Conservatives, Please Stop Calling Yourselves "Constitutionalists"

At first, I hoped it was a fluke.  Maybe a few rogue conservatives that started calling themselves "constitutionalists."  Maybe Sarah Palin loyalists?  Unfortunately, I keep hearing this absurd claim from conservatives.  They really think that they are constitutional loyalists! 

It drives me crazy to hear this, and it doesn't even take a lot to discredit them.  A few simple questions will dispel this ridiculous attempt to make them feel that they are no longer a party of backwards, anti-equality, anti-progress religious fanatics. 

• Do you support the implied right to privacy in our Constitution that has been recognized by our Supreme Court...including the right to choose abortion?
• Do you support the equal protection (14th Amendment) of all people within the boundaries of a state?  Including illegal immigrants?  Including homosexuals who choose to enter into the contract of marriage?
• Do you believe in the freedom of, and from religion, that is provided in the First Amendment?  Including not allowing the government to write any laws respecting the establishment of religion?  (This means no anti-abortion laws.)

There are more questions that I could ask to disqualify any conservative as a "constitutionalist."  However, I've never had to ask more than this.  If they can truthfully answer yes to the above questions, you should probably follow up with something like, "are you aware that you are actually a liberal?"

I do understand that conservatives recognize that there is a bad connotation with the term "conservative."  It tells people that you are against progress.  That you want to go back to the way things used to be and don't want our society to progress...at least not at a reasonable rate.  Don't be mad, conservatives...you've done this to yourselves.  This makes them want to find a new term for themselves that sounds a little more positive.  Unfortunately, the closest term I could find for conservative ideology is "constitutionalists of convenience."  I use this term to mean that they passionately believe in the Constitution when it fits neatly into their ideology.  However, they believe that anything that falls outside of those ideals, like gay marriage and abortion, should not be protected by the Constitution because it offends their religious and moral beliefs.  This means they are willing to ignore the Constitution when it is not convenient for them.

Conservatives, whatever you choose to call yourselves...and I can think of a few more terms if you would like.  Please...I beg you...stop calling yourselves "constitutionalists."  You're just making yourselves look worse.

Fixing Our Broken Welfare System

One thing that drives me absolutely crazy is hearing people complain about the welfare system in our country.  It's not that I don't think the system needs repair.  I know it is greatly ineffective.  My problem is that almost all of the people like to complain about it without offering any idea of how they would fix it.  Making matters worse, many people complain about redistribution of wealth constantly.  Just yesterday, I got into a discussion about this subject based on a person's complaint about us handing out "cash, food stamps and housing allowances to people who chose the life they have."  The absurdity of this claim is only topped by the fact that the same people debating the issue with me wondered why I think many conservatives don't want to help those in poverty.  Maybe because all we hear is constant complaining about doing it?  We'll get back to that.

More importantly, I mentioned during that discussion that I learned a lesson years ago.  I was taught that you will never really be taken seriously if you bring someone a problem.  You should always bring a solution.  Even if its not the right one, or the one that ends up correcting the issue, you always want to give the person a way to fix the problem.  That's exactly what I feel should be done with the welfare discussion.  Here's my solution.  

The solution to our welfare problem begins with access to education.  Education in our country is a joke at all levels.  Particularly the educational system in poverty stricken areas.  It needs a complete overhaul.  I'm pretty sure that is a concept on which we all agree.  Our children should all have equal access to quality education at no additional cost.  Conservatives may want to sit down for this...it's going to cost a lot of money!  That money will have to come from somewhere.  Increased taxes.  Decreased spending in areas like defense.  I'm not really going to tackle the funding issue, but this will cost.  

