I share your concern about democrat treatment of service members. I took that same survey a couple of months ago, and it showed me leaning heavily toward Gary Johnson more than the others....something like 93% if I recall correctly. But Johnson is off-putting to me personally for reasons I find hard to articulate, which contributes to why I am still wrestling with choosing whom I will support with my vote.TexasTornado wrote:TAM, I have "identified" Democrat for the majority of my political life, mostly due to my social views although I have never voted for a Democrat for President. The candidate I was most compelled by unfortunately received little traction and zero respect from the Democratic base. He was the hero they needed, but possibly didn't deserve at this time, who knows.
What I do know is that although my views probably align more with Hillary's than 98% of the members here, I can not accept her as the leader of my nation when she does not accept the principles that my nation was founded on.
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We can debate on policy all day and night but in the end the Constitution is not flexible on some issues, nor am I. One of the biggest things for me personally and probably the largest reason I refuse to vote Democrat is the continual decline in the capacity and care of our service members and Veterans. For me this is the hot button issue that takes precedence over all. It's personal.
I want to explain what I mean by my "conservative social values"...... (please forgive, I'm not trying to proselytize here, but just to explain the underpinnings of my thought processes)....
For the 23 years I identified as a registered republican, it was because I was ignorant to libertarian thought, and the republican party most closely reflected the totality of my personal beliefs. It's perhaps worth noting that social values are more complex than simply "liberal" or "conservative". I am an unapologetic evangelical Christian, but my social values are mine, for me. I guess that, in the sense of libertarianism, what other people do with their lives, is between them and God, not between them and me. I may still view their choices as sin, but it's their sin, not mine, and I am far too busy trying to live my life according to scriptural standards to stand in condemnation of others. (It is important to know the difference between the exercise of judgment, and condemnation. I may judge another person's actions as sinful, but I don't condemn the person for that sin, because the right of condemnation is God's and his alone.) Anyone who has read the second half of Romans chapter 7 would understand this duality. Paul - the author of a sizable chunk of the New Testament - writes about his struggle with the flesh.......the things he wants to do, he does not do; but instead, the things he does not want to do, he does. And this brings him, this bibilical giant, into conflict with what he knows about God's perfect law. In the end, biblical law only applies to those people who believe it is true......says so right in that chapter......and since (a) only complete adherence to the Law in all things can save us, and (b) none of us is capable of being obedient to the law (Romans 3:23), we are not saved by our adherence to the law, but by our faith in Christ. This is why a secular society like our own never has to fear from it's Christian members. We don't believe in any kind of Christian form of Sharia law. Why? Because we believe that salvation is about the individual's relationship with God, not the society-at-large's relationship with God. Whether or not same-sex preferences (for instance) is sinful has nothing to do with whether or not that person can find salvation, because we are ALL sinners. Those who believe are saved only by God's grace, not out of any inherent righteousness or works of our own (Ephesians 2:8-10). Therefore, I do not condemn people whose personal morality and social standards are outside of my own, because I don't view them as any worse than myself - a sinner saved only by God's grace.
That is why my political values lean to the libertarian. I don't believe that I have the right to force other people to live by my spiritual values. It's that pesky 1st Amendment thing. I don't condone some things, in fact I may think they are demonically inspired, but I don't want to see people imprisoned for them. For example, I do think that abortion is murder, but I don't want women who have had abortions to be jailed for it. I would hope to have an opportunity to convince someone struggling with that decision to choose life instead, but the decision is hers, not mine. It would be sinful, but it is her sin, between her and God, not my sin. I think that drug use is the ruination of the society, but 40+ years of the "war on drugs" has succeeded only in spending $ trillions of taxpayer dollars, getting a whole lot of people killed on both sides of the border, exacerbated an already out of control immigration policy, and solidified the hold of various cartels over the gov'ts of the countries from which the drugs originate. And, 40+ years later, more people today use drugs than ever before. What a waste. Prisons are full of people who did nothing more than buy and sell weed......a naturally occurring plant which used to be found in roadside ditches all over the country. I don't smoke it. I don't think you should smoke it because it's not good for you (the truth is that most of the alleged "health benefits" are pure malarkey), but you own your body, and if you want to turn your mind to mush, that's your right. If I had a nickel for every joint I smoked as a yoot, well, let's just say that my thoughts might be more coherent today, and I wouldn't have to write such long screeds to explain myself. ;)
I'm a free market capitalist. I don't believe that the Republican Party pays anything more than lip service to that principle - they being nearly as enamored of oligarchs as are the democrats. Heck, the republican nominee is an oligarch......which is part of why I struggle over supporting his candidacy. I believe in consequences as part of the natural order of things, and thus, while I agree with the idea of a very limited safety net for the downtrodden, I also believe that most people will never learn to adapt to their circumstances and improve their positions in life if the nanny state is always there to haul their ashes out of the fire, whenever those ashes are the result of their own demonstrably bad choices (chronic drug abuse, for instance). But similarly, I think that gov't needs to stop being a welfare state for corporatists. "Too big to fail" has been a product of both parties, not just one or the other, and it is the "little people" like you and me who are paying the price for that folly.
