The American Spectator

Mary| 12.17.08 @ 1:52PM

I don't think Conservatism is designed for the kind of power that Gerson and acolytes recommend and promote. Just the opposite; conservatism is naturally averse to such power grabs.

Tony Blankley noted in his Me Too Republicans piece that the conflict between conservatives, Obama and the policy he would likely install represented nothing less than the fight for the heart and soul of the Country.

I really like Mr. Blankley, think he's erudite and inclined to agree with him.

Mr. Antle, when I was 10 years old I was changing my baby brother's diaper and found that his left side was extremely distended, so I called my mother.

She knew he was in danger, so she called our next door neighbor who drove her (my parents never learned how to drive) to a very good pediatrician about 20 miles away.

That pediatrician never charged my mother a dime for taking care of my brother. At the time, my father had just started working at a local factory but healthcare didn't kick in for a few more months.

Dr. H sent my brother and Mom to a very good local hospital/medical center. This hospital is affiliated with a top notch local university.

My Mom's English was still not fully up to speed, so when a team of 15 doctors asked her to convene with them in a conference room and discuss my brother's condition she became very nervous. She said her English took a giant leap in the following days, and she has always attributed that to having to do her best to communicate because of the gravity of the situation.

Anyway, these fine doctors removed my little brother's kidney and 43 years later he's as fit as a fiddle.

My parents incurred a debt of thousands of dollars which they paid off over 7 years.

My parents would have done anything; washed dishes, wiped backsides in a nursing home, split pennies to pay the hospital.

I'm not really trying compare yesterday to today. I’m not sure you can what with the difference between a real dollar and a phony one. But I don't think many people would consider doing what my parents did as a matter of duty and honor. And I'm not sure that many doctors and/or hospitals would extend themselves in the way that those who saved my brother's life did.

I don't think it's just a different time, I think it’s a different world.

And, as you say, compassionate conservatism is only secondarily interested in relieving poverty, etc., so the possibility for limited government is non-existent. Some in Gerson's crowd readily admit that big government is here to stay.

Obama said in one of his campaign stops that Americans can't drive their cars all they want, keep their homes nice and toasty or eat to their heart's content anymore. He thinks Americans must come to accept a lower standard of living. I think Carter pretty much thought the same thing.

I'm not sure Americans see it quite the same way. And if they don't then all the current fussing will be for naught because demographics will capitulate to conditions and not the opposite.
One thing I’d like to know is what kind of a society is it that produces a people who would buy a home they really couldn’t afford, but proceed apace confident in their purchase because in 3 or 4 years they could sell the home at a profit? Is that what a home has come to mean to people?
Mr. Antle, I don’t know much about economics, but one thing I’m certain of, what is at the bottom of the need for these bailouts is rotten to the core. I don’t trust anyone involved.

linda | 12.18.08 @ 11:33AM

Unfortunately Mary there were many uncreditworthy people who purchased homes only to discover the truth in the old adage that "nothing is free." Experience is a brutal teacher, some learn, some never do. Shady mortgage brokers tacked on large fees to their mortgages and made out like bandits. Result is that the people holding the mortgages rarely read or understood the fine print contained in the voluminous mortgage documents. So, there are many reasons why people rushed to purchase homes - the needy something -for-nothing crowd, greedy, shady brokers, speculative investors...so many types of individuals and reasons why. The losers are the ignorant, illiterate, and those hard working class and seniors who now have inflated home values and extremely high real estate taxes put on the home that took them years to pay for and with every hope of growing old in what they considered their "home," not a speculative investment.

John Lofton| 12.22.08 @ 10:34PM

Forget "conservatism," please. It has been Godless and thus irrelevant. As Stonewall Jackson's Chief of Staff R.L. Dabney said of such a humanistic belief more than 100 years ago:

"[Secular conservatism] is a party which never conserves anything. Its history has been that it demurs to each aggression of the progressive party, and aims to save its credit by a respectable amount of growling, but always acquiesces at last in the innovation. What was the resisted novelty of yesterday is today .one of the accepted principles of conservatism; it is now conservative only in affecting to resist the next innovation, which will tomorrow be forced upon its timidity and will be succeeded by some third revolution; to be denounced and then adopted in its turn. American conservatism is merely the shadow that follows Radicalism as it moves forward towards perdition. It remains behind it, but never retards it, and always advances near its leader. This pretended salt bath utterly lost its savor: wherewith shall it be salted? Its impotency is not hard, indeed, to explain. It .is worthless because it is the conservatism of expediency only, and not of sturdy principle. It intends to risk nothing serious for the sake of the truth."

Our country is collapsing because we have turned our back on God (Psalm 9:17) and refused to kiss His Son (Psalm 2).

John Lofton, Editor, TheAmericanView.com
Recovering Republican
JLof@aol.com