Posted by
American Conservative on Friday, September 05, 2008 8:14:00 PM
After watching both the Democrat and Republican National Conventions I have decided in two separate blogs to list and explain the reasons for why I prescribe to the conservative ideology.
DEFENSE:
I am a firm believer with the ideas of both Ronald Reagan and Teddy Roosevelt when they said, “peace through strength” and “speak softly but carry a big stick.” Time after time this form of foreign policy has been proven right; from the Barbary Wars to the Cold War this has been the most successful type of foreign policy by far. Of course it has not been without missteps and errors but that has had been more with the person behind the policy and not the policy itself.
JFK was a great example of this during the Cuban Missile Crisis. After with meeting with Khrushchev the Soviet’s thought that he was weak and they could push him around. As history has shown they were wrong! Ronald Reagan went to the Berlin and spoke next to the Brandenburg Gate telling the Soviet’s to “tear down this wall.” He won the Cold War by being tough. He outspent the Soviets by building up our military and seeking to develop innovative ways to combat them; one such way was the Strategic Defensive Initiative (SDI). George H.W. Bush stood up to Saddam Hussein when he invaded Kuwait and with the help from our allies he attacked and utterly destoryed one of the largest armies in the world and freed Kuwait from occupation.
Now if you contrast that with the Democratic ticket you see a very different picture. Obama has said that he’d meet with foreign dictators without preconditions. Such a meeting led directly to the Cuban Missile Crisis and in JFK’s own words about the summit, “roughest thing in my life. (Khrushchev) just beat the hell out of me.” If Obama meets with Ahmadinejad and is found wanting what will happen? Will they blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, greater covert operations in Iraq, attack on Israel?
Just as a side note the “experienced” Joseph Biden voted against the Reagan measures that helped defeat the Soviets and in particular wanted a nuclear freeze and voted against the Persian Gulf War.
Bill Clinton failed to stand up strongly against the terrorists on many occasions. He completely failed to act in Rwanda, he sought to prosecute the terrorists responsible for the first Twin Towers attack instead of destroying them. When Al Qaeda bombed the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania he shot a few cruise missiles over to Sudan and Afghanistan in response acconplishing little. He did nothing to respond to the Khobar Towers bombing in Saudi Arabia and the bombing of the USS Cole. The deafening silent response led in at least a small part to the terrorists attack on 9/11. They had thrown down the gauntlet and we condemned and sanctioned them but we allowed them to continue their planning and scheming relatively unmolested. That doesn’t even go into the fact that Clinton according to the CIA and several other government agencies had at least four chances to kill Bin Laden but for one excuse or another failed to act and we all know what the consequences were for his inaction.
As the saying goes, “don’t bring a knife to a gun fight.” You can’t bring pretty words and good intentions to bare against people bent on our extermination. I don’t doubt that the Democrats would stand up to the terrorist but what would happen before they did. Nobel Prize winning Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn said, “The timid civilized world has found nothing with which to oppose the onslaught of a sudden revival of barefaced barbarity, other than concessions and smiles."
ENERGY:
You cannot talk about defense without talking about energy. The conservative argument is “drill here, drill now, pay less.” Obviously we can’t completely drill our way out of our energy problems but it definitely will help. The argument that he can be completely off of foreign oil in ten years is ridiculous. T. Boone Pickens has been trying to raise awareness over this issue, to his credit over the last few months. He wants to make wind power responsible for 20% of our countries power. The problem is that the technology doesn’t exist to store electricity made by wind power. In other words if the wind stops blowing you’re going to need coal fire and natural gas generators to back them up. Also, the environmentalists haven’t and won’t allow the transmission cables to be built that would bring the energy from these wind turbines to our homes. What good does a ton of wind turbines do if they aren’t hooked up to our homes? He also talked about how we should switch cars to natural gas; another good idea. The problem is that we also import natural gas. According to the CIA World Factbook we used 602 cubic meters of natural gas in 2005 while importing 117.9 cubic meters. While this is far less than the 65% of our oil imports it will most definitely go up if we switch our cars to run on natural gas. The other claim that it’s cheaper is kind of a joke. It’s cheaper due to the fact that we use less of it, you know supply and demand. If we start using it to run our cars the price will go up, it’s basic economics.
I think as do most conservatives that we need an “all of the above” approach. We need to drill, we need to use solar and wind power, and above all we need to use nuclear power. Nuclear power is the cheapest, cleanest, and most efficient by far. The Democrats have prevented the building of these plants in fear of another Chernobyl. They have passed laws and all sorts of environmental regulations that take at least a decade to get the paperwork done; and that's only if the plan is met with little resistance, which is never the case. Roughly 20% of our power is already run on nuclear power and we haven’t had one leak or disaster and that includes Three Mile Island.
This issue is very complicated and has very far reaching and dangerous consequences if we don’t get the ball rolling. In all honestly the Republicans haven’t really been the champions of energy but when compared to the Democrats there isn’t much of a contest. The Republicans passed many laws during the 90's to drill in ANWR and other places but Bill Clinton vetoed them. ANWR for example was set aside by Jimmy Carter in particular the North Slope to drill. Not all the Democrats and unfortunately John McCain talk about how we can’t drill there do to the environmental impacts. They always talk about how the Exon Valdez was such a disaster and how we can’t afford to have a disaster like that in Alaska. The problem with that argument is that the Exon Valdez was a ship brining in foreign oil. The oil platforms in the Gulf have faced many hurricanes over the last few years and do you know how much oil was been spilt? NONE. We have the technology to greatly reduce the environmental impact of the area and still get to the oil and natural gas. The North Slope is a 1.5 million acre tract that is estimated to have between 3 and 9 billion barrels of oil which is located in the 19 million acres of ANWR.
SECOND AMENDMENT:
“A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” If you look up the opinion of this very heated and divisive argument on the internet you’ll find varying opinions on all sides of the issue. The Republicans, especially now with Gov. Palin’s nomination have thrown their lot firmly on the side of the amendment meaning that people do have the right to bear arms. The Democrats despite what Obama has said recently take the other side. Biden was in fact one of the leading supporters of the Brady Gun Ban that banned guns according to the style of grips they had and the overall look of the gun, which makes absolutely no sense. They claim that crime went down but that is a lie. Don’t believe me? The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms says it "can in no way vouch for the validity" of Brady Campaign's claim that the ban was responsible for violent crime's decline. An organization called the Violence Policy Center which argues in favor of gun control has said, "you can't argue with a straight face that the ban has been effective." The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention studied the "assault weapon" ban and other gun control schemes, and found "insufficient evidence to determine the effectiveness of any of the firearms laws reviewed for preventing violence." The anti-gun people fail to realize the simple and obvious fact that criminals by definition are people who break the law. More laws will not prevent criminals, once again people who break the law, from getting guns and using them in crimes.
To help put this into context here is a link from the great, prophetic (obvious sarcasm) Keith Olbermann about what the 2nd Amendment is really referring too.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=STwsbUwcO4U&feature=related
Unlike all the people on both side I like to see what the actual framers of the Constitution thought about this issue.
“No free man shall ever be debarred from the use of arms." Thomas Jefferson
“Arms in the hands of citizens maybe used in individual discretion in private self defense." John Adams
“The Constitution preserves the advantage of being armed which Americans possess over the people of almost any other nation where the governments are afraid to trust the people with arms" James Madison
“I ask sir what is the militia? It is the whole people. To disarm the people is the best and most effectual way to enslave them" George Mason
“A free people ought not only be armed, but disciplined…” George Washington
Case Closed!!!