American Republican’s Vs. Climate Change – Why?

[Michael C. Page]

Here is a good article addressing this GOP view.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/stor ... =125075282

[DJ Droood]

Riddle me this Michael C. Page...where has conservativism gone? As I get older, I get more conservative...I think things are going pretty good...I think our Western countries, especially my own, have been governmed fairly well...I am not interested in sweeping changes, just "improvements"...I think fiscal responsibility and accountability are important, and tax increases should be a last resort...I am socially progressive, but believe we should allow "community standards" that might not be as progressive as I like, as long as it doesn't cross the line into discrimination...

In Canada, there used to be something called the Progressive Conservative Party, but they were swallowed up by a new, "improved" Conservative Party, which is like Republican lite. And in your country, there used to be, and perhaps still is, a "progressive" section to the Republican party...but now...

It seems the label "conservative" has been co-opted by fascist white supremisists...that may sound like alarmist rhetoric to some, but that is what it seems like...the death threats, the terrorist strikes, the protesters yelling "n***r"..go over to st0rmfront.0rg, if you can stomach it, and read through their Tea Party organizing forum...eye-opening stuff.

I miss the real conservatives.

[LadyCelt]

I read a term on a HuffPo article that uses the term "Hatriots". I think it fits the current state of alleged "conservatism" perfectly. They aren't interested in the facts, just preserving the status quo at all costs, even if it's detrimental to their own existence.

[DJ Droood]

They aren't interested in the facts, just preserving the status quo at all costs, even if it's detrimental to their own existence.

See, I don't even see the current fascist movement as wanting to preserve the "status quo"..the status quo and democratic system have given them everything they hate...a black president, tolerence of homosexuals, health care reform...they want a revolution that will install theocratic fascism and promote white Christian rights, militarism and corporatism.....about as radical an idea as has been seen in USA, at least since the 1930's (and with plenty of adherents in all our countries).

[Michael C. Page]

I miss the real conservatives.

The real “conservatives” as you put it are in both parties, but to what extent I do not know. However, they seem to make up only a minority in both the republican (sometimes called liberal republicans) and the democrat (sometimes referred to as a “Kentucky Democrat”) party’s, though those terms may no longer apply. Is it possible for both the Kentucky Democrats and Liberal Republicans to join forces and form a new yet strong third party??? Who knows? Would it solve any abusive problems in our system? Who knows? Would Americans be better informed? Who knows? Would the main stream media be forced to be objective? Who knows?

I don’t know what would occur DJ, but it would be interesting eh?

[oaklight]

Riddle me this Michael C. Page...where has conservativism gone? As I get older, I get more conservative...I think things are going pretty good...I think our Western countries, especially my own, have been governmed fairly well...I am not interested in sweeping changes, just "improvements"...I think fiscal responsibility and accountability are important, and tax increases should be a last resort...I am socially progressive, but believe we should allow "community standards" that might not be as progressive as I like, as long as it doesn't cross the line into discrimination...

In Canada, there used to be something called the Progressive Conservative Party, but they were swallowed up by a new, "improved" Conservative Party, which is like Republican lite. And in your country, there used to be, and perhaps still is, a "progressive" section to the Republican party...but now...

It seems the label "conservative" has been co-opted by fascist white supremisists...that may sound like alarmist rhetoric to some, but that is what it seems like...the death threats, the terrorist strikes, the protesters yelling "n***r"..go over to st0rmfront.0rg, if you can stomach it, and read through their Tea Party organizing forum...eye-opening stuff.

I miss the real conservatives.

