Politics - blogging - ranting - raving

I have contributed to a blog that was originally built to support the candidacy of Ron Paul for President. I cannot vote for Ron Paul for president. I have what I think are sound political principles, and I am sometimes certain of the soundness of my views because, when I delineate them, liberals who see them are offended.

My positions are rather simple: I value the individual over the bureaucracy, to the extent that I am comfortable with the notion that government programs that offer assistance may fall short of providing adequate supports for everyone who needs them.

Yes, I said that i believe the premise of support programs should be that we will deliberately provide less than is absolutely necessary. For that reason, many left leaning people think I am a far right conservative. In fact, when I have take the on-line polls to determine my ideological placement, I always fall just to the right of the aisle. How can that be when my second paragraph is translated by liberals to be caustic, rigid, and unsympathetic?

The answer to me is simple. People are animals at their core. Yes, they are capable of honor, integrity, nobility, bravery, and many other traits that separate them from their animal core. However, they are still animals at the center. Consequently, government support for the poor and downtrodden must stop short, by design, from helping them to survive. Rather, governmental safety nets should provide them with a temproary reprieve from destruction, but no more.

My reason for the callous position is that I know that human nature is base, and so government safety nets that really provide everything a poor soul needs will ultimately lead the poor soul to decide to do nothing but lean on the government program. Complacency and dissolution are the only logical outcomes for a poor soul who learns that when he is at his lowest and most destitute, he need only solicit the assistance of some other to shield him from ownership of his own status or state. In simple terms, if a poor soul knows he will not perish, no matter what, when things are most dire, then he will eventually learn that there is no sense in trying hard. Psychological research has demonstrated variations of this principle over the years, and yet humans somehow think that, because the human mind can sugjugate and dominate his animal behaviors to some extent, he can therefore deny their existence or power.

Consequently, I think my position the most humane. If I want what is best for the majority of people, I must support the notion that people are at their best when they are forced to be self-sufficient and empowered. Government assistance demeans and weakens people. Government dependency debases humans.

I acknowledge that deliberately providing less than necessary will result in some individuals perishing. However, I learned from 1980's Star Trek that the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the one - or some similar statement. Soldiers live and die with that concept. The greatest good is still in teaching a man to fish, rather than handing him a haddock.

Republican principles align more closely with the ideas mentioned above, so I rightfully test out as a moderate Republican. The line between the left and right in this country is really located at that point between assisting and enabling. Extrapolate from there and the litmus test for governmental intervention is clear for me. If what you propose the government do will most logically lead to a subset of dependent people, I am against it. If the government intervention you propose is conceived to prop up the temporarily incapacitated, I am for it with reservations. Those reservations are relateed to the question of how temporary, or how invasive.

I have been having email and message board arguments with friends and relatives who are liberal-minded. They are also mostly young, which skews their thinking in my opinion. The jump I can't seem to get them to make is to see the severe side-effects of the governmental control they seem to condone and actively support. They seem to me to think only the best of most people at all times, despite overwhelming evidence that people under the most dire circumstances will always revert to their most animalistic drives. Government programs therefore should be designed to intervene when circumstances are most dire, and compel by design the individual to return to independence and self-sufficiency. The only way to do that, in my opinion, is to allow for the fact that some will perish when they don't find a road to self-reliance.