[quote=briansd1][quote=surveyor]
Conservatism does not imply rigidity. However, it just requires a higher standard and proof instead of the typical liberals/progressive lines: “it’s different this time around” or “the rules have changed” or “i know better”. To be conservative is to acknowledge that that there is a pattern of success that we have followed, and our society has been successful because of those principles and those rules.[/quote]
Containment of Iraq worked well for several decades. Suddenly we had to invade because “it’s different this time.”
Despite our traditions of Civil Liberties Bush needed the Patriot Act because “it’s different this time.”
The Christian religious nutcases believed that world was flat for hundreds of years although the Greeks knew otherwise. It sure took them a long time to be convinced otherwise.
Still today certain conservative elements don’t believe in evolution. Should we wait for another couple hundred years for the proof?[/quote]
Brian: Containment of Iraq worked well for “several decades”? Really? Which “several” decades are we talking about?
While I don’t disagree about Bush and the Patriot Act, I have to ask about FISA during the Carter Administration, rendition and NSA eavesdropping under Clinton. What about our civil liberties in those instances? Taken as part of an overall attenuation of our rights, Patriot Act then becomes the next logical step.
Again, Brian, what we have here is your inability to discern/distinguish differences and thus you simply lump everything together under the term “conservative”.
As a Jesuit educated Catholic, I was taught that BOTH Faith and Reason are the wings of enlightenment. For someone who is supposedly a reasoned “believer”, you seem to have a hard time understanding truly conservative positions and would rather blindly broad brush anyone you don’t agree with, or that doesn’t agree with you, as an unthinking, blinkered ignoramus. Not only is this untrue, but your own positions are either untenable (as in Patriot Act) or incorrect (Iraq’s multi-generational “containment”) or inaptly stated.
