Are Republicans as conservative as they claim?
By Jason Hochstatter
IV Leader, Dec 7, 2006
It has come to my attention that there may be some
inconsistencies in politics. Stating the blatantly obvious is a special skill of
mine, you see. To save some of you who would normally read part of my column,
decide you hate me and all the “garbage” that I may or may not be subscribing
to, I am going to be making pointed observations about the Republican Party in
this article. So if you’re a hardcore right extremist, save yourself a bit of
time and ignore this article.
Being a conservative in this country means favoring a small
central government with more state’s rights. I am indeed a conservative on a
number of issues in this regard. Many of the so-called conservative Republicans
are not.
Take for example the proposed amendment to ban gay marriage.
An amendment to the Constitution banning gay marriage would be the first
amendment to ban something since prohibition.
Prohibition seemed to make alcohol all the more fashionable
because it was supposedly harder to get, so will it do the same for gay
marriage? Letting gay people get married to each other does not trample on
anyone’s rights, but the amendment would trample on the freedoms of gay people.
“Conservative” Republicans are advocating advancements of the
government into people’s personal lives. The flag burning amendment is very
similar. If this pointless amendment ever gets passed, I think I would burn a
flag in protest. Very few flags are burned in protest in this country. In other
countries they do it quite frequently, but that wouldn’t really be enforceable.
Government spending is another huge issue. The Republicans
like to call out the Democrats for “tax and spend” policies, while the current
administration has cut taxes and spending. We had a surplus, but now our
government is up to its neck in debt, and they refuse to raise taxes. Whatever
happened to being fiscally conservative? I think the government needs to get a
debt counselor.
Finally I come to Iraq. Iraq was and is an act of arrogance
and hubris. We go into a country to disarm them of weapons that our leaders knew
they didn’t have. We then change our reasons for going in there, and say that
we’re spreading freedom and democracy. What if the Iraqis wanted to live in a
dictatorship? I imagine eventually the Iraqis would have rebelled if they didn’t
like it.
If they had wanted it badly enough, they would have
eventually come together in rebellion to topple the regime themselves, and then
there would be no civil war because they would care enough about their
government to actually make it work, and they wouldn’t have terrorists in there
causing unrest.
Why do you think that a lot of people in the Middle East hate
the Americans? The monster’s body doesn’t know what the head is doing. For those
of you who kept reading and actually thought about what I’m saying and then
decided whether it was good or bad, I thank you.