The Conservative Manifesto

What is a Conservative?

As I understand it:

1. Conservatives are in favor of less government. If you ask why? the answer would be that A. the government is pretty bad at Everything it does ( I was in it, I know), B. it costs government $900,000 to create 1 job when the average for a company is just over $100,000, C. ever had to get your license renewed or stop in at the local RMV/DMV? now imagine that kind of service running everything in your life.
2. Conservatives are in favor of following the law. Generally speaking, conservatives feel that the law is there for a reason and that it applies to everybody equally.
3. Conservatives seem to support lower taxes. Reread 1 above for the primary reason why. Government can’t really do anything right, companies are much better at getting the right products to the right people at the right time. The higher taxes go, the less well they can do that and the more government will step in and screw things up even further.
4. Conservatives want people to reach their full potential. They want people to enjoy life and be the most that they can be — without interference from anyone else or from the government — especially from the government. I was shocked once when I asked a group of liberals this question — “Wouldn’t you like to reach your full potential?” I asked this question privately to about 10 liberal-leaning people and I got the same answer back “No.” They wanted the government to provide for them, live on welfare etc. a lot of different answers but all more or less the same — they wanted someone else to take care of them and their schooling — probably the government. When I asked this same question to a group of about 8 conservatives — again privately, 1 on 1 — each one said “yes.” They wanted to test the capabilities and did not want to be held back by high taxes, excessive government regulation or control by the government.
5. Conservatives are pro-immigration (regardless of what you may have heard from other sources). Every conservative I spoke to said that immigration is what made this country great. They seemed to imply that in order for this nation to continue being great, we would need to accept a lot more immigrants. But they want legal immigration, not illegal immigration.
6. This is from 5. I have immigrant friends — all legal (except for 1 or 2 illegal). All my legal immigration friends hate the illegals. They say that they had to stand in lines, pay lots of money, go through intrusive interviews, answer Lots of questions and then wait years to become legal — and then some illegal jumps the line and takes their benefits? They stand with the conservatives.
7. Conservatives value life. You may hear the pro-life, pro-abortion debates and wonder what is going on. You hear that a woman has the right to do what she wants to her own body, etc, etc. and conservatives agree with that — just don’t go kill someone else. And that baby in their womb is someone else — another person, another human being who was granted a chance at being a person, at making a difference in the world, someone who should be given a chance just because “they are.”
8. Conservatives believe in helping out people who have less than they do. Did you know that 80% of charity money comes from conservatives? Did you know that most of the people who jump out of their comfortable homes and go to a hurricane zone, the scene of a tornado, or to a place where there has been an earthquake or tsunami are conservatives? In many cases this number could be as high as 90%. In one case every single person shoveling sand, filling sandbags, handing out food, making meals in dirty tents, handing out water and coffee, piling 50 pound sandbags during a flood was a conservative?
9. College scholarships come mostly from conservatives. usually they send their donations directly to an endowment or scholarship organization rather than through some charity because many charities only donate less than 10% of what they get to the cause they are supporting.
10. And this is from 9. I’ve worked with many charities. Some run by conservatives, some run by liberals. The charities run by conservatives were hard-working places where you were expected to do your job, but we had fun too and the environment was usually pretty cool. And we donated everything we could — usually 50% or higher to the cause we supported. The few liberal-run charities I worked with were more — volatile. The work environment was usually good — except when it wasn’t, people seemed to have bigger egos in the liberal charities and it was hard to add any advice because someone else would say you were attacking them. In the conservative charities, usually every piece of advice was casually accepted but not always acted on. In the liberal charities, the advice that was acted on was always claimed by someone higher up. Also the biggest difference was in how much they donated. In the liberal charities we never donated more than 8% or 9% to the cause we were supposed to be supporting.
11. Conservatives believe in the Constitution and that the Constitution is the paramount law of the land. Not all of course — like George W. Bush “it’s just a piece of paper.” But most — and certainly the ones I have run into. They believe the government should follow the Constitution and the law and not butt into people’s private affairs.
12. And this brings us to gun control. The places that have the strictest gun control laws are almost all liberal governed areas. They also have the highest levels of crime, murder and gun violence. And often the highest level of economic deprivation. The greatest majority of gun deaths a year are caused by suicide, accident and black-on-black murder — usually between gangs. States with more relaxed gun control seem to generally have the lowest crime rates and the lowest numbers of violent gun crime. This isn’t absolute, of course. I don’t know why. Conservatives say gun control doesn’t work and are opposed to it, I guess you can see why. Mass murders by gun in this country have almost always been in a gun free zone — where people can’t defend themselves say conservatives — and almost every gun used has been illegally obtained somehow — strict gun laws would not have made a difference. Over 2 million crimes are stopped or prevented every year in this country because the person who was about to be a victim had a gun and used it to stop the crime.
13. Conservatives will fight for your right to say whatever you please even if they disagree with it. Most liberals seem to say that if you disagree with them, you need to shut up.
14. If you’re poor, a conservative will give you a chance at a job, they will try to help you get an education and a place to live, food and clothing if you need it. But they also expect you to take responsibility for your own life. They want you to push passed any hangups you may have in your life and make your mark in the world in your own way — whatever that may be — as long as it is legal and ethical. They won’t help you forever — unless you’re disabled — but they will help you in the best ways they know how. They want you to be free and they want you to think for yourself and live your own life as you choose.
15. The way I see it, is that conservatives want things — like in politics — to work. That is to actually have results that help and not hurt or have no effect. They support politics and policies and actions that have proven to work in the past — and as a result — will most likely work again in the future for the same things in a similar situation. They know that just throwing money at something usually does not work and often makes the problem worse — because more money often makes it bigger with more people involved. They will welcome new ideas and plans, but you better have a good chunk of evidence showing that your new idea or plan will actually work or that you have a way of fixing it if it doesn’t work out the way you planned.
16. There are some but not many (almost all were from a previous generation) that are racist, bigoted and seem to feed on hatred and anger. But truthfully, the liberals I’ve met are more racist, more bigoted and seem to thrive more on anger and hatred than any conservative I’ve met.
17. Conservatives favor capitalism over socialism because they know that capitalism works better. In almost every country that has tried socialism, that plan failed very shortly. Even now, Vietnam that fought a war against us for socialism and communism, has mostly switched to capitalism because socialism just wasn’t working. China switched over to a mostly capitalist economy because socialism wasn’t working there. The Soviet Union collapsed because socialism failed and now most of the former states of the USSR are democratic and capitalist. Conservatives also know there are really big problems in this country with the capitalism we have now, but no one seems to know how to fix it, but they all know socialism isn’t the solution. (A possible fix — reduce governmental taxes and regulations. That would be a good first step.)
18. Conservatives believe in a strong defense because every country that has dropped their defense has been attacked by some other country. America has the biggest military budget in the world because — conservatives say — that we need to keep the sea lanes open for free trade for all countries to use (even those we don’t get along with) and to keep peace between countries because one country knows that if they attacked the other country the USA would help out the country that got attacked — no country should attack another country and kill people just because it can — the USA included. They also know we have done some really big wrongs militarily, but the ones who are trying to fix this are few and far between right now.

So this is just how I understand the conservative viewpoint. Yes, there are many extreme opinions within this group, but there are in every group. Maybe it’s fortunate that I have run into and talked with people who — if conservative — I can say more or less believe in most of what I wrote above. I will also say that probably none would agree with everything I wrote above, but the others would probably not be too deeply opposed either.