I believe that if we don't get term limits passed for both Congress and the federal judiciary, we will see the end of the nation and a complete loss of our liberties in our lifetimes.......regardless of which party is in charge.
Etc., etc.
I am currently reading a biographical trilogy on the life of Winston Churchill with the master title of "The Last Lion", and boy howdy......if you want to see a perfect example of the two adages that "the more things change, the more they remain the same", and "those who fail to learn the lessons of history are condemned to repeat them", I cannot recommend those books highly enough. Here is a great quote from that book. The year is 1922, and the place is London, England. Churchill has just succeeded as Colonial Minister in founding the Irish Free State in Southern Ireland, and Lloyd George is still Prime Minister:
It is my observation that the part I have emphasized would be true today for large swaths of both major parties, which explains both the astounding degree of success Bernie Sanders enjoyed this year, and Donald Trump's candidacy. Back during the 21 years when I was a registered democrat, an openly avowed socialist would have never been well-received by the party. Socialism was one of the "3rd rails" of politics. Most of the party's "social justice" schemes were socialist in nature - i.e. LBJ's great society, FDR's "new deal" - but the party was canny enough to label them otherwise, knowing that the voting public would never willingly swallow socialism if it was sold as socialism. Bernie Sanders is proof positive that nearly half of the party today will openly proclaim it for what it is........and happily vote for it. How different from JFK, who was a rabid anti-communist and extremely mistrustful of socialism.Critics of the prime minister were appearing on all sides, partly because he had unwisely abandoned the custom of consulting Parliament before taking action. Harold Laski wrote: “He seems determined to sacrifice upon the altar of his private ambition the whole spirit of our public life.” The Times declared that the word of England had “lost currency throughout the greater part of the world as the word of an upright land.” Francis Williams observed that the coalition had “produced at the centre an atmosphere more like an oriental court at which favourites struggled unceasingly for position than anything seen in Britain for a century or more.” It moved Sir Edward Grey “to indignation and despair such as I have never felt about any other British Government.” After a weekend with Lloyd George, Austen Chamberlain, and Birkenhead, Arnold Bennett noted: “I never heard principles or the welfare of the country mentioned.” Leo Amery later recalled that Conservatives “felt that they no longer had any policy of their own, but were being dragged along in the wake of an erratic Prime Minister whom they once again profoundly distrusted, by a little group of their own leaders who had lost, not only their principles, but their heads.”
[emphasis mine]
It used to be that there were enough elected democrats firmly ensconced in the pro-2nd Amendment camp that our gun rights were reasonably secure. I say "reasonably", because there's always going to be some nut burger who believes the populace ought to be disarmed.......but those nut burgers did not hold a majority opinion in the matter. Nevertheless, the GCA of 1968 was passed and signed into law by LBJ, and ironically, it was officially supported by the NRA (of which I am an endowment member), and equally ironically, it was passed in response to the assassination of JFK, who was a life member of the NRA.
So, Donald Trump has made certain promises about his support of the RKBA, and to appoint SCOTUS justices in the Scalia mold. IF he gets my vote, it will be for that reason, and that reason alone. But the big question is this: given his track record over the course of his life prior to this election season, and given his track record of having a chameleon nature, and given his support in previous years for the AWB of 1993 and other gun-control measures, can he be relied upon to fulfill his promises?
That is a huge unknown. This is why, even though I might vote for him based on protecting the second amendment, I still struggle today over the decision. I know exactly how I would feel if he turned out to be a liar on that score. I am fairly certain that the nation would experience an upheaval not seen since the Civil War years. Electing Clinton would only hasten that. So EVERTYHING depends on Trump becoming (suddenly) a man of his word. It's not a comfortable place to be.
