House of Eratosthenes

The parody is a perfectly adequate response to the original video. But maybe it would be good to jot down some reasons why I’m a Republican. Or, to be more accurate about it, why I’m a conservative, or a rightward-leaning libertarian, or why I’m a Tea Party guy. Why I’m not a democrat.

1. Before we realize absolute success in making life completely perfect and before everybody’s safety and happiness are resolutely guaranteed, I think we can stop making new rules. Yeah, before we get there. For no reason, just stop. Otherwise, all things within our ability fall into two categories: What’s already illegal now, and what will be someday. And, you know, I don’t like that.
2. I don’t want my elected officials to make me a better person. I don’t think they have what it takes to do that, even when my favorite guys are the ones that got elected. It’s just not in the job description.
3. I think the whole point of taxation is to raise revenue for vital services. Their purpose is not to punish or reward people, or offer people incentives to start or stop doing certain things.
4. If you have a hot new idea, I think it should be tested out someplace where it doesn’t impact anyone, before we force it on people. That’s just the way I see it. For this reason alone, I can’t be a democrat.
5. I believe in equality of opportunity, not equality of outcome.
6. I don’t think we’re more civilized when we find reasons not to lock up violent criminals, or look for excuses not to execute them when they’ve killed innocent people. That doesn’t protect the innocent. Actually, I think that’s barbaric behavior, because innocent people get hurt and we know it. I think we’re more civilized when pull the switch.
7. I think when some people produce goods and services of value and other people do not, the people who produce things can go ahead and do their producing without advice or regulations from the non-productive people. Those non-productive people, if they knew anything about the best way of producing things, I figure they’d already be doing it.
8. The way I see it, humans are part of nature. Even when you take humans out of nature, this doesn’t make nature “pristine,” or free of malice, violence, death, even sadism…so what’s the point? Leave humans in it. We belong in it.
9. I don’t think it’s right to count “jobs created or saved.” I think when you create jobs with money you forcibly removed from other people by means of taxation, you need to produce a “net”; you need to factor in the jobs that failed to materialize because the people who would’ve created them, had to worry about these taxes.
10. I think when you earn money, and you pay all the taxes in effect at the time, whatever’s left belongs to you. And that is perfectly okay.
11. It remains okay even if you end up with vastly more money than some other guy. I don’t think there is any one point where you’ve made enough money.
12. I respectfully disagree with Michael Moore. Private property is not a “national resource.” It is a resource that should be placed under the control of the people who own it.
13. I’m worried about the exploding public debt. I’m worried about it when we debate tax policy…AND…unlike democrats, I keep worrying about it when we discuss where the money should be spent. I can’t turn it off like a switch.
14. By the way, those two are separate in my mind. Because I’m not mentally disabled, I don’t think a tax cut is something that “costs” us anything.
15. When we talk of the virtues of “choice,” I don’t think sex means an awful lot. To be a democrat, you have to think choice is important when you’re talking about sex, then you have to be suddenly anti-choice when we’re not talking about sex anymore. I just can’t bend that far.
16. I don’t think, when you spread the wealth around, it’s good for everybody.
17. However, when a child has both a mother and a father…I do think, generally, that is good for everybody.
18. Drill, baby, drill. Consuming resources is a natural part of living life, and going after those resources is a natural part of consuming them. There is no shame for anyone in any of this. The shame is in compelling others to make sacrifices you yourself are not willing to make.
19. I don’t think people are necessarily better if they voted for Obama.
20. I don’t think people are necessarily better because of the color of their skin.
21. I don’t think people are necessarily better if they’re women.
22. I don’t think people are necessarily better if they’re gay.
23. I don’t think people are necessarily better if they choose to be vegetarians.
24. I don’t think people are necessarily better if they happen to work for the government.
25. I know too much to be a democrat. I know you can’t restore the hours that the library is open, by cutting defense spending.
26. I don’t think a nation can tax its way into prosperity. I don’t think the rich are getting richer while the poor are getting poorer. And if they are, then that’s great, because you can only get so poor, but if the rich are getting richer then that would mean the economy is doing better, and who would have a problem with that?
27. I don’t believe the middle class is taking any kind of a beating when it is found that fewer people are in it. I don’t think organized labor is taking a beating when there are fewer members. I don’t think people appreciate the environmental movement more when they see more hybrid cars or eco-cups. I don’t think college graduates enjoy a brighter future when there are more college graduates. In short, I can’t be a democrat because I appreciate the simple economic truth that commodities become precious through scarcity, not through abundance.
28. I think a study that is funded by the government has just as much chance to be biased and inaccurate, as a study funded by oil companies, in fact the government-backed study has greater potential to rely on false information.
29. I don’t believe in “unfettered capitalism.” Such a thing is an impossibility, because you cannot have capitalism without a free market, and in a free market all transactions 1) must involve at least two parties representing different interests, and 2) are suspended by default, permitted to go forward only if both sides believe they’re coming out of it ahead. Capitalism is self-regulating. Socialism, on the other hand, works within the rules only until such time as it figures out it needs to break the rules, and then consistently tries to find ways to break the rules.
30. I know Ronald Reagan was right: If not a one among us is sufficiently competent to manage his own affairs, there cannot be anyone among us sufficiently competent to manage everybody else’s.

