They could be, if we were willing to waterboard the suspects.
I thought torture didn’t work…
Looks more like a caricature. I don’t beleive any of that.
I don’t care what *you *believe. I think we can all agree, friend Scylla, that you’re a fucking oddball. 
I’m asking about what most conservatives believe. Any insight on that?
Some conservatives are saying that Obama and Putin conspired to murder the President of Poland.
I might believe Putin was involved. But Obama? Perhaps Hillary was involved since she already had Vince Foster killed. 
So, what does the One True Conservative believe?
For practical purposes of intelligence gathering, no. As entertainment, however…
Sure.
I think most conservatives believe in a strong military, and foreign policy, and the upholding of basic laws. Other than that government should be smaller. I think most are against what is broadly defined as entitlements. Most don’t like the government engaged in social engineering or legislating morality. At the same time most are in favor of the government maintaining “traditional morality.” Those few that recognize the hypocrisy might defend it as protecting the status quo. There is a lot of hypocrisy in this area, but there really shouldn’t be. An evolved society that is self-adjusting from the bottom up, will in many but not all ways be superior to one that adjusts from the top down.
They tend to believe in the law of unintended consequences, and therefore attempts to throw money at social problems will, as history demonstrates, subsidize and encourage those problems.
Most will state a belief in freedom and the personal responsibility that goes along with it, believe they are self-reliant and better able to take care of themselves than the government.
Social Conservatives seem to be religiously motivated, and believe pretty much what you’d expect based on their creed. They wish the government would enforce this creed. I’m not really comfortable calling them conservatives, because I think the idea of letting the government define morality is anti-conservative.
Many are skeptical of “climate change,” in some way. I remember when it was global warming, before that, global cooling, and before that it was the ozone layer. Environmental alarmism is nothing new. Now, I have no doubt the climate is changing, and I have no doubt that mankind has a significant effect. I think pollution is bad, but I don’t think the “Manmade Global warming is a fact!” crowd actually knows what they think they know, and I think that what they say think they know is actually different from what they really think they know. Take carbon, for example. The March of Dimes used to be about polio. Once they licked that they took on birth defects, because… well that would never go away. The carbon cycle is a fact of life. I don’t think it’s possible to make a meaningful impact on the amount of co2 being put in the air. But, as long as it is a cause and a goal, it is a handy device for greater government control and engineering of business. Which brings us to another point:
To one degree or another pretty much all conservatives think liberals are full of shit. Their causes such as global warming, and health care, and all the people they claim they are trying to help is just an excuse for the government to take greater control of our lives. Sure, there are true believers, but up top? I don’t see how you can look at the last fifty years and not see that.
Most conservatives tend to be fairly quiet about their beliefs, and are not particularly active on social issues.
Ridiculous. You have a faulty definition of opinion and/or fact.
Here’s a little help on just one of the OP’s examples: it is not objectively determinable whether a Keynesian stimulus is a good idea or not. The notion that “a stimulus is a good idea” is not something that can be measured like the temperature or salinity of a water sample. It is not the case that someone else can come along and look at the facts and say “yep, sure enough, it turns out that a stimulus is a good idea.” It takes human judgment to weigh the options and evaluate the likely consequences and then decide that taking a particular action is indeed a good idea.
So does it bother you that you have an ignorant and blindly stupid view of global warming? Does it bother you that you are so uninformed that you don’t know that global cooling wasn’t the scientific consensus? Does it bother you that you stupidly believe absolute bullshit spoon fed to you (by people who have a monetary stake in the game), about how much and the effect of the carbon we pump into the atmosphere?
Or are you just a fucking moron?
Conservatives believe bullshit that there is no evidence for. I think that’s the crux of what we’ve learned here.
Yeah, and you know what? Most experts are of the opinion that it’s a good fucking idea. If we did what the Republicans wanted we’d be circling the drain right now. Surely you’re not so fucking stupid you don’t understand that?
This is what is stupid. It happens on both sides. Stop assuming that, since people disagree with you, they must be doing it for EVIL reasons. Assume incompetence before malice.
If most conservatives believe this, then it is a perfect content for this thread. That is the textbook definition of a Conspiracy nutter.
Here are some other things that are opinions: Determining who qualify as “experts,” and determining what exactly “most” of them believe (it’s not like “whether a stimulus is a good idea” is a binary thing–there are many different variables, such as how much, when to start, when to stop, how to deploy it, etc.).
Here’s a little help with basic reading comprehension. He listed “Keynesian stimulus”, point number two, as not factual.
You have to believe that:
- Sarah Palin is actually much smarter than Barack Obama
- GW Bush’s electoral win in 2000 was totally legitimate, but ACORN stole the 2008 election for Obama
- studies on climate change sponsored by oil companies are to be taken as gospel
- allowing gays to marry will destroy heterosexual marriages
- the Constitution is sacred, but only commies believe in the Bill of Rights
- the health care law is the end of our freedom, but warrantless wiretapping of Americans is just fine
- white protestant males are the most persecuted group in this country
Ah,ok, fine, I didn’t look back at the OP for the numbering, and I was still responding to the OP mainly anyway.
Damn, but that’s deep! Or maybe not, can somebody here tell me if that’s deep or not, 'cause all I got to go on is that I don’t have the slightest idea what he’s talking about here, and when that happens, he always tells me its because I don’t grasp the brilliance. So I’m hoping maybe somebody else does, and can break it down for me.
And this whole “big government” thing I’m supposed to be all hot about. In all the years I’ve been a lefty, listening to everybody from wishy-washy half-ass liberal centrists to arguments between Maoists and Stalinist about who is most Marxist…I don’t remember anybody rubbing their hands with insectile glee and cackling about the advance of “big government”.
What do they mean? Well, usually, what they mean is government intrusion into the sacred Free Market, blessings and peace be upon it. Too much interference and regulation. Like coal mines, for instance. All of this unpleasantness might have been avoided if that blood-sucking greed freak of an owner could have had his way without government interference, and the shameless way government coddles unions.
OK, thats sarcasm. What that situation calls for is some serious government intrusion, like regulation enforcement rammed so far up his ass, he can taste what the lawyers had for lunch.
The struggle has nothing whatever to do with the size of government, never was, never will be. The struggle is about who controls that government. So long as the government is in the hands of the people, I couldn’t care less if it is big or small, since we can change that whenever we choose.
Power to the people, to coin a phrase.
Exactly-- that’s my conundrum, too. Having made the switch from “Conservative” to “Libertarian” in the Reagan years when the Crazy Right-Wingers took over, I wonder if I now need to switch to “Liberal” to avoid the Really-Bat-Shit-Crazy Right-Wingers…
And we could have a similar thread: “What stupid shit do you have to believe to be a Christian today?” Do I have to hate gays? Ignore the poor? Bomb abortion clinics? Wave my flag while we kill heathen furriners?
I had a house guest last week and he put Fox News on the TV and left it on all day, even when he wasn’t there. My passing through the room caught me up on the stupid. So, add to your list pretty much anything Fox says that is one sided. Oh, and Fox is worse than it used to be.
No, there is no new health care system in place. There is nothing that could reasonably be called “Obamacare,” it is factually false to say that the government is taking over health care and it’s patent bullshit to say that the HCR package will"destroy the country." These are all completely ridicuolus things to believe.