Quote:
Originally Posted by peter12
Do you understand libertarianism? If you did, you wouldn't make such ignorant comments.
On to Bush. I'm a conservative (not the small-c) and by the traditional republican standards of liberty and freedom of the individual, decentralization of the federal state and the reduced role of government, George W. Bush is an abomination.
The Republican Party has moved so far off from the principles of Newt Gringich and the revolution of the early 90's. What's worse is that the Democrats truly don't have any decent alternate policies in place and will run the next Presidential race as a "not them". That's just as bad for American politics.
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And that is what is so stunning. The label "conservative" as it is used today (in the media, and in general) doesn't mean what it used to mean. Republican has totally shifted away from what they used to mean. Yet I think people look at the way the past was, see the ideals they strive for, then look at the current party names and that is how they vote. It isn't based on any real undestanding of the issues.
Right, left conservative, liberal, republican, deomcrat - all are labels that seem to have a very fluid definition. And I don't know if the general public has the interest in keeping up with what these people/politicians represent outside of the labels the media hangs on them (not that the media are the problem, other than that the media needs labels in order to (attempt to) fit the issues into a 2 minute news story)