Oh, this is fun! Let me try:

I’m a conservative because….

1. I passed Econ 101.

2. I read a history book.

3. I know that ambulance-chasing shyster lawyers don’t become avatars of virtue and pillars of probity just by winning an election.

4. I know that the typical government “worker” is far less Mr. Smith Goes to Washington and far more Darleen from the DMV. I know this because I know how I’d be if I were unfireable and guaranteed a fat pension for life and had the sense of entitlement to go along with it.

5. I know that meetings are the least productive form of work on earth, and that government is nothing but meetings.

6. I know that whatever they were initially designed to do, bureaucracies begin working solely for the propagation of the bureaucracy about .00003 seconds into their existence. Just as software engineers constantly complain that they could do some real sterling work if it weren’t for those damn end users (sorry, Morgan), government bureaucrats could deliver some killer healthcare spreadsheets if it weren’t for those damn patients and their dumb diseases and their constant whining about “quality of life” and “basic human dignity” and whatnot.

7. I developed a sense of humility. When I was a teenager, I thought I knew everything… and so naturally I was a liberal. But after I kicked around the world for a bit, I started realizing all the things I don’t know, and now every new bit of information I learn sheds light on a dozen more things I don’t know and will probably never have the time to learn. I know I shouldn’t be in charge of other peoples’ lives, because I can barely handle my own (see #30, above).

And finally, I’m a conservative because I know the One Great Truth of Existence: you can’t have everything. Choosing X necessarily entails forfeiting Y, and anyone who tells you you can have both X and Y is at best a naive, deluded fool and at worst a sociopath and an aspiring dictator.
- Severian | 07/08/2011 @ 06:41
“3. I think the whole point of taxation is to raise revenue for vital services. Their purpose is not to punish or reward people, or offer people incentives to start or stop doing certain things.”

I’d modify this one slightly:

“3. Taxation has two functions: To raise revenue for vital services, or to create incentives for desired social behaviour (by granting breaks) or disincentives for undesired social behaviour (by increasing cost). Both of these are valid. But they must not ever, for one day or even a second, be both invoked as justification for the same specific kinds of taxes — because the former is aimed at bringing in money while the latter is aimed at giving it up. Someone who claims the latter motivation in an attempt to cover up the former is lying, which should disqualify them from tax supervision of any kind.”
- Stephen J. | 07/09/2011 @ 19:50
I’m a conservative because:

1) I was raised and remain Catholic, and believe life begins at conception, marriage is something that happens between a man and a woman willing to accept the results of their own intimacy and committed to supporting them (accidentally or electively sterile couples don’t “invalidate” this definition any more than broken-down or unused cars invalidate the definition of “car” as a vehicle you drive someplace), and terminating life for someone else’s convenience is murder even if doctors say it’s OK.

2) I grew up in a very liberal town among very liberal friends, and one day read Ann Coulter out of sheer curiosity about how much everyone I knew hated her, and discovered she was not a frothing satanist maniac but had some good points (even if she was harsher than I would have been). This was the beginning of a larger but seldom-failing trend: What conservative/right-wing people wrote about my friends turned out more often than not to be true. What my friends wrote about them, didn’t.

3) I started reading newsbusters.org, and realized that the mainstream media wasn’t nearly as committed to objective truth and fact-finding as it claimed.

4) I discovered that whenever I tried to bring up points from the opposing perspective with any of my liberal friends, the same people who prided themselves on their intelligence, open-mindedness and tolerance of others’ difference became screaming Pod People who instantly forgot anything and everything else I’d done to earn their respect or liking.

5) I spent much of my 30s in significant debt and realized just how bad a position it is to be in, and how appalling it is for a government to put its people in that position without their consent.

6) I stopped believing that being smarter, more creative, more talented or funnier than most people justified you making judgement calls for them.

7) I had a son.
- Stephen J. | 07/09/2011 @ 20:05

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Why I’m a RepublicanThursday, July 7th, 2011

Why I’m a Republican
Thursday, July 7th, 2011