I am SOOOOOO glad my parents never screwed up my head with religion!!! There's no such thing as a "good death" and a "bad death?" Are you kidding me??? Human beings live in societies. We are a social animal, and like any other social animal we need to have structure and stability. Without it, the law of the jungle comes into play, and while someone who's 6'6" and over 300 pounds like myself would love it, I doubt that someone who's 5'5" tall and weighs 110 pounds would appreciate me bashing their head in and taking their stuff.
When you've got someone who's demonstrated their willingness to not follow the rules, who's willing to commit the most heinous acts, they are not someone you can have in society. In nature, an animal that acts this way is cast out from the herd and left to support an upper link of the neighborhood food chain.
We have the death penalty. The results are the same.
I don't believe that any human life is "sacred". We do what we have to do in order to maintain society. We kill the bad guys because it's cheaper than keeping them alive for all their lives, and we kill babies because their parents are unable or unwilling to raise them. That's better to having killers roaming the streets or even more unwanted children.
Back to the matter at hand, Bertha brings up an interesting point. She's quick to point out how vital it is that gays have a right to equality under the Constitution, yet she's sitting on the fence about the Constitutional rights of gun owners. If you're going to believe in Constitutional rights for one group, you have to believe in those rights for all groups, whether you agree with them or not. If you find yourself fighting for rights for one group, but opposing those of another, you don't deserve any rights (IMHO).
Are all Liberals and Conservatives of the same mind? No, but what does that matter? It is not the individual that makes politics, it's the majority of individuals. As long as you can make 51% of the group believe that something is right, you win. That's what Vrai refers to as "Libthink." Here are some classic examples of "Libthink":
1. The 90's represented the longest period of economic prosperity in American history. This gets repeated as gospel despite the fact that most of that economic prosperity was a phantom, consisting of greatly overvalued internet companies and companies falsely reporting their incomes.
2. We are going it alone in Iraq! I think Ken covered this pretty well.
3. The US has lost three million jobs! Yes, but how many have been created during that time? That's a number that never gets reported. I, for example, lost my job at one company when we lost our contract and was immediately hired by the company that won the contract. I was one of those three million, yet I never really lost my job.
4. The Democrats were responsible for putting 100,000 new cops on the street. I love this one! The money that was made available for hiring new cops covered one half of their first year salary. That's it. No money for training, equipment, benefits, etc. After the first year the municipality had to cover all of the officer's costs, which is why only a handful of officers were hired because of this effort. There were no 100,000 new police officers hired. All that money did was offer a one-time offset to some of the costs that big city agencies spent on hiring new officers that they would have been hiring anyway.
5. We need more gun laws! I think the biggest argument against this was Sean Combs's arrest in NYC for brandishing and firing an illegal handgun in Chuck Schumer's home state. Combs broke about 30 state, city, and federal firearms laws, but he was only charged with two. So the laws didn't deter the crime, nor were the laws enforced.
6. There's a right to abortion. We've read this one several times on this forum. There is no right to abortion, and there never has been one, yet many Liberals feel there is.
7. Al Gore should be President because he got the most votes. Gore lost the election because the Founding Fathers were smart enough to figure out that some sneaky candidate might try to win the office by catering to the city folks while ignoring the country folks, which is what Gore did. You can get 100% of the vote in the major cities and far more votes (numerically) than your opponent, and still lose if you don't get the votes from the country folks. That's not stealing an election... that's just some well thought out fairness in our political system.
8. Government has the final say over business. This is my biggest problem with Libthink. Liberals believe that you can pass any regulation on a business, and that business has to take it. They forget that a business always has the two final options: close the doors or move to another country. That's why we have so many businesses closing or moving overseas.
9. Lower taxes for the rich are unfair. As I've said before, the Liberals always love to talk about how much money the Rich are getting back and compare that to how much a middle-income taxpayer is getting, but never mention how much more the Rich are paying in.
10. And the King of them all... most people need the government in order to survive.
Are there plenty of examples of "Conservethink"? Yep... but as a whole I agree with the principles of Conservethink more than those of Libthink.
Honestly, I don't know how to answer that. As I say, it's not because I vote a party line... let me think about how to answer.