There are still moderate Republicans, particularly in Massachusetts where I'm from. My political beliefs are very much like what you've stated yours to be. I am for environmental protection as long as it isn't unreasonable; and what I mean by that is that they shouldn't be pushed to silly extremes. One example would be the law prohibiting a homeowner from building on their land because it is soggy for more than two weeks during the year and that makes it a "wetland". That's just ridiculous. My problem with "Cap and Trade" is the added costs to heating fuel and gasoline will unreasonably harm working families. It will create a virtual shadow currency of carbon credits, while allowing the worst polluters to continue to do so, as they buy the credits from non-polluting companies and pass the expense along to consumers, with little or no gain to the environment.
As for the "Tea Party" folks; it isn't a single organization, it's several different organizations using the same or similar names. If the friggin' Nazis are using it, then they must be either trying to gain credibility (like that's gonna happen), or be "agents provocateur", and cause trouble that they can exploit. The folks that I've seen using the Tea Party name have been from all socio-economic strata and simply don't want to get taxed into the poor house. For many people, especially in this economy, additional taxes can very well mean the difference between weathering the recession and economic failure

[oaklight]

I read a term on a HuffPo article that uses the term "Hatriots". I think it fits the current state of alleged "conservatism" perfectly. They aren't interested in the facts, just preserving the status quo at all costs, even if it's detrimental to their own existence.

Respectfully, how is the Huffington Post any less biased than anyone else? The thing about any media outlet is the need for content; content that will bring readers and viewers and allow the media outlet to charge as much as they can to advertisers. Good news doesn't sell; controversy sells. If a television network can whip up controversy and engage their viewers' emotions, then revenue will increase along with viewership.
As for Conservatives, if anything, we dislike how government entitlement programs have been used to keep people poor by keeping them dependant upon the government. If this were not so, then why does a single mother lose her benefits if she gets married? Why not give them a bump in benefits so they can get on their feet and become self reliant? It's the old Roman tactic of "Bread and Circuses"; if you teach a person to fish, they can eat for a lifetime, but if you give a person a fish, and make sure they remember who gave it to them, and where they have to come to get another one, then you have a voter for a lifetime.

[Merlyn]

Hiya Michael,
The diatribe of disinformation, us vs them and on & on is pathetic.
If we have issues with the solutions then we are instantly considered as against the science of global warming. This is in fact the defeatist fatalism of the issue to date.
No one is really against the fact we need to stop pollution. The bleeding hearts have a quick and defensive reaction and blurt out "non-believer" before anyone ever even finishes a sentence. The squealing must stop, the gerrymandering of science must stop. The recent effort to put all the pollution eggs in one basket and serve it with a cup of tax has been the biggest defeat for ecology no matter what party, what wing or what apocalyptic chicken little prophecy fear mongers might wish to think.

The truth of the matter is this. To say "American republicans are anti-climate change" is disinformation, cherry picked, out-of-context lie.
What republicans are against is the failure of solution to the problem. Conservatives and bleeding hearts alike have been protesting while watching the world order freaks reap and reap, and their solution is to reap some more. None of the solutions put forth are any different from the failed and deliberately lobbied efforts of the rich we have seen in action ripping off everyone all over the world for decades.

If anyone so much as says, "I disagree" every word after that is drowned in a diatribe of total crap by people who would like to sit on their arse and have their ecological lunch served to them by the government with a side order of tax. How easy, how simple minded and how lame. And how we all got here in the first place. The governments know how lazy people are, know full well they will not take responsibility on themselves to make the needed changes and know another bit of tax will nicely line their pockets as they grandstand on their soap box and claim their own grandiose ego.

Truth is simple.
If people world wide do not want pollution, then stop polluting!
If we even think for one second that governments have our best interest in mind, we then fall miserably into the tax trap and continue to be strangled, financially and our freedom to take responsibility and act on change is abated by our own hand.

[LadyCelt]

Respectfully, how is the Huffington Post any less biased than anyone else?

Good point, but I still like it better than Faux News.

[LadyCelt]

I really liked this recent column by E.J. Dionne, and I think it may contribute something to this conversation. He's basically wondering where the "real" conservatives have gone.

http://www.truthout.org/ej-dionne-jr-wi ... nd-up57920

Every nation needs an intelligent and constructive form of conservatism. The debate over the health care bill, which mercifully came to a close on Sunday night, was not American conservatism's finest hour.

