What’s a Conservative?

It's fairly easy to go to Wikipedia or read a definition from any number of dictionaries, to properly define the word conservative but I want a little more than that. I'm constantly hearing that someone is not conservative enough or that a local politician is not acting like a conservative. It seems to be a personal observation from the accuser. I'm not alone because this morning, I heard Joe Scarborough send a Republican representative through his paces. Joe went onto say that he's a small government fiscal conservative, so he didn't know why we added $1 trillion to the debt since the House of Representatives controls the purse strings. The representative replied" we would have to shut down the government. That's why the name of the game is a compromise, not liberal or conservative.

I don't know what the obsession is with Ronald Reagan; it's as if Republicans haven't found a leader since he left office. I hear the national candidates say, “I’m a Ronald Reagan conservative" that's just another definition of a conservative. They still talk about the 1980 Reagan Democrats; those people are long gone and had babies who are now voting. The example from above has a clear definition, but then I hear people saying, “well they're not conservative enough." I think it all boils down to a how right of center a person is. The more moderate the person is; the less they care about distinctions. I think people on the extremes sides have controlling issues but I don't have a degree in psychiatry.

A lot of conservatives will take the most positive traits of a human being and apply to conservatism and say the rest of the traits are liberal. Some people think that clean water and air is a liberal viewpoint, but it's not, it's an American or better yet, a human being viewpoint. Others will say that smaller government, fiscal economic policies, and a strong defense is what conservatism is all about. I want smaller government but I want a government that is efficient, so what I call small maybe too large for those that dislike government.

I see where we're going back to having free- for- all forums, where people post without vetting. That may have been the case all along, but I believe we had a long spell of opinionated blogs, but they didn't get their basis from conspiracy web sites. I will never understand how some people could write a letter- to -the- editor or post a blog in a public form without vetting. I have made all sorts of mistakes and have been properly corrected, but I would never think of posting something without doing the proper vetting. It may be old fashioned pride, but it would be embarrassing if someone found my blog to be a complete lie. I'm not going out a limb by saying that it's fairly obvious that those posters hate the president and everything he stands for. That in itself is perfectly OK but purposely trying to deceive posters to get others to share their hatred is what I call a “low life." The problem won't go away without the Advocate Staff commenting about the inaccuracy of a blog. It doesn't have to be mean, just a statement making other posters aware of their findings. I don't know, perhaps the posters on the VA  forum like their freedom to post without interference, thinking that the posters will always police themselves. There's something to the free flow of information based on personal opinions.

I've always admired the free spirit posters ,who will not be tied down by labels because their thoughts are not from web sites or filtered media; it comes from their heart and brain. Sometimes it's a little bit of this and a little bit of that but mostly they are 100% conservative on some things and 100% liberal on others because they refuse to be tied down to a label.It’s too bad and too bad for this liberal from Victoria.