OBAMA AS WAR WITH RUSSIA LOOMS: Boy, I sure picked the wrong week to quit smokin’! 
[shrug] Comes with the job. When you’ve got a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.
So it is the government’s job to create wealth? 
It comes with the “job” of being a liberal, but doesn’t necessarily come with the job of being a Senator or President.
Piffle - to Bush, war was his hammer. And one nail just wasn’t enough so he invented another.
This is much more peaceful of a discussion if you don’t make pointless and tunnel-visioned partisan jabs.
Ah. That’s why both Bush and St. Reagan blew up government spending to absurd proportions, right?
Why do people keep using this argument against people who say they don’t like Obama because they don’t want big government? Do you really think Obama will not increase the size of the government as much as McCain would have if he had been elected?
Before you go on this path, what’s your idea of Big Government?
Clearly, I mentioned McCain for a reason.
Well, that’s the point. There’s no smaller-government option on the ballot anyway, Pubs have not much different a record than Dems in that regard, so why single out Obama?
Because it’s what the liberals want to spend money on that frosts the conservatives. Republicans and conservatives don’t mind that much if we spend a lot on defense. For one thing, it makes us look like we’ve got a bigger pair (which is always good), and for another thing, it makes rich companies even richer. Defense spending is Good For Big Business, which is always A Good Thing.
Democrats and liberals may or may not be big on defense spending, but generally are not as big on military capital expenditures. They spend defense funds on stupid things like veterans benefits and soldiers’ salaries, and whose business does that benefit? Small businesses, that’s who (because that money is spent locally by the recipient, unless it’s for health care or education), and they don’t count. But worse, Democrats and liberals want to spend money on domestic programs that help people, and these programs are not much, looking at things from an investment standpoint. If government expenditures are supposed to produce a tangible return on investment, these programs are not the right ones to do it.
Ideologically, conservatives are opposed to that kind of government spending. If something is good and useful, then there should be a market for it, and someone in the private sector will pick it up and people will pay for it. That’s what the theory says, and so conservatives appear to believe. The problem is, too many things are used by too many people - benefits and responsibility are so diffused, so widespread that the only sensible way to pay for them is to get a group of all the people to pay for it. We just happen to have one those; it’s called the government. Other things are useful, but no one is going to step in to do them, no matter how much the conservatives try to say it’s not government’s place. The example that has been cited by Sarahfeena here works very well. There is no profit to be made in teaching impoverished small children to read. It would be nice if the school systems were doing it, but what with societal pressures being so strongly anti-education in these classes (I’m hoping some of this will change as African-Americans feel more enfranchised with the election of Obama, but that has little impact on very poor whites who considerably outnumbervery poor blacks), it is more than the underfunded, overworked inner-city schools are able to do. Society as a whole will benefit from those children growing up able to read, but no individual nor set of individuals will do so enough to be willing to pay for it.
So what should the government do? Perhaps the program currently in place is not working as well as it should. Does that mean it should be done away with and not replaced? Then we still have the problem of a lot of children growing up illiterate, and no one doing anything about it. It doesn’t matter that it’s the parents’ responsibility and they’re not doing it - they may not be able or they may not be willing, but either way, the entire society pays the cost if these kids grow up unable to read. The government can either sit on its hands, or it can try to address this kind of problem. For conservatives, the solution is quite easy; when in doubt, keep government out of it. For liberals, the solution tends to also be pretty easy; where there is a serious problem, look for a private solution, and if there isn’t one, use the government.
But that’s why there’s no contradiction between being conservative and still supporting Reagan and Bush. It’s what they spent the money on that made them acceptable, and it’s what liberals would spend money on that makes them so unacceptable. Basically, if it’s for national security, it’s good, especially if it’s equipment or materiel. If it’s for helping people, it’s bad - the private sector should be handling it.
Obviously, because I’m a liberal myself, I’ve done a better job of representing the liberal position than the conservative one. I apologize to the conservatives; I’ve tried to present your side as fairly as possible in this post.
Just as an aside, I will open a thread if I see that Oy! is the latest poster, and I’ve never been disappointed at having done so.
Which is to say: “This.”
The trad skin voice needs more representation here, anyway.
Agreed – quality post Oy!.
How then, did we achieve high literacy rates in the 1800s, before mandatory public schooling, and when reading was a less- important skill? Because parents and the students themselves do benefit. Schooling is good and useful, and there is a market for it, as thousands of private schools attest – it’s just a highly distorted market, where one competitor is subsidized by everyone, including the other guy’s customers.
Thankfully, Obama has expressed support for vouchers, which would be a step towards full freedom of choice in education.