Of course, even access to great education won't solve the poverty problem.  There will always be a need for assistance.  It's how we give people that assistance that is important.  Here are some aspects of our system that must be in place for this to work:

• Assistance must provide for the needs of the individuals, including the nutritional needs, without the ability to transfer the assistance to another party or use it for unnecessary items (things like take out pizza - I'm looking at you Papa Murphy's).  
• Contraception must be available at no cost to individuals on welfare.  
• People should be approved for an amount of assistance and it should remain at that level, regardless of whether or not they have any children after they are approved (women who are pregnant should be approved including the anticipated child).  
• Drug tests should be mandatory and each recipient should be tested every time they pick up their assistance.
• Vocational training or higher education (not beyond a bachelor's degree) should be mandatory and provided at no cost.  Missed training (excluding illness) should constitute reduced or denial of assistance.  (There's that spending again conservatives.  Try to stay calm.)
• Companies that don't pay a living wage and have employees working full time while collecting benefits should be charged a penalty.  We do not subsidize the workforce of private companies...I'm looking at you Wal-mart. 
• None of these reforms should reduce the amount of assistance provided.  If savings are realized from the reforms or additional revenue is brought in (thank you, Wal-mart), the money should be used to stabilize the assistance programs during periods of recession and/or expand coverage. 

Now I'm sure that there are plenty more specific changes that I would make if I knew the welfare program well enough.  The point is that I'm not going to sit here and complain about the government taking my money and helping people who need assistance.  I would much rather have my taxes pay for assistance to the impoverished than wars around the world in which we have no business being involved.  I would much rather have some people taking advantage of the welfare system than have rich defense contractors getting even richer lining the pockets of decision-makers to get million and billion dollar contracts.  We spend as much on our defense as the next 13 countries below us on the list of top spenders combined...with room to spare!  I'm pretty sure we can lower the budgets for defense and reallocate a large portion of that money to making sure that we can feed and shelter our people. 

The point is that we are all sick of hearing about it.  Conservatives are in the minority when it comes to what they try to condemn as "entitlement" programs.  The reason our country is seeing a fundamental shift in the way that people are voting is because we don't want to see the rich getting richer while complaining about assistance programs.  And don't tell me how generous conservatives really are.  Generous people don't complain about the fact that their money is being redistributed to the poor.  We want to help the people of the United States.  We see no reason that anyone should go hungry or homeless in the richest, most powerful nation in the world.  Do something about it or deal with it.  Just stop complaining.

A Liberal in Conservative Clothing

Be careful, conservatives.  You might actually be a liberal fighting to convince yourself that you are a conservative.  Oh, the horror!

I know this because I actually talked to one this weekend.  I was in a hotel having dinner, and I began a conversation with a conservative about some hot topics.  As I expected, we made absolutely no headway with the abortion (contraceptives) debate.  There is no winning in a debate about that.  The debates I really enjoyed were about "entitlement" programs and gay marriage.

In these discussions, I simply used a sequence of logical questions to get the poor closet liberal to admit that they didn't really align with conservatives in the way they thought.  We began discussing the law being free from religion.  This conservative played the "Constitution was written on Christian beliefs" card.  Well, that was an easy one.  I simply got the person's agreement that the Constitution was written to protect freedom of religion, and freedom from religion.  Once that was established, I asked if they believed that the government should be forcing some Christians' beliefs on others?  Of course, it was hard to admit, but I got the "no" I was looking for.

Then it was time for the self-proclaimed conservative to play the "but marriage is a gift from God" card.  Another simple one (that seems to be a trend with conservative arguments).  The easy argument here is that, while it is fine for a church to refuse to marry people because of their beliefs, marriage as far as the government is concerned, is purely secular.  It is a contract that has specific rights and responsibilities included.  If religion is taken out of the argument, then we're only left with a contract (called marriage) that the government has no reason to deny to a gay couple.

At this point, I got an agreement that, even though the conservative didn't agree with homosexuality, there was no reason that the government should be denying gay marriage.  This person did attempt to say that they would have to vote against approving gay marriage if it came up because they didn't agree with it personally.  Well, the discussion immediately became about forcing the person's beliefs on others versus allowing others to make decisions on their own.  No matter what logic was used, this was the last hiding place for this faux conservative.  There was not going to be an admission that, even though they said the government should not be writing any religion's beliefs into law and there was no reason that the government should be denying gay marriage, this person actually believed as many liberals do and would vote to see progress in freedom and civil rights.  I warned this person to be careful because they might actually be a liberal in conservative clothes.

