Saturday, May 30, 2020

Is this conservatism?

Trying to get a fix on what exactly constitutes a genuine conservative position seems to be getting harder and harder these days. The "compassionate conservatism" of George W. Bush is an interesting idea--the idea that the government should encourage private agencies to help the poor rather than do it themselves. But what about this, from conservative Christian activist Rebecca Friedrichs.

We should look to the past. So, let’s just take the free lunch program that we have in our schools. It started out being pushed by the unions and their friends for poor children. Well, 28 years ago, I had two students in my class on free lunch. Today almost every single child is on free breakfast and free lunch. So what the unions are trying to do, they’re pushing something called community schools. And in these community schools, we’re giving children free health care, we’re giving them free food, free emotional support, and by the way free political indoctrination for their parents. And so, if these unions and their friends, their politicians, get their way, they would like our schools to be open 24/7. They want to replace the family and families raising their children with our own virtues, they want to replace that with the state. With union-controlled government-run schools. That’s dangerous. That’s communism when you think about it.

This is discussed here on an atheist website.


7 comments:

Starhopper said...

Well, minus the hysterical hyperbole... if that's communism, then sign me up!

Victor Reppert said...

This woman takes TANSTAAFL literally.

Starhopper said...

But the hilarious thing is, it's not. It's just sensible public policy.

StardustyPsyche said...

"Trying to get a fix on what exactly constitutes a genuine conservative position seems to be getting harder and harder these days"
Why would one go in search of conservative positions, or liberal positions, or whatever?

If a policy or a law or an opinion or a philosophy makes sense on the merits, great, if not, then not so great.

Ideologies, parties, and schools of philosophy each have their good arguments and their bad arguments, which is why I belong to no and I ascribe to no particular ideology, party, or school of philosophy.

"Conservative", taken literally means to keep things the same, which is a good idea for good things, and a bad idea for bad things. So, if you set out to be conservative you are setting yourself up to perpetuate all the wrongs of the world along with preserving all the good progress that has been made. Why restrict yourself in such a regressive way?

Doesn't it make more sense to get rid of the ideas of either change nothing or change everything? How about we conserve the things that are already good and have merit, and work on changing the rest?

Starhopper said...

Stardusty,

Could not agree more.

BK said...

"They want to replace the family and families raising their children with our own virtues, they want to replace that with the state."

It is actually pretty funny that people are commenting "sign me up." I guess if you are in agreement with what the positions that the State takes, you might be willing to do so. But what if those positions change? What if the State starts teaching things that you find to be not only wrong, but contrary to your morals? That could happen, of course. Personally, I raised my kids according to my morals, and all of them turned out to be good people, and I would expect that everyone would prefer to teach their children what they believe rather than allow the State to dictate what they ought to believe.

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