Here, I think you’re conflating principle with politics to a certain extent. There are plenty of conservatives who think we could stand to cut military spending, especially on outdated cold-war equipment programs that no longer fit the threat profiles we face (e.g., nuclear subs). John McCain is one.
The problem they have is political: it can be spun that they are soft on defense, and worse, shrinking the capital spending means running against the entrenched interests of contractors (and the unions they employ) and congresstypes who are funded by them, or who benefit from bases in their district. The same is
Thus, even the best-intentioned fiscal conservative comes to the budget fight, against powerful and entrenched interests who have much to lose and will fight to keep what they have, armed with nothing but whatever mandate they can claim from their election.
Add in the fact that as a political matter, fiscal conservativism is in bed with social conservatism – which sometmes does want more spending, on their programs – and you end up with politicians who say, in theory, that they want smaller government, but are unable/unwilling to take the political risks actually doing anything would require.
Liberal politicians have the same problems, just with different issues. If they try to shrink the military, they have the same problems as the GOP. They can say they oppose corporate welfare as a matter of principle, but the political reality is that if GM goes under, it hurts the UAW, and thus the dems, and so they do it. They can say – and mean it – they just want to “help people” and “look at private solutions first,” but they have constituincies that oppose support to faith-based charities, who will fight the ending of any given social program of any kind even if arguably counterproductive, and who very much do want more and bigger government – the government-employees unions, and the hard left that distrusts anything corporate America does. And they must reckon with those constituiences. Vouchers and education reform are just one example.
I once read in a book about China that in regards to human rights, Americans tend to compare China’s practice against our own stated goals and ideals, which is unfair; he also pointed out that the Chinese do the same.
I think it’s a pretty universal human tendency to do that, and I think both sides of our political spectrum are an example.
pseudotriton, that is hands down the best compliment I’ve ever received on anything in my life. Thank you! You too, furt.
furt, I will grant you that politics distorts both our adherence to ideology to a great extent. In exchange, I’d like you to examine very closely two things. One is that the your idea of literacy rate in the 1800s is actually high. I don’t think as many kids were literate as you think. The other is that there were social pressures going on then that were very different from the social pressures going on now. I think this (i.e. contemporary society) may be the first society we know of where we have a group of people who for multiple generations have actually had social disincentives to succeed educationally, even while there were financial incentives to succeed. I’ve never heard of any other place where education is held in such contempt as it is here in the US among young people. Even among older people, it is viewed as something children must be lured and tempted and tricked into, rather than as it was in the 1800s, the earlier part of the 1900s, and is in other parts of the world: the child’s responsibility, as surely as it is the parents’ responsibility to feed and shelter that child.
Emotionally, I am red meat conservative on this issue; if I had my druthers, those children who did not choose to make the most of their educations would fall flat on their little pug noses! Unfortunately, I am intellectually liberal and therefore able to see nuance, dammit. I recognize that regardless of whose fault it is, we all suffer if those damned lazy bum kids don’t get educated. But I resent it. Boy, do I resent it, with all of the power of a naturally good student who never had to do a lick of work to excel in school. 
My point (which I thoroughly lost there) is, it’s no good comparing school systems of today with school systems of the 1800s, because the entire society has entirely changed. There’s no basis for comparison, so it’s no good telling me that private schools are the answer on that basis. As a matter of fact, public schools did a very good job of teaching students during the early 1900s. The culture was one where students were expected to learn, and they did. Right up to the point where their parents and our society decided that it was the school’s responsibility to see that they learned, rather than the student’s. It’s hard to forcefeed a mind.
This is still about Obama, right?
I think I have gotten about 6 actual answers to my original thread.
I’ll say it again, just in case anyone has forgotten what it was and wants to answer it:
Everyone has character flaws. Everyone.
Some people are lazy, or overbearing, or impatient, or bossy. Some tend to act before thinking, or talk before considering. Indecicive, arrogant, greedy, unorganized or short tempered.
What are Obama’s character flaws (not your opioion of his flawed policies).
This is patently ridiculous. Obama’s stated policies will increase the size of government much more than McCain’s stated policies.
When choosing between Obama and McCain on the issue of the size of government, it doesn’t matter that Bush has not been as good on this issue as he could have been.
I believe that I actually did answer your question. The desire for large government is a character flaw.
The hell? No, it isn’t. The philosophy that the government has a duty to help its citizens is a philosophy, not a character flaw. Whether that actually works well is another question, but it’s certainly not a character flaw.
In my opinion, his biggest flaw is that sometimes, he’s just too awesome. 
But seriously, though he’s better than Kerry and Gore, he still needs a lot of work on combating rumors: I think the baseless accusations of Marxism, socialism, and to a lesser extent Islam are going to be quite problematic as he tries to get his agenda through Congress.