At some point, we transitioned to a discussion about "entitlement" programs.  We agreed that Social Security, being a system that is paid into by workers, is not what many people refer to as an "entitlement" program.  (We had a discussion about the word "entitlement" before we started in which we decided that we would use the word to basically "charity" as many conservatives use the term.  We agreed that, by the true definition of the term "entitlement," social security was one.  I'm pretty sure the sentence, "I've paid into that my whole career, you're damn right I'm entitled to it" was uttered.)

Then we agreed that there should be some reform to the programs.  We agreed that people on welfare should be subjected to drug testing.  The surprising part was that, while the conservative thought Medicaid should be destroyed, we agreed that everyone in a country as rich as ours deserved to have basic necessities like food, shelter, and healthcare.  This conservative told me that they believed we should move to a single-payer healthcare system.  Stop.  Re-read that last sentence.  Now realize that this conservative works in the healthcare industry...and has for over 25 years.  At this point, there was no denying the obvious.  I had to tell this person who proclaims to be conservative that they are actually a liberal.  Yes.  This anti-abortion, anti-gay marriage, self-proclaim Christian conservative is actually a liberal who is refusing to see the truth.  If you believe in the freedom to live one's life, if you believe that the fundamental rights outlined in the Constitution apply to all of us, if you are a true Christian...then you should be very careful with whom you align yourself politically.  You may actually be a liberal in conservatives clothing.  

Republicans Start the Year Off with Typical Stupidity

I guess Republicans didn't get the message in the election.  Losing the Presidential election and losing seats in both houses of Congress didn't drive it home.  So they just keep pushing their tired, ridiculous agenda.  Within the first few days of the new year, I've read about two extremely stupid bills being proposed by Republicans (gives me a good idea of what to expect for the next two years). 

First, while the Violence Against Women Act and the Hurricane Sandy Relief Bill go unapproved in Congress, Republican Michelle Bachman announced that she introduced the first bill of the 113th Congress to repeal the Affordable Care Act.  Despite passing similar bills 33 times in the last useless congressional session that didn't go anywhere, Republicans apparently don't mind wasting millions more passing the repeal (the first 33 times cost an estimated $50 million to taxpayers). 

This morning, I read news of another Republican that has decided to waste taxpayer money by introducing a bill that would allow public schools to require the recitation of the Lord's Prayer.  Indiana state senator Dennis Kruse, who attempted and failed to get creationism taught in schools last year, filed a bill that would allow Indiana schools to force children to recite the Lord's Prayer, although the bill allows for individual students to opt out.  In this case, the Republican in charge of the Indiana state senate was intelligent enough to recognize that this bill is an unconstitutional waste of time.  He assigned it to the rules and legislative procedures committee and said that it was a clear violation of the first amendment. 

That leads to the question of why these legislators are introducing bills that they know will fail.  The answer is that they want to make a statement.  They believe that their agenda should be forced upon the rest of us, regardless of whether we want it or not.  They choose to make a statement that costs us millions of dollars.  Meanwhile, they complain about frivolous government spending. 

This just illustrates the hypocrisy of the Republican agenda.  They say they want to stop spending, but waste millions on bills they know won't pass.  They say they want smaller government, but want to write more laws restricting the freedoms of specific groups.  Ask them why, and they'll tell you that there's a difference between conservative fiscal policy and conservative social policy.  Of course there is, that difference is called hypocrisy. 

I can respect a true libertarian.  They don't want government intrusion at all.  They want very little government in either fiscal or social policy.  While I may not agree with much of their agenda, I can respect them for having a solid belief and applying it to all aspects of government. On the other hand, today's conservatives are simply hypocrites who only push their ideology as far as it benefits their agenda.  They are perfectly willing to compromise their ideology to make a statement about their beliefs (which is ironic because they refuse to compromise with anyone who believes differently in order to get things accomplished).  Maybe this is why their party is imploding...no one, not even their own party members, can really a group that doesn't live up to its ideals and proves itself full of hypocrites over and over.  Hopefully all of this silliness and waste ends after the 2014 election when many of these people are removed from office.