Third Party - Part 1

I keep hearing from people that I am not a True Conservative like them, and I think they are right.  Of course, I am not a True Liberal either.  So I guess I am not a part of either collective, and that is fine with me.

I have had it with people who are philosophically inconsistent, and that includes those on both the left and the right.

Yesterday I caught Al Sharpton interviewing John Lewis at the Essence Festival.  Let’s be clear; both men would like for people to take skin color into account when judging others.  I have taken Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee to task for the same thing, as she seems to be very proud of her skin pigmentation also.  Congressman Lewis and Reverend Sharpton both agreed there was still a long way to go for “their people”, and that the struggle was not finished.

The recent back and forth about Paula Deen and the N-word, and the racism surrounding the George Zimmerman trial, has made me a little sick to my stomach.  It is clear that people are on both sides here, those sides being black and white.

I am not a true conservative or liberal because I do not care in any way about skin pigmentation, and I want my government to also be completely colorblind.  I want individuals to still be free to think whatever they want, to enjoy their ignorant racist thoughts, but I insist that my government not recognize color of skin.  To that end we need to eliminate affirmative action and everything that goes with it.  We need to stop taking data on race on federal forms.  We need for the EEOC to stop prosecuting Dollar General for doing background checks.  And we need to eliminate the designation of hate crimes.  A crime is just a crime.

Principle Number One:  It does not matter what color your skin is.

I was listening to an internet call-in type show that featured primarily conservatives last Monday night.  They talked about a wide range of subjects.  I loved the conversation because it was slightly irreverent and open, and some if not most of the guests had been drinking just a little.  The last topic they covered was, “should marijuana be legalized”?  The discussion centered around whether or not marijuana was harmful, and personal stories about folks who had messed up their lives with drugs.  They talked about some research, and whether pot led to psychoses later in life.  Most ended up answering “NO”, that it should not be legalized.

The True Conservatives are always going off on Mayer Bloomberg for outlawing cola drinks over 22 ounces.  They are upset that there are more and more restrictions on smoking.  They complain that government is telling them how to live their lives.  They sit around and enjoy a cocktail and talk about how pot should not be legal, that it is contributing to the moral decline in this country.  I will not bother going over the health effects of smoking and alcohol.

I am not a true conservative or liberal because I choose to be on the side of personal freedom across the board.  With two caveats; that children cannot decide for themselves and so must be protected, and that you cannot take away my rights or directly endanger my safety, I do not support restrictions on personal liberties.  If you want to eat tree bark go ahead and do so.  It is probably not good for you and seems stupid to me but I do not want to see a flurry of tree bark laws if that suddenly becomes a fad.

Principle Number Two:  I support the personal liberty of adults to do as they please so long as they do not infringe my rights or safety.

There is a debate going on in this country about abortion.  Texas is in the middle of a big debate on a bill that would restrict abortions after 20 weeks.  Both sides are pretty heated.  Liberals have decided that until the baby is born and comes down the birth canal it is part of a woman’s body and she can do with it as she pleases.  The conservatives feel that it is not a fetus but a child and that the liberals are treating abortion as merely another form of birth control.

It was particularly interesting this week to see the pro-life crowd singing Amazing Grace and the pro-choice crowd countering with chants of “Hail Satan”.  Make no mistake, there is a heavy religious overtone on the issue with pro-lifers quoting scripture and pro-choice folks not wanting someone else’s morality and religion shoved down their throat.

I watched my children come into the world.  Based not on religion but on being in the delivery room, I can say with complete confidence that human life begins sometime before a full term trip down the birth canal.  They were just as human 10 minutes before they were born as they were 10 minutes after.

I am not a true conservative or liberal because my anti-abortion stance is based on protecting the rights of what I see as a human life, not a fetus.  And so when every law continues to make exceptions for rape and incest, I scratch my head.  Since this is a human life it has rights, whether it is the result of rape or incest or whatever.  It seems to me reasonable that a baby that would be viable if delivered should not be aborted.

Those on the true conservative side also are fighting against the emergency contraception pill, which would not abort a child but prevent a life if taken the day after.  Those on the liberal side are ignoring the fact that before the late term abortion a woman has plenty of “choice”.  She can choose not to have sex, to use contraception, to use the morning after pill, or to have an abortion much earlier than 20 weeks.  Lots of choices.

Also, I am pro-life in the sense that I do not believe in the death penalty.  I am not a true conservative because I am against the death penalty and not a true liberal because I do not support abortion rights.

Principle Number Three:  Human life is sacred and as a society we should not take human life unless necessary to protect other human life.

Much has been made recently about the supposed trade-off between security and liberty.  The recent revelations about the NSA and PRISM programs and government secrecy have made for some very strange bedfellows.  Those who have called Edward Snowden the worst kind of traitor have squared off against those who see him as a hero.  He is probably both. 

I am not a true conservative because I do not support the government’s need to have secret programs to keep us safe that involve government spying on us.  I distrust my government, as did the founders, and although they do have a responsibility to try and keep us safe, it is secondary to protecting our liberties.  Liberals, to my shock, have also embraced the need for these secret programs, ie, Diane Feinstein and Nancy Pelosi agree oddly enough with Dick Cheney and Lindsey Graham and Barak Obama that we need these secret government data collection programs to keep us safe and that Edward Snowden has done a terrible thing.

Principle Number Four:  Government itself is the biggest threat to our liberties, and we need a transparent open government.  Liberty trumps security and Tyranny is our biggest threat.

Finally, I am not a true conservative or a true liberal because I believe in a much smaller, much more limited federal government.  I also cannot be a true conservative or liberal because I think we need to do whatever it takes to reduce our deficit and repay our national debt.

Liberals are in love with big government and are fine with expanding it for Obamacare and entitlement programs, and they do not ever talk about our debt problem.  Nancy Pelosi is famously quoted as saying we do not have a spending problem.  I am not a liberal because I know we have a massive spending problem.

Conservatives think we need to protect the military from job cuts.  They think lowering taxes is the solution to the federal debt problem.  Wall Street is in love with Ben Bernanke and his printing press solution to our economy.  George Bush and Hank Paulson convinced us we needed to do whatever it took to bail out the financial sector and the largest companies on the planet because they were “Too Big to Fail”.  They were wrong.  Failure is how we learn.  Failure is what keeps us honest.  Failure allows smaller companies to rise up and replace bigger ones.

I am not a true conservative, I am a capitalist.  I believe in the free market.  I do not support cronyism.  Conservatives would tell me I just don’t understand.  Liberals will tell me I have no compassion.

Principle Number Four:  Government cannot control the economy, or protect everyone financially.  Government needs to balance it’s budget, pay it’s debt, and get out of the way and let free market capitalism work.

I am sick of people protecting their own self interest, their own views, their own side, and ending up horribly inconsistent and then using convoluted reasoning to defend their views.  The words conservative and liberal no longer have any consistent meaning, except that they both represent hypocrisy.

There is talk of a third party, of the need for another option.  We do not need a moderate party, lukewarm and straddling the fence.  We need a party that outlines principles and sticks to them, through thick and thin, whether comfortable or not.  I say leave the Republican party for the TRUE CONSERVATIVES, the Democrat party for the TRUE LIBERALS, and we all leave their parties for something with a consistent set of principles.