my money and spend it on things I don't want my money spent on.  Heck, I hate it when my own wife tells me to zip my pants before I even have a chance to finish dressing on my own. 

The founding fathers had this in mind when they created the U.S. Constitution.  They made it so that no government official could legally take away any natural right from any American citizen.  The states could, and so could local governments, and so could moms and dads, yet the Federal government could not.

The fouinders wanted to make sure the government did not tell people what to do -- with anything.  The reason they did this was because they hated it when the British king took away their money to pay for wars they weren't interested in.  They essentially had taxation without representation, which is the subtraction of a natural right.

So essentially they made it so the Federal government only had the power to make laws regarding a few essential elements, such as maintaining an army, and maintaining a good economic environment.  It did not have the power to take my money and tell me how I had to spend it.

That's why I'm a conservative.  I don't want to be told what to do.  I have no problem helping people out, yet I don't want my hard earned money going to help people spend 40 years sitting on their couches and buying them $100 sneakers and $40 worth of Budweiser each week. 

The elderly need to be taken care of, and I have no problem with this being a government job, yet the Federal government should not be involved in it -- it's unconstitutional.  It's telling us what to do, and it's not in the Constitution that the Fed has to take care of the elderly. 

I hate the Federal government telling us we have to put money into a social security program that is not now how FDR originally intended it to be, and also is probably going to go bankrupt by 2024 along with Medicare because we simply cannot afford it. 

Encouraging people to prepare for retirement is a good thing, and the states surely could pass laws making people choose to put a certain amount of their money in retirement accounts so they can retire and have money available for health care until they die.  Yet the Federal government has no Constitutional right to tell us we have to put our money in.

Problems need to be solved by local people.  If I see a homeless person, then I will help him out.  And if I help him out I know 100% of my money will be used by that person because I saw the transaction.  Yet if the Fed has taken my money to give to that guy, probably 10% of that money will make it to the homeless guy and he'll never get out of poverty because 20 bureaucrats absorbed the other 90%.

So what's better:  Me helping that poor guy out, or Uncle Sam?  I hate being told what to do.  I hate being told to put on a clean shirt and to shave if I don't want to.  I might be better off looking and smelling good, but I shouldn't have to.  It's a natural right to choose. 

It's a natural right to get irritated by an irresponsible government making rules that I -- and perhaps you -- dont' want to follow.  And when you make them it's nearly impossible to get rid of them.  The founders new this, and it's why they made the Fed limited in scope.

I am a conservative because I don't like to be told what to do.  I want Uncle Sam off my back and off yours.  I want America to go back to the simple days when a U.S. President didn't use Federal money and power to bail out a failing bank, or business or economy.  Depressions were shorter when people didn't tinker with them.  Just ask FDR about that one.  His Great Depression lasted longer than any other because he couldn't keep his paws off.

I want to go back to the pre-Woodrow Wilson days when the U.S. Constitution was respected and the words and wisdom of the founding fathers was taught in U.S. Schools.  There's a reason the Constitution was written how it was, as a solid document to stand the test of time so natural rights could never be strippled from Americans. 

I am a Conservative because I want to be free.  I want a right to choose how to spend my money.  I want to be able to afford to help the poor.  I want to have more options how to prepare for retirement, and how togive the money I earn -- including my retirement and social security money -- to my children if I so choose instead of it being absorbed by the government.

I want a common sense approach to government.  That's why I'm a conservative.  I want to have the right to be lazy and stupid and wrong, even if that means I have to suffer the consequences of my mistakes.  Because in the world the founders created, I can also reap the rewards of my hard work without being punished so other people who don't work can eat chips all day.

When an expert in Washington decides what's best for me and makes a rule I have to follow, they are also assuming they are right.  By making decisions for me they are also making me reliant on them, and this makes me lazy -- like the 25 year old who still lives with mom and dad.  If you don't pay your own way, where's the incentive to ever do anything with your life.

This is why I often let my kids make their own decisions.  Sure I don't want to see them fail, so I might help them along.  Yet once they cross that bridge I take it away so they have no option but to keep going forward.  Progressives in Washington do the opposite:  they keep bridges up all over the place so people are encouraged to rely on mom and dad -- or Uncle Sam.

The reason I let my kids help themselves is because I don't want to discourage them from, perhaps, becoming the next great thing, from seeing another paradigm like Thomas Edison, Henry Ford and so many other great Americans did. 

When we forcibly take from those who succeed to give to those who do not succeed we discourage innoation. That is perhaps the number one reason China's economy will soon pass us as the most powerful economy in the world.  America has lost its edge.

Why hasn't an American inventor invented a powerful batter to run a car?
Why hasn't an American inented an environmentally friendly heating system?

The answer is because there is no incentive the way there was in the 19th century, the 1920s or the 1980s.  Americans have become dependent on Uncle Sam.  We have become enablers.  And I hate it, and therefore I'm a conservative.

I  just want to relax and enoy myself.  And if you do to you'll join the conservative cause.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Invest in a spell checker.

You're an idiot.

whyimconservative said...

I love it. Very astute; I don't know how anyone could disagree. Freedom is good, right?

John Bottrell said...

Typical liberal argument is to call those they disagree with idiots. Great post.