In its current incarnation, conservatism has taken on an angry crankiness. It is caught up in a pseudo-populism that true conservatism should mistrust -- what on Earth would Bill Buckley have made of "death panels"? The creed is caught up in a suspicion of all reform that conservatives of the Edmund Burke stripe have always warned against. Authentic conservatism is better than this.

Conservatives, of course, are rightly suspicious that when those on the left recommend a "proper" role for the right, they usually want a tame creed that doesn't really challenge any of the progressive fundamentals.

Still, I have written over the years with respect and some real affection for conservatism and its writers and thinkers because I believe that conservatism challenges the progressive worldview in at least three indispensable ways.

First, conservatives are suspicious of innovation and therefore subject all grand plans to merciless interrogation. Their core question goes something like this: Maybe you think this new health (or education or environmental) plan is a great idea, Mr. Liberal, but will it really work? What are its unintended consequences? Can our governmental institutions carry it off? Not all progressive ideas pass the test. In the health care debate, conservatives were at their best when they shelved the demagoguery and asked practical, focused questions.

Second, conservatives respect old things and old habits. They are not always right in this. Racial segregation and discrimination are good examples of "old ways" that were morally wrong. But an admiration for what the conservative writer Russell Kirk called "custom" and "convention" speaks to something deep in the human heart.

Our habits are the product of time, based on the slowly accumulated wisdom of our ancestors. That's why tradition should not be discarded lightly. You don't have to be a conservative to agree with Kirk that custom and convention "are checks both upon man's anarchic impulse and upon the innovator's lust for power."

It's worth remembering that not only did Hitler's staunch opponents include the German left, but also, as the historian John Lukacs has insisted, conservative traditionalists horrified by the ways in which the Nazis were ripping apart German society and how they were treating other human beings.

Related to this is the third great contribution of conservatism: a suspicion of human nature and a belief that humans cannot be remolded like plastic. Conservatives see a fallen side of human nature usually described in terms of original sin. And when utopians propose to create a New Man or a New Woman, the conservative typically cries: Stop!

From generation to generation, human nature doesn't really change. Efforts to alter it typically lead to totalitarian forms of political and social catastrophe.

A society that fails to keep these conservative warnings in mind is likely to run into trouble. Yet our current forms of conservatism seem thoroughly un-conservative or, as Peter Viereck put it in the 1950s, "pseudo-conservative," which is an ally of pseudo-populism.

It's not just that the mob that gathered outside the Capitol to shout epithets at Democratic lawmakers before they voted on health care was disrespectful of the very norms that conservatism preaches. It's also that utopianism, typically a danger on the left, now runs rampant on the right.

Many who call themselves conservatives propose to cast aside even government programs that have stood the test of time. They seem to imagine a world in which government withers away, a phrase that comes from Friedrich Engels, not Buckley. Or they tie themselves up in unruly contradictions, declaring simultaneously that they are dead-set against government-run health care and passionate defenders of Medicare.

And while modern conservatism has usually supported the market against the state, its oldest and most durable brand understood that the market was an imperfect instrument. True conservatives may give "two cheers for capitalism," as Irving Kristol put it in the title of one of his books, but never three.

Perhaps I have just fallen into the very trap I warned against, seeking a conservatism that corrects, but doesn't oppose, progressivism.

But to my mind, conservatism has always made its greatest contribution as a corrective force that seeks to preserve the best of what we have. As our long and bitter health care debate winds to a close, might proponents of such a conservatism find an opening? Are they still there?

[oaklight]

Respectfully, how is the Huffington Post any less biased than anyone else?

Good point, but I still like it better than Faux News.

I watch the local ABC affiliate, myself; they don't seem to take sides on anything. Do you know the difference between a reporter and a journalist? A reporter reports what happened, a journalist makes themselves part of the story. I don't trust journalists.